Nigeria in the throes of power beyond limits (II)

The issue being that not every citizen has a right of plebiscite, but every member of the electorate should inevitably be a citizen. Hence, when we now draw a profile of our nation’s response or non-response for its capacity to fulfil the dream-visions of the populace, its larger sub-regional and regional longing based on the […]

The issue being that not every citizen has a right of plebiscite, but every member of the electorate should inevitably be a citizen. Hence, when we now draw a profile of our nation’s response or non-response for its capacity to fulfil the dream-visions of the populace, its larger sub-regional and regional longing based on the capacity and dare of the Nigerian nation to lead, the limit of power and the action of the powerful to transcend that limit become the defining features of the nation’s connect with the drive toward social change, or in the current political lexicon, toward national transformation.
Nigeria, because of her disproportionate capacity to deploy its abundant goodwill from its almost proverbial performance in its foreign policy centred on Africa, especially West Africa for material, nay economic advantage for the country; because of its god-fatherist posture of giving so much and allowing other people, especially non-African, Western and emerging Eastern powers, to reap where they did not sow by capitalizing on the weakness of the nations we have rescued from the jaws of extinction and unearned annihilation, Nigeria has caught a pathetic figure of an anti-hero.
Worse still, and resulting from this lack of apt consciousness/awareness of its abundant capacity to plunge, headlong, into the welcoming embrace of the nations of the sub-region that longs for its modelling role in Africa’s desired drive for ultimate socio-economic transformation, it has indulged itself in ludicrous domestically demeaning and bizarre role that can at best frustrate the aspirations of the ‘smaller’ nations looking up to her for example and/or at very worst, create contemptuous perception of the lame-duck giant before its sprawling protégées.
One can go on infinitely on the philosophically lane as indulged above, trying to demonstrate common exasperation on the failure of fulfilled possibilities of our nation to lead the rest of the black world out of the woods of development. It is best to just exemplify with the example of Sierra-Leone that we have hinted at last week, as symbolizing the longing of Africa for Nigeria’s leadership while the ‘giant’ itself lies prostrate and forlorn like a lion bulked in its prey! In very many respects, Sierra-Leone bears many significant identity marks with her ‘big brother’, Nigeria. And (as I said last week), this unabashed respectful distance is a common feature of public Sierra-Leonean perception/marker of Nigeria currently raging — ranging from the heinous trans- Atlantic slave trade/inhuman traffic regime to downright political hegemonic aegis of imperial rule/colonialism to the present neo-colonial Global village coinage of the globalization of the world in which Nigeria and the Africa are inextricably bound,
Sierra-Leone, a small country of about 6million strong, and slot-able in Lagos about three times and smaller in population than at least half of the number of the States in Nigeria, went into a near-motiveless fratricidal carnage which lasted for over a decade (similar to the 1967-70 experience of Nigeria), bouncing back with incredible speed. They have, as war aftermath, come to the realization that there was neither need no cause for that war, except for the rapacious greed and inordinate ambition of certain coterie of power and money megalomaniacs. They have therefore gone ahead to create liminal processes of national rehabilitation, reconciliation and reconstruction, which were all both genuine and popular. Following the Truth and Recondition commission, they have further made progress to build a growing democracy through envisioned and enmissioned strategic plan erected on agendum of change and prosperity consecutively.
Sierra-Leone painfully currently undergoes crippling poverty. This poverty being experienced by the federation is a painful paradox, given, like is the case of Nigeria, the country’s overwhelming endowment by nature and pristine nurture. If you flew over the country, the sheer splendour of its watery masses with its evocation of aesthetic wonder and delight made available in seven minutes of descending, which you are then made to relive on the sea by speed boat, raging toward Freetown, where every alley and troubled road beckons you to a alluring warmth, you would feel most humbled by the pain of aborted possibilities—almost the way you would, as a citizen, feel about Nigeria. Poor infrastructure, unexplored and unexploited minefield of mines and natural resources, ranging from ores oozing from the hills of the country, unrivalled quantity of Diamond, whose vaulting hunt led, in part, to the nation’s yesterday doom, to the other over thirty-five mineral resources, has slowed down the ambition of the country to become a positively changed and envied, prosperous country. 
 Cognizant of their needless national poverty and clearly and terribly perceptive of the way out—the need for stronger nations of Africa and the world to come to their aid to gain advancement, Sierra-Leone openly and unequivocally begs Nigeria, and possibly Ghana, to come and conquer, in economic/investment terms. As usual, Nigeria, being more driven by god-fetherist mentality rather than economic diplomacy of maximizing the vantage space historically placed on its cavalier laps, has refused to swoop, hawk-like on Sierra-Leone. She has relinquished the initiative and birth-right to China and Lebanon.
True, after the devastating war, Nigeria engaged in the non-formal sector of Sierra-Leone’s economy, including shipping of badly need food crops and vegetables to the country; true, a few business/ corporate and private concerns, including five Nigerian owned and run banks, and other private mercantile driven individuals and groups have take some strategic economic spaces in the country; the economic life-line of the country lies in the hands of the Chinese and the Lebanese; two of a disproportionate verminous nations driving towards ultimate development. With a crying deficit in skilled man-power and skilled entrepreneurial and vocational capacities, Sierra-Leone’s economy is dominated by non-Africans—precisely Chinese and Lebanese. Nigeria currently plays second fiddle in an economy in which it should command the lucrative heights. And given the ludicrous occupational tendency and aggression of the Chinese, especially, unless care is taken and urgently, the country is up for recolonization from the hands of ex-colonies!. Let me give a small instance. In the task of physical rail tracking, needing no skilled labour, the Chinese company handing the small railway project in Sierra-Leone were reluctant to employ natives. When they did, it was on contract; on a use-and-dump basis. What is more painfully disgusting is the fact that Sierra-Leone citizens are hired to do cheap, underpaid and undignified services. The hotel where I stayed, Bintumani, an old, elite resort, centre of intellectual activities in the past, and later headquarters of the Rebel commanders, every symbol, from menu books to direction signs are written on un-abashed Chinese. It matters not whether the costumers and clients from wherever understood Chinese symbols and language or not. Indeed, there is the ridiculous revelation that, if a mirror got broken, replacement has to come from China. Believe it because it is the true and I have witnesses.