Book
Preview
Oseloka Obaze*
Sunday
14 August 2011
How to Fix Nigeria
Uche
Nwakudu
(ISBN-978-1-4634-0691-2;
AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN, USA, 2011, Pp. 176 Price, $9.95)
Available:
www. Authorhouse.com
Uche
Nwakudu, treads where angels dread in seeking to postulate ideas on how to fix
Nigeria. But then, every Nigerian is an expert on the ills and problems that
afflict Nigeria. In that context, he is in good company. But his reasons for
this venture are clear; Nigeria needs redemption, even though prescriptions and
precepts on how to fix the nation has become a huge industry.
How to Fix
NIGERIA -And Make It Work For Every Nigerian,
is a spirited, sometimes bold, sometimes prescriptive, sometimes pragmatic and
generally critical, and interesting read. Nwakudu succeeds in voicing the broad
frustrations of many Nigerians as well as their visceral reactions to their
leadership’s follies over the years.
While
How to Fix NIGERIA is engaging and
many anecdotes are employed to dramatize the trouble with Nigeria and Nigerians,
the summary of the work and the prescribed default solution is reform, which can
only come from Nigerians, not from aliens or foreigners, and certainly not from
God, even as many Nigerians continue to pray for daily for their distressed
country.
Nigerians
and non-Nigerians alike recognize the nation’s challenge and potentialities.
However, fulfilling the latter is not possible without overcoming the
former. So what to do?
How to Fix
NIGERIA
is a bold and courageous undertaking with the author drawing from practical
ideas and comparison of what works and what does not. The author writes
authoritatively, having as it were the benefit of insight from two worlds;
Nigeria his challenged native land and America, his adopted homeland.
If the
biggest challenge in fixing Nigeria is thought to be leadership, it is perhaps
so in one particulate context. As a Nigerian political pundit and social critic,
Rudolf Okonkwo had put it to me; “Those who are supposed to fix Nigeria are the
ones benefitting from the current mess. The rest of the Nigerians merely pray
for a better country, which will be long coming.”
Strands of this point populate Nwakudu’s work, thus making it a shared if
not an emerging mainstream view.
Insurmountable challenges are rare and few and fixing Nigeria, is definitely not
one of such challenges, at least from Nwakudu’s perspective. Daunting and
intractable as the challenges are, with most requiring heavy lifting, fixing
Nigeria is from Nwakudu’s vantage point still “doable”.
This overarching optimism is achieved
on one solid pedestal. “Every
Nigerian know that Nigeria is in a sorry state of systemic, structural,
socio-political and economic disrepair and every single Nigerian agrees that
Nigeria needs fixing”.
The book,
divided into four parts and nineteen chapters is fundamentally easy to read and
is rendered in straight, free-flowing and easy to grasp everyday language.
It opens with an indisputable statement.
“Nigeria, without question is mired in many serious problems which
threatens its very existence.” However, it is the follow-on sentence that
perhaps captures the Nigerian challenge best. “The biggest and perhaps most
crucial of Nigeria’s problems is that Nigerians generally has no sense of
country”.
One does not
have to finish reading the entire book to grasp how Nwakudu proposes to
deconstruct Nigeria’s problems. Indeed, much of the solutions he proffers are
geared towards reform of existing institutions and practices, but also the
overall overhaul of the governance approach.
The work is prefaced with a synoptic overview of what to do. Redo the
Constitution; the law court system; the governance and power structure;
establish a fourth tier of government at the “village level” to bring
governance closer to the people; sharing national resources equitably;
electoral reform; improvement of infrastructure, public service and most
crucially, the economy, education and technology sectors. Of all the proposals,
only the “village” town hall proposal is novel in the Nigerian context.
Uche Nwakudu
insists that Nigeria’s problems persist because of the wrong problem solving
approach by the leadership. As he observed, “solving a problem is to understand
the problem,” which does not seem to be the case in Nigeria. Even at the risk of
restating the obvious, this book seeks to deconstruct and lay bare the root
causes of Nigerian multifarious problems. It provides well-articulated solutions
to the problems; explores the most salient options for actualizing and
sustaining the solutions and finally, uses letter form to convey to every
Nigerian, the clarion call to join forces and be part of the collective process
to bring about the much needed change.
In a nutshell, it is a reminder to Nigerians, “that they can no longer
afford to be part and parcel of the stench and vile that our dear nation has
become, either by our inaction or by out active participation” (p5).
Of Nigeria
and its problems, Nwakudu paints a captivating but troubling mosaic, which is
diametrically perceived, regardless of where one stands. Hence, it becomes a
matter of defining perspectives, whether one sees Nigeria’s most pressing
challenge as crime and criminality, corruption, leadership morass, moral
turpitude, indiscipline or social decay. He notes that it is for some, not one
but the overcoming the collective of these ills that is the greatest challenge.
Apropos the
lack of sense of country, Nwakudu notes that “Nigeria is fashioned as a country
of ethnicities rather than a nation of individuals” (p.21).
Hence, the national center stage is replete with ethnic and parochial
interests wedged against each other.
Rivalry between the three major tribes produced a “disgorgement of the
remaining sense of collective national interest” (p.24).
Implicitly,
Nwakudu repudiates the value and essence of federal character. His words:
“Because of ethnic balancing there is a lack of interest in building a national
common front” (p.36). Of the
omnipresent corruption, which has become a national pastime, he noted,
“corruption was not invented in Nigeria. However, we have taken it, embraced it,
cuddled it and made it our own. We exist in it rather than it existing in us” (p.41).
This seeming theological and physiological relationship between Nigerians and
corruption led Nwakudu to proclaim that “Nigeria is officially a Corruptocracy”.
Of these
glossaries of ills, Nwakudu offers a singular panacea; ensuring that it never
happens again, and “setting our sight on righting the wrong” rather than chasing
after stolen wealth.
As much as
he assails the leadership elite, Nwakudu has some harsh words for the followers.
Specifically, he points to the folly that breeds apathy; “Nigerians actually
believe that God would intervene on their behalf to set their country right” (p52),
which indeed, “shows a remarkable hopelessness that their country can be
reformed by acts of human beings”.
Other
obstacles to reform posited by Nwakudu, includes, the need to reform persons
before reforming that state; the mediocre notion that our nascent democracy has
to grow before it becomes viable; and finally, the overreaching reliance on the
supreme authority figure. In this context, Nwakudu asserts that Nigerians are no
different from citizens of other orderly nations. However, “Nigerians do not
obey laws of their country because there is no efficient system of enforcing the
laws of the country.” To buttress this point, he notes that “there are no posted
speed limits” and “no one is to hold you accountable if you drink and drive” (p.55).
In sum, he contends that “it is the system that makes you either good or bad.
System drives behaviour.”
Summing up
the Nigerian trait that makes progress and reform impossible, Nwakudu points to
the schizophrenic character of Nigerians, and how those “who have become adept
at copying just about everything form the latest ideas in music, entertainment
and fashion are the same people who would prefer we settle for basic and
mediocre forms of politics, infrastructure and economy” (p.61).
Nwakudu
offers a series of pragmatic ideas and observations, which certainly Nigerian
leaders must be aware of but lack the political will to execute. Of the proposed
fourth tier of government, he cautions that the goals is not to foist another
level of government to mirror the corruption and rot in the existing levels, but
“to dilute and distribute governance and to make government more compact and
effective and less like a multifaceted and counterproductive entity”(p.118).
It is in the
Part 3 of this book titled, “Pathway to Change” that Nwakudu unleashes the power
of his ideas, most evidently long thought of and analysed before he put them on
paper. The beauty of these ideas lies in their simplicity and attractiveness to
the ordinary citizen. Of the common man and woman in Nigeria, Nwakudu exhorts:
“in the event that the political leadership will not voluntarily bring about
change, the people would have to force their hand through the kind of
revolutions that have swept through many countries in recent years; ordinary
people’s revolution.” He proposes that solving Nigeria’s problems must be
“ethnicity-neutral” to avoid past pitfalls.
Finally, in
his letter to the Ordinary Nigerian, Nwakudu asserts: “It is now up to you
challenge the status quo in Nigeria and bring an end to your woeful
existence...you can no longer afford to sit on the side-lines …it is your turn
to have a say in how things should be done in Nigeria”(p.
171).
How to Fix
NIGERIA -And Make It Work for Every
Nigerian,
is an exceptionally fine book – balanced, spirited, tactful, with the
contentious points well-argued -- and more importantly, an honest-from-the-heart
effort to steer the Nigerian problems debate in the right direction.
There is no
question that this will not be the last book or treatise on how to fix Nigeria.
Yet it is an enthusiastic exertion by a patriotic national, who is very
conversant with the ills of his country and is willing to lift a finger and
contemplate ideas towards solving them.
This book may seem to some not of much worth, but posterity may in years
to come read Nwakudu and his ilk and honor and adjudge them fairly, as those who
indeed salvaged Nigeria from self-destructing through national complacency and
indifference. How to Fix NIGERIA is
a stimulating read.
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Mr.
Oseloka Obaze
is a co-founder of the
Kwenu.com Book Review Forum,
which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo
and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers
Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of
INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey
community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state
area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the
Editor-At-Large. He is also on the editorial board of
The Amaka Gazette,
journal of the Christ the King College,
Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of
poems, “Regarscent Past:
A Collection of Poems”
was second among the top three finalists in the poetry
category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004.
He is working on a novel titled “Happy
Eulogy”.
He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby. © Copyright
14 August 2011.