Regression

I got a forward email recently with pictures of Lagos back in the day, in the 60’s and 70’s...

...There were pavements, department stores, there was no filth lining the streets. I’ll go beyond the pictures and assume that people could walk across town without fear of armed robbery, being knocked over by a 12 year old okada driver and his passenger who is carrying 3 split unit air conditioners on his head, or fear of their car being engulfed in pot holes large enough to engulf them.

In the 60’s and 70’s we were on a journey somewhere and had we continued along that path, dare I say that we may have far superseded development in many parts of the world. Somewhere along the line our development was derailed by mass consumption of a cocktail of greed, uncontrollable population growth, oil money, and a double shot more greed. The previous generation traded the greater good for personal gain, and at the rate we are going the cocktail is becoming more potent. In years to come we may look back to the two-thousands and say... “wow the good old days”

At some point in history union bank had more sophisticated operations than HSBC (then Midland bank), whilst Midland was still using paper tickets, Union bank had some form of automation. We had clean beaches, attracting tourists from far and near, we had safe roads, and a clean environment. However somewhere along the line we went into regression, we started going ‘up the down staircase’, undid what was done, and drove further into under development. The story department store that once stood on broad street has been replaced with market stalls selling poor quality 2nd hand goods. I never went into Kingsway stores, but I am sure the merchandise in the store was Nigerian – My grandfather had a mini studio in there so by virtue of that I shall assume that other Nigerians sold their merchandise. We swapped home grown goods for made in China, our domestic products were no longer desired, and even if they had been there was no infrastructure to support it. We exchanged a maintenance culture for a cost cutting strategy. It is no longer noble to make an honest living with your skills and talents, it is more expedient to “go into politics”, trade – making a dollar out of 15 cents... And so the regressive spiral continued till we landed ourselves in this black hole, further and further inside a dark under-developed abyss.

A black hole where nothing works, yet we circle around the destruction, destitution and debris of a city once destined for greatness in our luxury cars, wearing luxury clothes, oblivious to the failed state we live in. It begs the question, how far back do we have to go before we actually notice how desperate our situation is. Perhaps till when we have regressed as far back as wearing tiger skin toga’s and sitting in mud caves rubbing sticks together to make fire. We have played politics for too long; we have free styled development for too long; it is about time we put aside the charade and realise that we are regressing at an incredible rate, we need to put a plan in place, we need to manage our population, solve our infrastructure, resuscitate our healthcare system, redefine our government, and most importantly fix our educational system. We can no longer wait for the government to do these things, we have given them 50 years. The private sector must begin to lead change, else in 30 years our generations will be sending emails with pictures of flooded streets, okada crowded bridges, lamenting about the good old days when we had 2 hours of light a month. It is never too late to be the great country that we could’ve been.

Xoxo.