Segment II: RE-IMAGINING NIGERIA

Segment II: RE-IMAGINING NIGERIA: Why a culture of engaged wakefulness is now the key to national selfhood

Co-author of Let There Be LIGHT, Patrick Bernard, continues the dialogue on why the new generation Nigeria must be a top-down community of competence and conscious engagement. 

Who owns this land?
In the first segment of this thread, we hinted that what Nigerians are beginning to acknowledge, albeit in that peculiarly accepting and “we that God, it could have been worse” Nigerian way, is that there is psychological famine in the land. Nigerians are starving for a nation of light, a nation of “noble cause” that is decidedly shooting for “great and lofty heights.” So what message did Nigerians hint, first to President Jonathan and then to all the politicians out there? What do the recent election results say in essence? Here are some thoughts.  
 
To President Jonathan, it sounds like a huge vote of confidence, an astonishing privilege:   
    
“If you, Mr. President, are re-emerging with A Legacy of Greatness in mind, here is our mandate for you to heal our land from spiraling ineffectiveness and lead us to greatness. You have all of our trust now, and we ask that you give us all your light this time!”

Perhaps Nigerians have finally started to wake up to the fact that Nigeria is theirs and that from now on, they must participate actively in the redemption of their country from the “mental logjam” of both strategic and tactical ineffectiveness. Remember “Arise O compatriots, Nigeria’s call obey?” Is that not a call to aim higher as a nation, a charge to put the country and its citizens way up above narrow interests and personalities, even the mighty and the seemingly powerful?

What do the recent elections hint to politicians and political parties in Nigeria? “You can be big or you can be small! You can politic and party all you want! You can balkanize and zone positions until you fully enthrone mediocrity and make complete nonsense of the idea of national brand enhancement and integration! You can recycle dead weights all you choose to! And you can plan to slice and dice the “national or state cake” and do your horse-trading all the way! But here is our message.”

“We (150 million of us) are gradually beginning to “arise” to the call for active citizenship. If you are clueless on what it takes to lead in this 21st century, you will do well to go fishing rather than seek or remain in public office! If you don’t put your conscience to the task, field competent and credible candidates and prepare to deliver respectable return on the investment we have made in giving you the privilege to serve, you are toast! You don’t get to take our votes and dreams for granted anymore. We will now only root for the welfare of our children and the greatness of our nation - no more votes for bags of rice, not for tribes and tongues, not for religious intolerance, and not for big egos!”

A time to run
Is the era of an Engaged Citizenry in Nigeria now under way then? If yes, what must follow quickly is for every Nigerian politician to take note, take a radically revamped oath to really “serve with heart and might” and begin the heavy lifting that will be required from every duty post. Thankfully, President Jonathan now has all of his own four years to complement this momentous up-scaling of citizen expectation with a conscious leadership regime in which the delivery of solid results must become the Acid Test for Legitimacy in every office, big or small.

This time, let national leadership upscale to exercising the Proprietary Courage and the Creative Clarity to expressly ask senior office holders for Time-Framed and Measurable Results in public office. Give people set goals and targets as they take up offices, and see who still wants to be, minister, commissioner, DG, or whatever. “When result-driven leaders ask their lieutenants for results, they can quickly tell who has something to offer the nation and its people and who just wants to tag along for the ride, of course at the people’s expense!” What are we saying then? That this is Goodluck Season in Nigeria, and we must not fail this time! This season begs to be stretched and up-graded to become the Good Luck Days of all-round Concrete Return on Leadership Investment. Boy! What a thrill! Isn’t this exciting? Now, let me take you into the thrust of Let There Be Light so you get a glimpse of why this book sees this as a new day for Nigeria. The charge goes like this. “Run Nigeria! Run! Run! Run!” Why run? You ask. Why not? The book returns. Every other serious nation is running! Here is how this is unfolding globally.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.


It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
 Every morning a lion wakes up.
 It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it would starve to death.
 It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
 When the sun comes up, you better start running.

To run, it turns out, is one thing we must begin to do now in order to stop both the renegades (within and outside) from either eating our lunch or possibly even eating us for lunch. The world is running on all fronts – employment, technology, education, health care, infrastructure, leadership, rule of law, safety, ease of doing business, you name it. Sadly, in too many cases, the fast upgrading world has left Nigeria far behind. Give this some thought and decide if you see any semblance of running for miles in our approach to the welfare of citizens or any aspect of our national affairs. Merely think about it!

Segment I: RE-IMAGINING AND TRANSFORMING NIGERIA:

Segment I: RE-IMAGINING AND TRANSFORMING NIGERIA: Why a culture of engaged wakefulness is now the key to national selfhood

RE-IMAGINING AND TRANSFORMING NIGERIA:
Why a culture of engaged wakefulness is now the key to national selfhood

Co-author of Let There Be LIGHT, Patrick Bernard, explains why the New Generation Nigeria must be a top-down community of competence and conscious engagement.

Is this finally the homecoming?

Just in case you are in a hurry to go face-book a friend or tweet away from these pages, this is A Case for Light; Yes, that degree of light in the public space that every purpose-driven nation needs to begin to develop or emerge from “underdeveloped” or developing into the global loop of national greatness. The executive summary of this presentation is simply that:

“No nation seeking to grow and go great should fear the challenge for deep reflection and self-examination. What we must fear is our urge to avoid this.”

Let me tell you the whole story then. Well, not really the whole gist - I take that back. Let me give you as much of the summary of the whole story as can fit neatly into a few pages. Once upon a time, there was this rather understated but smart politician who, despite having known a childhood without shoes for his feet, was now the fortuitous CEO of a big country. Amidst the rants and oversimplifications of opponents who mostly seemed to want to be handed the CEO seat on a platter of gold, this man a very bold statement. The statement was of course hard, if not impossible, to believe. “The coming elections for this seat and all others will be free and fair,” said this low-key leader of a 150 million people nation of the proud and gregarious black man. “Free and fair elections here? Ha, ha, ha! We hear that all the time,” echoed the skeptics – an overwhelming number of citizens for whom the national project had become more like a circus of recycled but uninspired and uninspiring clowns. They no longer saw reason for optimism on the national project front. So the all-too-familiar pushing and shoving “for survival” and for chunks and crumbs of the “national cake” continued. Keep in mind that all this was happening in a blessed, even if underserved and undefended, land that was not and, thankfully, is not at war - except perhaps with itself. Then he named his chief electoral officer, one with a strong reputation for no-nonsense credibility. Still, citizens stayed preoccupied with their existential issues - such as light, water, security and bread for the children - the import of his move understandably failing to register or sink in. The accumulated cynicism of the years would not let most take note. Then it happened. President Goodluck Jonathan said elections must be real and fair under his watch, and Professor Attahiru Jega and his team pulled it off. But wait a minute! What again? Must we witness that familiar but dreadful sign of a national project still starving for collectivity and singularity of purpose once more? In a bizarre protest against a ship that had already set sail, the street soldiers of a fundamentally flawed and outdated bloodbath approach to nationhood, an approach we must now banish permanently to the past, resurfaced. They spilled their brothers’ blood, ostensibly to reset the clock, “In order to move Nigeria forward,” they claimed. Please people! Please stop! Stop trying to get to heaven by unleashing hell on earth! This bloody “kill and burn” war against innocent neighbors is at least 50 years outdated. We are adults now and we are racing to the loop of common sense and decency! No more shedding of others people’s blood so as to make shortsighted and perplexing political statements.
                      

                                                                  
 

                                                                 Seeds of a Nation                                                                     
                                                “Shoeless” but pregnant with possibility!

                                                                President Jonathan 
                                                           From “shoeless” to president!

Decoding the people’s message
Nigerians have gone to the polls, and they have voted both their conscience and their hopes for a nation with eyes on the prize. That prize is a nation of light, a nation of “noble cause” that is decidedly shooting for “great and lofty heights.” Nigerians have voted in the man Goodluck to lead the charge – this time, with a solid mandate and a seal with his name on it. But there is a message in the bottle! To make it clear that their votes are meant for Goodluck the man and the idea (not necessarily for his party and his friends), and for Good Luck for their land, Nigerians have also done something that past election results suggest that they have not typically done. They turned left and right and voted in some other men and women that hold some promise, even where it meant voting out the president’s party in some surprising cases. What message did Nigerian’s send with their votes this time? Think about it!