Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Transforming Nigeria?


Do We Have The Courage For National Re-invention?

It seems to me that the things we need to do in this country are the things we would never have the courage to do. Still, we dared to take a chance on some people who are ruling us today. Why not really go all out and experiment? The flame of taking chances is burning so, why not really dare? How much worse can it get? We've had non-starters manipulated upon us as rulers, and in spite of their idiosyncrasies we are still standing and occupying our space. What have we to be afraid of?

You know I never really came to terms with the reason Mr Ben Bruce was not allowed to run for the governorship of Bayelsa State in the last election. I think it was said the man had a dual citizenship status. So what? So do many really black Nigerians who vote and who have run for and held offices.

I have known Ben Bruce as a teenager through their Domino Stores on the then Commercial Avenue, Yaba, Lagos. Now if, through the years, Nigeria's electoral system has permitted the man to vote people into our offices; then I think it is a terrible act of segregation to not allow him to run for office, whether in Bayelsa or on a national platform. Who is afraid of his color? Is all this not because he is an half-cast?

Well, Jerry Rawlings is an half-cast, and he redeemed Ghana. Lets face it, it takes black and white to get some major or fundamental things right in Africa. Mr Ben Bruce is a Nigerian, born and bred. When he stood to run for office in Bayelsa, I wished he was from my state because of what my gut feeling told me he would accomplish if he got in. But alas! PDP did not allow him. Sadly, when we look at Bayelsa since then, one's heart aches for what could have been!


Well, we still have Mr Ben Bruce with us even today. And I see a Nigeria where Mr Ben Bruce is President, and Mr Aliko Dangote as Deputy thriving and really transformed beyond what the failures of today's government has disillusioned us from imagining. I see a new Nigeria where we'd stop in our tracks and wonder that we could become so pleasant a place, even in our days.

There is a clamoring for a return of a Niger Delta origin President. Mr Ben Bruce is a Niger Delta man. And Mr Aliko Dangote is a northern man. Surely, we the people of Nigeria - North and South and East and West - for the need to get our country working can bury the hatchet and do this one last experiment; for the love of Nigeria.

I think the Bruce / Dangote Presidential pair is just what this country needs. But do we have the courage to allow it? Well, we should. Time is over for doing the government of sharing money into personal accounts and pockets.
As we have allowed some faceless greenhorns from nowhere to gamble away our time in recent years, merely going through the motion of governance; what have we to lose if we gave these two gladiators a chance? I am sure that we, the teeming masses of this great nation so extravagantly blessed by God, will finally be truly satisfied as we eat the good of our land.



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