Tuesday, April 24, 2007

High Expectations - When and For how long?

The above topic was inspired by my last post, which has earned me bashing from 2 fellow bloggers, I bet a lot more are still coming. Their vituperations are long awaited though, because of my own perspectives of weighing Nigeria scenarios differs in a long way with lots of bloggers on the net. Having said this, when and for how long would the intellects of our country continue to rule this country from far away, all by being among the elites that criticise the government, believing that nothing comes out of the government of the day. One funny thing is that, one outgoing government is always worse than any incoming government according to the manner of criticism coming out from them, I was jolted the other day, when I read it somewhere, where somone was even proving that Abacha days are even better than Obasanjo regime, can you believe that?
The truth however is that, Nigeria has a long way to go, and no matter how we progress on the journey today, we are learning, and we will continue to learn. There are so many thing that is wrong with this country, any little achievement should be encouraged, less we all have to abandon this country and criticise anything about it from a far - outside the country.
The further truth is that, even if some of us doing the criticism today were privilege to be in the helm of affairs today, others will also criticise us by pointing out the evil in our government.
Like Akin replied in his blog, our high expectations posture had actually earned us the best in Africa since independence, it has given us the best man to rule us since independence and it has also prevent some cabal to rule us even though we prefer Abiola in 1992, Gani Fawehinmi in 2003 and Pat Utomi in 2007. Our high expectations posture has even make the likes of Akin to blog from outside the country (I hope I am right) and criticising the government from diaspora.
What is on ground now is the real Nigeria, tell me who has succeeded in sterring its course away from low expectations to your Akin's high expectations since Independence. I live in real Nigeria, and i dare say, I live with it.
Like I always said elsewhere in my blog, the best way to fight for Akin's seeming mirage high expectations in this country, is to join the system and fight within, if we cant fight them, join them. If we fight for this 'high expectations' till thy kingdom come, those who had made us do with low expectations will continue to have their way, while leaving us to expect the 'high expectations' and probably transfer the expectations to our next generations.
So, I ponder again, When and for how long will this 'high expectations' come? Perhaps Akin had a good answer.
So Like I said yesterday, the election observers/monitoring group should shut up, less they ignite more trouble for us with their utterances, I guess this is the best Nigeria could afford as an election giving what is on ground compare to their own country where everything seems perfect, no wonder Nigerians migrate to their countries. I stand by my write-up and I hasten to add that, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, Akin and Imnakoya inclusive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't see the relevance for the use of the word "elite" concerning this discourse. The fact that I, Akin and several others blog from abroad doesn't make us the "elites". Besides, some of the advantages of being abroad is the opportunity to see how things work and where things are made to happen. These are societies that have decided to hold themselves and their leaders accountable to higher moral and ethical standards among others, and everyone is better for it. And that is the point raised in the comments you have blogged about.

The only way forward is to always aim higher and work harder to attain goals; otherwise, regression sets in. Several similar countries that gained independence at about the same time as Nigeria have move far ahead.

It is unproductive to always rationalize our failures and misfortunes, the energy expended doing this can be put to finding ways of doing things better, but first we must have the courage to accept our failures and short comings. And that is what you need to do, and what the leaders and players in the Nigerian democracy need to start addressing.