s I stated in the first part of this article, published last month on nigeriaworld.com, romance mentality in which many Nigerians, at home and abroad, are drowned is one of the most serious factors that pander to Nigeria's socio-economic underdevelopment. One of the problems with Nigeria is that many of her socio-political critics are ignorant of where, how, when Nigeria started her march towards national development, and many of them are not conversant with the specific facts and circumstances that have led to the socio-economic progress witnessed today in developed nations of the world. To them, Nigeria has failed; she has retrogressed because all roads in Nigeria are not yet macadamized, no hospital, no school is equipped, and no round-the-clock electricity. They ought to know that Nigeria needs DEVELOPMENT, not just social conveniences, to be a great nation.

advertisement

Many of them wrongly believe that the ultimate index of a country's development is the number of social conveniences/ programs it possesses or runs, instead of the ability of its citizens to invent or manufacture products. A nation is still a weak and undeveloped country if it possesses all social amenities in the world without any of its citizens being able to invent or manufacture anything. Nigerians ought to know that in the comity of world developed countries, we do not have a nation whose citizens are weak in inventions, scientific discoveries, or manufacturing entrepreneurship. This, therefore, means that a country cannot develop unless its individual citizens are creative and initiatively productive, and it does not matter if it has the highest amount of social infrastructure or natural mineral reserve in the world. Neither does it matter if it has the most honest government in human history.

Many Nigerian social critics do not know that necessity (not luxury or abundance) is the mother of inventions, and that genius is the capacity for taking pains. One may be tempted to ask: did the Wright brothers attend any university of aeronautics in the USA or anywhere in the world before they were able to invent the first airplane in 1905? Did Thomas Edison attend any university of electrical engineering in the USA or elsewhere before he was able to give humanity the first electricity in 1879? Did Maybach and Daimler attend any university of mechanical engineering in Germany or elsewhere before they were able to produce the first motor vehicle in the world in 1889? My contention is that the amount of social infrastructure we have in Nigeria today was not there in the USA, Germany or other countries of the developed world before major inventions that elevated human development and civilization were made. Again, the seeming perfect development we see today in advanced nations is the outcome of many years of hardwork and trial and error process by their individual citizens.

It is disheartening that major world inventions have been made for Nigerians and technologies transferred, yet it is extremely difficult or impossible to see a Nigerian who can confidently manufacture anything, including even a pin or razor blade. It is mind-boggling and shameful that Nigeria has over fifty universities, numerous polytechnics, very many colleges of technology, several research centers, millions of Nigerians(at home and abroad) who possess and showcase different types and quantities of university degrees and higher national diplomas, yet it is absolutely hard or impossible to see a Nigerian, at home or abroad, who can initiatively manufacture even a ruler for our schools, a needle for our hospitals, a hammer for our carpenters, or a spanner for Nigerian mechanics. It is my contention that, though social amenities can facilitate human life, we do not necessarily need twenty-four hour electricity, well-furnished hospitals, well-beautified universities, well-macadamized roads or life full of comfort and pleasure in Nigeria before we should think of inventions, scientific discoveries, and manufacturing entrepreneurship, which are the bedrock of any socio-economic development.

Nigerians, at home and abroad, should borrow a leaf of true patriotism from Al Schwimmer, an American Jew, who moved from the USA to Israel in 1953 to help in developing the new State of Israel. Schwimmer used his experience, his skills, knowledge in aviation and business to establish Bedek Aviation Company, now called Israel Aerospace Industries. This is the leading industrial corporation in Israel that has been catering to Israeli defense and security needs since 1953. That Israel is a military and economic power in the world today, successfully defending herself from her enemies, is mostly attributable to Al Schwimmer, who used his ingenuity to manufacture fighter, commercial aircraft, unmanned air vehicles, and helicopters for the Israeli defense forces and the world at large. AI Schwimmer did not wait in the USA for twenty-four hour electricity to be installed in Israel or her roads to be macadamized before he decided to come back to his fatherland to help in nation-building. Nigerians, especially those living abroad, should also emulate Albert Einstein (who won the 1921 Nobel prize in physics), Sigmund Freud (world renowned psychoanalytic theorist), and Martin Buber (world famous theorist in philosophical anarchism/religious existentialism), who were Jews in the diaspora but later left their foreign countries of abode for their fatherland, the State of Israel, and helped in establishing and running Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is the first Israeli university founded in 1918 and the power house of Israeli research efforts today. These great intellectuals did not run from Europe to the USA and wait there until all roads in the land of Israel became tarred and concreted before they decided to return to their fatherland and help in building their nation, as many Nigerians abroad do today.

Many Nigerian socio-political critics are very apt to compare Nigeria with Ghana today. According to them, Ghana was one of the countries that got independence with Nigeria almost at the same time. Ghana, according to them, has recently achieved a measure of economic success and stability in electricity while Nigeria has retrogressed. Although I do not personally believe that Nigeria has retarded in national development, I am constrained to ask: do Nigerians as individuals behave and think like Ghanaians? Jerry Rawlings seized political power in Ghana in 1981. He ruled Ghanaians for ten years as a military leader and another ten years as a civilian. He restricted press freedom, the right of Ghanaians to free speech, and eliminated Ghanaian dissidents and was able to lay the very solid foundation on which the recent Ghanaian growth is anchored. Can Nigerians allow one particular leader, however well- intentioned he/she is, to rule them for twenty years without Nigerian social critics causing the heaven to fall down in Nigeria? Can Nigerians, as Ghanaians did, allow somebody like Jerry Rawlings, however well-meaning he/she is, to govern them without our self-made social critics causing the earth to break up to pieces in Nigeria? Are Nigerians, as individuals, as patriotic, honest, trustworthy, understanding, loyal to constituted authorities as Ghanaians? Are Nigerian citizens, more than Ghanaians, not regarded as fraudsters and hard-drug peddlers in the international community? If electricity is stabilized in Nigeria today, will Nigerians, out of get-rich-quick madness and ethnic/political sabotage, not vandalize and loot our electricity installations in the next six months?

Nigerian socio-political critics are very quick to compare Nigeria with Israel in terms of national development. According to them, Nigeria ought to be developing step by step with Israel, as both of them gained their independence almost at the same time, 1960 and 1948 respectively. To foster national growth, Israeli government made education compulsory for any child, aged three to eighteen years. One may ask: if this system of education is introduced to Nigeria to enhance our educational development, will it work? Will our social critics not attack the Nigerian government, accusing it of high-handedness and forcing children who are not interested in education to go to school against their will? Will they not lampoon the Nigerian police for arresting or detaining a child for failing to go to school? In 1960 when Nigeria became independent, having a population of over sixty million people, she had only one university. By 1960, Israel had about eight fully-fledged universities, having a population of about three million people. Again, Israel was essentially developed by the Jews in the diaspora, who returned to their homeland between 1881 and 1939, with bags of advanced skills and superlative intellectual prowess acquired in developed nations of the world. One may still ask: did this situation apply to Nigeria, and will a right-thinking Nigerian socio-political critic expect Nigeria to grow at the same rate as Israel at this point of our national history, given the above circumstances? Short-sighted Nigerian social critics who usually compare Nigeria with Israel should know that Israel is a developed country today because her individual citizens are industrially active, intellectually sagacious, scientifically creative, and entreprenuerially competent, not necessarily because she has had the most honest or dishonest government in the middle East of Asia.

Many self-opinionated Nigerians, critical of Nigeria and her development, have even reasoned that if it took Germany, UK, USA, France and other developed countries two hundred years to grow, it should not take Nigeria such a length of time to join the comity of industrially advanced nations because she is an oil-producing State. Can oil develop a nation when its citizens are not industrially productive and innovatively agile? Russia, the world highest producer of crude oil and natural gas, did not attain her national growth in forty-nine years, and Saudi Arabia, the second world crude oil-producer has not achieved her national development in forty-nine years, though she has been tapping her oil reserve since the early 1930s, with a population more than six times lower than Nigeria and never suffered official colonialism unlike Nigeria. How can one believe that Nigeria will develop in less than two hundred years when Nigerians, especially the social critics, see every government in Nigeria as an evil, an enemy that must be pulled down and destroyed? How can a political leader in Nigeria be encouraged to provide dividends of development to Nigerians when every day he/she reads articles, written by Nigerians expressing their disbelief in the unity of their country, states, or even their local government areas? Yes, it is true that Nigeria may not wait for two hundred years before she gets advanced in national growth, but one may continue to ask: how long does it normally take a country to develop if she has a huge oil reservoir with a citizenry that is not entrepreneurially oriented and scientifically creative? The importance of social criticisms or virile opposition in the life of a nation cannot be over-emphasized, and that is the cardinal point for which the right to freedom of expression is entrenched in the laws of all democratic countries of the world. However, there is no country in which this right, this freedom is guaranteed absolutely. Freedom of expression must be exercised within the ambit of the law and the dictates of reasonableness and truth. Freedom of expression demands that a social critic must be constructive, factual, logical, and honest in his/her analysis. Free speech, as enshrined in the laws of all democracies, is not a license for wilful misrepresentation of facts, seditious publications, libels, slanders, injurious, or malicious falsehoods. It is not a license to enthrone speculations, rumors in critical analysis and dethrone facts, sound reasoning, and authentic research. A good social crusader serves as a watch-dog for the entire society; as such, he/she seeks to guard the people against the extremities of the government and the leaders against the subversion or insubordination of the people. A good socio-political crusader in a country is guided by the interest of the whole nation; he/she is neither ethnic nor clannish and criticizes an errant government official specifically, based on facts; he/she never unnecessarily generalizes in his/her actions or criticisms. He/she gives honor, credit to whom it is due and helps to muster popular support for good public programs/policies.

Contrarily, most of the Nigerian socio-political critics are actuated by ethnic/personal jealousies, selfish interests, political malice, and social ill-will. Nigeria has had many social critics in the past who turned out to be mere thieves or wolves when they were entrusted with one public office or the other.The evil an unbalanced social criticism can do to a nation is incalculable. For instance, through unconstructive and ethnically colored social criticisms, Nigerian socio-political critics in the 1960s wrongly motivated Ifejuna and Nzeogwu to topple the government of Nigeria in the first republic, which threw Nigeria into one of the most deadly civil wars in history and which set Nigeria back in her march towards national development. Again, through unbalanced and ethnically oriented social criticisms, Nigerian social critics wrongly instigated Sanni Abacha and Babangida to overthrow the CORRECTIVE and PURPOSEFUL regime of Idiagbon and Buhari in 1985, and later they (Babangida and Abacha) instituted kakistocracy in Nigeria. Ethnically minded Nigerian social critics are at it again. Directly or indirectly, they have started to invite and encourage the khaki boys, through their pens, to strike and destroy our nascent civil rule. They ought to note that when this happens, Nigeria will retrogress more than she has now, as many of them think.

Nigerian self-styled social crusaders/critics who believe that Nigeria has not made any progress since independence ought to know that If their position is true, it is equally correct to say that those who have been critical of errant Nigerian successive administrations have also failed in their duties since 1960. This, therefore, means that Nigeria has not produced credible social critics who can help in correcting the ills of our society. It equally means that if Nigeria had had responsible social criticisms, her developmental backwardness would have long been mitigated. On the whole, I strongly believe that Nigeria must develop; she must grow in the nick of time if Nigerians, NOT ONLY MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNMENT, will be ready to cast out most of their criminal tendencies, eschew left-handed, uninformed socio-political criticisms, and start to think inventively, innovatively, and entreprenuerially, like the citizens of the developed world. Development does not fall down to a nation from the atmosphere like a downpour rain; rather, it is achieved and earned through constant hardwork and perspiration. Rome, they say, was not built in a day.