I have come to discover, that certain countries, and regions of the world, seem to have certain endemic natural disasters.
The Asian countries have their tsunamis, typhoons, monsoon floods, landslides, mudslides, earthquakes,volcanic eruptions, mine accidents, and rivers overflowing their banks, on a regular basis.
The news cannot be complete in one month, if we do not get a report of one of these.
For some of us, we are no longer amazed. We seem to be conditioned to them.
In the Americas on the other hand, they seem to contend with natural disasters like hurricanes, landslides, mudslides, floods, hailstorms, snow storms, blizzards,tornadoes, freak factory accidents, usually accompanied by loss of lives, and shooting incidents, on a regular basis.
While the loss of lives may not be on the same scale as Asia's, the Americas too suffer a great deal.
When I look at Nigeria, I find that we have been spared almost all of these natural, and man made disasters.
The disaster that we seem to contend with, is an abysmal, and colossal failure of leadership.Truth be told, leadership does not even exist here!
What we have are a group of children parading in adult clothes, masquerading as leaders, and playing government!
Story story? Story!
They do not understand the first thing about leadership, all they know is how to acquire more for themselves, and no more.
In the regions where natural disasters abound, leadership seems to have evolved to be robust, responsive, and responsible!
Could it be that the absence of life threatening phenomena over here, has bred, over time, a breed of happy-go-lucky, hapless, hopeless, and good for nothing ,but looting ,leaders?
It is what usually happens in nature when a specie does not have any natural predators, it become careless, relaxed, and contented;like the Dodo, on the Island of Mauritius, until man came .
It is a matter we need to give serious consideration to.
I love watching documentaries. I thrive on them. What I have discovered from watching them is that, in times of crisis, the Americans do not mind scrambling four coast guard helicopters, two ships, and an airplane, to go and look for a man who went fishing, and was caught in a freak storm at sea!
If that were to happen in Nigeria, the first question the government would ask is, 'Who is he? They would want to know whether he belongs to the happening group, the ruling class.
If there is no monetary gain to be had from his family now, or in future, the fellow is on his own. He becomes food for the fishes. Someone in government would even make a statement to the effect that people should not go out to sea to fish because government cannot be responsible for their welfare.
I have seen Americans, on television, mobilizing helicopters to rescue a cow!
If we were to finally agree to mobilize the helicopter for the rescue, it would not be available!
We would discover, that the minister, has taken it for the weekend, to use for his daughter's wedding in the village!
I know someone would argue, that the Asians are not better than us, I would disagree on that score. You can see that they are making a lot of effort to cope with the cruel crippling conditions confronting them.
On our part, we are like the grasshopper in the nursery story, who played in summer, and suffered in winter.
What natural disasters do we see around us, one man stealing the whole oil money windfall from the Gulf war, a governor being arrested at the airport in the United Kingdom, with one hundred thousand pounds cash on his person.
The fellow did not see what the fuss was all about. The amount was not even up to what he regularly gave his fifteen year old son as pocket money for a day trip!
We have been cursed with a curse!
The curse of bad leadership.
Even when good upright, incorruptible people get into positions of leadership, the disease seems to afflict them too!
My question is, why are we so blessed, with bad leaders?
Why! Why!! Why!!!
I am truly searching for the answer,
and as it comes,
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA,OUR NIGERIA,FOREVER!
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