THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF THE FIRST LADY
At long last, the veil of suspense and uncertainty which seem to have beclouded the whereabouts of Nigeria's first lady - Dame Patience Jonathan - has been lifted. The big masquerade is back in flesh and blood to the utter delight of most Nigerians, particularly, her teeming well-wishers. One should reasonably expect that in the coming days and weeks, the entirety of the country's print media will be profusely littered with congratulatory messages from the high and mighty in society, most of whom will be doing so as a means to ingratiate themselves to the fountain of power and patronage.
Expectedly, the airport of Abuja and its adjourning streets as well as the state house would have been besieged by an uproarious crowd of colorfully dressed women, some of them clad in “asuebi” uniforms with prodigious headgear to match, all shaking their waists in perfect unison and with amazing robustness while singing ecstatically in honor of the first lady. This would be followed, at some point, by a befitting thanksgiving service that would be put together for her, while clergymen would fall over themselves in the tussle for who emerges as the officiating minister. Undeniably, the first lady deserves to savor all of such merriment because - as the Holy Book will put it - “she was once lost and now she is found.”
However, as Nigerians hail the first lady's triumphant return, it is important that the sobering lessons born out of her long absence are not lost on us as a people. In retrospect, Nigeria had suffered (and continues to suffer) the misfortune of being saddled with a leadership that exhibits complete lack of faith and trust in the people they are leading and in the system they are developing. It has, indeed, become a chilling scandal that all year round, our political leaders in Nigeria budget huge sums of money to promote public healthcare. They make an elaborate show of equipping the country's tertiary and primary health institutions. Yet, at the slightest suspicion of catarrh, they jet of to foreign countries to enjoy first-class medical services that have been nurtured and sustained by leaders who possess the same head and brain like their Nigerian counterparts.
In the educational sector, the distrust of our leadership in the system they are supposedly managing is even much more alarming. Our government waxes eloquent about their heroic achievements in the educational system. Yet, even the best of public schools in Nigeria is considered unfit to admit and tutor our leaders' maidservants, not to talk of their children. They are not grieved by the appalling standard of the educational system of the country they are presiding over; they see nothing wrong in their expression of lack of confidence in the system they are managing, Their overwhelming inclination has always been to parcel their children and loved ones abroad for the best of educational tutelage in foreign schools built and managed by leaders with conscience and vision.
How come that our leaders have contrived the uncanny habit of leading a country whose system they willfully under-develop and essentially distrust? If a leader who is saddled with the responsibility of developing a society and its people cannot muster the confidence to patronize the very system he is “leading”, then, who will? If our leaders and their cronies subsist in the practice of patronizing foreign education, healthcare, leisure centers etc, who will develop the ones in Nigeria?
As we proceed to shout “Hosanna” because of the first lady's return, it should be born in mind that there are Nigerian mothers in our various localities whose chances of surviving their pregnancies would have been greatly imperiled due to lack of access to basic maternal healthcare. We should remember that there are new born babies in Nigeria of today who would probably not live to see their 5th birthday as a result of complications arising from mosquito bite. What about those Nigerians beset by chronic health conditions but whose economic conditions would have sentenced them to “death-by-installments” simply because they have neither the means nor the connection to fly abroad for urgent and more sophisticated medical attention? Herein lies the perfidy of our leaders' attitude and the moral turpitude of their mindset which propels them to unleash such neglect and suffering on their fellow citizens while pretending to be leading them.
Nigeria's quest for global and continental reckoning will remain a colossal mirage as long as its leaders continue to shy away from the historic task of turning around the fortunes of the country for the overall betterment of its populace. Nigeria will assuredly remain a laughing stock in the comity of nations as long as its leaders abdicate their responsibilities and prefer to dance naked in the “open market” of other countries. They can deem it expedient to preside over a system whose education, health and other vital sectors are useless and irrelevant. They may find it fashionable to patronize the wonderful creations of other leaders in foreign climes at the detriment of their very own. Yet, in doing so, they would only be acting out the dilemma of the proverbial pig that chooses to rub lipstick on its lips, forgetting that at the end of the day, it still remains a pig.