Book: Moving a Nation Forward: The Practicable Road To Achieve A New Nigeria
Author: Bayo Oyewole
Reviewer: Sunmola Olowookere
:
The current state of the project “Nigeria” has been generating equal measure of interest and concern from every citizen of the nation and observers alike both in the country and beyond.
In this work, “Moving a nation forward: The practical Road To Achieve A New Nigeria”, Bayo Oyewole shows a passion for the motherland that was showcased in the cogent issues bedeviling the nation which were raised in the book.
The book mentioned above is an eight-chaptered book with over 200 pages that exposes the abnormalities of the Nigerian Democratic System. Along with the exposé, the author also proffers deep insights on improving the Nigerian nation.
It opens with a foreword and introduction that draws its audience in with the promise of ingenious suggestions and recommendations that are guaranteed to inspire a new national outlook.
The first and second chapters started simply and it was dedicated to introducing the components of democracy to the reader, showing its interpretation and application to the workings of government in Nigeria.
With examples to drive home his points, he x-rayed why the Democratic system that functioned well in other climes failed to deliver the same dividends to Nigeria.
Oyewole maintained that the success of our democratic process is hinged on the competency, ideology, and intellectual abilities of political officeholders.
These three requirements give one pause for concern as they are attributes that are fastly disappearing from our political landscape.
The author juxtaposed Democracy in developed countries with the being witnessed in Nigeria and one could see that it is a far cry from the original version that we copied from the developed world. The dysfunctionality of our democracy, which is too numerous to mention here, has led the majority of Nigerians to live under terrible conditions. The author put the percentage of those living in extreme poverty at 85 percent.
Nigerian democracy seems to be a cruel joke as the author described it as a “Master and Servant” relationship with the master being the political class and the masses that ought to own the government going by the universal definition of democracy, pushed to the position of the servants who are forced to struggle for the crumbs that fall off the table of the “master” so they do not die of starvation.
He highlights the reasons for the systemic failure of the Nigerian democracy to be ways of life exhibited by political and public office holders and entrusting public funds and taxpayers’ money for national development in the hands of political office holders.
In the following two chapters, the author dived into the work with gusto. He began by opening the eye of the reader to the steaming corruption going on right under our noses as he made bold and categorical statements on the various facets of Nigerian corruption which indicted even the anti-graft agencies that are supposedly waging war against the menace.
He enumerated the ills embedded in corruption such as loss of foreign investments, lack of infrastructural development, loss of lives due to infrastructural decay and insecurity, proliferation of substandard goods and fake drugs, ineffective government plans, and loss of national value and integrity.
The endemic corruption in Nigeria indicates that any nation shrouded in corruption cannot develop. Then, he highlighted the areas where corruption easily fester in the workings of Nigeria’s democracy and copiously proposed long-term solutions to the problem.
In Chapter Five, he called for the establishment of the truly and transparently Independent National Infracstructural and Industrial Development Commission (INIFIDC) which he argued is urgently required in Nigeria to address various critical issues, particularly in infrastructure, technology, and industrial development.
He proposed that the establishment of the commission would correct past failures in Nigeria’s infrastructural and industrial development by ensuring proper utilization of resources, overcoming corruption and inefficiency in governance, averting failures, and providing an alternative governance platform among others.
With a well-expounded proposal, he drove home his point on the advantages inherent in Nigeria adopting the initiative of the commission.
In the same vein, he went on to enumerate the strategies to achieve the objectives of the commission in Chapter Six such as liberation of Nigeria’s destiny in terms of National Development from political control, creation of comprehensive master plan and monitoring and evaluation mechanism, establishment Of National Infrastructural Facility And Industrial Development Commission Radio And Television Stations, establishment of af Special Training School, demarcation of Nigeria into units specifically for rapid modern national development and industrial development Of National Infrastructural Facility And Industrial Special Intervention Trust Fund for the proposed initiatives.
In chapter seven, Oyewole outlined the duties of the planned commission which he introduced in chapter five.
The book is guaranteed to draw in every reader who is concerned about Nigeria. Perhaps the author’s prescription might be the medication that would heal the ailment plaguing Nigeria.
Throughout the book, Oyewole’s heart resonates with the passion for his motherland and vibrates with the concern for a better Nigeria which perhaps inspires the proposal of the model “Independent National Infrastructural Facility and Industrial Development C