Nigeria: Our Ministers No Get Time For Book O! 

Buhari with Nigeria's new cabinet Minsters

Successive governments in Nigeria actively engage in fads, ideas or gimmicks in order to define their miserable tenures. The online attempt at encouraging Nigeria's Federal Ministers to read by suggesting reading lists is nonsensical.  On the face of it, reading challenges the individual by opening possibilities, maturing the mind and generally creating an educated and informed person that is capable of adapting and contributing to the progress of his or her environment. The ideas gained from books must be adapted to local conditions in order for the society to benefit from erudition. For the Nigerian elite, their reading list should not consist of books but a forced immersion into the Nigerian condition.

The Federal Ministers should carry out their daily duties in darkness [glorified with lanterns and candles] like most Nigerians, on a daily basis, so they can 'read' about electrical power. Keke NAPEP should be their official means of transportation so they can 'read' the bad roads and maddening traffic. When they are sick, the best thing is to take their miserable persons to the village community clinics so they can 'read' about healthcare in the country. All their children should undergo education from kindergarten to secondary level in selected villages [contact me for details] across the nation so they can 'read' the educational system. All ministers should subsist on the country's minimum wage monthly, so they can 'read' what minimum wage is worth. All security personnel and official cars attached to them and their families should be withdrawn so they can 'read' about fuel scarcity and security challenges facing the common man. 

Our problem is not about a 'book-culture' deficient governance because we tend to have 'cultured and learned' men and women in government; the fact is that governance in Nigeria brims with parasitic, conniving, thieving and most importantly, unaccountable people with democratic pretensions.  They quote western democratic pedigrees and laws when they seek advantages, or to justify their kleptomania but are eerily silent when it comes to their responsibilities - at which point, their philosophical pretension dies and their assumed wisdom withers at its roots. 

The intellectualization of ideas from books is quite different from intellectualizing the Nigerian condition or the willingness to do something about it. Federal Ministers know that there is poverty in the land and they understand the Nigerian condition. Long before becoming ministers, they felt what the common man felt and understood his pains because they lived and had to interact with real Nigerians every day. But being in government and in power in Nigeria comes with the advantage of having your ruffled feathers smoothed out; your needs are met, and all you have to swear to, is maintaining the status quo. Things don't look so desperate when you are in government with a retinue of aids that are ready to kill on your behalf.

A former aid to the Jonathan administration recently averred that the president was interested in making his cabinet an informed one. Jonathan, according to the aid, encouraged the provision of books from foreign and Nigerian authors and cabinet meetings sometimes were opportunities for book reviews! That was fantastic, but a total waste of time. How government-induced reading clubs directly solve the problem of infrastructure, health, education and security in the country is anyone's guess - a government that shared trillions [see Dasukigate] of dollars to political vampires in order to get re-elected. It is better to have a president and a cabinet that understands the urgency of provision of roads and electricity as a right instead of those revelling in their grasp of Schopenhauer, Hume, Kant or Achebe. Schopenhauer ko, sopono ni - wetin concern monkey with flyover? 

There is a total disconnection between the grasp of the world's intellectual corpus and its application in solving Nigeria's problems. This is because as a nation, we have not come to terms with what it means to be a Nigerian; what the rulers owe citizens and what citizenship rights are inalienable.

Recently, a governor said, “In the last two years, I have been busy with opposition, new political party and elections. I used to read a book a week when I was less busy. But now, I just read files and documents and so on. My advice to anyone that thinks being Governor is nice, don’t try it. You don’t get to read; you don’t have a life.”

If the rulers don't 'have a life,' it means they are mostly on autopilot when discharging the affairs of state. Without time for reflection and study, the mind of rulers, become numb to entreaties from less paranoid minds. 

When the Nigerian political system is all about seeking, stealing, and holding unto power, instead of service to the people, desperation becomes the norm and desperate men eventually eat themselves, and unfortunately the nation.