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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,

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