Nigeria and the Need for Inspiration

By Msonter Anzaa

The great Chinua Achebe has written in one of his novels that when an ill-fated man drinks water, it catches in his teeth. I think Nigeria is an ill-fated nation. The things people do in other lands that work, when you do them on Nigerian soil, they don't work. People have even insinuated that if you bring the world's best leaders here, they will fail. Though I share no sentiment on this, I believe we are at a point in Nigeria's history when she desperately needs to be inspired.

I may not be able to define inspiration, but I can tell when I feel it. And if I may quote what I have read somewhere, 'we were not taught definition in school.' There is a quality in some people which readily appeals to our emotions and gets us connected when they are talking. This quality makes us look at the future or a particular situation through the eyes of the speaker. An inspirational speaker opens himself up to his listeners. While talking about whatever situation at hand, he invariably speaks about himself and is able to make his listeners feel what he feels and see what he sees. My opinion is that this quality is lacking in our leaders. And I think it is for a number of reasons.

Many leaders in Nigeria are not sincere or truthful. They have an amazing ability to speak from both sides of the mouth and to remain very passively involved where issues affecting their people come up. Leaders who inspire their people are sincere individuals. They don't just talk about the issues affecting their people, but those issues are part of their lives. If you listen to speeches delivered by present day Nigerian leaders, you don't get connected. Their speeches are passive. They just read them- the speeches are obviously on their behalf- the way a kindergatten child would do if he were called to read Prof Wole's The Lion and the Jewel. They panel-beat their speeches by putting fullstops where sentences have not ended and neglecting the ones where sentences have ended. The way they say the promises in those speeches tells you they don't intend to fulfil them.

When someone like President Obama speaks, you get connected instantly. Obama does not read the statistics on unemployment for example, passively. He speaks about specific impacts of the trend like families having to lose homes and American children having to drop out of college. Most times what we want to make of government is not an organization that solves all our problems. We just want the human feeling of sympathy, that feeling that at a particular period of sorrow, we have someone somewhere who cares and shares our feelings. When Martin Luther King delivered a speech about his dream during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, it came from his heart, it was not just on his lips. Many people at Lincoln Memorial where the speech was delivered, wept openly, both blacks and whites. They saw in King a young man who had committed his entire life to setting his people free. They not only heard his words, but also saw his dream. The dream was with King and the dream was King. They were inspired.

Last year when we celebrated, or rather when they celebrated Nigeria's fiftieth anniversary, Radio Nigeria collaborated with JistMe Communications and provided caller tones for the anniversary. I wasn't interested in any of the tones. I love Nigeria but I am not a fanatic. One of the tones was repulsively tagged 'I have a dream.' It was clear the speaker had no dream the way he said it. It did not come from his heart and so it couldn't go into my heart either. Then I realized that Nigeria was dying to be inspired. If those words were spoken by Late Gani Fawehinmi or Prof Wole Soyinka, they would have done the job effortlessly. These people whether they have said so or not, have a dream that one day Nigeria will be free. They don't just possess the dream, they are possessed by it. You don't inspire people by speaking like an over-excited Sunday preacher. You can't inspire people copying a foreign accent. You inspire people by being truthful and not being hypocritical.

A leader who, like the typical Nigerian leader, asks his people to do one thing while he does the opposite, can not inspire those people. You can not inspire Nigerians to make sacrifices for the nation when you have stopped baking the 'national cake' and have so 'cut' the one you met that it has almost finished. You can not rebrand Nigerians when you desperately need rebranding yourself. It is like a black man trying to paint me white. I will run away because I would think he wants to paint me blacker. If he knew how to paint anyone white, he would have begun with himself. If people feel good about their country, they won't need radio jingles telling them they are 'good people, great nation'.

Leaders who inspire their people are those who are genuinely interested in those people. When they speak, you don't just see that in what they say, but also in how they say it. They don't read their speeches like they have chewing gum in their mouths. Sometimes when I watch the present day Nigerian leader make speeches, I tell myself if you ask this guy to repeat what he has just said, he cannot unless he consults the paper in front of him. You see, they don’t say what they mean and they just don’t mean what they say. It reminds me of someone who came on VOA’s Straight Talk Africa programme and talked about the MDGs. He said they were two types of Africa. One Africa, he said existed in the families of African leaders, while the other Africa was in the families of the poor Africans. The first Africa had already achieved all the MDGs, while the other Africa had not and was not likely to achieve any. I think Nigerian leaders too belong to the first Africa. They have achieved all their dreams. They don’t suffer hunger, child mortality, poor education etc. So when first Africans talk about these problems, they do so passively because deep within them they don’t think there are serious problems, or at least, that these problems have not been solved. I think it is hypocrisy, part of the reason we don’t get inspired by them.

Nigeria needs inspiration. Her young ones must be inspired to love her and care for her. They can’t be inspired by leaders they don’t trust. One day however, this nation under God shall be adequately inspired.