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Question 1a. Define Nigeria. Answer: A land where
the elders do nothing but sing of a glorious past and the youth are
leaders of a tomorrow that will never come.

Question 1b. Explain your answer in 1a. Answer: In
typical Nigerian fashion I will begin my answer with another question –
or series of questions:

“Why is our Society so afflicted with the virus of
corruption? Why does it appear that the average Nigerian is
congenitally corrupt? Why should people who do not want to exert
themselves enjoy the good things of life? Why should the indolent and
the mediocre prosper at the expense of the hardworking members of the
Community? Why do we place so much premium on wealth even when it is
known that such wealth is a product of unjust and corrupt enrichment?”
Who said this, and when?

Those words were spoken by a certain Mr. Ayo
Fasanmi in a speech delivered at the annual conference of the
Association of History Teachers in Nigeria in, wait for this, 1972.

Troubled by the questions above, Mr. Fasanmi and a
handful of young Nigerian men and women on May 29, 1971 formed an
“Anti-Bribery and Corruption Committee.” 1971. Good ol’ days indeed. I
could have sworn that those words above were uttered by Nuhu Ribadu
yesterday afternoon.

One keeps hearing all this talk about “when
Nigeria was good” – when angels roamed the streets and questionable
wealth was kept hidden far from public view, and one naira could buy
you a shipload of rice (apologies to Mr. B of Basi & Company fame).

Isn’t this one of the great myths of this age?

I insist that the starting point for the
transformation of Nigeria is the realisation that there’s no point
lamenting that Nigeria is “getting worse.” From all available evidence,
Nigeria has always been “worse”. Our problems in Nigeria have never
changed. At best, what they do is change name:

the “Problem Has Changed Name (PHCN)” phenomenon,
seen in the transformation of NEPA to PHCN, OMPADEC to NDDC, FEDECO to
NEC to INEC; “go-slow” to “bumper-to-bumper”; police-routing Anini to
EFCC-routing Ibori.

It is sad that Nigerians above a certain age spend
so much time living in the past, lamenting how things used to work,
such that there is no energy left to find any solutions.

Acknowledging once and for all that things have
never been good frees us up to focus on a more pressing task: that
much-needed debate on why we are the way we are, and how we can break
free from the insanity of doing things the same way and expecting
different results.

“Very poor leadership appears to me as the black
man’s greatest problem,” Areoye Oyebola wrote in his 1970s classic
‘Black Man’s Dilemma.’ “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely
a failure of leadership,” Chinua Achebe pronounced a few years later,
in ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’.

Thinking about Nigeria’s leadership challenges I
am reminded of the words of W.B. Yeats: “The best lack all conviction,
while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” That, in my opinion,
is the most fitting punch line to the joke called Nigeria.

Might Achebe and Oyebola be right?

Arise Magazine recently published a special
supplement on Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary. It’s a slim but
well put together document, with fascinating photos and an informative
time-line of Nigerian history.

But the most interesting part of it is a piece
titled: “GENERATION NEXT”, with the intro: “As Nigeria celebrates its
golden jubilee, the torch is passed to a new generation; the Goodluck
Jonathan Generation. Here are 50 of the rising stars.” Those rising
stars included such distinguished young and promising Nigerians as
David Mark (“a bridge between the old and new generations”), Femi
Otedola, Aliko Dangote, Vice President Namadi Sambo, Bukola Saraki,
Bola Tinubu, Diezani Allison-Madueke, Donald Duke and Godswill Akpabio.

Awesome stuff. Those are the “rising stars” of
Nigeria, the future of this great country of good people. One wonders
what my generation is doing still hanging around. Clearly we arrived
far too early. We are the Premature Generation. We should blame God for
sending us well ahead of our time.

All of us should go and find stuff to do – sing
and dance and tweet and fall in love and pop champagne, until, say,
2040, when, hopefully,

the aforementioned “rising stars” would have
fulfilled their missions and stepped aside to give us, “the new youth”,
a chance to help ourselves to our own share of whatever’s left of
Nigeria by then.

In 2040, I will be a 58-year-old, well past the
life expectancy allotted to me by my country, my grey hairs nicely
suppressed by the finest of dyes. I will be ready to take my place as
the future of Nigeria.

And of course I will remember to tell my children, the leaders of a
tomorrow I know will never come, of the “good ol’ days” of my youth;
that innocent age long before Nigeria ‘spoilt finish’!