Caring for our fellow citizens and our country is not driven by or dependent on our model of government, but on the core value that animates our society. Sadly, and increasingly we are becoming a selfish , self-centered, me first and others can go to hell” people. We see that in the madness of people stealing the country blind. We see it in Emefiele building close to 1 thousand units estate from ill-gotten wealth and his people are defending him and alleging selective prosecution.
We can see that clearly in the way we drive on our roads. No one yields the right of way so others can pass and untangle traffic jam. We will rather block an intersection and in the process cause traffic lockjam for hundreds of fellow drivers so long as we have our way. We see it in convoys of big men blaring their siren even when traffic jam has totally made the road impassable, weaving through traffic and horse-whipping those stuck in the traffic jam they have caused. You can tell a lot about a people by the way they drive.
I know this may read like preachy sanctimony, but it is our reality. It didn’t use to be like this when our founding fathers ran this country in the first republic. They were no saints but they truly loved and cared about their people. They cared about and prioritized making life better for their people. They built enduring institutions and legacies we still talk about sixty years after. They invested in their citizens and empowered the children of the poor and the underresourced through free public education. By the way they sent their own children to study in the sane schools like their fellow citizens.
Today we have a former governor who allegedly paid his children school fees overseas into the future while his citizens go to school in shacks not fit to serve as pigs’ pens.
In our days children of the palm wine tapper and Eko hawkers went to school with the children of permanent secretaries. Today it is easier for a horse to pass through the needle’s eye than for the children of the poor to cross road with the children of the rich , privileged, and powerful.
Wale Alonge
