Time flies! And it seems to be flying faster these days than it used to in the past! Truth is time does not fly; and it waits for no one. It just keeps going at the pace it used to since creation. Little wonder the saying that the unit of destiny is measured in time. Whether you are a royalty, a pauper, a slave, a billionaire, a farmer, a businessman, a professor, a doctor, a politician, a president, a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, a poor or rich person, or whatever, and no matter where you are on planet earth, one thing nature gives equally to every being is time. We all have 24 hours a day; no more, no less. It is what we do with the time, the one equal resource that we have, that counts.
We can decide to waste this resource, manage it haphazardly, invest it very wisely or just do nothing with it; it is still our time. No one takes another person’s time and live it. No! We just live our time given to us by our Creator. It is when we look back over time that we realize how well or badly we invested our time.
It was not so long ago that it dawned on me that REFLECTIONS! is a year old today. I had actually thought about writing this article to mark the first anniversary of this fortnightly “column”, if I may call it so. And I thought it was March 1, 2023 when I started it. It wasn’t until I referred to the first article that I realized it was on February 1, 2023. One full year, 24 articles (besides the one in your hands!) none stop! So, where did all this time disappear into? Thin air, as we say.
The first article was apt; in retrospect, I am happy I wrote it. It was my wholesome endorsement of Mr. Peter Obi for Nigeria’s presidency. It was just two weeks to the presidential election and I had no doubt on my mind that he was the man the country needed to steer this capsizing ship. The article was titled “It’s Peter Obi, stupid!”, borrowing from the 1992 blistering presidential campaign strategy of the United States’ Bill Clinton captioned “It’s the Economy, stupid!” Clinton went ahead to beat the incumbent, George Bush Snr, in that election.
REFLECTIONS! was conceived in the last quarter of 2022 as my contribution toward national conversation; toward finding solutions to our myriad problems as a nation. How do I go public with my reasoning and ideas about what Nigeria should be and do; how can we build a better (well, given where we are today, it might be better to say a good rather than a better!) country. A second reason, albeit selfish, was to resurrect my dying writing skill and style. 25 years after quitting journalism practice, I have not been writing as regularly as I used to. I know how much of “sweating” I had to undergo to write my first book some eight years ago.
Since 1st February 2023, when it debuted, REFLECTIONS! has looked at the polity, the economy (more on the economy), investment, security and governance or the lack of it. I have also written articles on the war in Ukraine, elections, deaths on our roads and waterways, the Mohammadu Buhari years; the quarrels between governors and their deputies, ECOWAS’ stance on Niger, and the rest.
I have not done justice to the sectoral decays in education, health care and public services. I have also not been as research oriented as I would have liked to; though on the economy front I am not doing badly! Governance at the state and local levels seems to be escaping my binoculars! International relations and geopolitics are not getting good mentions in REFLECTIONS!
I am also aware that, from the feedbacks I receive, my articles are rather lengthy. Hmmmm! This is deliberate. The intention is to publish articles the length of which gives me the opportunity to look at the many sided angles of the topics I like to write about. It is difficult to express these views in short write ups without doing injustice to the topics and discerning minds. I am aware that not many people read these articles when I publish them on Facebook! Some would read the first few paragraphs and end it there. It’s quite understandable. We are in an entirely different era! Compared to birthday celebration posts and the likes, I probably don’t do five percent of my followers! That’s fine with me.
I am also mindful of the fact that though these articles are very analytical, they are short on proffering solutions to the issues identified. Some of these identified shortcomings (absolutely not all) will be addressed as we start year two today. It bears mentioning that articles in REFLECTIONS! are just my personal opinions and thoughts at the time they are written. Additional information may become available afterwards; and can, in retrospect, make nonsense of the opinion held as at the time the articles were written and published. That’s a major difference between journalism (or in this case journalistic opinion) and history. Journalism is history in a hurry, while historians have the chance and time in their hands to review, analyze and critique what had happened in the past.
I will use one article in REFLECTIONS! to illustrate this point. In the REFLECTIONS! of December 1, 2023, I wrote about the great work that the minister of interior, Mr. Bunmi Tunji-Ojo is doing in that ministry, especially in the following parastatals: correctional services, immigration and civil defense. A month or so later, the minister got enmeshed in the scandal rocking the ministry of humanitarian affairs and poverty alleviation in what is now being called Edugate! Did his company’s involvement in the scandal affect the outcome of his sterling work he is doing in his ministry? No. Would I have written the article in question if I knew about his involvement in the scandal a week or so before the article surfaced? The answer is a resounding NO. That’s the benefit of hindsight historians have that journalists do not! Enough said.
Apart from the publication of my articles on Facebook, two online news outlets and one fortnightly newspaper have been publishing them for the wider audiences. I an grateful for their acceptance of my works. I have also attempted publishing on LinkedIn but observe the platform not to be very friendly with lengthy posts (there you go again!). I have also regularly sent it to close friends and families on WhatsApp. I receive critical feedback from few of them regularly, which is quite encouraging. As I commence the sophomore year, I hope to widen the reach of the community and audiences that have access to the content. I will leverage on the opportunity that technology provides. Sometimes I wonder how journalism is being practiced in this era (me not having the benefit of technology while in practice) especially when I recall that my first degree research topic was titled “the democratization of information and the role of new communication technology”. Having this topic in 1990, I could never have imagined how revolutionary technology would become today in the practice of journalism, and in our everyday lives.
But I already have a little feel of it: just with the aid of my smartphone, I am able to write this article. With access to internet, I can do a few factchecks, research and send the article to the “whole wide world”!
Happy First Anniversary to you REFLECTIONS! And t thanks to you my readers.
Short Takes
1. Kidnapping!
Things are getting worse in Nigeria from a security perspective. There is hardly any state that is spared. Because we have allowed this to fester, insecurity has gotten out of control. The security agencies do not know what to do; forget about what they say publicly. A most laughable thing is when they ask that relatives of kidnapped victims should not pay ransom to secure the release of their loved ones. More worrisome is that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is still behaving as if things are normal in Nigeria. The new normal is simply increased insecurity.
2. ECOWAS goes down!
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria should take the blame for wanting to kill ECOWAS! He had hardly taken over the presidency when he erroneously declared war on neighboring Niger because of the successful military coup in that country. REFLECTIONS! wrote a critical article against such move. Shamefully, it was an empty threat from a man who had not yet learned the ropes of governance and diplomacy; and whose country has many battles to fight. Because of the hypocritical stance of the subregional body including economic sanctions on Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, the three countries have pulled out of the bloc. ECOWAS cannot stand without these countries, or any country for that matter. Pragmatism is required to rein in these Sahel countries. We need each other. Sometimes you need to stoop to conquer.
3. Governance in Lagos?
The Lagos state government seems to have fallen asleep after winning election last year. To be sure, the governor gave a very good account of himself in the first three years of his government. He did excellently well managing the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He was front and centre. But since he won the election for a second term, governance has taken a back seat. Portholes on the major roads, new roads started have slipped on completion deadlines; touts are even more brazen; the commercial bus operators are now more lawless; slumps are multiplying; the homeless are everywhere, beggars are more daring; and insecurity has spiked. One can say traffic snarls have reduced but that is not because government has done anything right other than the fact that petrol prices have driven out some private cars from the roads. Can someone nudge Governor Sango-Olu to know that he has barely three years left!
4. The Naira?
Say Nothing!
Esiere is a former journalist
