Nation Drifting, Civil Society Warns, Seeks Protests

THE nation is on the brink of collapse and it requires the urgent intervention of all citizens, especially through protests, to rescue it.

This was the position of civil society activists at the second Save Nigeria Group (SNG)’s State of the Nation lecture held in Lagos Monday.

Delivering the blistering verdict, the convener of the SNG, Pastor Tunde Bakare, urged Nigerians to immediately take to the streets and bring an end to corruption and bad governance, which he said were seriously threatening the survival of the nation.

For religious leaders across Christianity and Islam who are using their positions to enrich themselves, and maintain ostentatious lifestyles, including buying private jets, Bakare called on the people to begin to cleanse the corrupt system by moving against such clerics.

He said: “All G.O. (General Overseers) must go to prison…and all of us must be rounded up and put in jail. This is not the first time I am saying it. I know I will be quoted tomorrow. If the revolution does not begin in the church or mosque, Nigeria will not change. Dubai (United Arab Emirates) once came to Nigeria to borrow money; what stopped six Dubais from happening in Nigeria is the corruption of our leaders.”

According to the fiery preacher, the massive protests that greeted the removal of fuel subsidy by President Goodluck Jonathan in January demonstrated that the myth that Nigerians are a docile people, who lost the capacity to be shocked by the misdeeds of their rulers, has been shattered forever.

Bakare also took on former President Olusegun Obasanjo who reportedly expressed the fear at the weekend that a revolution was imminent in the country. The preacher declared that the former president would be one of the victims of the revolution, just as he challenged him to explain the source of his wealth.

Calling for protests to immediately begin, Bakare noted that almost everywhere in the world, democracy was preceded by revolution, and development, just as he agonised that Nigeria had put the cart before the horse.

The guest speaker at the lecture, Prof. Pius Adesanmi of Carleton University, Canada, said that Nigerian leaders and the elite had over the years been behaving like the selfish tortoise of Yoruba traditional folktales, which always by trickery attempts to corner what belongs to the community for his exclusive use.   Adesanmi also decried the unbridled consumption, which according to him has now become an article of faith in Nigeria. According to him, the idea of a “national cake,” being perpetually shared, and never baked was at the heart of the corruption and laziness that now defines Nigerian life.

A former Minister of the Federal Capital territory (FCT), Nasir el-Rufai, said the country was at a crossroads, warning that the situation would degenerate if the people did not rise up to tackle the misdeeds bedeviling the nation. El-Rufai noted that creating what he called “Nigerian elite enclave mentality” would not shield anyone from the impending crises if the people refused to act now.

According to him, people below the age of 20 currently constitute the majority of the country’s population, but that they are faced with hardship and excruciating poverty. He bemoaned the decadence in the social structure, which he said had led to an ending cycle of violence and bloodletting, stressing that all these problems manifesting in form of violence and terrorist attacks, were products of corruption, lack of inadequate education, as well as the high unemployment rate in the country.

Similarly, gubernatorial candidate of the Democratic People’s Alliance (DPA) in the 2007 general election, Jimi Agbaje, said that the only way to improve the quality of the country’s leadership was by building civil societies by the citizenry so as to know the kind of people they elect to represent them.

Agbaje noted that the fight against corruption in the country could only succeed with the collective responsibility of both the leaders and the led. He called on Nigerians to resist corrupt leaders or they would be constantly pauperised by them.

On her part, the President of Women Arise, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, said the idea of always wanting to share the “national cake” had remained an obstacle to the nation’s development.

Okei-Odumakin urged the government to prosecute all the parties found culpable in the controversial oil subsidy scam. “Gathering here is to prove a point that Nigeria belongs to all of us and we cannot fold hands and watch corruption tear us apart,” she said.

The Chairman of the Ikeja chapter of the Nigerian Bar Association, Monday Ubani, said the country had failed but still working for those responsible for it. He called for a synergy between the public and the press to chart a new course for the nation in the fight against corruption.

According to a former member of the House of Representatives, Dino Melaye, the country’s problem is mainly corruption, as 60 per cent of the nation’s budgetary allocation goes to mismanagement and corruption. He said the country was at the “emergency ward” and would go to the “intensive care unit” if the people did not act.