The origin of the terrorism challenge in Nigeria can be likened to the case of a father who never had a plan for his own children, then came a stranger who brain washed the kids into believing that they can gain attention and prominence by being a tool for massive destruction, that the attention their father never had will be gotten eventually either by hook or crook.
For a nation to progress and attain economic prosperity that makes it the envy of other nations, it requires leadership. Leadership demands vision. A leader must be seeing something passionately, a change he strongly wants to see in his/her country. That’s the essence of true leadership. When the leadership of a country fails to come up with a vision the people can connect with, Nigeria’s present situation is what it gets. No matter how we want to see it, the Boko Haram have their own vision for Nigeria, which is to bring terror and pandemonium, and you need not argue with me that so far, they are actualizing that dream. Sadly, we all are now living our lives as reactions to their deadly vision.
Nigeria has suffered badly from poor leadership and the disadvantages are numerous, one of them is the terrorism crisis we are now living with. The negligence on the part of past administrations to engage the impoverished northern youth is what we are paying for. When UNICEF come up with the list of out of school children, which Nigerian most times come top, was it difficult to see that the northern kids always constitute the greatest part of that statics? But we all decided to look away, and now we all can’t even sleep with our eyes closed.
When we don’t have good roads today, we feel the pains today. When DISCO fails to provide electricity today, we live in darkness today, when we don’t have food on our table today, we live in hunger today, but when we fail to educate the minds of the people, the result will only show in 10, 20, and say 50 years time. To buttress that, the attention Chief Obafemi Awolowo paid to education decades ago, speaks louder in South-West Nigeria today. Most times we only pay attention to what is seen; while in the real sense what is unseen is what we should be concerned and bothered about. The big question is; what is the government paying attention to today? That essentially will tell if we’d be able to sleep with our two eyes closed in few years to come.
It is sad that we are where we are at the moment. Bombing, kidnapping and all what have you. But then we can’t but forge ahead and move on as a nation. We can afford to give up now as a people. This is a time when we need to keep faith alive and remain united to stand against our collective enemy of peace. We shouldn’t give up now, falter or tire. No we shouldn’t!
We need to bring everything to the table to ensure that we win this war, because truly we are at war. It is sad that we need to keep reminding the leadership of the country to be bothered and show enough concern about the insecurity crisis, but as a people if that’s what we must do, that we should do.
The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag amongst many others has shown that we can force this government to act. If not for the involvement of Nigerians on Social Media, most likely this issue would have become a forgotten one. We need not forget that even the military at some point was quick to lie that the girls have been found. That shows that we have a lot to do collectively to recover our nation from this mess. We need to keep asking more questions about the abducted girls, from the look it seems there is more to it than meets the eye.
We need to stop lying to ourselves that this is a religious war. We need to also turn deaf ears to those who only want to score cheap political points with the present situation. We need to come together as we are already doing, and then build more synergy. Our Social Media cry won’t bring terrorism to an end. But sure it’ll serve as a tool to ensure that the Federal Government wakes up to his responsibilities.
I am @Lanre_Olagunju on Twitter.
Lanre Olagunju is an hydrologist turned freelance journalist. He has a degree in hydrology from the University of Agriculture Abeokuta and a professional diploma in journalism from the American College of Journalism. Lanre advocates on several international platforms for the prosperity and absolute well-being of the African continent. He's @Lanre_Olagunju on Twitter
