By Ijeoma Ogbulie Eugene
Pakistani, Sudan, South Africa, Chad, Mali, Venezuela etc complain of their countries being broken; they all should get out? If we all start getting out, pray tell me where we will head to?
Few years ago India was rated as the poverty/rape capital of the world, today giving silicon valley a run for their money. The state of Maharashtra is richer than all of Nigeria.
June 3-4 1989 we heard of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China that left several hundred to thousands dead. Over 10,000 people were arrested because of a broken China. Today China will match US dollar for dollar and military for military.
It took Rwanda 100 days in 1994 to slaughter 800,000 Tutsis by Hutu extremists. Rwanda isn’t yet where they would like to be but at least there has been steadY growth. How did these countries get to
Where they are today? India banned almost the importation of everything. You dare not bring in biscuits, milk, body lotion etc into India. Tariffs on car import, registration of imported cars are so high that many Indians stick to mahindra, Tata, maruti suzuki etc. India locked down their RBI (reserve bank of india) for a long time such that you couldn’t do international transfers except you jump through lots of government hoops which lasts weeks at times months.
What did that do? They were forced to scale up on education, health care, local production etc. The SIPs (social investment programs) we are making noise about, is exactly the same template india used in taking their extreme poor to a manageable level.
Even the tea seller in India could access micro loans as low as 5,000 rupees. These made so many of them able to send their wards to school. Those kids today are the gurus controlling the IT/Apps multi billion dollar industry.
China looked inward, increased tariff on lots of imports while dropping tariff on exports to boost production. They even went as far as 0% tariff on some items. Today China is the biggest manufacturing and export country in the world. China has almost 10% tolerance for corruption, some cases end up with death sentences.
One thing all these countries have in common is being down to the ashes and found a way to rise.
Everything they applied, try it in Nigeria and see Nigerians start screaming. Restrict forex on importation on certain items Nigerians come to twitter and claim its a Fulani agenda.
Block border to avoid smuggling in of rice and smuggling out of petrol, Nigerians scream that they are blocking a certain tribe from making money. Arrest people on corruption charges, Nigerians scream witch hunt, bias and come up with hashtags/banners.
I do not agree with that moving out is the solution. Let us first admit Nigeria has a huge problem. Let us all agree that a country isn’t fixed alone by government, that we all can contribute our quota in fixing Nigeria.
We all want a good country, we all want change, let us all agree that WE ALL HAVE TO CHANGE.
–Ogbulie-Eugene writes via @Hejeoma on twitter
