Reverse mode: Deactivated

Instead of 80% of the country’s budget going to recurrent expenses to pay for politicians’ salaries and benefits and 20% going to capital expenses, we can use 80% for capital expenses to build up and maintain our dilapidated infrastructure and 20% to pay salaries. Instead of working to live and pay bills, we can just […]

Instead of 80% of the country’s budget going to recurrent expenses to pay for politicians’ salaries and benefits and 20% going to capital expenses, we can use 80% for capital expenses to build up and maintain our dilapidated infrastructure and 20% to pay salaries. Instead of working to live and pay bills, we can just live to work by doing meaningful tasks such as executing and implementing the requests of the citizenry. Instead of living in reverse, we can actually move forward and thread a new paradigm for ourselves through self determination.  
Iceland is a country in Europe that recently went through bankruptcy in 2008. As part of their restructuring plan, they threw their crooked bankers in jail (instead of giving them bailout money) and redefined their policy by writing a new constitution. Part of the new rules in the Iceland constitution for contesting for political office was that  past politicians or persons that even contested for elections in the past prior to the bankruptcy were prevented from running for an elective post. As part of the reforms in the new constitution, the citizens are now allowed to use social media or technology to vote daily on issues that concern them. If Nigerians can vote from their cell phones on our favourite contestant in Big Brother Nigeria, why not vote on important and relevant issues? Technology has made it possible for real time information to be tracked instantly and recorded globally.
The first question most people would ask is that why would politicians ever allow such a thing to pass that would take them out of a job? After all, what better job is there than to get paid millions working part time without gambling as our politicians do today? The problem is that we’re always giving our power to someone else. If there are enough of us that demand this, it will eventually happen whether they like it or not. We’re creative enough and united enough to overcome any obstacle, because as the saying goes, persistence beats resistance.  
Instead of privatizing our resources to no end, our resources can be owned by the public or citizens for our own benefit. Politicians have told us for decades now that government is inefficient so they should privatize our resources and give them to private businesses which they end up owning. Since then, we’ve gone from mediocrity to inefficiency when we could have self-sufficiency. We may actually be able to go back to focusing on knowledge to generate ideas and develop our surroundings instead of waiting for oil. I hope and pray that we can figure this out before the oil runs out. Then we can put love in front of fear instead of living in reverse.
With direct democracy, we can distinguish incompetence from conspiracy. Robots are becoming more useful in the developed world. However, we should restrict them like politicians to remedial tasks so that we can think for ourselves. Once we figure out that we don’t need politicians but that they need us, we can stop living in reverse.
Adeniyi wrote from Abuja and can be reached on [email protected]