Sensitivity and direct accountability to the citizens is the beauty and cornerstone of democracy in the world. Unfortunately, Nigerian Political system is beset with triplets called; sycophants, bad leaders and bad advisers,and consequently damaging the fabric of the Nigerian political society. The fear of not telling the truth by some of our elders in the society, daily settlement as mouth blockage, unnecessary collective punishment, unnecessary impeachment and exchange of verbal missles because of politics make mockery of our hard earned democracy.
The Health Sector is in shambles, graduates are parading the streets without any meaningful jobs, Education is in chaos while water, power, security and other necesities of life are absent. In short, the significant benefits of democracy are not felt by the consumers of democracy. Nigeria is facing unprecedented attacks from every living soul for lack of necessities of life. The Boko Haram insurgency is on-going, a war that looks unsumountable. All these are the results of short changing democracy unfortunately when this happens the country becomes rotten.
Chief Uche Ezemenari an Elder/Chairman of the Board of Igbo Community and Chairman of Anambra Board of Directors, Mr. Chudi Asidianya,The President of Council of Igbo States in Americas, Mr. Soja Adetutu; a notable figure in Toronto, and others Nigerians living in Canada bare their minds on the situation in Nigeria.
Mr. Chudi Asidianya believes that the government should be able to have enviable milestones for people to benefit from and be able to transform public opinion into public policy to buttress what is called government by majority. Chudi went further to say that Nigerian citizens should hold their representatives accountable. “Politics should not be seen as a business venture but as service to the people and the nation and therefore the representatives should have principal focus when going into politics” he stated. According to Chudi “The President should be concerned about the citizens and should always task the Politicians with this question; "whose interest are these politicians serving?” All ethnic groups should think of how to feed into this giant called Nigeria, we should forget tribalism and make Nigeria one. According to Chudi, "let us change our mind and change the country" we have no other country."
When our Reporter conered Mr. Chudi that “good governance should be evidence-based and that there is nothing to show for this and these politicians are building designers’ houses, travelling abroad and buying customised cars while the citizens are suffering badly at home which is tantamount to waste of human and material resources and total neglect of the masses that put them into power”. Mr. Chudi opined that the citizens should hold their representatives responsible and that these Politicians should always be reminded that one day they would give account of their stewardship.
Chudi emphasised on the fact that Politics should be a service to mankind and not a business venture. He however berated the state of religion and politics in Nigeria. "These two institutions are Money making ventures for Nigerians in every street in Nigeria there exists at least 15 churches causing Noise pollution and everybody wants to go into politics because they can get fast money from there instead of thinking on how to serve the country"! “Nigerians should all think on how to feed into the giant called Nigeria and make it a great and enviable country” Chudi added.
Chief Uche Ezemenari who fought in the Nigerian civil war in his usual cool, calm and collected manner appealed to Nigerians to fight the corrupt leaders representing them. Chief Uche Ezemenari is not happy how things are going in Nigeria In his opinion, “Nigeria should employ teachers who have interest of the country at heart and should start teaching students morals from kindergarten, primary, secondary to University level. Civics subject should be brought back and government should encourage them, it is then we know that morals are indispensable .’’
Mr. Soja Adetutu is very upset that in a country where we have abundant natural resources the citizens are still suffering, his refusal to accept that population explosion could be one of the reasons for the rise in poverty level of Nigerians, he canvassed for self-reliance which according to him is a major key to succeed in life. However, he decried the way the government is not focusing on helping the masses. Mr. Adetutu agreed that the quality of education is very important in this modern time and that the standard must be set to enable our children compete with international standards like Canada and USA. He recalled that in the 70’s and early 80’s Nigerians were the best because some Nigerians in diaspora were sending their children to Nigeria to go to school but now reverse is the case.
The safety and security of Nigerians is now another major concern, Nigeria is back to the old stone age. According to Mrs Grace Konifara; a Banker, opined that the cold truth is that Nigerians worship Money, the politicians are not helping the situation but making it worse, we dont know where to run to for security. She did not hide her feelings when asked about safety and security in Nigeria. She informed OASES NEWS that her friends in Toronto and United States of America who had wanted to travel to Nigeria changed their minds at the eleventh hour because of security. She screamed and said that “Nigeria is behaving like the ostrich, thanks to facebook and other media that report news on things happening around the world, bad Nigerians are really giving Nigeria bad name. She continued, "lifeless, bloodied and mutilated bodies are reported daily, people are scared travelling to Nigeria because of ritual killings here and there and this is creating bad image for the country” She advised the government to do more on safety and security. Money-cracy is what is on-going in Nigeria not Democracy. She defined Monecracy as getting Money by all means through human rituals, selling human parts, joining politics with the intention of stealing public fund with inpunity, while insisting without much explanation that introduction of iron law will curb this craze for money. Her final advise; "Nigerian government should wake up, regulate social activities, provide jobs and make the youth comfortable otherwise devil finds work for idle hands".
Sule Mukaila who has been in Canada for the past forty years did not mince words according to him “in such our wonderful affluent society it is unpardonable to neglect our less fortunate ones and belittle their conditions because we will be judged by history the way we treat our citizens”. Mrs Folashade Adepoju totally condemned how Nigerians behave to worldly materials, according to her “the rush to material success has ruined our country, we no longer consider the intrinsic value of life but we are more concerned with the extrinsic values of life, this negates the social norms in the society she concluded”.
Mr. Asidianya’s philosophy of “Change the mind change the country” should sink to all Nigerians so that each ethnic group should all feed into the giant called Nigeria and hold it together.
