Nigeria is a nation that we all love to hate, we love to love and criticize.  We criticize the nation, we criticize the leaders, we criticize individuals and we even criticize the system that we help bring to life without offering any iota of solution.  The easiest thing to do in this world is criticize but to build is difficult. Of course we have the right to criticize Nigeria because for almost 47 years she remains in a comatose state simply because of the small-minded leaders we’ve had.  The right to criticize must, however, carry added responsibilities of giving encouragement whenever a nation shows any ray of hope as with Professor Dora Nkem Akunyili, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, etc.  Amongst the people in this world, those that are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize.  On this spectrum, where are Nigerians?

To redefine self, one must be able to seek the truth about one’s self and recognize the purpose why one is on earth.  One of the problems with Nigerians is that we want the nation to be great while we are individually rotten.  There is no way individuals that are integral part of a rotten system can themselves be upright.  At the tail end of my article on Patricia Olubunmi Etteh, “the crucifixion of Rt. (Honorable) Speaker,” I asked some rhetoric questions and came up purposely with some off the wall statements which brought some diatribes from some fellow citizens.  For those that failed to read between the lines, it is unfortunate, I cannot help them. 

The problem with Nigerians is that we stand to lose when we do not search our own souls before we criticize.  We are all very good at coming up with holier than thou solutions.  Get rid of the bastard, we say, crucify him/her we mutter and change the baton without understanding why leaders repeat the same mistakes and dare us question them.  It is clear to every Nigerian that Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh seeks greatness, remembers greatness, does not have the capacity to find the truth and so, it seems she may end up losing both greatness and truth.  Almost all our leaders have not been patriotic.  How can one steal one’s own property and has the audacity to transfer the stolen property to another disinterested entity overseas?  Mrs. Etteh is not the only unpatriotic citizen, and even if you refer to her as unqualified to hold the position of speaker of the house of Assembly, she will not be the last unqualified person to do so.  Many of our political Generals that took over government violently were unqualified to lead a democratic government and may not be qualified Generals in a fighting army except if we consider coup planning and execution qualification for leadership.

Many Nigerians have never looked at Nigeria from any angle other than how to take but never to give back to our nation.  We cannot point to any Nigerian leader who has been so committed to the nation and willing to die empty in order to safe her.  The vocabulary of 90% of Nigerian leaders has never contained the words trouble, adversity, calamity and grief; therefore, it cannot contain the words bravery, patience and self-sacrifice. Those that do not face calamity need no courage.  The human characteristics we admire, mysterious though it is, grow in a soil with a strong mixture of trouble.

Many of our trading partners understand us, understudied us, know how we think, how our culture is an albatross on our necks, know where our stress points are, they know how to covertly chose our leaders for us but for their own benefits.  They know that we can only bark but cannot bite, and they know that like robots, we’ll accept the leaders after few noises.   Many of the leaders we’ve had so far in Nigeria failed in their home front, they failed in their professions, they failed in the very religion which they use to destabilize our polity, and they failed as human beings except when it came to looting our treasury.  Abacha did not probe IBB, OBJ did not probe Abubakar and IBB because they belong to a Mafioso group, Yar ‘Adua dare not probe OBJ because he (OBJ) single handedly put him in office.  The only one that had a warped sense of courage was OBJ who probed a dead Abacha because the dead cannot fight back.  None of these leaders have courage to probe any living leader because our system is to sweep problems under the carpet.  For Nigeria to grow as a nation, her citizens must expend their hidden store of energy to seek the truth, know the truth and act on the truth. The truth-energy must be released in order to compete in the marathon of life.  Within each of us is a hidden store of courage and courage to give us the strength to face any challenge.  Within each Nigerian is a hidden store of determination, determination to keep us in the race when all seem lost."

So, how do we re-define ourselves and hence our nation?  Again, all personal breakthroughs being with a change in beliefs and attitude, so how do we make meaningful change in our attitude, and improve our self-esteem.  This can be accomplishes by:

1.       Being good to each other and seeking each other’s welfare (not assassinating and making sure we don’t succeed).   The fact that Mohamed from Kano succeeds should not stop Abiodun from Ile-Ife from succeeding.  The sky is big enough for all kinds of birds to fly without their wings touching;

2.       Stopping putting a nail on the coffin of “e don nearly finish, make I grab my own.”   America played this same game of predicting that world crude oil would be depleted but the oil is increasing in volume and will continue to do so as long as there are fossils, dead trees, etc.;

3.       Building our self-esteem and stopping this warped thinking that everything from the Western world is good.  As there a good things about the West, there are also good things about Nigeria.  We need to develop and emphasize things that this are good in Nigeria and discourage people that partake in bad acts in Nigeria.   We must not believe the crap about one group of people is a superior race.  Adolph Hitler tried it and failed.  When God created Adam and Even, He never established superiority but established respect for mutual co-existence.  Superiority and strength of character do not come from physical capacity but from an indomitable will which we have so far lacked as a Nigerians;

4.       Our strength as a nation is from our standing together in oneness.  We cannot stand together in oneness if the Hausas, the Yorubas, and the Igbos have different national interests.  Because we have parallel and competing national interests, it is easy for our enemies (internal and external) to encroach, get better jobs in Nigeria and live better than they live in their own countries.   This is why we are all second class citizens in Nigeria;

5.       In whatever we do, no matter how our disagreements may be, at all times we must focus on the issues at hand not on the person (tribe, height, color, education, religion, etc.).   We must, however, be able to call a spade a spade when it is a matter that concerns our collective interest.   For example, as a Yoruba man, one must not fail to criticize OBJ to his face to stop looting the treasury if he is doing so irrespective of whether he is older or not.  One can still respect him as an elder but not as a thief;

6.       Since independence, we can't point to any Nigerian that made a difference in the nation’s live other than those that caused capital flight that help develop other nations but Nigeria.  The loots transferred out are loaned back to Nigeria at a criminal rate as IMF loan.  Isn't something wrong with this picture?;

7.       We must refocus on the family and most importantly we must be spiritual not religious.  Religion is an outward pretense that one is closer to God.  Spirituality establishes a one-to-one relationship with God in the dark, in light, under a rock, and under water.  God knows who serves Him so we don’t need to fight a physical war on behalf of God;

8.       We must change our beliefs so as to empower our dreams and desires for our great nation.  We have nothing to lose by creating a strong belief in ourselves and in what we want;

9.       We must rebuild Africa’s medical/ pharmaceutical (medicinal) technologies and package and sell it back to the West.  We must copy and duplicate technologies because we understand the mathematics, the physics, the Chemistry involved and how such technologies can uplift Nigerian spirit.  We must put a Nigerian stamp of approval on our own inventions;

10.   We must love ourselves, our resources, and our ingenuity more than the foreigners love them but be willing to work with those that want to partner with us.  Part of loving ourselves is for a leader to build our industrial capacity and improve our energy supplies, our roads, and our healthcare delivery system, reconstruct our national psyche from consumer to producer; and

11.   We must rebuild the self-esteem of the next generation so that they can feel worthy of competing with their counterparts in this global village and global economy.  Riches is not defined from the amount looted, any brainless person can succeed in looting but from efforts and joy derived from creating jobs and producing economic success (financial, technological, etc.).

There can be no meaningful revolution without an attitudinal change of the nation and within the rank and file of citizens – res ipsa loquitor.  Any revolution without internal change will just be a change of baton.  The most effective way to effect a peaceful revolution is to get our brains to associate massive pains we’ve been through to the old paradigms in Nigeria.  We must feel deep in our guts that not only has these believes cost us pain in the past, but it's continues to cost us as Nigerians in the present and, ultimately, can only bring us pain in the future.  

In Nigeria, there is a saying that, “once there is life, there is hope.”  A test as to whether our mission on earth is completed is to check if we are still alive."  Since you are reading this, you are alive, there is hope and there must be a paradigm shift in the ways we interact with each other, with our environment and with our foreign friends and foes.