by Adebowale Adekunbi

Trust me you don’t want an outsider making Nigeria for you. The truth is us, and only us, can make Nigeria better.

Happy Independence to Nigeria

The crux of our case is that, our work to build the country has not reached the threshold or critical mass needed for a revolution.

This is very much an ALL-or-NOTHING phenomenon. I will explain the ALL-or-NOTHING phenomenon in very simple terms. A nerve cell needs a stimulation with a threshold of 55mV to transmit a signal to the next cell. A stimulation less than the threshold, no matter how close to the threshold, will not cause the signal to be transmitted but once the stimulation reaches the threshold, there is NO GOING BACK. No Jupiter can stop that cell, it MUST transmit the signal and it will transmit it.

Understand that once the work to build our nation reaches the threshold, we’ll have it ALL, though our meter reads NOTHING today.

Do you get my point?

Bear it in mind, telecoms was almost NOTHING 12 years ago, now we can be proud we almost have it ALL in telecoms.

Power too can succeed, so can water, transportation and security.

We must not lose hope and not lose touch of our reality at the same time which is not presently pleasant.

These things take time but the question is what can we do not to wait unnecessarily longer?

JTF seems to be gaining ground on curbing the Boko Haram menace. I didn’t think the current administration would have been able to do it. Let’s give them some credit for the raids in Kano, the arrests and the hardwork they’ve put into attacking our attackers. And let us encourage them to keep defending us until we win. Criticism cannot defend us, they can.

Corruption is still endemic, so is poverty, but we shall not lose hope.

The West or other Africans cannot solve our problems for us, they can empathize and broadcast the challenges and progress sometimes, but we must continue to tell our own stories, design and work out our own policies to make a Nigeria that we know can work for us. Trust me you don’t want an outsider making Nigeria for you. The truth is us, and only us, can make Nigeria better.

We must pray for Nigeria and not give up the hope we have, the hope we have kept for our native land.

In the words of Rebranding Nigeria, do I close, Nigeria at 52, “Good people, Great nation.”

Happy Independence Nigeria!

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Adebowale Adekunbi, author of Next Nehemiah, Rebuilding the broken walls of modern society, and Gold-medalist in non-fiction, Festival of Peace ‘Tor Vergata’ Rome, 2012