Cleaning and Re-Indoctrinating Nigeria to the Root

By Charles Nwosu

Cleaning and Re-Indoctrinating Nigeria to the Root is a mirror of the nation where all Nigerians can see their images. It imagines Nigeria as a large portion of farmland owned by a group of families frustrated by their incapacity to plant and harvest abundantly from their travails for so many years. Most seeds/crops die before they are harvested, and few that survive are carted away by wild animals and pests. Eventually, some farmland owners, their dependents, and those who are trained to manage farms but are kept outside the project are beginning to come together to imagine options available for them as follows: (a) coming together of all trained members of the family where they adopt a motion of change of attitude (behavioral pattern) and sealed oath of sincerity on all future proceedings; (b) selection of all future seed/crops to be planted in the farmland; (c) screening out of all bad leaders and workers in the farm, (d) disinfecting the barren land from pesticides, screening out gravels and concrete sands, and then irrigating and fertilizing the land; (e) securing the farmland from wild animals by erecting a fence and employing new security guards; (f ) taking decisions on how crops will be harvested and what to do with the gains in areas of priorities, including distribution among the whole group of families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477237960

Charles Nwosu

Dr. Charles Nwosu spent many years writing papers and providing strategic analysis for others, including some government officials and international conferences, after obtaining his PhD (political sociology) in 1986, in Paris. However, some of these ideas and analysis were often made tools of diversions and manipulations by interests concerned, including implementers of some policy-making circles, for their own personal egos and aggrandizements. Getting out a book, Cleaning and Reindoctrinating Nigeria to the Root, at this time, is a fulfi llment of the author’s ambition to reach directly the Nigerian and African audience. Charles Nwosu attended Wilcox Memorial Grammar School, Aba Abia State, Nigeria (a model high school), and left for France on government scholarship, where he studied French language in the University of Nancy, and obtained an advanced certificate in French, and went on to study human sciences and sociology in Dijon and Paris. He obtained a national high diploma (human sciences), BSc, MSc, MPhil (sociology), and PhD in political sociology. He is an expert in civil military relations and strategic Studies. He is also linguist and translator (French/English). He was a longtime senior researcher with universities and some international peace missions. He is a member of the International Sociological Association (research group on armed forces and conflict resolution). He has a good working experience with some sensitive Nigerian offices where he occupied senior management positions. He was a federal constituency candidate in the 2003 Nigerian Federal Legislative Assembly elections. He lives in Paris and Nigeria and is happily married to Lyne and has four children.

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© 2012 by Dr. Charles Nwosu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/01/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3794-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3795-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3796-0 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Appreciation

Introduction

Chapter 1      Reconciling the Armed Forces and Politicians with Nigerian People

Chapter 2      Elimination of Fake Standard of Living and Unrealistic Importance Accorded to Wealth in Nigeria

What Is the Lifestyle of Wealthy Nigerians?

Chapter 3      Elimination of Barriers to Development

A. Development of National Awareness through Genuine Citizenship

B. Redefine Criteria for Choosing People at the Helm of Affairs

C. Developing new method of collecting unemployment data and getting people back to work

D. Re-establishing employment agency as National pole for employment (NPFE)

E. Organizational proposal of National pole for employment (NPFE)

F. Fighting unemployment and illiteracy by attracting out professionals to the field.

G. Using National youth service corps to create a gap to employment market

H. A summary of advantages if National youth Service Program is re-organized.

Chapter 4      Re-organizing educational Institutions in Nigeria

A. A call to SCRAP JAMB and open the GATES OF HIGH INSITUTIONS to Nigerians with certificate.

B. Re-introducing morals in High Institutions

C. REVISING THE TREND OF BRAIN DRAIN.

Chapter 5      Re-introducing ethics in Nigerian offices and establishments

A. Can the mode of dressing in Nigerian offices and business places be re-visited?

B. SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN OFFICES

C. DISCIPLINE IN OFFICES AND ESTABLISHMENTS

Chapter 6      RE-EVALUATION OF NIGERIAN TRADITIONAL INSTITUTIONS

A. HOW CAN ASSEMBLY OF TRADITIONAL RULERS MODIFY WAYS THEY ARE PERCEIVED?

Chapter 7      Re-thinking the Nigerian Police Force

And Security for all Nigerians

A. Exploitable ideas for the Police Force

B. Carrying out the exercise of reselection and retraining

C. Introduction of Social benefits and Assistances for the Police Force

D. How to transform police posts in rural areas to Community Proximity Police Posts (CPPP)

Conclusion

Abbreviations

Selected Reference

Map Of Nigeria,

List Of Local Goverment Areas In Nigeria

The book Cleaning and Re-Indoctrinating Nigeria to the Root is a reflectional societal mirror in which all Nigerians can see their image. Wherever an individual finds himself or herself, be it in our families, villages, communities, governments, and so on, the image in question (behavioural pattern) is very conspicuous.

The author of this book is no exception.

Appreciation

My hearty appreciation goes to my friends in Paris, and to my wife, Lyne. You have been so wonderful. ‘Merci du fond du coeur.’

I want to remember also all my friends in Giordano Bruno, and Jeanne Guesdon, at Rue Saint Martin Cultural Centre in Paris. ‘Merci beaucoup’, for your motivation and encouragement.

Dr Charles Nwosu

Foreword

This book contains personal views and proposals of an individual who is very conscious about participating in the development of his country, Nigeria. Therefore the humble objective ideas which are laid out here should not be perceived as outright solutions to problems confronting Nigeria.

The author has the conviction that we, as Nigerians, may continue to deceive ourselves for the next hundred years to come, encountering problems of establishing a progressing and peaceful democratic society that is capable of securing an atmosphere of equality and socioeconomic upward mobility for the people. The nation will not realise such objectives until governments and the people of Nigeria become sincere and honest in not only what they do, but in the rule of law, which will be applicable equally to all zones and citizens of Nigeria through the actualisation of a new, realistic, acceptable behavioural pattern that will need to be enshrined down to the roots of Nigerian society.

The author has no intention to insinuate the old quarrels of government, persons, and religion in this book; neither does he intend to judge the people or the politicians and civil governments, including past military governing authorities which kept the armed forces busy for most years after Nigerian independence.

Most critics have assumed that armed forces intervention in civilian politics for so long a time was to the detriment of their own influence, reputation, and domain, especially in the area of the development of military industrial complex, which would have perhaps given Nigeria today more impetus to talk straight with the international community. These critics believe that those years of its involvement in civilian politics would have been channelled to exploit the vacuum created by apartheid in South Africa for its own expansion in the development of full military industrial complex, especially because the oil boom would have given it more impetus and ‘capacity to even establish small friendly military bases in some of our immediate neighbouring countries’, at the place of France, who does such projects to the detriment and irritations of Nigeria.

This strategy, according to them, would have not only provided protection for these neighbours who feel so insecure because of their economic standing and the existence of a giant Nigeria around them, but it ‘would have boosted Nigerian influence and security of Nigeria porous frontiers’, realising that it has been a country which remained without identity cards several years after obtaining independence from Britain.

Others critics imagined a contrary of the above assumption, where the armed forces’ interventions were necessary at some periods in question, when Nigeria faced a total insecurity political, ethnic, and religious anarchy as a result of civilian political conflicts.

According to such opinions, intervention would have been brief and would have centred on cleaning the mess in order to restore confidence; as such, actions would have probably been viewed as positive and as an effort to reject intervention in civilian affairs, thereby keeping the armed forces intact and centring its efforts in boosting ideas mentioned in earlier paragraphs, especially with regards to the military industrial complex.

Some critics who prefer to be hard on the military simply describe their behavioural pattern during the time being discussed here by saying that some military interventions in politics was a normal part of the complexity-greed of the total Nigerian society and that few military governments with good intentions for Nigeria had no opportunity to carry out their fixed objectives before being overthrown by another group; and that sometimes, civilians yearned for such military coups.

So who is to be blamed? Blame the failure of the civilian political process in all its facets with regards to democracy since after independence, the loss of opportunities, and its detriments to the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria—without excluding brains for which Nigerian governments paid who were either lost during the power struggle or sent into earlier retirement. Moreover, the failure to remedy situations by civilian politicians at the time being discussed here till today remains almost the same except for some cosmetic changes of pacification with different clothing, which Nigerians have witnessed from time to time, and no lesson has ever been learnt.

Oil exacerbated greed and raised unreasonably high expectations of the private appropriation of unearned rent (the national cake), to the point of strongly eroding personal ethical and social values and thereby dislocating the cohesiveness of Nigerian society (Richard Akinjide, 2006).

The generation of Nigerian minors under eighteen when the civil war erupted in 1967 are in their late fifties today, but they are still asking to be given a chance to contribute to the development of Nigeria. There are many of same old faces with different clothing who occupied the scene when they were born, and it is very unfortunate that many of these same faces who contributed to the predicament-rattling Nigerian development are still there in one form or the other, teaching Nigerians the best way forward, or what they think is good for them.

The result has been alarming because Nigeria is still reduced to struggling with derailed under-development, while those I referred to as former minors are probably today intellectuals, scientists, and other resounding professionals, in most cases brain-drained to already developed countries where they are underutilized, marginalized, and exploited.

We Nigerians can’t even mention the fate of those at home who hadn’t had such opportunities. With so many wrong people at the helm of affairs, the middle class, if such group exists, has lost faith when the situational analysis of Nigerian workers today is genuinely scrutinized.

We don’t even talk of the totality of the lower class, who are the mass population of the Nigerians workers today—and the other mass as numerous as the lower class without means of income who can be immersed into this last group and asserted as pushed to the wall of behavioural vices, which is dissimilar of higher methodical vices employed by players at the top. All these somehow became the acceptable pattern of norms in Nigeria today, and all these have become part of the problems facing the establishment of a genuine democratic process for what can be called a federal Nigeria.

Some of the predicaments we have mentioned earlier created several vacuums requiring zen capacities of highly instructed professionals and personalities, but in many cases they are left to be occupied by some ‘representative stooges’ and names submitted by governors who are in most cases more interested in strategies of balancing acts, and those named often become more excited and find better ways of sapping methods to grab Nigerian wealth in order to consolidate or upgrade their own ego and power.

Sometimes the same people turned around to preach doctrines of good behaviour to the down-trodden class—doctrines which they themselves do not practice.

Even the spirituality of Nigerians has been brutalized with material ambition and religious corruption, as if all that matters in the world today is money or economic survival. Despite all these, many Nigerians still understand that so many things are wrong.

When looking into past histories of some nations who experienced a similar situation to that of Nigeria today and later became developed. One’s mind can’t forget the example of the era of King Napoleon of France, who had the citizens of that country squeezed to the wall by corrupt kangaroo legislators, and who appointed administrators (charlatans) including provincial traditional rulers who preached doctrines and code of conducts to same down-trodden masses whom they were strategically and intentionally squeezing and oppressing to death. The people took their destinies into their hands, resulting in the genuine democratic France which we have today. That liberation was not left at that level until they re-clothed it to what they refer today as ‘May 1968’.

As much as no one is expecting or wishing such a French-style revolution in Nigeria, what those entrusted with the destiny of Nigeria need to understand is that real democrats see people they govern as possessing the people’s power, and when they as citizens are pushed and squeezed for a very long time, or where such a country escapes decomposition, the worst scenario can be expected and can be assumed to have become a country sitting on a time bomb.

The problems of these Nigerian masses can be summarised as follows: food, water, light, good roads, healthcare, affordable education for children, and employment for students when they come out from school. Nigerians are no longer as docile as they have been portrayed in the past, and as such they expect funds voted for their local governments and constituencies to reach them. They are eager to vote in the right people to do the job and provide needs for which they are clamouring, and they want to put a stop to rigging votes or choosing cronies and fraudsters for whom they did not vote.

Apart from democratic rule, today many people among the population still argue that the nature of Nigerian people is such that only force through genuine dictatorship, born out of ambition to change and implement policies and ignite genuine developmental projects, was best suited for a number of years to Nigeria, and that these expectations of Nigerians today would not have been if the past military governments had played the right game especially because the economic climate of those periods, which resulted from oil resources, would have been utilised to seal a viable destiny for all Nigerians.

Despite what critics see as a failure in the civilian domain by those past military governments, and as much as the priority of Nigerians is not to develop nukes or become a nuclear power, the Nigerian people would have been proud today if those forces (which are being called Nigerian armed forces for those long years of several different coup d’états) were focussed elsewhere, such as establishing a bogus industrial military complex to boost Nigerian industrialisation, and avoiding the military dwelling in the civilian political arena.

However, in the war of communication and sleazing in Nigeria, where some individuals succeed in tainting a personality, many Nigerians will follow and write off such a person, including his shortcomings and all good sides or accomplishments of the individual. When talking about the failure of past military governments, this is where Nigerians have not been very fair in the global judgement of former President Babangida, because his era was completely different from those of his colleagues, which attracted many renowned academicians and intellectuals to find a way of assisting his government. Despite his shortcomings as a human being or other things, he might have been reproached by some Nigerians. Examples of these personalities include the late Tai Solarin and Professor Wole Soyinka, and more, accepted to work with former President Babangida.

There are those with assumption that Nigerians would have been very proud today if the armed forces had foresight to exploit the oil boom during such periods they were in power coupled with the absence of democratic South Africa, to assert their might to the world stage through boosting and establishing the military industrial complex without forgetting that such opportunity would have equally given them the impetus to assert their powers against the will of politicians, like in Pakistan and other nations.

Other critics say that nothing would have been wrong if the armed forces used those periods to establish the military industrial complex. After all, Nigerians have a universal right to enrich its uranium for nuclear plants and electricity, which it desperately needs for its people and development, because the problem of electricity light has given Nigeria a sleepless night till today. They claim that all these would have brought Nigeria into a real-world stage for discussions and negotiations on how to establish such venture.

The windfall of assistance and double economic standards involving foreign investments, resulting from such discussions and negotiations, can be numerous and would have probably done well for the armed forces and all Nigerians.

Many critics of the military agree that those actions mentioned earlier would have been better today, rather than seeing many Dick and Toms taking ‘the joy of sleaze on our great Armed Forces because of their long intervention in civilian political affairs. However, ‘a soldier has a heavenly right as a citizen of same nation to participate in his country’s democratic political process, but he needs to shed his uniform or retire’ to be able to do so. More so, these debates and negotiations would not only have centred on priorities of Nigeria, but it would have also acted as a deterrence on the African soil between Nigeria and some of its untrustworthy neighbours who often run to ‘Paris to obtain an approval for tarring a street for their population’.

And any time such a government refuses to bow to foreign, anti-colonial interests, either political opponent’s at home are used against such governments, or multinational media are asked to tag such governments or groups as dictators or rebels and drug traffickers.

Some of these neighbours are sometimes obliged ‘to hide in the cupboards of some developed countries’, being a debtor nation to the said country and using security and economic reason to bow and hand over the country’s resources indirectly to such former colonial powers, or a new bidder in the name of a developed country. Some of these West African countries decided to allow foreign military bases using the pretext of bilateral economic relations which include security agreement’ on their soil, and being a close neighbouring country to Nigeria, they constitute a threat to it because the potential of Nigeria is always a source of attraction and concern to these developed nations.

If Nigeria intends to remain united and succeed in a genuine democratization of their nation and thereby avoid decomposition

it must become truthful in all handlings, policies, and governance, and all this will require the need to rethink the Nigerian definition of equality to life of any Nigerian, no matter where he or she is found.

There must be sincerity in the development of a consciousness to learn from the past in order to move forward. There must be a capability to demand explanation of past stewardship and to acquire the capacity to punish if explanations to the demand of past stewardship do not convince, no matter how highly placed or how long such an event, service, or crime might have taken place.

Genuine national reconciliation with all geographical zones of the country ought to be envisaged, correctly avoiding the strategy of divide to rule or marginalize the past, which in most cases has been the way out for so long as a methodology by those in power. They must avoid following the local Nigeria jargon which says it is their turn to do their own thing and get out, abandoning such problems of the past to future leaders.

Finally, Nigeria must usher in a new national attitude meant to clean Nigeria to the root of the society through the introduction of a new behavioural pattern of doing things in every aspect of our national endeavours.

The interest of this book is to pick holes with critical objective analysis of our present national behavioural pattern, followed by humble proposals which are capable, if tried, of motivating a new and realistic attitude which can in turn restore confidence to the citizens themselves with their leaders. And one of the options available in order to arrive at this objective is re-indoctrinating Nigeria completely to the root, while avoiding at the same time those doctrines or ideologies which are interpretable in the future as centrist, leftist, or rightist.

It means that national dialogue has to be started in our villages and communities, and then go up to the federal level, before at last laying out what is to become the new national attitude, with the leaders becoming the example and thereby helping the ordinary man to emulate them and come out of the old ways that have frustrated the whole nation.

The methodology adopted in this book will be that of objective, comparative, social, and political analysis, which is accompanied by personal contributions and proposals to reveal a conscious author in search of solutions to the sleeping time-bomb problems awaiting the country.

Introduction

The meaning of the word ‘cleaning’ will be defined in this book as ‘fighting vices and moral decay’, presumed to have gone down to the root of Nigerian society. The word ‘re-indoctrination’ will highlight the needs and methods of introducing new attitude to replace the expunged vices, thereby assisting the author to arrive to an assumption that ‘putting the two words into practice may uplift the national consciousness of Nigerians’, no matter the level they find themselves in their daily obligations or with laws of their nation.

It is true that Nigeria has so many weak, uneducated, and poor people within the population who do not even know what is happening at the centre or the top, and they do not care to know at all because of a lack of trust in their leaders, or because they were abandoned. This helps to explain the reason for exploitation and manipulation of their docility by leaders who were meant to assist, educate, and protect this particular population in Nigeria.

However, this book intends to portray nation building as starting from our kitchens and families; to our villages, schools, churches, mosques, community meetings; and up to ‘Aso Rock’ (seat of the government). Therefore it will hold all Nigerians responsible for the type of Nigeria we have today.

To rebuild a Nigeria that obey laws, demands accountability, punishes in strict equality, and provides and cares and protects all Nigerians at home and in diaspora, it will require citizens to accept that we are all responsible for the type of Nigeria we have today, and we must put our hands together to rebuild it. Past leaders geared Nigeria to what it is at present and therefore is more responsible for the mess we have today and no lesson has been learnt from those who took over since 1979 when Nigeria returned to democratic rule.

The poor masses are also responsible because life and the group or national karma of a nation begins from our kitchens, villages, and communities, to those on top misdirecting the national destiny because the same leaders come from these places, and moreover, the population’s docility, in sleeping over exploitations on them or the failure to reclaim what belongs to them, makes their sufferings everlasting, because actions from the populace would have helped to remind those leaders that power belongs to the people. This is why the poor have partly contributed to the type of Nigeria we have today. Leaders made them dependants and arrogantly resolved to exhibit the behaviour that the masses don’t count. This is why many critics agree on the argument concerning neglect and abandon by saying that Nigerians die every day, anywhere, and everywhere in Nigeria and in diaspora without accurate statistics of the dead. Local government chairmen, state governors, and constituency leaders of both law-making houses need to see things themselves in order to suggest remedying factors. In fact, many Nigerians die in so many different forms—in groups, families, individuals, in villages or communities and with different methods rather than natural.

This is not to argue that one or two among those mentioned above by the necessity of political survival, not done so once rather than genuine sympathy or