RE: Africa is Doomed - Especially Nigeria.
Awesome post, well constructed and articulated. You are an awesome writer and I wish I saw this post from the first day. I have just followed you to make sure I don't miss this sort of write ups anymore.
What actually attracted me to your post was the caption, in as much as i agree partly with your submissions and proposed solutions. I disagree fully with the caption of this write up, the Africa that I know and i'm a part of isn't doomed in anyway, there's great hope for greatness, all we need are good policies and obviously that can only be offered by a good leader who truly loves Nigeria. We have had good leaders but we've had non that have the interest of our country above theirs.
On the issue of corruption, your solution is rather brutish and ultimately wouldn't create any lasting solution. Killing of all our corrupt leaders could be compared to making plans to eliminate sin which you and I know is not visible. You would only succeed in killing the pertuators and not the evil(corruption) in itself. First of all, what we need to understand is that man by nature is a corrupt being, he is only prevented by a system. So the only solution to minimizing corruption( yes I said minimizing because it cannot be eradicated), is to create systems that actually prevents same. Execution of the pertuators of corruption could be likened to killing your goat for eating your yam that you left in the open, when you could actually just have kept the yam in a more secure place.
I wish i could write more, but let me stop here for now.. With your permission I could write a rejoinder reaction to this your post. How about that?
By the way great post @edumurphy.
a) You definitely don't need my permission to write a rejoinder. In fact, I would love that!
b) I concur about creating systems to prevent that (and I believe I did address that in the writeup)
Humanity is a sinful being that knows it is a sinful being hence why we fence ourselves in with rules and laws and commandments to be less sinful and less corrupt. True enough. We need systems to minimize it.
The most fundamental of those systems however is punishment for the already-guilty. If they are pardoned while those who sin after them are punished, that is unfair. Eliminating the corrupt leaders is not meant to eliminate corruption (after all, even Britain and America and China are corrupt); it is meant to make the survivors smarter about it, to make sure they know they can do it but not with impunity. That they must be careful, that they must be accountable and, most of all, that they must actually do the job they were appointed to do and have the stealing be a side-hustle (rather than having the stealing be the entire point of the exercise as we currently do.)
Without some measure of consequences, things will continue as they are. With consequences in place, then the rest of the plan comes into play where education is improved, standard of living is improved so that people are less desperate and there is room in their lives for goals other than money-money-money.
Did you know Nigeria has a space program? I do. It's a small building on a big piece of land on a highway in Abuja. Do you suppose they have a budget? Do you suppose that budget is being spent on heavy lifter rockets and infra-red satellites?
Thanks so much for the deep comment 👍