Happy Independence

Today marks the 51st anniversary celebration of our great country Nigeria. This country has a lot of potential and prophecies over her. We think becasue of all these positivite indications, Nigeria should automatically become a great country with abundance for its citizenry. Alas it is not so.

Despite our nation's wealth, we still see poverty plaguing our society. It is evident in everything in our society-

1. Our education system (leading to mass failure of even NECO. Simple NECO! Ah!), 
2. Our electricity -with unsolved power supply issues despite many millions invested in it.
3. Our transportation - expressed in a myriad of bad roads and all (you would think a meteor landed on some of our roads.)

Poverty is evident everywhere (well almost everywhere) most especially in our minds. The kind of environment we live in is really swallowed up in this poverty evidenced in various sectors of our society. The absolute disregard of law and order in our nation is another evidence of the poverty around us. Most of these things are like gigantic Goliaths, constantly harrassing the polity, while our Saulish leaders hide in their tents and run commentaries and give speeches while ignoring the problems.

So what are the indicators of a great society? Here are a few:

1. Tolerance
2. Knowledge
3. Access to basics (shelter, etc)
4. Freedom of expression
5. Justice, fairness and equity
6. Representative governenace
7. Dignity
8. Secutrity
9. Freedom of choice
10. Individual responsibiltiy to society
11. Freedom to aspire

These things are what the government should provide. But what do we do when Goliath roars and all the leaders do is quake in their boots and run into their tents to hide? That's the purpose of this post-a call to action by the Davids. If you read the story of David conquering Goliath, we see the same situation being played out in our nation at the moment. When no one could do something about it, God sent David into the equation even unknown to David himself.

David got there and was infuriated at the way Goliath was pouring out insult upon insult to the entire nation of Israel. He couldn't take it anymore. Who was this uncircumcised guy embarrassing the nation like this.  Very soon his words got to the ears of the king. Eventually he went to fight Goliath and what were his credentials?

1. He had defended his father's sheep against a lion and a bear. 
2. He had a covenant with God (and Goliath didn't).

The truth is that most of us have solved one problem or the other in our communities. When we didn't have power, we bought generators. When our gutters were blocked, we didn't wait for the LGA chairman to do something. We motivated people and we did the actual clearing of the drains ourselves. We have been our own PHCN, water co-operation, ministry of transport and so on. All these are the qualifications we have to bring these Goliaths down. What are we still waiting for? we've got God on our side on this one! Happy Independence and welcome to a new Nigeria!