The Power of Transformative Ideas: Let’s Get to Work!
By Franklin Otorofani, Esquire
Dedicated to all those who are helping to move Nigeria forward
01.16.08
World’s
Cheapest Car is Here – N288, 000 Only!
The above is the caption of a Thisday story
(01.11.08) about the development in India—a
developing country like Nigeria—of the world’s
cheapest car by Tata Motors. The stories about this
revolutionary automobile breakthrough were carried
by the world press. As a matter of fact, the
unveiling of this car was celebrated by the auto
world with pomp and pageantry; from Detroit to
Mumbai, and from Tokyo to Bavaria, and everywhere
else between. Pictures of the car and ecstatic
crowds milling around it were splashed in front
pages of newspapers; beamed on television, and
heralded on the internet with screaming headlines,
which I’m sure the reader must have seen.
However, I have deliberately chosen to highlight the
Thisday report in this article because of its
crucial relevance to Nigeria within the overall
context of the nation’s developmental dreams and
aspirations (which by the way, is the main thrust of
this presentation), in order to bring the message
home. The development must bear particular resonance
in Nigeria not only because of the promise of the
product itself that would potentially liberate the
mass of footwagoners in Nigeria who cannot even
afford a second hand tokumbo car, but more
importantly, because of the birth country of this
car—India.
As the reader problems knows, India had her
Independence from Britain in 1947, barely thirteen
years before Nigeria got her own Independence from
the same Britain. Thus, there is only a 13-year gap
between India and Nigeria in age. Yet today, India
is more than fifty years ahead of Nigeria, in terms
of growth and development. While India is Nuclear
Power and a big world player in the satellite
industry, in addition to its robust ICT powered
burgeoning economy, Nigeria is still a toddler
nation; unable to successfully organize ordinary
local government elections. Nigeria today is
exhibiting the symptoms of a failed state albeit
amid seemingly tentative flashes of progress in the
preceding Obasanjo years. What a country! What a
people!
The Tata triumph is a tribute to vision and a can-do
attitude that is sorely lacking in Nigeria. Nigeria
is a nation of self-doubters and incurable
pessimists who have no confidence whatsoever in
themselves and what they can achieve. But the
Indians, like other self-confident peoples who make
things happen, are different from Nigerians and they
have shown it even in this auto development. Don’t
take it from me: hear it from the mouth of the
Chairman of Tata Motors himself, Mr. Ratan Tata, at
the unveiling ceremony, as reported:
"I observed families riding on two-wheelers - the
father driving the scooter, his young kid standing
in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding
a little baby.
"It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a
safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for
such a family. Tata Motors' engineers and designers
gave their all for about four years to realise this
goal. Today, we indeed have a People's Car, which is
affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements
and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on
emissions.” (Italics mine)
Therein lies the power of ideas! The world runs on
ideas. The quote speaks for itself, but it requires
some elucidation. The Chairman of Tata Motors saw a
man in the street “driving a scooter, his young kid
standing in front of him, with his wife seated
behind him holding a little baby.” And that alone,
without more, got him thinking about how to develop
“a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport
for such a family.” He didn’t let his dream die, and
within four years, a mere thought has been
transformed into a technological revolution for the
auto industry—beating all other auto giants in the
world to the punch!
I’m sure there are hundreds of millions of the 1.1
billion Indians who see hundreds of thousands of
such families crowded on scooter infested streets in
New Delhi, Mumbai, and other major Indian streets,
every hour of the day, that are indifferent to the
plight of such families. Like those millions of
Indians who see nothing wrong with families crowded
in scooters in Indian streets—with the high risks to
body and limbs, there are equally millions of
Nigerians who see nothing wrong with the
coffins-on-wheels called Molues and Danfos
on Nigerian roads that brutalize commuters;
notoriously so in Lagos. Equally true are the
millions of Nigerians who see nothing wrong with the
use of motorbikes—just like the Indian scooters—as
standard means of transportation in Nigeria. The
morale of this story is that it takes an individual
to change the world with the right vision and
leadership; not necessarily an entire country; just
as it has taken a Ribadu to change the face of corruption in
Nigeria; although apologists of corruption would
have us believe that EFCC is greater than Ribadu;
therefore, he could be sacrificed to the gods of
corruption without killing the war on corruption.
What a puerile contradiction!
Now, because the people see nothing wrong with
scooters and motorbikes as a means of
transportation, they would not put their thinking
caps on like the Chairman of Tata Motors, to develop
a better system of transport that does not treat
human beings like animals. Not even animals are
transported in the developed world the way human
beings are transported in Nigeria and other African
countries. Africans, nay Nigerians, are transported
like goats, sheep, and cows in their own countries
and the government has no problem with that.
That speaks to a major deficiency in governance—the
near total absence of minimum national standards in
our public life. The Nigerian transport sector is an
all-comers affair where transport operators are left
to their own devices and free to not only exploit
the traveling public mindlessly, but to also
brutalize them without government’s protection of
any sort to the extent that one begins to wonder if
there is government in Nigeria. And that is the
reason why I published an article titled: Standards
Nigeriana sometime ago to call national attention to
the need to develop minimum standards in all areas
of our national life in Nigeria because things can’t
simply remain as they are and we claim to be
developing. Development is not just about economics
and the GDP, but about quality of life. Minimum
standards ensure minimum quality of life for our
people. That was the dream of Ratan Tata, the
realization of which is being celebrated all over
the world today. The man saw that Indians are being
transported like animals and did something about it.
He did not sit back in his limousine watching them
suffer.
Long before the Chairman of Tata Motors dreamt about
developing his people’s car, however, a man in
Germany named, Herr Adolph Hitler—the genocidal
German Chancellor of the Third Reich, dreamt of a
people’s car, which he aptly christened,
Volkswagon. Volkswagon was mass produced in
Bavaria, Germany, for the people and before Tokyo
and Detroit could catch their breath, Volkswagon had
firmly established itself as the world’s biggest
selling car! Tata is set to repeat that history that
was born and bred in the minds of its makers.
Both examples provide profound lessons for Nigeria.
But Nigerians are dreamers too. It’s just that our
dreams hardly see the light of day like those of
other nationals. It might interest the reader to
note that before Ratan Tata ever dreamt of his baby
car—the Nano, the Nigerian government, under
the former Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo—once
dreamt of a people’s car for which a special project
was set up at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU),
Zaria at the Center for Automotive Design &
Development (CADD). As you read this article, the
Nigerian Customs and Excise Department is still
collecting levies on all auto imports ostensibly for
the development of the Nigerian auto industry
including the ‘Nigerian Car.’ But like every other
Nigerian dream, it was allowed to die, or rather, we
are still dreaming the dream! What took Ratan Tata a
mere four years to realize has taken Nigeria an
eternity to achieve. There have been individuals in
Nigeria too who had dreamt of a Nigerian car, but
again, their dreams have gone the Nigerian way,
never to see the light of day. Nigeria is a country
where dreams hardly come true. They are killed and
buried in their infancy.
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. But
while that is true for some countries and cultures,
it is certainly not true for all countries and all
cultures, it would seem. And it is certainly not
true for Nigerians and Africans. If it were not so,
Nigerians themselves (without looking up to
foreigners to solve their problems for them), would
have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to
lift the country up from its present nadir of
economic and technological quagmire.
Let me illustrate this:
The frigid temperatures in the temperate regions of
the world have compelled the development of
heating systems in homes and offices in those
regions. Without those heating systems the peoples
of those regions—Europeans, Asians, and the
Americans, would have been living at the mercy of
the bitter colds. Indeed, life would have been
brutish, nasty, and short for those peoples in those
forbidden regions as it, in fact was, before the
development of those systems. Could anyone imagine
living in those regions without the benefits of
those heating systems? Sheer necessity thus
compelled the development of those systems to make
life livable in those parts. If you are an African
and a Nigerian in particular, you might want to ask
yourself what has the searing temperatures in our
tropical climate compelled us to develop? Put
pointedly, what air conditioning system have the hot
tropical temperatures in Nigeria compelled us to
develop to make our lives a little comfortable
against the brutal temperatures?
Isn’t paradoxical and utterly shameful, to say the
least, that it’s the people of the temperate regions
of the world that developed air-conditioners and
other air cooling systems for Africans who are
living in the hot tropical climate? Every year
African farmers lose billions of dollars worth of
farm produce due to the absence of storage
facilities. The produce is easily destroyed by heat.
During harvest season markets are flooded with farm
produce—fruits, and vegetables—that would soon
disappear from the markets off season due to absence
of storage facilities. Yet it has not occurred to
Africans and Nigerians to develop any effective
means of storing these produce especially fruits and
vegetables, and make them available to the consumers
off season.
Solar energy is the talk of the moment. Europe, Asia
and the Americas, are moving in big time to harvest
this free energy that is so abundant in Nigeria and
Africa. It’s been reported that Germany, in
particular, is moving aggressively to have solar
energy displace all other forms of energy and its
now the world’s greatest producer of solar panels.
Solar energy is electricity derived from the sun,
which, as indicated above, Africa and Nigeria have
in abundance. But guess where the technology is
coming from: Europe and America, and not from Africa
and Nigeria! This is not unlike what obtains in the
oil industry, where countries like Japan without a
single drop of oil in their soil have developed the
technologies to come to Nigeria and help us to
exploit the resource that has been sitting in our
land since the beginning of time that we knew
nothing about, let alone exploit.
Africa and Nigeria may have been blessed with
blazing 100% F. temperatures all year round but we
prefer to live in darkness in perpetuity than to put
our thinking caps on, and develop solar energy from
the sun to light up our homes and power our
businesses. Here again we see the abject poverty of
progressive and development ideas of Africans and
Nigerians in particular. Which raises the questions:
why are we so unprogressive and backward looking?
Why are we so un-innovative and un-inventive? Why do
we prefer to be consumers rather than producers? Why
are we ever so contented living off the sweats of
others who toil day in day out to develop new
technologies and products that we shameless flaunt
in our hands as status symbols? Why would the
Europeans and Americans be the ones to find cures
for malaria disease that has decimated African
children for centuries? Why are solutions to African
problems always coming from outside of the continent
and never found within the continent? Why are we so
shamelessly dependent on others to solve our
problems for us? How could such a dependent race
ever hope to get any shred of respect from those it
cries to for help every so often at the drop of a
pin? I’m ashamed. I’m indeed, ashamed.
We cry about extreme poverty in Nigeria in the midst
of supposed oil wealth. But we forgot the material
poverty suffered by Nigerians and Africans is a
direct consequence of our intellectual poverty and
abject lack of vision. There is a direct link
between intellectual poverty and material poverty. A
society that is intellectually poor is doomed to
wallow in material poverty! It’s that simple! There
is no way for a country that suffers from
intellectual poverty to be materially rich unless
the wealth is derived from some lotto played in
heaven. That Nigeria today has a semblance of a
state and the trappings of a country derives from
the unearned oil wealth that foreigners are helping
us to produce. Left to our own devices, that crude
oil sitting underneath our feet would never have
been discovered, and therefore never have been
exploited to earn us the billions of dollars that
our public officials are busy looting.
All our governments at all levels and the people do
in Nigeria is wait for Shell BP, ExxonMobil, Texaco,
and other oil prospecting companies to pump and sell
crude oil for us and give us our share to squander
in Owambe parties like drunken sailors, and
the rest is laundered abroad to fuel the economies
of these same foreigners; leaving our peoples to
hold the short end of the stick. Nigerians are
poorer today than they were before the advent of oil
going by the nation’s GDP. Comparatively speaking,
GDP is a function of a country’s produced wealth in
relation to its population, with inflation factored
in. All available statistics show conclusively that
Nigeria and Nigerians are poorer today that they
were in pre-oil boom era when cocoa, groundnuts,
rubber, and cotton, were the golden cash crops that
Nigerians themselves actually produced from their
own sweats unlike oil that is pumped and sold for
them only to squander the proceeds on frivolous
white elephant projects that have little or no
relevance to the daily living conditions of the
peoples.
And when you ask the question: why is Nigeria poorer
today than it was 40 years ago? The answer is
simple: The country has refused to develop and grow
her intellectual resources. It’s not enough to
establish universities and specialized institutions.
Nigeria currently boasts of about a 100 universities
in addition to hundreds of other specialized
tertiary institutions. Yet she is at the very bottom
of technological and intellectual production in the
world. If higher education alone could cut it
Nigeria would have been one of the leading
technological countries and an intellectual
powerhouse in the world today. But the reality is
that she is not. She is not because she has refused
to develop a culture of invention, innovation, and
problem solving. Put differently, she has failed to
breed inventors, innovators, and the culture of
science and technology. On the contrary, she has
been busy breeding an army of bishops, pastors,
deacons, and deaconesses, and has turned every
available space in her landscape into emergency
churches and mosques where fake religiosity and
spiritual charlatanism have taken hold of a deranged
population.
Nigerians, nay Africans, would prefer to live
with a problem than to solve it. That’s why
we continue to live in darkness in perpetuity even
when the Almighty has given us a blazing sunshine
that could be converted to solar energy to light up
our homes and offices, and even cook our meals, and
also utilized to preserve our farm produce. None of
that is happening because no one is seriously
thinking about solving our electricity problems at
both the governmental and individual levels. Our
elders prefer treasury looting and tribal politics
to development. And our youths prefer 419 scams and
armed robberies to putting their minds to solve our
daily problems. The amount of time, resources, and
energy utilized to plot those fraudulent schemes are
more than enough to produce the Bill Gates and Bezos
of this world. The Nigerian genius for crime could
be transformed into the Nigerian genius for
development. It’s about time somebody figured this
out! It’s about time!!
It’s about time somebody thought creatively and
developmentally. It’s about time somebody questioned
the status quo and did something different. It’s
about time somebody out there challenged the culture
of indolence and inertia. It’s about time somebody
up there turned our youths from criminality into a
productive force for growth and development. The
opportunities in Nigeria are literarily limitless.
Everywhere in Nigeria I see opportunities for
development where others see poverty and
hopelessness.
Isn’t disheartening to note that no one has thought
about turning our local beverages such as the very
popular ogororo, burukutu, and palm wine,
into a huge industry that could provide employment
for tens of thousands of our jobless youths and even
export the surplus overseas to earn foreign exchange
for the country? Isn’t it shocking to find that no
one has developed our local delicacies such as
isiewu, suya, ukpa, moimoi, akara, etc, into
major culinary industries that could service the
entire West African sub-region and beyond? Isn’t it
amazing that despite the fact that Nigeria is the
one of the world’s largest producer of cocoa there
is virtually no cocoa end product industries in
Nigeria apart from Cadbury Nigeria, PLC? The cocoa
bean is capable of a variety of products like
chocolate, creams, butter, food drinks, etc. Same is
true of palm oil and palm kernel, and off course,
groundnuts, walnuts, soya beans, etc. But where are
the industries to process these resources into
finished goods that would expand our economy and
provide jobs for our people?
This is just a tip of the iceberg: There are
literarily thousands of business opportunities
abounding in Nigeria that could spring up from the
abundant raw materials available in all parts of the
country. But our people have refused to exploit and
profit from them preferring instead non-existent
government’s jobs and waiting for somebody to
provide them with employment. The usual litany of
lame excuses is there is that there is no capital.
But give them the capital and they would proceed to
acquire new wives and maintain a harem with the
funds only for them to bankrupt their fledging
businesses. Examples abound of typical American
start up businessmen and women who started their
businesses from one-room or a garage space. And with
just a few hundreds of dollars they have turned
their small start ups into major corporations in due
course with aggressive goal-setting and goal-getting
attitudes to business. Today, they are the Walmarts,
McDonalds, and Microsofts of this world. In Nigeria,
the reverse is the case. Those who are in a position
to industrialize the country with the huge capitals
at their disposal prefer to invest in unproductive
ventures like politics, either directly as
candidates, or as political godfathers with the sole
aim of cornering the resources of the state for
themselves. The cases of Ofor/Mbadinigu Mba/Ngige
are still fresh in our minds.
Every now and then I watch programs here in the
United States showcasing new inventions made by
Americans of virtually every age group—including the
elderly, youths, and even house wives! These
inventions pass through a process of product
development that would eventually become consumer
products tomorrow, which the indolent Africans and
Nigerian would be hankering after tomorrow as
“American Products.” How about “Nigerian Products,”
for a change, other than 419? How about some
creativity, innovation, and inventiveness? How about
some progressive and development thinking that would
transform our problems into solutions like the Tata
Motors Chairman did? And how about becoming the
world’s workshop like Japan and China? Why do we
revel in importation rather than exportation? Why do
we worship foreign goods at the expense of our own?
I would like to put it as bluntly as possible with
no apologies: The solutions to Nigerians problems;
whether it is unemployment, bad roads, dilapidated
infrastructure, adulterated drugs, armed robbery,
traffic chaos, waste disposal, ex-cetera, lie in the
hands of individual Nigerians themselves, and not in
the hands of government. It took the invention of
one individual, or groups of individuals working
together, as the case may be, to give the world
electricity, airplane, and the internet. For
instance, the invention of the internal combustion
engine was the launch pad for the industrial
revolution. The same is true of the television, the
car, and the telephone by Bells. The government has
no hand in any of these other than providing the
regulatory framework for economic activities.
Nigerians should and must look inwards into
themselves rather than outwards towards the
government for the development of ourselves and the
nation. National development is a collective and
joint effort between the government and the
citizenry. A hands-off attitude on the part of the
citizenry is tantamount to a direct negation, and
therefore, a breach of the government/citizens
compact, which produces nothing but poverty and
underdevelopment.
We, Nigerians have made a fetish of blaming the
government for everything including the infertility
of wives. Of course it is a whole lot easier to put
our individual failures on somebody just like we
blame the devil for our own personal weaknesses. But
the truth of the matter is that we have all failed
the country as individuals not just the government
alone. The United States, for example, was built and
made great by the citizens of the United States
themselves through their individual and collective
efforts, and not necessarily by the government of
the United States. While the United States citizens
feed their government through taxation the reverse
is the case in Nigeria. The highly entrepreneurial
citizens of the United States are constantly
sniffing around to find business opportunities to
exploit. Where there is no opportunity trust the
American to create one that would blossom into
another giant industry that would dominate the
world.
Where there are weaknesses or shortfalls in product
and service deliveries they move in to take
advantage of them to fill the gaps rather than look
up to the government to do it. A typical example is
in the area private security field. Everybody knows
that the United is one of the crime capitals of the
world and the government alone cannot provide
security for homes and businesses. Every single
second somebody is getting murdered, raped or some
home is getting burglarized in the United States.
The government is simply unable, in fact, incapable
of preventing these crimes and I dare say: no
government can. But guess what: this huge security
gap has been quickly filled by hundreds of thousands
of private security firms, many of which deploy
sophisticated security systems, and in the process,
provide jobs for millions of Americans. In fact,
private security in the United States has been
developed to the point that it is now almost as
large as the United States army, and the US military
even relies on private security firms to provide
security even in its own military bases in Iraq and
elsewhere. They are now aptly called “private
armies” in mercenary duties fishing in troubled
waters!
Now, contrast that to the situation in Nigeria.
Today, Nigeria is writhing under the sheer weight of
insecurity and criminality. But how many Nigerians
have risen up to the challenge to set up private
security firms with sophisticated gadgets to fill
the gap with the army of retired generals with no
jobs outside of politics? It’s next to nil. All we
hear are cries and whining about armed robberies and
crime. As usual, it’s the government alone that
Nigerians look up to for every problem they face in
life. Is it any wonder then that Nigeria is totally
bereft of a well developed, sophisticated private
security firms, as indeed, in other areas of the
Nigerian economy? A docile and inactive citizenry
begets a weak and docile economy. And the reverse is
the case with a dynamic and active citizenry that is
ready to take on challenges and overcome them at
both individual and collective levels.
For starters: How about seeing the nation’s current
energy problem as an opportunity to come up with a
solution outside of government? How about turning
our waste disposal and traffic congestion problems,
for instance, into a solution outside of government?
How about somebody out there in the maddening crowd
thinking up some meaningful and effective way of
maintaining our huge road network and make our roads
motorable all year round? How about somebody
thinking of becoming a hero for Nigeria rather than
being a tribal champion? And how about Nigerians
themselves putting on their thinking caps and making
the nation great rather than looking up to Europe
and America for great ideas and inventions?
Nigerians are certainly capable of doing all of the
above and more if they put their minds to it. I make
bold to say that Europeans and Americans, nay
Asians, are no more intelligent than Nigerians and
Africans. They are no more intellectually endowed
than Nigerians and Africans. They are not any
smarter than Nigerians and Africans, either. But
they are certainly more progressive and less
traditional. They are certainly more innovative and
inventive than Nigerians and Africans. And they are
certainly more patriotic and nationalistic than
Nigerians and Africans. It’s time to put our
thinking caps on and think seriously about how to
immortalize our names in service of our motherland
and the continent. The fact that Nigerians have
created something big out of nothing in the home
movie industry testifies to the fact that Nigerians
can and will pull it off if, and only if, we build
on the successes of the movie industry. It cannot
just be in one industry that we made a splash. It
has to extend above and beyond to science and
technology and the arts. Nigeria has to promote the
inventions and breakthroughs of our young scientists
and inventors. And by Nigeria, I mean the Nigerian
people themselves in their private capacity; not
necessarily the government.
It’s time for Africans and Nigerians in particular,
to contribute to the world intellectual capital
rather than being mere onlookers and voracious
consumers of the product of the intellectual capital
of other nations of the world. It’s a shame that no
scientific and technological breakthroughs ever
comes from Africa and Nigeria. What is Africa’s, nay
Nigeria’s contribution to the world’s intellectual
capital? Why do we spend billions of dollars
establishing universities of technologies and
specialized institutions that only specialize in
churning out handouts to their student populations?
Every now and then we read about studies and
scientific breakthroughs coming out of American,
Asian, and European universities, but nothing,
absolutely nothing, is heard from Nigerian and
African universities. Are we satisfied being mere
spectaculars in this technological and scientific
race?
Is it not scandalous that an entire continent can
only boast of a single Nobel Laureate? Sure enough
there are Nobel quality materials like Chinua Achebe
and others in Africa that the title has eluded for
reasons best known to Stockholm, but that is a
different issue altogether. Even if they award the
title to all deserving sons and daughters in Africa,
the continent would still not produce enough Nobel
Laureates that can match the number of Nobel
Laureates produced by the City University of New
York alone, let alone the entire state of New York,
and the United States as a whole. There is an acute
dearth of intellectual capital on the continent of
Africa today. Here, I am not talking about egg heads
and academics. I’m talking about inventors,
researchers, and scientific discoverers who would
produce breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture,
energy, science, and technology. Our nation and
continent would be doomed to extinction or at best
re-colonization, if we don’t put our thinking caps
on in this age of globalization.
This is not about the government; it’s about
Nigerians and Africans themselves. This, therefore,
is a clarion call on my fellow Africans particularly
Nigerians to seize the bull by the horn and make a
difference scientifically and technologically in
their individual capacities. Sure enough the
government could do more and would do more but it’s
the individual that makes a difference as the Tata
Motor experience poignantly demonstrates.
Therefore, let’s not wait on the government to solve
our electricity problems; garbage collection; and
fixing our roads, equip our schools and hospitals
and all the other national shortcomings that plague
our country. Trash can be converted into cash and
darkness can be transformed into light, if only we
put our thinking caps on. And the advent of the
internet has placed enormous resources in our hands
that we can exploit to solve our myriad of problems
without waiting for the government. The
government-must-feed-and-clothe-me attitude that
Nigerians exhibit all the time, as if government
owes them a living, must give way to individual
sense of responsibility and contribution to the
commonwealth. There is no free lunch anywhere—not
even in the United States—the wealthiest nation on
earth, and the earlier this reality is imbibed and
internalized the better for the our people.
In making this clarion call, I’m fully cognizant of
the attitude of the people in Nigeria who are quick
to rationalize their dependency attitudes by
pointing to welfare programs in the developed
countries without realizing that it’s the citizens
themselves in those countries that fund their
governments through prohibitive income tax burdens
that they bear with pride, equanimity, and total
commitment. Again it’s about the individual not the
government. The people must play and can play their
part in the game of national development, not by
waiting on the government to deliver the goods, but
by being partners in development and delivering the
goods themselves, where possible. The so-called
developed countries were not developed by their
governments but by a critical mass of individual
citizens who wanted to make a difference while
making a buck for themselves in the process. It is a
win, win situation. I believe in my heart of hearts
that when Nigerians turn their negative ingenuity
into positive endeavors, the sky is the limit.
Nigeria would give even the most developed nations a
run for their money when Nigerians decide to be true
Nigerians rather than the impostors they appear to
be. They have done it in the home movie industry and
have come tops within a decade! They can do it in
other areas they turn their ingenuity to. Nigerians
don’t believe in themselves. But I believe in the
inherent quality and superiority of the Nigerian
mind and every African I have met in the United
States testifies to the Nigerian genius. It just
hasn’t been put to use as yet. When it does, there
would be a million Wole Soyinkas, Achebes, and
Nnajis to conquer the world.
As President Musa Yar’Adua struggles to find his
feet to move the nation forward, the question you
should be asking yourself as you read this piece,
is: What about me? What is my contribution to move
the nation and the black race forward? Folk, become
a doer and not a complainer.
Fellow Nigerians, permit me to leave you with these
immortal words of an American icon—President John F.
Kennedy, repeated time and time again:
“Think not what your country can do for you but
what you can do for your country.”
I’m sure you have heard that quote before. It rings
true today as it was then when those immortal words
were uttered, at least in the ears of the citizens
of the United States. For the most part, the people
of the United States live by those words and the
difference is clear!
What about you? I call on President Yar’Adua to use
his bully pulpit to drum this message home to
Nigeria. He should be talking less about rule of law
and more about the rule of the mind. The mind is too
precious an asset to be wasted. Nigerians should be
mobilized to think creatively, technologically, and
productively. The government might be shouting its
voice hoarse about the year 2020 when Nigeria will
hopefully become one of the twenty most
industrialized nations on earth. But if Nigerians
are sitting pretty on couches in their living rooms
with their eyes glued to television sets like
kindergartens watching cartoon movies, and hoping
that President Yar’Adua will make 2020 by simply
sending a bill prepared by AGF, Mr. Aondoakaa, to
the National Assembly to decree it into existence,
it’s not going to happen. The promise of the year
2020 will happen if, and only if, Nigerians
themselves rise up to the challenge. The government
can do but little without the people themselves
embracing and appropriating the ideals and goals of
national development for themselves.
It’s all in the power of ideas. Have you put on your
thinking cap on yet? What’s your brain cooking? Is
it robbery, 419 scam or the looting of your local
government or state treasury? Or is your brain
cooking up fictitious figures to inflate that
government contract you won or the rigging of the
next election? What’s your brain brewing? The next
generation of computer hardware or software or is it
the next big bang to hit the world of technology?
The power is in your brain. Think positive. Think
Nigeria. Put your brain to good use to the benefit
and pride of the black race and humanity. In the end
you will be glad you did.
Come on, folks: Let’s get to work! I want the
Nigerian car: NOW!
If India can do Nigeria, can do it better!
Franklin Otorofani, Esq. (USA)
Contact:
mudiagaone@yahoo.com
