Nigerian-political-leaders-need-not-go-far-to-learn-how-a-state-country-should-be-governed-we-have-the-rwandan-example
September 7, 2020 | News
NIGERIAN POLITICAL LEADERS NEED NOT GO FAR TO LEARN HOW A STATE/COUNTRY SHOULD BE GOVERNED – WE HAVE THE RWANDAN EXAMPLE
A Ghanaian visitor to Kigali recently wrote his experience: “I am in Kigali and I am almost in tears. It is cleaner than Singapore, very safe and orderly. Ghana is a joke. Frigging joke. They have Okada but registered, jacketed and helmeted. To think that this country was at war twenty years ago with cutlasses and machetes. I am upset. A country with no natural resources. Low interest rates. Working public transport. No cash for public transportation only e-payments. Register any company on line. Working airline. One day to register land etc. etc. we are frigging jokers.”
There are many other testimonies like that by those that have visited the Rwandan Capital, Kigali. Let us recall that Rwanda’s economy suffered heavily during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to 1.3million Tutsi and moderate Hutu when social tension erupted in 1994. The Kigali Genocide Memorial documents the said 1994 mass killings in Rwanda, associated with the country’s civil war. But that was then. Today, Rwanda’s economy has since strengthened. Surprisingly, the Rwandan economy is based mostly on subsistence Agriculture. Coffee and Tea are the major cash crops for export. Tourism is a fast-growing sector and is now the country’s leading foreign exchange earner. Rwanda is one of only two countries in which mountain gorillas can be visited safely, and visitors pay high prices for gorilla tracking permits.
I weep for Nigeria when I read through the above media post of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda that rose from civil war to become what it is today. Rwanda's capital, Kigali has been declared by the United Nations (UN) as the “Most beautiful city” in Africa, and the Third Greenest city in the world. The question is, why can't Nigerian political leaders learn from this African country? No need to go to UK, France, US, etc., to learn from them. We should just learn from Rwanda, our small African brother country under the leadership of Paul Kagame. With the Rwandan example, Nigeria, as the supposed “big brother of African”, is nothing but a disgrace. All our political leaders are good at doing is to talk, talk and more talking without any concrete action to back their promises. They even organize one economic workshop/summit/seminar to another in the name of attracting investors, but they fail to do the needful in providing the needed infrastructure and conducive environment that would automatically attract such investors.
With the above Rwandan example, we can see that Nigeria, with its vast natural and human resourcefulness, simply has no excuse to be where it has been all these years as a retrogressive-progressive-developing country. If our Nigerian political leaders have widely traveled and have seen these other developed countries, met the men and women who lead these countries, walked the clean streets of their cities and travelled in the regular and regulated means of transport of these countries, they simply do not have any excuse not to replicate the same things back home in their country Nigeria.
If all the looting that had taken place in the last 16 years of the PDP Federal Government for instance, were rightly appropriated and used to developed the different sectors of Nigeria, we are sure that the country and its citizens will be far better of than what we are today.
No matter how we look at it or try to justify it, we really do not have any iota of excuse to be where we are presently as a nation that is replete with all kinds of ills making life daily miserable for its common citizenry. Like we have often reiterated, no foreigner can effectively and efficiently develop our country for us. That onerous task, no matter how challenging it might seem, only belongs to us and can best be done by us. So, it is high time our political leaders and all citizenry as followers stop making excuses and start using their ‘thinking faculties aright’ in developing this nation and get it out of the league of Third World countries in no distant future.
Zik Gbemre, JP.
A Ghanaian visitor to Kigali recently wrote his experience: “I am in Kigali and I am almost in tears. It is cleaner than Singapore, very safe and orderly. Ghana is a joke. Frigging joke. They have Okada but registered, jacketed and helmeted. To think that this country was at war twenty years ago with cutlasses and machetes. I am upset. A country with no natural resources. Low interest rates. Working public transport. No cash for public transportation only e-payments. Register any company on line. Working airline. One day to register land etc. etc. we are frigging jokers.”
There are many other testimonies like that by those that have visited the Rwandan Capital, Kigali. Let us recall that Rwanda’s economy suffered heavily during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to 1.3million Tutsi and moderate Hutu when social tension erupted in 1994. The Kigali Genocide Memorial documents the said 1994 mass killings in Rwanda, associated with the country’s civil war. But that was then. Today, Rwanda’s economy has since strengthened. Surprisingly, the Rwandan economy is based mostly on subsistence Agriculture. Coffee and Tea are the major cash crops for export. Tourism is a fast-growing sector and is now the country’s leading foreign exchange earner. Rwanda is one of only two countries in which mountain gorillas can be visited safely, and visitors pay high prices for gorilla tracking permits.
I weep for Nigeria when I read through the above media post of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda that rose from civil war to become what it is today. Rwanda's capital, Kigali has been declared by the United Nations (UN) as the “Most beautiful city” in Africa, and the Third Greenest city in the world. The question is, why can't Nigerian political leaders learn from this African country? No need to go to UK, France, US, etc., to learn from them. We should just learn from Rwanda, our small African brother country under the leadership of Paul Kagame. With the Rwandan example, Nigeria, as the supposed “big brother of African”, is nothing but a disgrace. All our political leaders are good at doing is to talk, talk and more talking without any concrete action to back their promises. They even organize one economic workshop/summit/seminar to another in the name of attracting investors, but they fail to do the needful in providing the needed infrastructure and conducive environment that would automatically attract such investors.
With the above Rwandan example, we can see that Nigeria, with its vast natural and human resourcefulness, simply has no excuse to be where it has been all these years as a retrogressive-progressive-developing country. If our Nigerian political leaders have widely traveled and have seen these other developed countries, met the men and women who lead these countries, walked the clean streets of their cities and travelled in the regular and regulated means of transport of these countries, they simply do not have any excuse not to replicate the same things back home in their country Nigeria.
If all the looting that had taken place in the last 16 years of the PDP Federal Government for instance, were rightly appropriated and used to developed the different sectors of Nigeria, we are sure that the country and its citizens will be far better of than what we are today.
No matter how we look at it or try to justify it, we really do not have any iota of excuse to be where we are presently as a nation that is replete with all kinds of ills making life daily miserable for its common citizenry. Like we have often reiterated, no foreigner can effectively and efficiently develop our country for us. That onerous task, no matter how challenging it might seem, only belongs to us and can best be done by us. So, it is high time our political leaders and all citizenry as followers stop making excuses and start using their ‘thinking faculties aright’ in developing this nation and get it out of the league of Third World countries in no distant future.
Zik Gbemre, JP.