By Adakole Ijogi
Nigeria more than ever before as a nation needs to get back into progressive TUNES, with melodies of a caring people, with sounds of progress, with drums of justice and with the resonating chords of development all in harmony of a united people with one destiny under God.
The trumpet blears… it beckons on all who are and who is TRULY Nigerian… Arise oh compatriots; the clarion call is upon us.
Gather round, all you patriots and those who think NIGERIA first, before tribe, before political partisanship, before religion and before self our country needs you.
The sound of music today has made is compulsory and a compelling duty to heed to this call, for those who were entrusted with composing a truly spirited Nigerian progressive melody have all but displayed mediocrity, poor judgment, bad imaginative and cognitive abilities, the Nigerian national progressive anthem is now being sang in reverse.
The guitarist, the drummer, pianist, back-up singers, sound engineer, choristers and music conductor, have all fallen short of our collective aspiration for a progressive melodious nation building progressive script. Reminiscing that in their music notes, they crafted and promised heavenly melodies, mastered artistry and angelic choristers with high vocal capabilities, they even photoshoped a new Nigeria melody drenched in the mantra “change”, little did we know that the falsetto was stringed in lies, propaganda and deceit.
Now the reality is upon us, as the nation bleeds, the economy fractured, our people moan in poverty and deprivation, our children dying of curable diseases, sadly we are even back to a polio stricken nation, strife and hunger adorns our land, our people more insecure and unsafe, regional agitation pluralized and ethnic suspicion compounds drastically. Plaguing misery, groping darkness, gruesome suffering and immeasurable hardship inflected by Buharinomics is a testament of an ineffective and non-caring government.
The Nigerian people who voted NEVER asked you, our “Command and Control General” to take the job of band leader, YOU said you wanted it, sought for it and got it on the forth time, they also NEVER asked you “who CAUSED the problems” YOU SAID YOU COULD FIX IT, that you will solve that not too clear sound we have experienced since 1960.
You stringed Inflation to 16.5% from 9%, tuned the economy that was A+ and Africa’s largest economy growing at 7% GDP in the last decade to a negative growth of -0.32%, now we are in an economic recession, you have mixed unemployment rate to 28% from 12.5%, drummed the exchange rate that you promised one naira to the dollar to 408 naira to the dollar from the 198 naira you met, the manufacturing sector that was souring at a 12.8% growth is now contracting at –21%, all of these are under you watch as leader and just to mention a few.
I won’t even talk about the sectionally biased federal appointments and your non-inclusive government, or the regrettable massacre of innocent Nigerians in Zaria and Onitsha by trigger happy unknown soldiers, or even the rampaging killings by herdsmen, but will just keep it light and simple. This government has supervised unpaid salaries of workers, increase in electricity tariffs without a corresponding increase in electricity supply, increase in pump price of petrol while the “unpaid wages” is held constant, we even hear about a planned 9% service charge tax on usage of mobile telephones.
This begs the QUESTION? Is This The CHANGE? Nigerians now know better, we now have clarity and are sand marking a government that serves Propaganda for breakfast and Infinitesimal Hope for dinner, while awaiting the sun rise and the morning dew filled with the “blame game” and ethos of cluelessness, we awake to a non-thinking, self righteous and high divisive government, with its choristers and “hailers” applauding a disastrously discordantly tuned Nigeria.
We must as a people rise in defence of our nation and the Nigerian people, it is not about who did what, when and why, the blame game in regressive, nonproductive and illogical, as it can even take us far back to the amalgamation in 1914 or even pre-colonial Nigeria with ever administration blaming its predecessor, what is pertinent and critical at this moment is a forward looking direction towards building a progressive and prosperous Nigeria.
Every generation has its challenges and must confront these issues with patriotism, justice, sincerity of purpose and sustainable development choices. The sound must be clean as a whistle and majority of people must be in agreement and in one accord with the music notes, performers and choice of equipment. Democracy is building popular consensus for development, and development is about the people.
We desperately need to develop a new progressive medley with the right strings and equipment, right minds with the know how, from the ashes of a grossly failed government with it’s cacophony of woes, hardship and intellectual bankruptcy, we must jettison this anti-peoples song and restore it with an orchestra of right thinking, talented, hardworking and a “think Nigeria First” progressive people, those who can string into a harmonious melody, the evident sound of progress, citizen empowerment, development and oneness for our people serenated in prosperity. My sincere belief is that it CAN Be Done, my resolve is that it MUST Be Done and my fears are that if it is NOT Done, then we as a people are DONE.
__________
Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng
Copyright 2015 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.
