Nigeria: The hope and the fear We have made reference to the kingdom of Sheba, a point we will return to once more in due course, in order to illustrate the principle that nations earn what they strive for, they can reach the height of their aspiration and the goals they set for themselves, as long as they abide by the rules which bind the conduct and behavior of nations. The rules spell out to you how you may build your nation and how you may ruin it.

 When a nation rises and thrives you can explain it logically and sensibly within the rules of cause and effect; so also when it stumbles, declines or falls: in every situation the ultimate course of events are determined by the ultimate choice a nation makes. In the case of Sheba, for instance, we have seen that what they had as resource at the onset, apart from their land, was water. They had nothing equal to today's oil, gold, uranium or diamond or such mineral resources which can bring instant and unimaginable bounties. But by dint of ingenuity and hard work this singular resource brought them food, prosperity, health, stability, and security. They became a global economic power.

Now Nigeria is one nation which has been blessed with multiple bounties; each one of those bounties is sufficient to uplift it to any level of success and greatness. But the nation is still far away from greatness, but the journey is still on. The worry, however, is that many Nigerians do not look upon the nation with hope but pessimism as though all is lost. They indulge in willful denial and freeze themselves in nostalgia. They see no life before and after Sardauna, Awo or Zik, and are not ready to accept the reality that the world, by nature, keeps moving and changing. Certainly there had been changes in Nigeria. Post Sardauna, post Awo, post  Azikiwe has witnessed many developments in various sectors that could not have been imagined by those ordinary mortals who are being deified today. Schools, colleges, universities,  roads,  airports,  sea ports,  dams, and numerous others cannot just be dismissed. The very fact that the nation can feed her more than 150 million people is an achievement that must be acknowledged. The overall profile of Nigeria has changed beyond recognition; it is the profile of a nation that can stand its ground once it can get its acts together, not one that is damned and doomed. The hope is that if one generation fails, another will succeed.

A nation's progress is not measured by the fortunes of governments alone, the strides of the people should be counted as well. Yes, the people of Nigeria have done much in spite of all the daunting challenges to build their lives and their nation. That is progress.  Can you go to Kano and say that nothing more has been achieved since Sardauna? Can you, after experiencing the vibrance of Lagos deny the obvious? If you want to go to the capital of Nigeria is it to Lagos you go or the beautiful city, Abuja? Moreover consider the new additions to the nation's political vocabulary: Jigawa, Abia, Bayelsa, Kebbi, Zamfara, Kogi, Imo, Ekiti, etc depicting a nation in a evolution, transmuting and transforming continuously, for better and for worse. Consider also how in spite of the disruptive tendency of the power elite, the people of Nigeria refuse to disunite: the yam trader from Wukari loads his yams to Lagos confident that his commodity will suffer no discrimination whatsoever but will be bought only on its merit and value. No one goes to the market insisting on buying the commodity only of his tribe, they buy what they need and can afford. They enrich and benefit one another without discrimination or suspicion.

But we cannot deny our failures, and yet that is precisely what we do intuitively. Our failure results in part from our inability to focus on issues and challenges that have direct bearing on our well being, and even our survival; to take adequate measures needed to tackle urgent matters and to anticipate and prevent dangers. For example as far back as 1996,  Mallam Bashir Dalhatu, then Minister of Power and Steel, warned, in an address to Vision 2010 Committee, that  the National Grid faced imminent danger of collapse unless urgent steps were taken to salvage it. His message was very loud and very clear. The nation took no notice and did not care; so the urgent, massive investment  in the energy sector he pleaded for never materialized. But a few years later, massive funds were indeed made available to the energy sector but' lo and behold, the energy sector was not revitalized but in fact came to a point of imminent collapse. Nigeria is enlightened and intelligent enough to know that it cannot develop economically and industrially without adequate energy and that without such development there would not be prosperity and stability. Yet the nation seems not to bother! Such is the tragic psychology of Nigeria!

Similarly we all agree that in the political sphere the best option now is to do whatever is possible to sustain democracy, because it guards against anarchy and war. But from all indications this democracy may go the way of  the Energy Sector, National Steel, Nigerian Railway, Nigeria Airways, National Telecommunication. In fact democracy may likely be dumped in one remote corner while the battle for political power rages elsewhere and by the time the battle is over there will be no democracy in sight, just as  we now find ourselves without sustainable electricity, without the steel industry, without the rail system, without the national career, without telecom services, and who knows, as its decline has just begun, without the National Petroleum Corporation.

So has it fallen upon Nigeria that its democratic process is foundering again. As a result,  many strange things are happening, some bothering not merely on desperation but insanity. In one such strange instance some eminent politicians met a few years ago to decide on how power was to be shared in the Nigeria of their dream, so that the nation's  stability survival could be maintained. They reached a deal as gentlemen. When the tide changed, one side decided to repudiate the agreement unilaterally, citing 'divine intervention'. The Patriarch, the wisest of them all, justifies the betrayal of this monumental national trust on the ground that they never thought in the course of their deliberations that a sitting president could die, and since the sitting president did in fact die, the whole equation has therefore changed and the agreement fails. Here is a mortal denying mortality! Yet the truth is that the countdown to death begins the very moment life begins. In the course of life there is nothing as absolute, certain and inexorable as death. When a mortal denies mortality he has committed a mortal error. If death takes its majestic course this way today, who knows which way it will take tomorrow?