On human rights, the West often accuses Russia and China of rights abuse – recall Tianemen Square crackdown. Legend has it that China, the most populous country in the world (population estimate of 1.4 billion), had as a counter argument offered to test the US lofty human rights credentials by unleashing about 300 million Chinese outlaws into the USA (population of about 320 million) to see if the country that prides itself as the bastion of liberty would not act differently.
Considering how civil liberties were relegated to the background (wire tapping of US citizens at home and abroad, Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the so-called Rendition in Europe) after the unfortunate incident of terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2009, now known as 9/11, the Chinese had a point.
The USA, for instance, does not subscribe to some international protocols, especially those that could antagonize their interests, particularly with respect to their men and women in uniform located in military bases abroad which enable America to play the noble duty of policing the world. Along the same line, trade/commerce has remained a sore point of continuous disagreements and tensions between the advanced economies flouting or not sticking to the World Trade Organization tariffs. Therefore, accusations and counter accusations of dumping of products like steel, arbitrary currency devaluation to tilt balance of trade in their favour, etc amongst advanced economies are common occurrences.
I went into these detailed narratives to make the point about the extent to which countries can go in self-preservation to prove to Mr President that the savvy qualities and business wit required to run a country are quite different from the mien of forthrightness and religious piety required to lead a mosque or a church since in the market place of life, and especially in the comity of nations, it is a case of survival of the fittest when tigers ,vipers, crocodiles, lions and anacondas co-habit.
As an army general, who has led troops to war, I believe President Buhari understands what I’m struggling to portray as he will never disclose his army’s weaknesses (whether infantry, artillery or air power) to his opponents in the battlefield.
Now that Mr President has wrapped up the composition of his cabinet with the inauguration of the ministers recently, it’s time to look forward to strengthening a broken economy and stop looking backwards by not dwelling on whether the nation is broke or not.
Corruption has been identified as a key culprit in Nigeria’s economic malaise, and a decision had been made to kill it before it kills Nigeria. So also could inflexibility and lack of right attitude to move Nigeria forward quickly be a clog in the wheel of progress, so our leaders must dispel the negative impression before it crystallizes.
A seminal report by psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University, USA, titled “The Low Down: Why Attitude Is More Important Than IQ” and published in Harvard Business Review of November 2015, argues that “the deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks with open arms”. According to the psychologist, “Success in life is all about how you deal with failure.” In her report, she proves that people’s attitude fall into two categories: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. With the fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are and you cannot change. This creates problems when you are challenged because anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.
Conversely, people with growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset even when they have lower Intelligence Quotient because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.
As progressives, the ruling APC leadership is expected to have a growth mindset as espoused by Carol Dweck. So far, the party seems overwhelmed, but events in the coming weeks or months now that the cabinet members have been inaugurated would determine if the party, President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo are meeting the expectations of Nigerians who voted for change.
Let me conclude with an interesting admonition from Fredrick Douglas, a foremost US rights activist, in his famous speech commemorating the West Indian Emancipation: “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle . . . This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Arising from the above, Nigerians demand that President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo do not allow Nigeria to remain broke or broken. After six months on the saddle, we want to hear and see the good work that the new government is doing to move Nigeria forward. I guess such expectation is not too high for a government that rode to power on the crest of change.
Magnus Onyibe
