THE BASICS, NOT THE GRANDIOSE
Now and then Nigerians hold their own assembly apart from the ones in Abuja and the 36 states capital cities. You need to experience the deliberations. Some times it is as stormy as the formal ones, other times, it is effusion of lamentation. Once in a while sobriety prevails. Some of those are when the common suffering and deprivations slap everybody's consciousness. Hunger is a common denominator - it doesnt have any respect for tribe, religion or colour.
This day in a bus commuting from Lagos to Abuja a session of the informal assembly held. After all the banter, it succeeded in discussing Nigeria's issues dispassionately. It didn't waste time to find who caused it.
Whatever that caused you to join the bus instead of flying was not the issue. Everybody is stuck. A journey that was billed to terminate at 5pm maximum only ended at 10pm. Meanwhile the bus was supposed to be the fastest. So to try to pretend to salvage the lost opportunities, lamentation filled everywhere - seeking catharsis. Somehow one of the members of the informal assembly summoned everybody to be sober by moving a "be sensible" motion. Motioning to the imaginary Speaker, he calmed everybody down and began to asked serious rhetoric questions: Why hasn't train services worked well in Nigeria? Why is it that it is only the cities of Abuja and Lagos work as urban areas and you must visit those places to do anything meaningful in Nigeria? While are we not developing centres in the six regional blocs of the country? By the way, why is the Minister of Science & Technology thinking about phasing out mud houses when he doesn't know how many local inventors there are in Nigeria? Why are they not being asked to find solutions to the basic needs of our people? How come Aba shoes makers cannot be made to satisfy Nigeria's shoes needs? Shouldn't there be a way of modernizing the production of Aso Oke, Akwete cloths etc? Then he deposed - we are not paying attention to the basic issues and forever looking for the grandiose.