At 39 years of age, I have been privileged to have obtained 16 years working experience non-stop and these years are spread around all the geopolitical zones of the country and those who know me know I’m open minded enough to mingle deep into people I come across with a view of integrating and enriching my life living strategies and skills.
This makes me loaded enough to understand the demography of Nigeria as well as a fair understanding of the likely outcomes of events related to national development. In these years, I equally made mistakes owing to certain misconceptions and the outcomes of it have added to my experiences.
The key tool to ensure such development of a country in a democracy is politics and the understanding and/or lack of it determines the stability that would create a room to develop or not. However, the participation in politics has over the years been tainted by economic insecurities and greed to the point where people appear to have not learnt any mistakes regarding the choices they’ve made but I also understand that the opinion of the majority of voters are decided by the elites who control them by way of economy, belief and tribe and the question will now be whether these elites have seen the writing on the wall regarding the likely outcomes of 2023 or not?
The key among the problems of the nation at this period is disunity but those who are comfortable in their corners are blinded to see any problems with this and we should remind them.
The insecurities happening all over the country are a result of decayed morals and disunity and nothing more. When so much hatred has been disseminated into people to the extent that it has become a habit, what do you expect the offspring of such individuals to be, also full of hate and such hate has led to mutual suspicion over the time and finally to killings and unrest.
No part of the country is isolated from this problem and has the potential of graduating from inter communal to inter country if not managed well because at the moment, no one is talking about it except some of the candidates and it resonates with me.
Some people mistake infrastructural development as the real development but it is too much love for luxury and enjoyment that makes them see it like that. A country like Gambia does not have as much infrastructure as Nigeria but the Europeans consider it as their best destination for vacation as against Lagos or Calabar that have the same beaches but lack security, sanity and serenity.
So they get enough FOREX to carry out their economic activities while we’re here and break off it. This should amplify the need for peace and unity.
We are now faced with elections around the corner and the arguments appear as some have forgotten or don’t know about these very serious issues and are about making same mistakes, now let me break down what a mistake would do to eroding any hope left of a country called Nigeria, I would have added United country but the reality is Nigeria is not United as this moment, the cracks and red flags are too glaring for anyone to see.
Anyone who votes you based on some creed or personal expectations will naturally develop a sense of entitlement and once such expectation do not start to come in the first three months of administration, agitations start and ego will not let the president who was insincere enough to use divisions to win to agree to correct those perceived injustices and trouble starts, this is in addition to the so many that are currently on the ground and then your guess about the state of the nation will be as good as mine- CHAOS.
Therefore, more than ever before, Nigeria only needs competence, experience and a nationalist who genuinely believes in the oneness and indivisibility of Nigeria and such person who comes with this has to also come with clean hands from day one and not any form of skewed tendencies and whether the voters understand this or not remains to be seeing in the coming days but the word of caution must be sounded!!!
May God bless our dear and beloved country Nigeria, some of us have a passion for her wellbeing!!
Hashim Suleiman writes from Abuja. He can be reached via Oneheartnaija@yahoo.com