As one of the few people who chose not to travel during the
festive period, I had the rare leisure of sleeping non-stop and indulging the
lazy part of my personality which has forcefully being rendered passive by the
unending but welcome demands of earning a living.
Missing the laughter and company of loved ones I desperately
sought for activities to occupy the mind and pretend to be busy. Then I opted
to work on my small apartment, just to fix a few issues. Next thing I knew, I
was renovating the whole house. What started as a simple time-passing activity
became a mentally and physically demanding activity.
Then it struck me, renovation is no easy task at all. The
outcome of a good renovation work is both aesthetically pleasing and rewarding
in improved utility. Renovation at times requires total demolition of the old
and rebuilding from the scratch. It could require plucking holes, drilling,
painting, or reshaping of an existing structure.
Make no mistakes; a hastily planned and executed renovation
work is an accident waiting to happen. The quality and magnitude of the effort
that is invested in executing a renovation task are therefore strategically
critical. The outcome of a renovation work actually reflects the quality of the
effort- planning, skillset and expertise of the effort. It also shows the
magnitude of the effort which points to the capacity to deliver a said volume
of work within a fixed timeframe. A lousy renovation attempt could actually do
more damage than good. Such renovation efforts end up leaving holes on the
fabrics of a structure and weakening the foundations (in which case the
structure becomes a death trap), or even papering over the cracks while the
main problem persists under the shadows unresolved.
Unfortunately, this is akin to the kind of development
interventions/efforts that have been offered by the different Nigerian
governments over the years. Nigeria is in great need of thorough renovation work
but the efforts that have been invested so far have been kwashiorkored,
deceptive and often lacking planning and expertise. The promise of change still
remains elusive.
We must begin to ask ourselves why past efforts to
positively change our country have not yielded the desired effects. What have
we been doing wrongly? In the attempt to fix the development challenges of the
country, have we adopted the wrong strategies? Have we ended up leaving holes
and weakening the structure? Are we building on a faulty foundation? We must
begin to question the quality and magnitude of the efforts invested, perhaps
the change process has been left in the hands of unskilled and inept
politicians. How much faith do we really have in the quality of the effort and
how much more failed renovation attempts can be managed before the structure
collapses? Can we afford one more leadership calamity?
The impending general elections offer the opportunity for
swift and decisive actions. Personally, I have seen enough of the old. I yearn
for and deserve to be wowed. President Jonathan’s leadership track is well
known, having progressed from deputy governor to governor, vice president,
interim president and now president. He is presently no longer able to surprise
me, as a man cannot perform beyond his capabilities nor can he escape his
personality. Put simply, Jonathan is Jonathan and I may have seen it all. The
same can be said of the other old heads like Buhari. These men currently hold
no promise of change. They have played their cards, their hands have been
shown.
Nigeria is in dire need of renovation; the type that holds palpable
promise of change, driven by vision and engineered by a skilled, passionate,
radical and luminous leadership. It is clear that the current leadership class
cannot offer this. We must therefore look beyond the Buhari’s and the recycled
PDP brotherhood. We need fresh ideologies, perspectives and strategies that
will inspire belief, and restore confidence in the system. As luck would have
it, this is still very much achievable as the process of change is like a
rolling wheel that always comes full circle, we just need to ruggedly persist
in demanding change.
