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Nigeria’s
nationhood for the past 50 years with very little to show for it was
the centre of discussions yesterday in Benin, as the Edo state chapter
of the Nigerian Union of Journalists began its press week activities.

Julius Ihonvbere, a
professor of political science who was guest lecturer at the event,
attributed Nigeria’s slow pace of development to bad leadership over
the years, and blamed Nigeria’s upper and middle class of having ruined
the country’s present and future.

“The truth is that
I often feel sad when politicians, so called leaders and bureaucrats
try to confuse, mislead us with half truths, concoctions and
fabrications about our progress as a people and nation in several
respects,” he said. “Nigeria is more of an undeveloped rather than an
underdeveloped society.”

Bothering God for everything

Mr. Ihonvbere
lamented that Nigerians rather than face the realities on ground to
change the system turn to God for divine intervention.

“We bother God with everything,” he said. “God is our excuse for laziness and failure to organize our people for struggle.”

He said the country
and the states could only make progress through “discipline, focus,
sensitive, compassionate and visionary leadership, planning,
investment, savings, productivity, stability and good governance. We
just have to abandon political rascality, posturing, noise making,
populism and diversionary tactics for focused and strategy-based
planning and leadership to move forward.”

Government by committees

According to him,
the failure of leadership in Nigeria has also been exemplified through
the constitution of various committees who turned in reports that were
never considered.

“We believe in
government by panels or committees but have no regard for the report
from such committees,” he said. “Their reports are dumped as soon as
they are presented. We hear of assets verification but never know what
assets were verified.”

Mr. Ihonvbere, who
served as special adviser on project monitoring to former president,
Olusegun Obasanjo, and intends to run for governor of Edo state, lashed
out at political parties in the country who he said have been
infiltrated with sycophants and individuals who only believe that
political offices could only be got by moneybags and not people with
programmes to change the system.

“Candidates are
sponsored for political positions not necessarily based on competence
but their predispositions to being manipulated and ability to pursue
narrow interests,” he said. “Just have a godfather, sufficient wild
looking thugs, money- the source is not relevant- and strategise on how
to influence the electoral commission, the police and the media, and
pronto you are ‘elected’ into office.

Politics in our country is costly, diabolical, unsteady, uncertain
and announced results hardly ever reflect what took place on election
day.”