Nigeria Sliding Dangerously, Needs Urgent Rescue, Group Laments

Sunday Okobi
A new political movement, New Nigerian Nationalists (NNN), has expressed great sadness that the country is going through the most dangerous time in its history, adding that if the people hesitate to muster the courage to halt the sliding, Nigeria would be badly decimated beyond repairs.

 The leaders of the politically-charged group called for the rescue of the country at a world press conference held in Lagos yesterday, where they also decried the crass lack of quality and visionary leadership, adding that NNN is poised to take over the mantle of leadership of the country and provide good governance that would touch the lives of the people as well as heal their wounds.
While blaming instability in the Nigerian society on ‘total lack of discipline, impunity, collapse of the educational system, lack of societal value among others’, NNN, called on all well-meaning Nigerians to join the movement for good.

 “While we carry on with careless indifference and wanton abandonment, it is sad to acknowledge that Nigeria is once again at the most dangerous time in its entire history that is next to probably civil war which has left the country badly decimated.”
According to a Board of Trustees (BoT) member, Paul Erinne in his speech, the festering sores of the Nigerian civil war has refused to heal after 50 years due to “leadership that could not effectively tender and heal the wound.”

Erinne said: “All the three major spheres of our national life are almost completely broken down. Politically, the Nigerian nation is at sea as leadership has completely lost grip and understanding of what national progress is all about, while all social structures and infrastructures of managing the society have almost totally collapsed. Our system and processes have become ghost of themselves.”

He added that while social safety nets have worn out into absolute despair, the country security is down to ground zero, adding that “today, Nigerian politics is begging for urgent and serious intervention, hence the NNN movement, which is ready to rescue, revive and reactivate the country and put her back on a noble and desirable path of safety, security and stability.

The nationalist lamented that those who spearheaded the fight against the country’s slide into the cesspool of corruption of its fundamental value system were thoroughly eliminated and shoved out of the polity.
In her remark, the National Coordinator of the NNN, Mrs. Foluso Makanjuola-Oyenuga, who accused the Nigerian elite for being the beneficiaries of the failed state of the country, described the recent Independence day celebration as a show of shame as there was nothing to celebrate “because majority of the people they claim to serve have been abandoned to perpetually live in abject penury.”

While also berating the political class for also refusing to spend the stolen commonwealth of the people in Nigeria, Makanjuola-Oyenuga, who also  announced that they have contacted the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on their plans to form a formidable political party, alleged that “they (political elite) practically live abroad, holiday abroad, study abroad, seek medical treatment abroad; establish businesses abroad and they only come to Nigeria to take the money they need to fund their international opulence.
“Even when they are home, they do not moderate their tastes. They bully us off the streets with their long convoys of exotic and rare vehicles loaded with whip and gun wielding security guards as if our people are common animals to be constantly beaten into line.

“They build fantastic estates with proceeds fraudulently made from our common patrimony and create a world of insensitive affluence in the midst of pervasive poverty. They have regular water provision, constant power supply, impregnable security or so they assume, among other good necessaries of life that the majority of their fellow citizens are perpetually denied. These overindulged leaders of the Nigerian nation have good reasons to celebrate.”

She noted that celebration of any kind in the country would start when the lives of the people begin to have meaning and the government and the society begin to place the necessary and ultimate premium on the life and wellbeing of every citizen of the nation.

“Celebration would start when the resources of the country are adequately and effectively deployed to provide meaningful living for every Nigerian without any form of discrimination. We shall celebrate when food is made available to all of us after appropriately harnessing the abundant agricultural potentials of the country. For us, celebration would start when there are good medical services for all the citizens,” the national coordinator insisted.

Another member, Board of Trustee, Pa Solomon A. Adegbolagun, said the group would soon embark on what he called the New Nigeria Walk which he said  is a genuine and fully televised, video and photography recorded walk designed to  kick off in Lagos and terminate in Abuja, covering a distance of about 761kilometres and spread over about 45 days, calling on Nigerians who are interested in the vision of the group to join freely.

According to him, “Our vision is very clear fellow compatriots: it is to maximise the use of democratic processes to build a nation of citizens and not of slaves. It is a vision that challenges us all to stop being slaves and start being citizens. It is a vision that is committed to peacefully, collectively but unstoppably liberate our people from prolonged poverty and pain with all the resources available to us within the bounds of law and human decency, and irreversibly enthrone the era of liberty, equality and prosperity. Ours is a historical vision of care, concern, commitment and commission to birth a great new nation.”