By CHIEDU UCHE OKOYE

That Nigeria is a troubled country is an incontrovertible fact.

Nigeria, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, is hobbled on many fronts by diverse problems. Is she not bedevilled by economic crisis, epileptic electricity supply, insecurity of lives and property, technological backwardness, infrastructural rot and deficit, youth unemployment, and national disunity? The answer to this question is a categorical yes. But our country’s problems didn’t start today; they date to 1960 when she became a politically independent country.

Over the years, since we achieved flag independence in 1960, Nigeria has not got it right, politically, what with the military overthrowing our incompetent and corrupt civilian governments. The first and second republics, we should remember, were truncated by the soldiers. And then, the military rulers, who fancied their governments to be corrective regimes, performed far worse than the civilian governments they overthrew. They’re, simply, armies of occupation.

Thankfully, today, Nigeria has enjoyed twenty-five years of uninterrupted democratic government, with one political party handing over the baton of power to another political party, peacefully and seamlessly. But the question is this: What have we achieved in our many years of having unbroken democratic governments? The answer to the question is not far-fetched. Nigeria is still stuck in the morass of economic stagnation and technological backwardness.

Now, in Nigeria, it has become the fashion of members of each new civilian government to blame the failures of their government on the maladministration of the immediate past government. For example, President Muhammadu Buhari, who contested the presidential election several times before winning it, whined endlessly about his predecessors in office inability to checkmate the monster of corruption in Nigeria.

Again, now, the progressives, who are holding the reins of power, would want us to believe that decades of rape of our economy by past successive governments, have caused the worsening economic situation in Nigeria. Now, the prices of food commodities, fuel, cement, and others are rising, astronomically, in Nigeria. Consequently, our depressed economy underlined by the depreciation of our naira has erased the middle class in Nigeria.

But President Bola Tinubu, who is in the saddle of power, is familiar with Nigeria’s problems, having served as the governor of Lagos state for two terms. And more than that, he was among those who fought tirelessly and patriotically for the restoration of democratic governance in Nigeria, following the cancellation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. So, it is believed that his long stay in office as the governor of Lagos state; and experience as a pro-democracy activist ought to have imbued him with insight on how to tackle, successfully, Nigeria’s multifarious and multidimensional problems.

But the stark and sad fact is that President Bola Tinubu started his leadership of Nigeria on a wrong foot by ad-libbing the withdrawal of fuel subsidy during his inauguration speech. And he has hurriedly executed other economic policies, which have had negative effects on our economy, with millions of Nigerians being reduced to subhumans.

And in today’s Nigeria, it is not only the economy that has not looked up since the inception of the Tinubu-led government. Our security challenges have exacerbated. Homicidal deeds are being executed by terrorists with reckless abandon, which have left thousands of people dead; and countless others displaced. And the abduction of well-heeled people for ransom is pervasive and commonplace in Abuja and surrounding environs.

More so, another problem that is besetting Nigeria is youth unemployment. The labour market is flooded with unemployed graduates as our universities churn out thousands of graduates, yearly. Those unemployed young people do pound the pavement on a daily basis in search of the elusive white and blue collar jobs. But most of those unemployed university graduates lack numeracy and literacy skills, which make them unemployable.

However, even millions of Nigerians, who are government employees, are not earning living wages. Most of them are living on the margins of society as their salaries cannot sustain them for a month. So, they are the malcontents and discontents, who are shortchanged in our country’s scheme of things.

And it is well-known to us that the poor welfare condition of Nigerian workers is the chief reason why they do embark on industrial actions. In the immediate past, both the federal government and sub-national governments had failed to abide by the agreements they reached with NLC and TUC on the issue of minimum wage for workers. Consequently, the labour unions have been embarking on industrial actions, which have caused colossal damage to our economy.

So it is imperative for the President Bola Tinubu-led government to up its game and offer us goal-oriented, responsible, accountable, and visionary political leadership. The APC government, which is at helm of our national affairs, should stop whining and, instead, take proactive and decisive actions to solve our myriad national problems so as to put a lie to the narrative that this government is bereft of ideas on how to remake Nigeria and put it on the trajectory of irreversible technological advancement and sustainable economic growth.

And more importantly, President Bola Tinubu should know that Nigeria is perching precariously on the precipice of political conflagration. Are the biting economic hardship, which we are experiencing in Nigeria; and the security challenges, which have bedevilled our country not portents of doom for our country? President Bola Tinubu should take this proverb to heart and act speedily: A man whose house is on fire should not chase rats.

So, now, the patience of Nigerians, who are chafing under severe economic hardship, is running thin, which resulted in their staging protests in major cities of Nigeria to register their displeasure with the existent ugly status quo ante in the country. The devaluation of the naira, our country’s epileptic electricity supply, the rising costs of goods in Nigeria, the security challenges in our country, and Nigeria’s infrastructural rot and deficit are the auguries of the impending doom, which is looming ominously over Nigeria.

A stitch in time saves nine.

•Chiedu Uche Okoye, a poet, writes from Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State, He can be reached via 08062220654.

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