Steem4Nigeria Weekly Contest - Discussing the Instabilities in my Country. || by @xkool24 || 2nd August 2022

Hello friends, it nice joining us in the ongoing steem4nigeria community contest for this week and I welcome you all as I make my entry therein. I hope you stay relaxed and read through my submission. My thoughts would mainly be guided using the contest hints as stipulated.

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Discuss the current state of the country

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My country Nigeria is regarded as the giant of Africa. A country with the adage that when she sneezes, other African countries catch cold. This leaves it with no doubt of the strength and impacts it creates and wields within the continent. But does that match the current situation of the present? That is what we have to deal with.

It runs on geo-political zones with all the zones having at least six (6) federating states except the South Eastern region with five (5) and North-West with Seven (7). Just as the security experts would say, crime is local and if we look at it, every zone has its peculiarity both observed from a positive and negative perspective.

The current status of my dear country is termed a "A Nation on the Brink". The country is seen to be characterized by so many challenges that look unredeemable. The entire geopolitical zones have received their fair share of security lapses ranging from terrorist attacks, banditry, cattle rustling, farmers and herders clash, unknown gunmen attacks, kidnappings, secessionist movements, etc. These are one of many challenges ravaging the country's security system.
No wonder why the military is over-stretched.

We would not discount activities of misappropriation and corruption from the different sectors of the economy as also a major menace. Billions of Naira were looted by those in the corridor of power as well as our prestigious heads of Agencies and Departments. It has so much been abused that the integrity of borrowed funds that are made for infrastructural developments aren't guaranteed anymore due to this high scale of looting. And our financiers are no more in the best in their best of minds to lend to our dear country. Do we need to talk about the hyper contract scam/padding witnessed or rather the fraudulent budgetary process and padding seen on a yearly basis? This is now a norm as the legislative arm is also a collaborator in this dastardly act.

Okay, let's also look at the inflationary concerns bedeviling the nation where the local currency is on a free fall vis-a-vis the USD. Foreign reserves are on the low with sovereign savings (excess crude Oil account) badly devasted with withdrawals. The cost of living also has doubled with a worrisome catastrophe moment envisaged as the amount of debt servicing is almost a per with the revenue generated.

Let me shock us with a recent report from one of the media channels in the country on the daily killings that are ongoing in the country. From January to June 2022, a total number of 6,638 people have been killed which translates to 37 people on a daily average. I don't think any country would want to continue or sustain this killing spree.

Indeed, we cannot continue like this, this trend only portrays doom for the country. This is a situation where the economy, security, and integrity (leadership) are seen all collapsing at once.

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What are the Various issues that need to be addressed by the government?

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Just as I have listed some of the points while narrating some of the issues inherent in my dear country, I will be making bullet points of some of them here.

• Insecurity
• Poor Coordination and inadequate Management of Intelligent
• Improper Delineation of Roles and Orders of Security Agencies
• No Punishment for Failures
• Lack of Accountability and Hyper Corruption
• Poor Leadership

These are some of the pressing concerns that needed answers so as to fix the "Nation on the Brink".

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Do you think there are better ways things can be done differently for rapid change?

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Definitely YES. The right leadership style and altitude is a catalyst for the positive change we've longed for. The right leadership should be able to bring about an abrupt stop to unaccountability, corruption, and contract scams as well as the strong political will to make decisive decisions and policies.

We cannot continue to fondle issues relating to terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, and unknown gunmen attack with kid gloves. The military and entire security architecture has to be overhauled with a going concern scheduled training, welfare packages, and human/equipment provided to tackle issues of insecurity head-on

This immediate overhauling should be able to handle issues of improper delineation of roles amongst security agencies, poor coordination, and Intelligence management as well as assignment of severe and stain punishment for failures. No house stands stronger divided and hence there must be a political will to gear up stronger synergy amongst all security agencies.

The body language of the presidency should be one that frowns completely on acts of misappropriation and corruption. This should be the positive drive that runs from top to bottom. More emphasis should be made on Prevention and system strengthening rather than waiting to deal with the issues.

Having the political will to drive the economy into prosperity and a producing nation guarantees job employment which is a catalyst in crime reduction and redundancy amongst the youths, better living conditions for her citizenry, low inflationary outputs, etc.

Conclusion

In conclusion, insecurity should never be politicized given to its devastating outcomes but should rather be handled head-on. Just as listed above, most of these listed concerns are interwoven which simply see that each issue raised has some relative ties with the other. Better leadership style, zero tolerance for corruption in all sectors, as well as creating a production economy that avails more jobs and better living conditions to its citizens should be one of the main drivers of a prosperous nation.

For the organizers of this contest, Thank you for putting up this great idea.