By Kelechi Deca
Whenever one makes a statement on poor dividends of governance in the country. Most Nigerians take solace in consoling themselves and others that “it is a matter of time”. They say it in such a way as if ‘Time’ is some animate messiah somewhere that will arrive at an appointed time and start fixing everything that is broken with us.
The kind of confidence they exude when saying so may mislead one into thinking that this ‘Time’ will fix our schools, hospitals, challenges of insecurity, build roads, provide electricity sanitize our civil service and make our airports worthy of passengers.
It is similar to those who often ‘confess’ that Nigeria will rise someday. So many poor people in their 70’s and 80’s also told themselves that they would be rich someday. But most of them are walking closer to their graves.
Confessions of faith alone does not change anything without a corresponding action (work) towards the direction of that confession.
Did this government not make all the confessions on security, economy, and corruption during the campaigns? When will Nigerians realise that time on its own does not build or solve anything. It is what happens (actions) in the time that cause changes.
When will Nigerians come to terms with the fact that countries do not just break away from the shackles of ignorance, poverty, and underdevelopment simply because of how long they’ve existed as a nation? Or because their leadership said so?
When will Nigerians realise that there are countries that are over 200 years old yet they have not found their bearings, while some that are about 50 years old are fast climbing the ladder of progress with boldness and assuredness.
Do I need to remind these set of Nigerians that Liberia is 172 years old since Independence. Yet were are they? Perhaps they are also saying that it is a matter of time.
San Marino has been there since 301 BCE, Armenia has been a nation for 2600 years, while Ethiopia has been there since the 2nd Millennium.
But Botswana is 53 years old, Rwanda is 57, UAE is 48 years old, Qatar is 48 years old, South Korea is 66 years old. These ones know it is not a matter of time. Describing what inspires his drive to make his country great. The Sheikh of Dubai always reiterate the depth in the quote by Christopher McDougall about the Lion and the Gazelle:
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest Lion or it will be killed. ..in same vein, a Lion wakes up and knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the Lion or a Gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
That’s how forward looking nations think. That’s a Kaizen mindset.They are dictating the time. They already planned where they want to be at given times in their national lives. They are not hoping on “a matter of time”. They engineer their national destiny.
But Nigerians are waiting on time, sitting on their palms doing nothing and believing time will do the magic.
It is like some Christians with the mindset that “waiting on the Lord” is achieved by being idle doing nothing.
You can’t live with an abusive, very violent, good for nothing spouse and expect that one day she will wake up from sleep an entirely different person, the opposite of what she was without conscious efforts at helping that person to turn around.
As Newton warned in his First law of Motion that an object will continue to be at a state of inertia or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force.
It is not a matter of time. It takes work, initiatives, ideation and well thougth out efforts geared towards a given end for nations to escape the type of sociopolitical morass we found ourselves in.
As it is for a nation, so it is for an individual. It is in your hands. Especially when you live in a country with a very irresponsible government.
