Let’s talk about Bugs

Bugs mess everything up, don’t they?

From the huge cockroach that flies into your face to that online form that keeps returning an error message when you try to submit, Bugs are a huge inconvenience at best and at their worst, can be a downright catastrophe.

But I’m not referring to any of these bugs, you see. Have you ever had one of these questions that constantly bug you? Maybe you’re wondering why sales keep going down at work, why your son just won’t go out and have fun like other kids his age, or why Arsene Wenger hasn’t yet decided to swallow his pride and resign as the Arsenal manager. That, right there, is a bug. I’ve had one of those for a good couple of years now: “Why don’t I want to be the president of Nigeria?”

Growing up, one of my biggest dreams was to become the president of Nigeria some day. My Father helped fuel that dream when he would pray for us to be Presidents, Governors and senators. In Church, the Pastor repeated the same prayer for the congregation and at school, the teachers constantly made us believe that the smartest kid got to be the president in future. Fun times. All I had to do was study hard, go to church and in a few years, I’ll become the First citizen in Nigeria. Turns out it wasn’t that straight forward.

Now that I’m much older, instead of planning for when to campaign for the presidency: 2019, 2023 or 2027, I’m back at the beginning; wondering why I ever harbored dreams of being the president. For the past couple of years, the same question bugs me from time to time: “will I love to be the president of Nigeria?” The answer, has increasingly been a resounding “No”. Now, that is weird. Why did I start out planning for my days as the President of the Federal republic of Nigeria but now that the time has come to implement those plans, I give up on them and decide that I don’t want to lead the Nation anymore?

To answer this question, I decided I needed more information, more perspectives. So, I asked a variety of people — from work, school, family, etc.: “would you like to become the president of Nigeria?” 1 thing was consistent among the responses I got: Inconsistency! The vast majority of people seemed to be saying “Yes” and “No” at the same time. Interesting. The one consolation I had was that apparently, I wasn’t the only one with that internal struggle. I had to figure out why.

To do this, I went back to these same people and irrespective of their answer to the first question, I followed up with “Why?”. This time, the answers were much more varied, thank God. But I noticed they fell into 3 broad categories:

1. Fear. “I would have loved to try, but in Nigeria, you can get killed for something like that”. Someone actually said that. In a country where politics is considered a dirty business filled with dangerous people, it is hardly a surprise that upstanding people will want nothing to do with it. I also heard reasons like “they’ll probably kill me within my first 100 days in office, no thanks to the kind of reforms I’ll make”, “I will love to go into politics, but only when our Democracy improves”, “My leadership ability or vision will only be relevant if there’s some form of sanity”
2. Lost Hope. “…even to get the presidential ticket alone, na war… then the people that will sponsor you, you have to repay them. That alone will [re]start the corruption”. Some have lost hope in the country, in the political system, in the people. We have such a checkered history that many Nigerians just don’t believe anything good can come out of Nigeria anymore. As a friend said, “Even if I lead and change things, the person after me will most likely just mess things up again. There’s no point”.
3. Selfishness. “Why be the president of this crazy nation when you can make your low key cash being a senator and sleeping on duty at the National assembly?” Who will bell the cat? Almost everyone you meet on the street agrees that to bring effective, lasting progress will be a long and painful process which will require significant self-sacrifice. But who is willing to make the self sacrifice? Such self sacrifice will require battling your greed and that of your family, friends, community, etc. It won’t be an easy fight. Therefore, people prefer to just focus on their personal goals, ignoring the country’s needs. As someone said, “See, I for like enter politics o; but guy the matter long. Make I just jejely run my thing on a low. I no fit kill myself.”

If we don’t come out to turnaround this country, who will? If we don’t deal with this bug, will the rot ever stop? I saw this video yesterday and the man’s words really struck me: “If you love this country, come out and do politics and save this country”.

One final question remains: “How?”

PS — A few people were unequivocal in their response to “would you like to become the president of Nigeria?”. Of these, the ones that said “Yes” seemed to just want their share of the “National cake” — “If I mistakenly become president, I’ll make sure everyone around me is made for life!”. While the ones that said “No” had simply given up on the country and often were looking for emigration opportunities to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

This was my most worrying discovery.