Yes. I said it. What?
Africa is largely doomed. Nigeria is absolutely doomed. Now what are we going to do about it?
Alright. In the fantasy world where I somehow end up in charge of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I would do ... well, actual me isn't ruthless enough to do what logic tells me would need to be done in order to achieve practical viable progress in a single lifetime.
So let's try this again. Let's pretend I am that guy. First things first would be have every corrupt political figure executed quickly and messily -- and PUBLICLY. You know who they are. Those that survive would be forced to flee the country and banned from ever coming back. This will put the whole country on notice. If this sounds like a dictatorial solution ... then you should have thought of that before putting the likes of my more-ruthless hypothetical self in charge of Nigeria, a country where one of our airlines had a door fall off the plane as it landed and it's really only a big deal on Twitter.
All the funds they looted would have to be recovered of course. They'll be needed for the next phase.
I would call in the Israelis to train up our military (borrowing a leaf from Lee Kuan Yew's playbook - man was a genius of realpolitik) Simultaneously, I would have the military retrain the police by whatever means necessary because their corrupt nonsense must be stopped with immediate effect. The Nigerian police would need to recruit massively, be upgraded with the right gear, paid far better than before and most of all equipped with the right mindset, one where extorting naira from innocent motorists (or accepting it from guilty ones) would be far beneath their dignity. This would be accomplished by both negative and positive reinforcement, the positive being that cops would start getting paid a lot more and equipped a lot better to encourage them to actually do their jobs and to consider it worth doing.
The negative being messy public executions.
Why all this? Because without the ability to genuinely enforce the law for people at every socioeconomic stratum, we will not be able to move forward with any other project without corruption and nepotism dragging behind us like an anchor on land. The new people in government will be aware of what's at stake and operate accordingly, acting in the country's best interests because it is in their best interests to do so. Because their lives literally depend on it.
After that is done, now we can start on positive changes in the country without being held back by drags on progress.
TOURISM
First actual positive change, we have to keep the momentum going. With well-equipped high-morale law enforcement and military that have both been trained up to international standards, we can now make a serious move on Boko Haram, the Fulani Herdsmen and any other violent idiots that are disgracing Nigeria at home and abroad.
With safety, comes the possibility of tourism. Nigeria has a great many beautiful waterfalls, rock formations and all manner of cool stuff to look at. The kind of thing that Kenya would have made so much national cake off, our idiot existing leaders have allowed to lie fallow and be completely ignored. I will not make that mistake. If Nigeria is safe for foreigners to visit, they will have cool places to take iPhone X pictures in 👺👺👺
Moreover, those tourists, they'll need locals to sell stuff to them, to be tour guides, to be guides to the stuff you don't find on tours. That's jobs. Tourism dollars buy us a lot. That leads to the next point.
PORTS
Nigeria for now lives and dies by imports. As a visionary Nigerian leader, believe you me, I fully intend to address that -- but for now, I have to work with what I can improve at high speed. Nigeria needs to lose the bottleneck of Lagos being the only real international economic hub and the best way to do that is to open the doors for other states to do business. Start building ports everywhere that Nigeria touches water, bring in investors to help, GoFundMe at the geopolitical scale, no IMF or World Bank loans (now I'm dipping into the Thomsas Sankara playbook) and it has the lovely side-effect of encouraging local manufacturers to ramp up their game.
But building ports takes too long. In the interim, heavy-lift helicopters and cargo planes and jumbo drones (like the ones the Chinese are testing right now for passengers. Scale that up for high-value cargo and we've got something interesting -- and our skies will become as unto those of Wakanda.
ADDRESSING
Believe it or not, the lack of a consistent street addressing system in Nigeria is a massive problem. It drastically slows down commerce, censuses and numerous other functions. More interestingly however, it's a problem that today's open-source GPS Big Data world can cheaply and quickly solve. I'd simply invite one of the companies already doing digital street addressing and make them throw a grid across the country that lets even the most remote villages have addresses. Hello, voter registration; hello, e-commerce delivery; hello, document delivery; hello, accessibility; hello, hello, hello in general.
ELECTRICITY
One word: Solar.
Okay, more than one word: Massive Investment in Solar because no time no time. Get this show on the road, subsidize it massively for everyone who wants it from schools to barbershops, hospitals to huts and let the chips fall where they may. Whatever spirit is blocking us from solar when we have more than over-abundant sunlight in our boiling hot country, that spirit should PERISH BY FIRE! PERISH BY FIRE!!!! PERISH BY FIRE!!!!!
EDUCATION
Nigeria's education sector is ... okay. Did you ever hear the story about the guy who wanted to paint the side of his house but, instead of just painting the house, dug a massive hole 30 feet deep in front of his house, went down in the hole with a ladder, climbed the ladder and then painted his house? No?
Yeah, that's exactly what Nigeria's higher education system is like.
How do we fix it? Well, once upon a time, our colonizers the British when their country was young were famed for the prowess of their longbow archers. There came a day when the British king of the time met with the king of another nation. The other king, perhaps frustrated, asked the British king: "How do you train such incredible archers?" And the British king answered: "If you wish to train a English longbowman, you must start with his grandfather."
On the one hand, that's the kind of strategic forward thinking we need to improve Nigeria. With that in mind, I would say forget the universities and start lower down at the primary schools. Write off our existing crop of university students and just start over at the roots.
So instead I would sponsor and promote a show on the scale of Big Brother Naija -- except that instead of having a bunch of sex addled semi-illiterate celebrity wannabes in a house, I'd have a casting call for people like this guy, kids with that natural talent for tech and I'd throw them into a great big lab/junkyard and have them compete (and yes, fuck and fight too, sure whatever.)
Get kids excited about science and tech and building cool stuff with our own hands in our own country. Excited about things that aren't money (well, not just money), aren't religion and aren't fleeing to better countries where things actually work. Winner gets 45 million naira, all the computers and tablets he or she can handle and an all-expenses paid admission to any university in the world they can get into, be it MIT or Caltech or something Chinese.
In conclusion, because if I stay on this matter, matter no go ever end (walahi, Naija problems too plenty 😡), I have chosen measures that are fast and brutal and expensive to ensure maximum change in minimum time. Of course, things like roads and fuel scarcity matter too and of course they would be tackled but I think a rejuvenated Giant of Africa under my leadership (haha) would not be sliding backwards with the sand trying to hold onto technologies and certainties that are being left behind by the world. Instead it would be leapfrogging forward to new technologies and new solutions that render the old problems as the irrelevant obstacles they should be by now.
(Oga @tezzmax, you have done an incredible work with this contest that enlists the minds of the @africaunchained community to imagine a better Africa and a better Nigeria. It is a powerful and personal concept and I couldn't sleep until I finished it.)
Want a resurgent Africa? Want a doomed Africa that is determined to seize that doom by the jaws and rend that lion's mouth asunder? This is one way that might happen. Our entrepreneurial spirit will handle the rest.
You might enjoy other stuff written by me such as:
Human History X: The Mapmakers
Geospatial Big Data: The Magic of Maps and Money
Barbarian Bushmen of the Blockchain (honestly, this might be my favourite thing I ever wrote on Steemit -- not the best but my personal favourite)
Your title got me running down here. Well, I know that Nigeria needs a tough determined leadership to move forward but brutality isn't really the answer. I love the plans you have but the approach is no longer used in modern days. You can read the 33 strategy of war and you will hear Robert Greene mentioned it that you should prefer intellect and strategy over brutality and force.
If you used brutality, you won't know when you have over stepped the mark, leading to war and rebellion and innocent lives slaughtered then you will end up like the rest of the dictators.
You make very cogent points and I agree about the dangers of violence begetting violence. However, look at the state of the country. It is the way it is because the people in power know they will never suffer any consequences for their endless legion of crimes. They can spend our schools and roads and electricity and environmental protection "abandex" on homes in Dubai and private jets and Swiss bank accounts and they continue to do so and we just sit here and do nothing. They fly private jets and leave Dana Airlines for us, their kids go to school in UK and leave hot Agbani sun for us, they fly to India and America for medical appointments and leave us to die in emergency room for lack of 5000 naira!!!
Nna eh!
Our hair is on fire and we are combing it while the people with matches enjoy Ghana-must-go millions and billions. We are already in a drastic situation, moderate action will not move that needle.
And the title was very deliberately chosen for that reason hahaha
I completely agree, violence is hard to stop and hard to justify if you make a mistake. Very sensible arguments.
Sincerely, your write up got me cracking... But it contains a lot of truth. Sad thing is, the first step is quite impossible as you would be attacked by activists and the likes...
We can only hope that the real change happens.
Hahaahahah -- you are of course correct and it is amusing that I have basically recreated "being a brutal dictator" without coming out and saying it -- but the goal is to be Sankara or Lee Kuan Yew, not Idi Amin or Charles Taylor.
Or just be Abacha and everyone would behave!
God forbid I should resemble Abacha in any way. Tufiakwa!
Lol i wouldn't want to laugh at your comment. So i wont be the one you would start d revolution with 😁
Hahahah, your musings are hilarious @edumurphy.
Look, I'm sure all of our leaders know about this, most of them sha, if not all - they know about this, but they are prevented from doing it by a lot of factors, a good leader can overcome most of those factors though.
But I've seen an instance where a Nigerian leader embarked on something good but he was stopped in his tracks by some of these factors. When Goodluck Jonathan was the president, he was building a big plant that would supply a large amount of electricity but this plant kept being vandalized and parts of it were stolen. So what could have caused all these? Maybe the generator importers who don't want enough power supply in Nigeria because it is bad for their sales? Or the opposition party who don't want him to achieve something as big as that so his chances at the polls would not be increased? Stuff.
Hope you know I'm not justifying any of these politicians, I'm just carrying out a discussion. Solar may have been the shit though ☺
@nevies, the son of Aphrodite
Oh that's normal for Naija na. Our people have absorbed the corruption down to the lowest levels of society. That's why I chose the Step 1 that I chose because that's the only thing that will put everybody on notice that things are now different.
I totally agree, bro. This stuff about Jonathan did you know it before?
Not Jonathan specifically but I have heard similar stories and it fits the facts. Who gains more from our electricity supply being sabotaged than the generator dealers?
Oh and let's not forget Chimaraoke building that mighty conference center in Enugu only for the two governors after him (Sullivan and the fool Gburu-Gburu) to leave it to rust away into a dead hulk of wasted potential.
That's some shit, really though.
very well articulated.. the situation especially in Nigeria requires drastic action in order to at least bring to a halt the negative slope in which we seem to be sliding as a nation.
That is eh!
@edumurphy you wrote well,but the caption (AFRICA IS DOOMED ESPECIALLY NIGERIA ) is what i can not agree on.
Brother , we are not doomed just that we are unfutunate to have bad leaders,that dont not have the matters of its citizens at heart.but that does not mean that we are doomed.
remember Rome was not built in a day.
it takes gradual process to achieve that not by force. i like the point you came up with on how to resolve those issues.
sometimes we blame government for everything but we the citizens fail to do our own part in national progress.
Guy, I am 35 years old. I have been hearing that line about Rome wasn't built in a day since I was 9. Rome wasn't built in a day but are you telling me that in 26 years Rome made no forward progress?
No. Listen to Fela's music, listen to his complaints and his humor. Now tell me, what has improved in Nigeria since 1992? Name one thing.
Oh, and as for Rome? They used force. And crucifixions. You might recall.
And they fell.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire
Everybody falls. At least they got to be a pinnacle of civilization for hundreds of years before falling. Nigeria didn't just fall, it lay down in the deepest pothole it could find and started digging with a 10 ton shovel.
What a wonderful dream for Nigeria! Honestly, we need a change in this nation, the type that can only be possible through aggressive struggle to take over from the current big brothers.
Which will never happen because deep down we know the truth: all of us have given up on Nigeria. We just have the people exploiting it, the people escaping it and the people trying to survive it. The exploiters, the escapers and the endurers.
@edumurphy I love your writing style... may it be "Driven by More Fire!!!" :)
I have been to beloved Nigeria twice! You must be thinking... "why this china-man-from-aussie-land wanna cum to me country... so sharp-sharp na?"
Because 4-5 years ago, I had a "Call" to Coach Social Entrepreneurs from a few African nations pro-bono and I have been doing so thus then. I founded an initiative called #IAmCatalyst and every year we do a Conference to ignite local country-men/women to rise up for the hope and change of the future possibilities.
Fyi, I will be there again this year in Sept/Oct and I hope to meet up with you.
Will support #AfricaUnchained... in the near future when I post on Africa.
Blessings!
Mel @coachmelleow
Exciting! Thanks for the comment and very happy to have you involved with #africaunchained!
Also, yeah, I bet you don't want to come to my country half as much as my countrymen want to come to yours 🤣
Yes, do come to Nigeria. Can't guarantee I won't have fled myself by then though 🤣
Nice! Will read over it again when I get the chance (not busy).
I like your approach... if I were concerned with preserving the Nigerian state I would take the same.
As a Libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist type... my own solution would probably be entirely different. I would look to decentralize and carve up the region by interest groups, clans, ethnicities, etc.
I wouldn't stop with Nigeria of course... I would do this to the entire globe.
I like the meta-approach. You're thinking way bigger heheheh seek first the human commonalities then build up to the differences from there. Not too dissimilar from what I theorized albeit I'm starting from a point of "let's get some actual infrastructure and some institutional memory of things working properly" first before we start to dig into tribal and ethnic worries.
The first part of this post sounds like the best solution to end the corrupt practices in Nigeria. Most people have thought about this too,even myself but who's ready to embark on this journey.
2019 is by the corner @edumurphy, we hope to see you flag off!!
O di mma. Mmadu gwa gi i kwelu 🙄🤣
Yeah right. If person tell you say I go contest, you go gree? 🙄🤣
Abeg, I go run comot men. If I'm the only one who cares that Naija is already on fire, then we are already fucked. Let it burn. Things cannot change until we all acknowledge how bad things are and all refuse to accept it anymore. A lot of us including me have done the first but the second? We including me are too afraid and too concerned with our own lives to take real action.
Na like this we go dey dey 🤷
WOW! Powerful and true, it's so sad that the advancements man has made continue to put us backwards. He still strives for corruption, greed, lack of affection, lack of love, on so many levels man does not feel accountable for his actions. Mans agenda is for better, when it lines his pockets at any cost.
I feel sorry for many Africans and the atrocities that they have had to endure and still have to live in.
We need a global government, with the whole human race treated as an equal, a global government that has the entire earths interest first. Remove egotistical self absorbed men that lord it over, and oppress people. These men are demi gods in their eye's and to remove them is like a dog removing a blood sucking leech from it's back.
Leeches is exactly the word. It's not just the backward notion, it is the lack of forward motion that is f***ing us and that comes from the constant squandering of our resources and no improvements to education, healthcare, electricity, fuel or anything really.
Of course the fact of the suffering forces us to focus on survival and personal wealth instead of the reasons for that suffering. We live in a state of utter madness in Naija and have gotten used to it. As if it's normal. Like the weather. Nothing we can do 😠😠😠
Your post is both funny and deep.
The first step though might just breed civil unrest, as violence breeds violence and a whole vicious cycle will surely detrimental to whatever you have in mind. Maybe incarceration, or actual lawful execution will work.
I am in support of the massive solar project. We are "suffering" from excess sun. How will one be in hell and still eat uncooked meat? Solar panels are even ozone friendly sef.
Education... The Nigerian educational sector is one word... Crap fest. That was two, my bad, but it's still true. We need more practical experience, I for one think that we now less of a hands-on, manual, creative people, and more white collar, desk people.
What happened to the creativity that made homemade bombs in the civil war? I'll tell you what... no good reward system. We glorify silliness and look down on things that can be a way out from this madness— mind you,I'm not saying bombs are a way out, I just used it as an example of creativity.
We need to help ourselves and we need to do it pronto.
Well done @edumurphy
I agree about the violence but the way I see it, the carefully chosen targets have no means of matching my state-sponsored brutality and are hated enough by the public that I feel pretty good about the odds. I mean, do you really think anyone outside his family or his village people would object to Andrew Yakubu's public execution? Remember him? Caught with 9.7 million dollars cash? Had the gall to argue that he could not be prosecuted in Kano because the money was looted in Abuja?! Still has not been imprisoned?!!!! What about Buruji Kashamu, a known drug baron still wanted by the United States to this day? If you've watched or read Orange is the New Black, he's "Alhaji", the drug baron that employed the protagonist and her lover before they went to jail. Is he in jail? No, he's a sitting senator from Ondo State to this day as I am typing this 😠. Or Babangida (yes, his age is no exemption, fuck that guy?)
I am pretty sure there'd be standing ovations for them and others like them being brought to final justice.
No, I stand by every word. They can bribe their way out of prison, they can enjoy house arrest, they can enjoy exile and they have no right. Monstrous consequences are required to move the needle, intimidatory ultraviolence that they cannot bribe their way out of like they always do, to tell every would-be kleptocrat politician to find a new line of work unless they are really there to work for the country.
And, as I said in the article, my real self is not ruthless enough to actually go through with it but this is all theory so whatever.
You are also completely correct about how far Igboland has fallen since the Civil War. The ingenuity and resolve displayed by our people was mind-boggling and it infuriates me that we are no longer capable of replicating that; because as you said, our reward system is bullshit but also because those guys were educated by the best and our present generations, by and large? Weren't.
I would love to visit Nigeria but I share what many Westerners seem to have: Fear for their safety. What is so interesting in my home city is that following the rule of law seems to be ingrained in our citizens' DNA. How this came about seems to echo this passage:
"If you wish to train a English longbowman, you must start with his grandfather."
How we will train the grandfathers of Nigeria? Create an environment that allows for people to respect - down to their bones - the common laws of the land. How this can be achieved is the extremely difficult part.
You are completely correct. The "English Longbowman Problem" is Nigeria's biggest problem, even bigger than the corruption because it is the reason for the corruption. There is no institutional memory of following the rule of law and not running a corrupt government/organization ... okay, I am exaggerating but only slightly.
As for the safety thing, honestly it's very strange. The Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram horrorshow always seems to be happening somewhere else; social media and the news is full of it but no one I know ever seems to have witnessed it. Don't get me wrong, it is happening but the parts of Nigeria where it's hot are generally not where a foreigner would go anyway. The places foreigners would go are pretty safe -- unless you work in the field for an oil company, I guess.
That is a very interesting point about safe places in Nigeria. A new study by German Market research company GFK found 23% of Germans view the USA as "unsafe" to travel to. It seems people in the west don't have access to high quality information about particular regions of the world's "safety index".
Hey, Nigeria has Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram, America has Mass Shooters and Actual fricking Nazis yet millions of people live to a ripe old age in America and Nigeria without ever hearing a gunshot or seeing their own blood.
(Am I being facetious in my equivalence? Absolutely and yet I am technically not wrong in the slightest)
I like your post so I have resteemed it and I like the serious comments you are getting. This is how Steemit should be - real discussion instead of stupid begging and empty flattering.
I am not in favour of corporal punishment and I think that the same could be achieved with an economic crucifixion instead of a deadly one. But harsh and reinforced laws is definitely necessary. I think coruption is at the heart of most problems around the globe and nations with high corruption are cheating themselves from a lot of progress that would help everybody.
Just as a parallel - there is some historians who argue that the reason the Scandinavian countries (I am from Denmark by the way) have so low corruption is because the sovereign king and his officialdom went in with such harsh laws that threatened to ruin all civil servants that was corrupt. This is more than 200 years ago so maybe the timeframe is rather large.
No matter what, I am pleased to see Nigerians debating this, even if Nigeria is doomed :)
Yes, I noticed your handiwork on the post. You're like the eagles from Lord of The Rings lol
Your points about laws are well-noted. You and @spaceballoon are clearly on the same wavelength. Your country/countries have centuries of institutional memory of rules worth following and people following the rules, Nigeria ... not so much. We have a lot of good people but very very badly maintained systems both bureaucratic and infrastructural.
The way forward? As he and I discussed, the issue is the English Longbowman Paradox. This generation are the grandfathers from that anecdote, now we need to create the grandchildren.
It is true that there is a very important factor in cultural memory. Nigeria is a young country, it has been through a lot of violence and it has oil (which seem somehow to be more of a curse than a blessing. Just look at Venezuela and the Arab countries).
I know a guy whose father was an Igbo refugee from the civil war and came to Denmark as a young man. As education is free here he took a medical exam and when he had worked a couple of years as a doctor he invested his money in hospital beds and other medical equipment that was being replaced in the Danish medical system. Then he flew to Lagos with the whole shipment to start a hospital and help rebuild the Nation.
But in the airport the toll officials refused to let him in with all kinds of stupid excuses and he refused to pay them anything because he did not want to start his new life in Nigeria doing something that was not only wrong, but also what he thought was the source of all the suffering in his country. After three days he went back to Denmark with his hospital beds, and today he is a chief doctor up here and has a Danish wife and three children, but what a waste of a resourceful man just because of some corrupt toll officials. (and also in some way bad for him because he freezes all the time - hehe (that is according to his son)). Somehow the formative years he had as a young man in Denmark made it impossible for him to return. He simply despised corruption too much as is the general sentiment in his new home country.
That is why I am pleased that it is debated like this in Nigeria. It does not start on the individual level but it starts in individuals who form a consensus. That is how the grandchildren are created... I hope :)
Oh such stories are abundant. The amount of brain drain (particularly young doctors) fleeing Nigeria for Australia, the UK and Canada and Dubai and basically, anywhere but here? It is terrifying. Worst of all, you can't blame them. If you check the stats, our people are achieving incredible things in the diaspora because they're in an environment where their talents match the infrastructure. That surgeon that extracted a fetus, took out the tumor and put the fetus back in the mom to be carried to term? Nigerian. Chief designer of the Chevy Volt? Nigerian. Smartest Family in the UK? Nigerians. Drone/robotics whiz in Texas with like 6 zillion PhDs? Nigerian. The list goes on.
If our country has nothing to offer its best people, then those best will either do their jobs at 1/100th potential, flee or be pushing wheelbarrows in the market.
And that's where we are.
My impression is that Nigerians take education very seriously, and that is a very good thing. Brain drain is very bad for a country though, no doubt about it, but looking around I would still see this as an important thing.
The Arab countries could actually learn a lot from you in that regard - but somehow the trend in parts of sunni Islam is to turn your back to knowledge and education.
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Awesome post, well constructed and articulated. You are an awesome writer and I wish I saw this post from the first day. I have just followed you to make sure I don't miss this sort of write ups anymore.
What actually attracted me to your post was the caption, in as much as i agree partly with your submissions and proposed solutions. I disagree fully with the caption of this write up, the Africa that I know and i'm a part of isn't doomed in anyway, there's great hope for greatness, all we need are good policies and obviously that can only be offered by a good leader who truly loves Nigeria. We have had good leaders but we've had non that have the interest of our country above theirs.
On the issue of corruption, your solution is rather brutish and ultimately wouldn't create any lasting solution. Killing of all our corrupt leaders could be compared to making plans to eliminate sin which you and I know is not visible. You would only succeed in killing the pertuators and not the evil(corruption) in itself. First of all, what we need to understand is that man by nature is a corrupt being, he is only prevented by a system. So the only solution to minimizing corruption( yes I said minimizing because it cannot be eradicated), is to create systems that actually prevents same. Execution of the pertuators of corruption could be likened to killing your goat for eating your yam that you left in the open, when you could actually just have kept the yam in a more secure place.
I wish i could write more, but let me stop here for now.. With your permission I could write a rejoinder reaction to this your post. How about that?
By the way great post @edumurphy.
a) You definitely don't need my permission to write a rejoinder. In fact, I would love that!
b) I concur about creating systems to prevent that (and I believe I did address that in the writeup)
Humanity is a sinful being that knows it is a sinful being hence why we fence ourselves in with rules and laws and commandments to be less sinful and less corrupt. True enough. We need systems to minimize it.
The most fundamental of those systems however is punishment for the already-guilty. If they are pardoned while those who sin after them are punished, that is unfair. Eliminating the corrupt leaders is not meant to eliminate corruption (after all, even Britain and America and China are corrupt); it is meant to make the survivors smarter about it, to make sure they know they can do it but not with impunity. That they must be careful, that they must be accountable and, most of all, that they must actually do the job they were appointed to do and have the stealing be a side-hustle (rather than having the stealing be the entire point of the exercise as we currently do.)
Without some measure of consequences, things will continue as they are. With consequences in place, then the rest of the plan comes into play where education is improved, standard of living is improved so that people are less desperate and there is room in their lives for goals other than money-money-money.
Did you know Nigeria has a space program? I do. It's a small building on a big piece of land on a highway in Abuja. Do you suppose they have a budget? Do you suppose that budget is being spent on heavy lifter rockets and infra-red satellites?
Thanks so much for the deep comment 👍
Here's my humble opinion @edumurphy, whenever I think about corruption, for the sake of not localizing my argument let's say globally... I realize it is driven by the desire for power and money - those two have to be the almighty clogs in the economy of every nation especially Nigeria.
Remember a certain late Umaru Yar'adua who unfortunately was snatched by the claws of death yet was a man widely thought by many would reposition Nigeria but you know how Nigerian politics is, even the political atmosphere and landscape is poisonous. I guess the good don't last but hey even when we're suffocating under the edicts of corrupt leadership we cannot lose sight of the fact that we can be an example of how the country should look like and also get ready to be arm twisted for even doing the right.
Long live Nigeria!!!
Thank you for this post.
Thank you for your comment. You are correct in that the few non-corrupt people we have cannot possibly triumph over a corrupt majority and a corrupt system. Look at Dora Akunyili; brilliant inspiring woman that essentially single-handedly turned NAFDAC into a real organization that actually worked, that actually inspected food and drugs and held them to real standards and saved countless lives from counterfeit products. What happened to her? Multiple assassination attempts (did you know she kept a gele scarf with bullet holes in it from when killers shot at her head, thinking the scarf was smaller than it actually was? She kept it in her living room) and eventually she just had to quit.
Died of cancer.
Meanwhile ancient bastards like Babangida and Obasanjo and Buhari are still thriving and alive. Life is unfair unless we make it fair.
So yeah, the candles of good get snuffed out by the ocean of bad.
Valuable post and totally i agree with you.So upvoted and resteemed done.
Wooooooow!!!!! Damn!! This post is where @edumurphy becomes a man?!?!? Hot shit. Let these ideas not fly into the dust. Pick one and make a change. I may get mad at you but i never stop believing and being inspired.
I ... approve of your approval? 🤷
Lol ah so purely speculative? Hmmmm
Well, you know me 🤷 speculation is my bread and Kerrygold butter
Srsly. The first thing you could never do but those other things? You could devise a plan to improve those other thimgs. Your words are powerful. I think you are finallh starting to see that. Use them!