What our founding fathers didn’t bargain for

The political landscape is laden with political broken bottles which poses extreme danger for Nigeria. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party is buried in a dangerous political crisis. The Academic Staff Union of Universities is on strike, and the industrial action is on course to deepen the decay in the Nigerian educational system. There is an […]

The political landscape is laden with political broken bottles which poses extreme danger for Nigeria. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party is buried in a dangerous political crisis. The Academic Staff Union of Universities is on strike, and the industrial action is on course to deepen the decay in the Nigerian educational system. There is an endless formation of political parties.
All the political parties lack internal democracy. Nigeria remains a major producer of crude oil but remains a major importer of refined petroleum products. Nigeria has all the resources for large scale agriculture but it spends billions of naira yearly to import rice and tomato paste.
Nigerian security forces continue to inflict pain on the psyche of Nigerian by their inhuman extrajudicial killings.  The economic gurus tell Nigerians that Nigeria is one of the fastest rising countries in the world but many Nigerians live below a dollar a day.
Many beggars, hawkers and job seekers populate the streets in astronomical numbers in pursuit of scarce and elusive money, food and security. Many Nigerian leaders regularly earn outlandish bumper harvests of salaries, wages, bonuses and other perks while millions of Nigerians live under the deadly high handedness and deathly strangulation of poverty.
The causes of the perennial problems which stand in the way of Nigeria’s motion and movement to the status of a developed country include large scale corruption, high level of unemployment, poverty of the highest order, poor quality leadership, acute neglect of agriculture, over-dependence on importation of goods and services, high degree illiteracy and poor quality education.
Political leaders should strive to make our democracy to deliver for Nigeria by generating high standard dividends of democracy which will have widespread and groundbreaking impact in the lives of the people at grassroots level. Nigeria has both the natural and human resources to resolve all the problems which confront and assault Nigerians daily.
The good struggle by some patriotic and good-spirited Nigerians to lift their fatherland out of decay should be made to grow in strength to make the uncertain future of Nigeria hopefully and positively fruitful.

Uchechukwu Agodom, Kofar Kaura, Katsina
<[email protected]>;