This is Nigeria

Leonard Karshima Shilgba

Nigeria turned 61 on Friday, October 1, 2021 as an independent nation. The number of years is not such an attraction to me to qualify for a dignified commentary. Rather, I address the “independence” of thought, courage, and action.

Independence, used in relation to man, and in further connection to any engagements or relationships involving man, is absolutely subjective. No nation is absolutely independent of other nations in every human endeavour and on all scores. The manufacturing process of an automobile typifies this. All nations are inter-related and inter-connected.

The progress, yes, PROGRESS, that Nigeria has made since 1960 is due to the independence of thought of a number of her citizens. Every time you meet some Nigerians profusely lamenting and complaining about “government”, blaming “government” for their woes, and raining vicious obscenities on Nigeria, there you have come face-to-face with unhealthy “dependent” minds, which see the role of “government” as partenalistic instead of as a facilitator.

It is upon the sum of the creativity and innovation of their citizens that nations create opportunities and jobs for better standard of life of the inhabitants thereof. The Nigerian national and state governments have highly subsidized education, which affords millions of Nigerians to achieve variegated levels of learning and acquisition of skills.
Sadly, I have observed an insidious mindset that does not facilitate societal growth. After benefitting from a government subsidized education, a typical Nigerian would fail to innovate, but blame the “government” for not providing him a job in its Civil Service! The interpretation is this: Many Nigerians still believe that over six decades after political independence, “government’s” preoccupation should remain providing subsidized education to her citizens in order to fill-up Civil-Service vacancies! Sorry, friends, that era has passed, and it’s not coming back.

College education’s main focus is improvement of the thought process and quality, and on these hang innovations, emergence of new businesses, and creative forging of gizmos. Some talk about relevance to today’s challenges of choices of college degree or diploma programs of study. I don’t disagree; I would add, however, that this is not the whole. Partly, analytic skills, writing skills, organisational skills, and communication skills can be learned irrespective of the choice.

I am glad to report that while some Nigerians gripe, fume, throw tantrums, see nothing good or worth celebrating in Nigeria, and deliberately work to undermine the country, there are Nigerians, both old and young, who are innovating, creating, and sacrificing to fix their nation’s challenges. Dangote and his collaborators are working to fix Nigeria’s downstream petroleum refining challenge, with huge positive impact on job creation, naira stability, foreign reserves growth, and increased foreign investors’ confidence in the Nigerian economy. Instead of multiplying hotels across Nigeria, as less cerebral Nigerian moneybags do, Dangote keeps intervening in critical sectors of the Nigerian economy. What an independent man!

Paystack is an online payment application developed by Shola Akinlade, a Nigerian graduate of computer science at Babcock University (my daughter’s alma mater). I was impressed when my publisher decided to integrate this application into my author website. Great independence of thought!

Interswitch (owners of Quickteller, an online payment solution) was founded by a Nigerian (Mitchell Elegbe, an Electrical Engineering graduate of University of Benin) in 2002. The company has a published net worth of over 26 billion US dollars, and has expanded its operations and acquisitions across Africa. This is another example of independent creative thinking of Nigerians.

Time and space will fail to talk about audacious undertakings such as Innoson Motors, Dangote-Peugeot automobile venture, the rapidly expanding Nollywood industry (with a new proposition to build a global franchise), Globacom telecom, Nigerian takeover of modern grocery retail business (culminating in the recent purchase of Shoprite, which has resulted in growing Nigerian products in the supply chain), and many footprints by young Nigerians in the ICT world, which I believe, shall soon result in mega buck-yielding ICT businesses in the class of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zoom, etc., with improved public revenue from taxes on those businesses.

The recent decision by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to buy a twenty-percent stake in Dangote Refinery teaches us that the Nigerian government can buy into excellence created by Nigerian innovators, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators.

Many Nigerians are working and solving Nigeria’s problems, not waiting on “government”. The Nigerian media should devote more time to reporting more the audacious creativity and risks being taken by Nigerians to tackle their country’s challenges right here in Nigeria.

Governments in Nigeria have their roles, but the citizens must not deny their responsibility to build a more perfect union through their personal creativity and risk-taking.

We have a lot to blame for our “failings”, but those excuses cannot solve our problems. We can blame Nigeria’s imperfect military-framed constitution, for instance. Yet, state governors, who have mastered the art of governance, are using the same powers that are either given or not obstructed by the same constitution to serve their people, including approaching the law courts in the process. We cannot afford to make a “perfect constitution” BEFORE we shall start governing. By the way, there is no perfect constitution anywhere. The people, working together, disagreeing and agreeing, improve their nation in degrees, generation-after-generation. No one generation fixes all of the problems. It is a generational relay race we are involved in.

This is Nigeria; this is our story. This is Nigeria; this is our progress. We are marching forward, in spite of the naysayers, who seek a leader to take them from the wilderness back to Egypt, away from our journey to the Promised Land.
Don’t tell us stories of “better years in Egypt” when you “sat and ate plenty of meat and garlic”! We have seen the fruits of the Promised Land. A few spies among us have held right before our eyes the evidence.

Leonard Karshima Shilgba

© Shilgba