Its all about "The People"
If you are tired of reading Nigeria lamentation type articles I don’t blame you cos quite a few of them have been written (mea culpa!). The writers are tired of writing and the readers are tired of reading yet here I am writing another one. In my partial defense though, the problem keeps attaining new lows so I cannot but write. Its like Max Lucado’s comment about convicted serial killer and cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer “. .he hung from the lowest rung of human depravity and then dropped!” That is so us, exploring the extent of our capacity to accommodate the absurd every day, and over 50 years later we still have not reached a breaking point. Just when you start thinking “oh surely it can’t get worse. .” it does. Kindly endure another article, let’s talk about this again.
Have you heard it said that if we had more schools, more hospitals, more roads and such then Nigeria will be a better country? Yes, just a couple of million times! Well that's not the whole story. While its true that many a-times the issue is that there is a surfeit of materials, social infrastructure and facilities, quite often all that is needed to improve our lives is a change in the way we view our responsibilities - domestic, civic and professional. That’s right - I believe an attitudinal change will result in a visible, tangible improvement in our standard of living. I insist that our problem is not so much the quantity of available utilities as the quality of services offered by the people who run them.
If for instance our Nurses would just speak a little more politely to patients, patiently record their data, check up on them at intervals, ensure that hospital toilets and equipment are sanitized and sterilized and improve personal hygiene, then the quality of healthcare would have improved automatically without our having bought more drugs or built more health centers/hospitals. It is not just health care of course: school teachers could read up a little to improve their vocabulary and pay more attention to special needs children, we all could just follow queues (at the Bank, to enter the Bus), obey traffic, pay our bills and clean up our own little corners and public officials/civil servants could determine to do their jobs without soliciting bribes to help us cut corners and avoid sanctions. None of these things is capital intensive and doing them would improve our lives significantly.
Unfortunately it is not convenient to admit our complicity in worsening the cancer that is eating this Country so we just blame the Government for not doing this and that. Civil servants collect money from people to do the very things they’re paid a salary to do in the first place and then gather in groups to discuss how corrupt the Government is! At this rate nothing will ever improve; we need a sense of personal responsibility if we are to make progress. If you disobey traffic rules and shunt queues and do “NEPA 2” then you (not just Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP) are the problem with Nigeria.
Changing this country for good is a task that requires focused, competent leadership, time, patience and hard work and while as we have said more facilities, structures and supplies are needed the more pressing need is attitudinal. Real change is all about you and I doing our bit and until we change our value system as a people - having the decency to blush when we do wrong, improving our abysmal maintenance culture, cultivating respect for the dignity of the human person - we can never hope to improve the standard and quality of life and living. Change is all about people.
Will you be the change we so badly need?
Have you heard it said that if we had more schools, more hospitals, more roads and such then Nigeria will be a better country? Yes, just a couple of million times! Well that's not the whole story. While its true that many a-times the issue is that there is a surfeit of materials, social infrastructure and facilities, quite often all that is needed to improve our lives is a change in the way we view our responsibilities - domestic, civic and professional. That’s right - I believe an attitudinal change will result in a visible, tangible improvement in our standard of living. I insist that our problem is not so much the quantity of available utilities as the quality of services offered by the people who run them.
If for instance our Nurses would just speak a little more politely to patients, patiently record their data, check up on them at intervals, ensure that hospital toilets and equipment are sanitized and sterilized and improve personal hygiene, then the quality of healthcare would have improved automatically without our having bought more drugs or built more health centers/hospitals. It is not just health care of course: school teachers could read up a little to improve their vocabulary and pay more attention to special needs children, we all could just follow queues (at the Bank, to enter the Bus), obey traffic, pay our bills and clean up our own little corners and public officials/civil servants could determine to do their jobs without soliciting bribes to help us cut corners and avoid sanctions. None of these things is capital intensive and doing them would improve our lives significantly.
Unfortunately it is not convenient to admit our complicity in worsening the cancer that is eating this Country so we just blame the Government for not doing this and that. Civil servants collect money from people to do the very things they’re paid a salary to do in the first place and then gather in groups to discuss how corrupt the Government is! At this rate nothing will ever improve; we need a sense of personal responsibility if we are to make progress. If you disobey traffic rules and shunt queues and do “NEPA 2” then you (not just Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP) are the problem with Nigeria.
Changing this country for good is a task that requires focused, competent leadership, time, patience and hard work and while as we have said more facilities, structures and supplies are needed the more pressing need is attitudinal. Real change is all about you and I doing our bit and until we change our value system as a people - having the decency to blush when we do wrong, improving our abysmal maintenance culture, cultivating respect for the dignity of the human person - we can never hope to improve the standard and quality of life and living. Change is all about people.
Will you be the change we so badly need?
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