by Steve Nwosu

Suddenly, we have all stopped thinking as Nigerians. Everyone now is either a Northerner, a Southerner, a Middle Belter, an Igbo man, a Niger Deltan, a Yoruba, Hausa, Tiv, of the Anambra League of Professionals, Arewa Youth Front, Muslim or Christian.

Our journey of the last 53 years, even if I joined the journey mid-way, have definitely been one of sweet and sour, in fact, more of the sour than the sweet. Cheers and jeers. However, I’m not one of those who would heap all the blame on government. Yes, our governments have generally not done well but I’d like us to use this period to look at how well we the governed have fared. Don’t we think we own a part of the blame for our failing (not yet failed) state?

Incidentally, virtually everyone who called yesterday to felicitate with me on the independence anniversary did so with a proviso. It was either “happy independence anniversary, Steve, if there is anything happy about it” or it was “I wish you happy anniversary, if you are actually celebrating at your end”. Somehow, in the subconscious, everyone felt that there was nothing to celebrate – that things are going from bad to worse. To think that we actually started out in 1960 as a country with great promise? It’s rather tragic. But we are happy that, at least, we are alive and that the country, in spite of all the buffeting from all fronts, is still together in one piece.

Everyone seems agreed on three or four problems, even though they reeled out a dozen or two others. The common ones are growing corruption, insecurity (with the Boko Haram insurgency on everyone’s lips), power supply, prostrate economy with the attendant hunger and poverty, as well as the collapsed social and physical infrastructure.

For me, however, I refuse to see corruption as a government and big business thing alone. It has trickled down to every level: from the motor park to the highway. From our housemaids to our children and we the parents. From the school to the church, mosque, club, village square, monarchy and, of course, public service and organised private sector.

In fact, the people in government are corrupt because those of us outside of it put so much pressure on them. Have we stopped to think that if those of us outside of government and public office would not make public officers, who retire into poverty the butt of every joke, that those who succeed them in office would not make a private vow to steal even more than they need to continue to live in opulence after office? If we do not go to greet our kinsmen in government with our CVs and proposals stuck under our armpits, the poor public officer would not be under any pressure to bend the rules. He would be scared to do it, even for his own companies.

Going to office yesterday, I say a typical case of just how unreasonable we the governed (the poor) have become with our expectations from both the government and the society at large. As I drove along the rather heavy traffic to the office, I noticed a female pedestrian, who looked between 20 and 30 years old, walking on the side of the road. It was October 1 and she was dressed in a green-and-white ensemble. She finished it up with gold-plated cap and platform shoes. She was either going or coming from one of the many Independence Day events. But the curious thing was that, rather than face the traffic, she was backing it, had to continually look back to check oncoming vehicles and throw swear words at those, who either drove too close to her, splashed water from the muddy road, rain-soaked or hooted their horns so loud they had her literally jumping out of her skin. As she walked, she chose to ignore the sidewalk, preferring to walk on the edge of the road where the motorists should actually be using. I was so irritated. But when I eventually got close to her side, I composed myself, wound down, and softly advised that she should leave the road and use the sidewalk. But I got her sharp tongue in return. There was no name she did not call me – from ritualist to 419. She even slowed down to keep pace with me and continued to rain more insults.

At some point, she eventually crossed over to the left side of the road, where she was legally supposed to be but not at any point did it occur to her that it was the motorists, not her, who had the right of way.

But this inexplicable anger and transferred aggression is what is replicated in virtually all of us on the wrong side of the power and wealth divide. The poor are so angry with the rich that you’d think the latter are directly responsible for their impoverishment while those of us out of the corridors of power feel everyone in power is just busy, looting the national treasury. It never occurred to that lady pedestrian that part of the reason Nigeria is not working is that she has refused to obey simple traffic rule. Everybody has contributed to this sorry state of our country.

Yes, some people may be guiltier than others but were all guilty.

After listening to Eze Festus Odimegwu of the National Population Commission (NPC) at a function last weekend, I could not but come away with the fact that all of us have paid this country back in a bad coin.

Suddenly, we have all stopped thinking as Nigerians. Everyone now is either a Northerner, a Southerner, a Middle Belter, an Igbo man, a Niger Deltan, a Yoruba, Hausa, Tiv, of the Anambra League of Professionals, Arewa Youth Front, Muslim or Christian. Increasingly, we are getting fewer and fewer Nigerians. But as Odimegwu put it, we all stand the chance of actualising our biggest potentials as Nigerians. The moment you pigeonhole yourself into an ethnic group, a region, a state, you limit your opportunities. It gets worse as you diminish further to your local government, town and finally to your community where you eventually become a local champion – who would ultimately be overthrown by a new village champion.

Incidentally, most of us do not realise this fact. Of course, Odimegwu was talking about the seeming opposition that a particular section of the country was mounting against his decision to include ethnic group and religion among the details for the 2016 census. He could not understand why anybody would be against this information that has become basic standard for census exercises all over the world. According to him, there is no way anybody can effectively plan for growth in Nigeria without such basic information about its population. Just as it is difficult to plan for an area with an under-declared population, it is even worse to plan for an area whose population has been deliberately inflated.

We play politics with everything. Our economy, our population, our democracy, our security, our health, education, religion, sports, agriculture, bank facility, just about everything that concerns our life, can be reduced to politics. Ethnic politics!

So, at 53, even if we insist on bringing everything within the purview of politics, can we now leave the mundane issues and begin to discuss the things that really and genuinely affect us? Can our leaders stop distracting us with religion and ethnicity and focus more on the things that would put food on our table, get our children back to school, create job opportunities for the youths and guarantee security for all?

For one, I don’t know of anyone, who has deliberately restricted his circle of friends to people from his ethnic group, religion, region or state. We mix, relate and even marry across all these divides. If the economy is bad, it is bad for all of us, whether we are Hausa, Igbo or Ijaw. Poverty and hunger do not know tribe or religion. Hunger will come, even on Sundays that it knows we do not go to work.

But, better still (to paraphrase Odimegwu), how many of the public officers, who have been indicted for corruption took the money they stole to go and share among members of their church, mosque or ethnic group? Why would we now have to consider religion and ethnicity while dealing with such corrupt officers?

Is it an ethnic, religious or even 2015 general election matter that the federation account is going into red? Even if Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala dishes out fresh figures to restate that the indices of growth are very positive and that Nigeria is not broke, is it still news that the states are experiencing the worst cash crunch we have witnessed in recent time?

Instead of busying ourselves with which region should produce the president in 2015, could we just begin to think of where our next revenue is going to come from, with the advent of shale oil and fading relevance of crude oil? If we cannot sell the crude oil, are we researching into how we can use it to cook soup, make akamu, stew or even drink it raw – since our shores forbid refineries?

If our politicians fail to keep the promises they are on record to have made to the electorate (and even swore on oath to keep) why should we be scratch our brain, wondering why they can’t keep to gentleman agreement they had with themselves behind closed doors? How will that pay my children’s school fees?

Why should we bother whether PDP, APC, APGA, LP, PPA wins the next election, when, as Jimi Agbaje once told us in Lagos, ‘it is same of the same’? What is our business if there is new PDP, old PDP, reformed PDP fraternity, indigenous PDP or whatever, when we know that all we would get is a change of looters? How much does the manifesto of one differ from the other? In fact, how many of them have bothered to even humour us with a manifesto?

Why can’t we just forget this 2015 thing that the presidency and the governors are now using to distract us from their collective non-performance and look at the things that really matter to us as a people? How are we faring on the Millennium Development Goals, for instance? The world is going green, how many states apart from Lagos, actually take it seriously? How about the global action against AIDS?  What about the other preventable diseases like polio and guinea worm? How much of the speculated agric loans actually get to real farmers? How many small and medium scale industrialists have been able to access the bank of Industry facilities?

Why, for instance, would the Federal Government abdicate all its responsibilities by concessioning and selling off all the national patrimonies we yearly allocate funds to it to manage and still insist on having the lion share of our national revenue?

After 53 years of political independence, can we today, resolve to take politics – crude politicking – out of our education, healthcare, transportation infrastructure, agriculture, power generation, security and the anti-graft war? Today, we have over 10 million school-age children out of school, how much of that is PDP, APC, New PDP or even 2015 elections that have continued to occupy our national discourse? Nearly half of the crude oil sucked out from our land is stolen. Even President Goodluck Jonathan has told us that it is big men who do the stealing. That the pipeline vandals we harass all over the place are actually insignificant in this organised theft. Incidentally, these big men, who own barges and ships with which they do the stealing cut across party, ethnic, religious and regional divides. But they all have no qualms, looting and sharing the booty. It is only when they disagree among themselves that they introduce ethnic and religious sentiments and bring us into the matter to fight for them. But when they eventually settle and return to peacefully share the booty, we are never invited or given a cut for our troubles.

At 53, let we, the governed, just resolve to ignore anything the wicked people in high places of this country tell us is the problem. Let us refuse to be led by the nose, by telling us that the problem is because Muslims don’t want Christians or that Southerners don’t want Northerners. Or that Igbo don’t trust Yoruba or that Hausa are uncomfortable with the growing powers of the Igbos in the North or that the minorities feel neglected. Those are all selfish bargaining chips with which the oppressors come to the negotiating table. They have nothing to do with the rest of us the people.

Let us, at every opportunity, remind them that we actually know what the problem with Nigeria is – and that the problem is actually with those we have entrusted with solving those problems (the leaders).

But most of all, let us elevate national discourse. Let’s change the beat. Second Bass o jare!

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.