The POLITICIAN 1000
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<strong>The</strong>y built houses, schools, hospitals, hotels, churches,<br />
fire stations, police stations, offices, roads and so<br />
on, and over time, people began to migrate to those<br />
towns, and the population began to grow alongside<br />
their economies. Human progress and development<br />
has never been as a function of government but rather<br />
as a function of the individual.<br />
<strong>The</strong> government that we have all focused all our attention<br />
and energies upon was established by individuals.<br />
God didn’t come down from Heaven to establish<br />
the United States of America and neither did Angel<br />
Gabriel write the American<br />
constitution (the rules by<br />
which the nation shall be<br />
governed )these things were<br />
thought out and written by<br />
human beings. For a nation<br />
to change, and rise to its<br />
highest potential, its citizenry<br />
must take upon themselves<br />
the mantle of individual responsibility.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y must look<br />
at the problems facing their<br />
country with the eyes of duty<br />
and service and not with the<br />
passive stare of complacency<br />
and criticism. <strong>The</strong>y must<br />
identify a sector that they<br />
would like to tackle; anything<br />
from building a school to a<br />
medical centre and everything<br />
in between. <strong>The</strong> nation of Nigeria is not in the<br />
hands of politicians and elected officials but in the<br />
hands of the ordinary citizen.<br />
Nigeria is a nation of pioneers and as such, that<br />
pioneering spirit must once again be stirred up and<br />
activated in the hearts and minds of all Nigerians. We<br />
must stop criticizing and start doing. No matter how<br />
small you may feel your contribution will be, it will still<br />
be a billion times better than those whose only contribution<br />
to national development is gossip, slander,<br />
character assassination and criticism.<br />
History only records doers and not critics. What<br />
our nation needs are problem solvers, not problem<br />
35<br />
spotters.<br />
We all know that the healthcare system in Nigeria<br />
is bad but what are you going to do about it? We all<br />
know that the educational structure is in shambles but<br />
what are you going to do about it? We all know that<br />
there aren’t enough jobs for graduates, so what are you<br />
going to do about it? We all know that the nation needs<br />
to put tribal and religious differences aside and work<br />
nation building but what are you going to do about it?<br />
We all know that HIV is spreading across the population<br />
so what are you going to do about it?<br />
We all know that there are major security issues<br />
in the country so<br />
what are you going<br />
to do about it? It is<br />
one thing for you<br />
to sit down and<br />
say “they will do<br />
it” but my question<br />
to you is this; who<br />
exactly are they?<br />
We behave as if the<br />
responsibility of<br />
building our nation<br />
has been given to a<br />
select few, and the<br />
select few that we<br />
always point to are<br />
the politicians, as<br />
if they alone can<br />
fix all of Nigeria’s<br />
problems.<br />
Nigeria has the potential to become a G7 nation,<br />
but what you must realize about the nations that make<br />
up the G7 is that their citizens aren’t just sitting down<br />
waiting for their politicians to fix everything. <strong>The</strong>y, in<br />
their own right are pioneers, they taking over entire<br />
sectors of the economy and reforming them. <strong>The</strong>y’re<br />
partnering with one another and generating the capital<br />
needed to birth new schools, companies, roads etc.<br />
Here lies one of the major stumbling blocks to national<br />
progress, the curse of individualism. When you<br />
dwell in a nation where everyone wants to be the biggest<br />
boy, it is hard to preach the gospel of partnership,