At a certain point in
time I had cause to think about it. After several brooding on the issue I came
to the understanding according to the bible that “…the curse causeless shall not
come.” Proverbs 26:2. Then I said to myself that there must be a root
cause for all these predicaments plaguing our dear nation. It is not enough to
talk about it as so many people do, I choose to take conscious steps to finding
out what exactly went wrong and proffer a lasting solution to the problem.
I wanted to know what
the PROBLEMS truly were. So, I understudied the other problems afore mentioned
and understood that they were not the actual problem; if they were, why was it
that all the solutions proffered in Nigeria’s situation, which have worked
elsewhere, did not work in Nigeria. This is because the assumed problems of
Nigeria are simply consequences of the root cause. It is just as though a
doctor is administering drugs for Malaria on a body sick of cancer. That would
rather exacerbate the condition. The book of John 8:32 say, “And
ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” If we do
not know the truth we would not make any difference in our pursuit of development
and change. Rather, we would aggravate the situations in the country.
In the attempt to
know, I, Mark Emmanuel Amechi, understood by books and articles addressing the
uncommon situation of Nigeria, that a lot of people have attempted remedying
the situation of Nigeria, which is good. But they have not succeeded because
they proffered certain foreign remedies that are not peculiar to the Nigerian
case. Every nation’s problem is unique in itself and requires a unique approach
to it. Most importantly, they are not taking into account, certain procedures
that are of top priority to problem solving. One of such procedures is running
a trace of past events in history. We have completely isolated the events in
history from the problem analysis.
My friend, have you
ever wondered that our challenges as a nation today could have been based on
certain events that took place a long time ago? I mean a very long time ago, I
am talking about a very very long time ago. Think upon this; WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN
AFRICA/ NIGERIA BEFORE INDEPENDENCE?!
Have you any idea? Well if you do not, it is high time you knew your history.
In an attempt to
personally find out the true and major cause of Nigeria’s predicament, I
understood by books that we need to go back in time to some epochs in history
that affected the course of the people of Nigeria and Africa at large.
Confucius, a Chinese philosopher stated that we must study the past if we must
divine
the future. Nelson Mandela of South Africa, in one of his quotes,
stated that the past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make
decisions for the future. He
went further to say that we should look back at the past and select
what is good and leave behind what is bad. Lyndon Baines Johnson, a
onetime U.S. president stated that “a nation like a person, not conscious of
its own past is adrift without purpose against the contending forces of
dissolution.” Another German politician noted that “a people not prepared to face
its own history cannot manage to face its own future.”
You see, from the above statements, you will agree
with me that it is quite important that Nigeria must look at the past
critically to understand her present situation. Africa and Nigeria in
particular did not just get to where they are now by mere chance or fate or
whatever you would call it. Nigeria is not underdeveloped because the leaders
are bad. We are not suffering because we do not know what it takes to survive.
In the course of history, something happened that altered the entire development
process in the whole of Africa. Now let us go back in time and ascertain what
took place in Africa. 
