When American President Donald Trump called Africa a shit hole, a lot of people got upset. They claimed that he had said what should not be said by any sane leader. A lot of theories were conjured just to distract us from the real reason why the American president addressed us in such a manner.

Come to think of it now, may I ask you dear fellow African. Are you proud of the political leadership we have in the continent?

 No matter any part of the world you are reading this article from, can you please state one African nation with a well spelt out national ideology, where its leadership makes you proud?

Owing to our present realities in Africa, I would permit you to mention Rwanda for now, as since after their civil war, President Paul Kegame has stubbornly stirred the ship of leadership in that nation to a deliberate path of safety, his number of years as the president notwithstanding.

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We must define what we call democracy in a way that suits our reality as Africans as long as we are getting good results from such patterns of leadership.

Moreso, I cannot say that South Africa which seems to be one of the most advanced African economies has a national ideology at the moment which all South Africans are rallied to.

One can also argue that Botswana, Mauritania, Egypt, Ghana can be lumped up into nations with national ideologies as its seen in their institutions. This entails that the youths of these nations have a lot of work to do to keep up with this philosophy in the years to come.

Unfortunately, I am a Nigerian by birth. We are well aware that my country is one of the countries with the largest population in Africa and that is amazing. Converting this huge population of young people into something phenomenal and exceptionally productive has seemed more like rocket science for our leaders.

Therefore, permit me to argue that the manner in which Nigeria is being run has totally robbed every one of us the “supposed citizens” of the privilege of having a nation where we are all loyal to the ideals of our country.

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Nigeria unfortunately is a nation with multiple ethnic and religious identities forced to coexist as a nation without these ethnic nationalities deliberately seating down and having a conversation on how they can make the best out of their ethnic diversity.

Each time I look at nations like Israel and how they have been able to thrive over these years inspite of multiple aggressions from most of their neighbours, you would understand with me that only rallying the citizens behind a national ideology can get these sorts of result you see their institutions achieve across board in that relatively small country.

When you read about how MOSSAD operatives are recruited and the type of high-end professionalism that goes into the process, you would have reasons to worry about our intelligence gathering agencies in Nigeria and what they consider before recruiting their personnel. Nigerian institutions across board with a few exceptions are lacking in excellence.

Looking at how long the Boko Haram insurgency has lasted in the North East, the militant herders’ crisis in the middle belt and the violent destructive arm of IPOB in the South East have operated without the security agencies effectively cutting off their logistics supply, infiltrating their ranks and getting their major financiers to answer for all these crimes against humanity, something tells one that these groups all have sympathizers in power, who are protecting them in a way or the other.

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These people protecting these groups of criminals maybe doing so because of religious/ethnic agenda which they may be loyal to or in some other cases, the greed for wealth which some of them maybe making from these violent crimes.

A country with the status of a nation would always have a common ideology and would always stick to keeping to it irrespective of whichever ethnicity or religion any citizen of such nation belongs to.

Nigeria unfortunately is divided very sharply along religious and ethnic lines and this explains why it may take forever for us to develop as a nation.

This is not about being a prophet of doom but in aviation sciences, when you want to fly a jet from point A to B, you must count the cost (maintenance services on the jet, refuel and dot all the I’s), draft a detailed flight plan and show your team mates clearly the path you all are taking to arrive at your destination. This is what a scheduled flight plan does for a pilot.

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Our reality in Nigeria differs so greatly from what is known in the aviation sciences, as we seem to be on a journey without a known destination and without having done what is needful to arrive at a specified destination and in good time. These explains the funny decisions taken by our political leaders across board.

Lack of national ideology explains why I see myself first as an Igbo man from the Southeastern region likewise my brothers and sisters from the north who see themselves as Hausa/Fulani, the west sees themselves as Yorubas, before they ever dare to see themselves as Nigerians. This paragraph here clearly shows that something is fundamentally wrong with our nationhood.

Most Nigerians at the moment believe that the entity called Nigeria is a business empire for the ruling class, who are always more committed to stoking ethnic, tribal and religious sentiments than getting to have us sit down and find ways to make the nation work for all of us.

Until we as Nigerians understand that Nigeria as it is in 2024 is headed for a disastrous crash, which military might or brutal police might would not avert, the better for us as a people.

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The time to come to the drawing board to have this probably uncomfortable conversations about our coexistence as a nation, the better it would be for us because our brothers from the North obviously have unique ideologies, that is at a sharp variance with the people of the southeast and southwest.

We must first of all accept our ideological differences and then make efforts to come to the table to have conversations about the way forward. We cannot continue to call ourselves a nation yet we live in institutionalised mutual suspicion of each other at all times.

Conclusively, if Nigeria must thrive and make the best out of its numerous human and natural resources, we must devolve into our component regions where we are expected to have regional ideologies which we would pursue with extreme commitment while we all now contribute to the center where the nation – Nigeria would be run from.

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No international community is interested in Nigeria enough to want to come and get involved in solving our internal problems. Always know that Russia, Israel, America etc. all have their internal problems and are not bothered by what happens to you all here in Africa as long as they get what they want from you to develop their nations. The Russia – Ukraine war should show every smart thinking person that Nigerian nightmares can only be fixed by the Nigerian people and not by strangers or world powers.