THE DILEMMA OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PANACEA FOR RESOLVING IT.

By EJIKEME PETER IGWE
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A computer on its own without the software application is like a box without cloths. It’s incapable of any meaningful work. Likewise a human being without a functional brain is like every other animal where anything goes. A brain that doesn’t think, and is not empowered for critical thinking, analysis of fact and deduction of actionable data is relegated to the floor of the food chain. When a man said that idea rules the world he wasn’t mistaken.

In our context as a nation where we have everything needed to succeed but we are not. The question is why? You see a nation is built by men with idea and when natural resources fails idea leads the way. In the seventeenth century, a man walked into Switzerland, he was a preacher. They told him that the country has nothing to offer, no natural resources and the land can barely produce.

He invited some of the preachers and the leading men of the society and said to them. When all fail idea will get us where we want. And for Switzerland to become what we all desire, want and see in other nations then we need to teach our people to have a rear quality that would make nations trust us. A program was launched for value reorientations. They embraced values like: honesty, trust, integrity, serves delivery, faithfulness, hard work and dignity of labour.

When a man walked in the street of Geneva and lost his wallet. He searched everywhere and didn’t see it. As he retraced his steps two days later, he found his wallet on the road with everything intact. A newspaper hawker would leave his papers on the road and attend to other business and any man that buys a paper leaves his money on a plate and walk home. The man will come later and take his belongs with his money equaling the number of papers sold. They would be asked to keep money for people and when the man comes to pick his money he gets it. It will not be diminished by a coin or cents. The hundred notes would not be replaced by fifty notes. You get exactly what you left.

The consequences of this when other businessmen heard about this peculiar people, they started bringing their valuable for safe keeping based on integrity of the people. They now developed a banking system that will help advance their own development. And today every thief, drug dealer, smugglers, government officials from other nations and even other countries want their money kept in a country that has no natural resources but says the truth always.

When you juxtapose this scenario with our Nigerian context it will marvel you why we are so backwards. Therefore no matter how great our idea for national transformation we will not get there if the software, the human capital that will drive these ideas is incapacitated by a virus called character flaws.

Our institutions with their mandates despite its gaps still need the human part to drive it. The problem of the country is not the institution per say but the man. This is not to say that we don’t have men in this country with integrity.

Those who have what is needed are not given the opportunity because we have exalted the status of mediocrity and ethnicity to our own peril.

I have heard people say that the country is so rich and government should give each citizen one million Naira each and whoever messed up has himself to blame. Yes the country is so rich but there is a problem with this kind of thinking.

One is if the government gives every man what they asked; the kind of inflation that would hit this country would be unmanageable. Two, ninety percent of the people with that one million would end up where they were in less than six months because of the poor quality decision and value system that kept them in that position that they were in at the first instance. They have not mastered financial discipline and have consuming mindsets. They have poor core values that would sustain what they got.

The other ten percent could keep their one million or even grow it and that’s the people with values. That’s the people this country needs and where are they? They are the ones with no means, no connection and seldom makes it where they would be noticed. Those who did were suppressed by petty jealousy and envy. Five percent of some in this category are not interested.

So how do we solve this question of value system so as to help our nation thrive? One, is to give capital punishment to any idea that encourages corruption. Two is to start moral indoctrination program at school levels. Three is to reward excellent and make it impossible for mediocrity to stay at that level. Finally is to make people resign their position when they lie with pen or mouth, fails to deliver in what they said they would do, are found in compromising positions or indicted of misappropriation.

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