This is the first part of the essay, I shall post other parts in time.


Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
_{Bob Marley, Redemption Song}


As long as the mind of the Nigerian remains untransformed, drives by the Nigeria Federal Government to promote the country’s image are doomed to failure and may remain nothing more than a waste of resources. The measure of a person is not in the noise the person makes, but in the person's actions. After all, an empty container makes the loudest noise, and the proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating.

But what is this Nigerian mind that needs changing?

The Nigerian mind is as metaphorically plain and uninspiring as the nation's aesthetically barren flag.

The flag exemplifies the lack of imagination and astuteness that plague the nation, which is magnified by the fact that the flag came about through a national competition, with the design selected as the best of the best! Before I am condemned for lack of patriotism, I should make my point:

What this analogy illustrates is the average mindedness and the lack of creativity that attend those that direct the affairs of the nation. The collective mind of the nation remains stunted and unenlightened. This is not an indictment on the educatedness of the Nigerian, no. Nigeria does have her own share of professors. The question is, how have they impacted the Nigerian society?

One can be in error concerning the distinction between enlightenment and educatedness (this last being simply book knowledge that fails to transform) and think that the Nigerian problem stems from an uneducated ruling elite. Simple evaluation, however, debunks the notion. One needs only to read the manifestos of newly elected or appointed officials to realize that the problem lies not in the lack of projective imagination (count the many visions so and so over the decades) but elsewhere.

Further, were this problem of education, we would at least see a measure of difference in the ministries and parastatals of professors appointed to governmental offices. The common denominator regarding these professors is that, in so far as they remain classroom teachers, they voice incessant criticism of the Nigerian system, but no sooner are they appointed to governmental positions than they out-thieve and out-graft the barely educated officials.

The vicious circle of corruption is so persistent, consistent, and pervasive that one wonders whether or not the Nigerian bent to corruption is not as inherent as his/her DNA.

Furthermore, the mind of the Nigerian is so warped that it seems incapable of planning for the future, beside the empty gestures of drawing manifestos not intended for execution in the first place. Similarly, this mind seems capable of singing only one song, and believe me, it is not the National Anthem. You hear it after every election cycle. It begins:

Now I may reap from the fields I've not sown,
Steal from the nation my greed to enthrone!
Now that I'm a kleptocratic elite,
Tell, how best may I embezzle and cheat?

But less we remain in the realm of high-flown abstraction, we should illustrate this point by concrete examples.

Let's examine an area that is surely dear to Nigerians: Football.

The World Cup debacle illustrates this seeming inherent bent to corruption. First, it was the thieving of not less than $200,000 dollars from the coffers of the NFF, meant for the Super Eagle’s Africa qualifier match against Mozambique; then there was the fiasco of the substandard hotel the NFF booked for the Eagles, which one can only assume was a ploy to save money on accommodation to be later siphoned into their own pockets; this was followed by the plane incident which resulted in the Eagles being stranded for 24 hours in London.

According to a report in Kick Off Magazine on-line (posted on 01-06-2010), the NFF had acted against the directives of the Sport Minister in chartering the ill-fated airline. The incident smacked of venality.

What becomes apparent very quickly is that what occupies the mind of the average Nigerian official is not how to advance the national agenda or how to find ways to help the citizenry but how to find ways to embezzle national funds. In fact, corruption is so entrenched in the system that public officials no longer steal by stealth.

The attempt by the NFF to send a 200-member "official" delegation to the World Cup, the institution of 14 committees for the tournament as if they were the host, the chartering of a plane by the members of the congress, that nearly crashed, on the pretense of going to South Africa to “support’ the president; all illustrate this corruptible mentality, which creates an appearance of duty but is however a ruse to divert money into private pockets.

All these are so glaring and apparent that Nigerians are no longer fooled by these pretenses. For instance, the very name "committee" is synonymous to embezzlement in the collective consciousness.

In examining the question of planning, the above-mentioned situations are good examples of the gross ineptitude of Nigerian leaders. Take the hotel incident. Common sense knows that in competitions, every advantage matters. It is baffling then that the NFF, which had stated its intent for the World Cup as winning it all, would book such a disadvantageous accommodation for the players.

The reappointment of coach Shuaibu Amodu after his disappointing run with the Super Eagles in 2002 is equally baffling, only outdone by his sack at the eve of the competition. Every turn the NFF made in the months leading to the tournament exposed a lack of basic planning, a fact that almost cost us a place in the competition.

Since such international competitions as this have a precise recurring calendar, one would imagine that this fact would afford an opportunity for those in charge of these affairs to make attendant concise and specific plans towards achieving the goal of winning said competitions, or at least, plan to make great impact at these competitions. Not so with Nigeria.

There is seldom any laid out plan, and if any, such plans exist in name only, hence the chaos that reign at the eve of every competition. Expect the frittering away to waste the four years we now have at our disposal to reboot for the next World Cup. What is sure is that there will be another sacking of a coach, the stealing of more money, and a return of disorder.

Watch out for Part II, and please leave comments