There has been a lot of destruction of oil-related infrastructure and facilities in the Niger-Delta over the last decade-and-half. There has also been an incredible amount of oil theft, so-called bunkering, with billions of dollars effectively stolen from the public purse by a variety of groups.
There has also been a recurrently violent response from the Nigerian Armed Forces and Nigerian Police Force, with a variety of communities bearing the brunt in a sort of "collective punishment" of the innocent and guilty alike.
Oddly enough, there are people who insist the destruction of infrastructure and theft of billions is a political statement, a protest against neglect of the Delta and against the lack of "resource control".
And on the other side, there are those who defend the federal response, repeating all of the usual cliches sovereign governments use to defend their right to crush citizens who rebel.
But there is something more important than this specific event, and the specific choices and decisions being made, the actions taken and the reactions in response.
Why does it always boil down to choosing between one bad thing and another bad thing?
And why is it, when presented with a problem, we respond, not by solving the problem, but by creating another problem and then insisting that one problem will be defeated by the other problem? And there are always opposition groups that protest at the problem being created to solve the first problem, except that their own alternatives are often worse than the first two problems.
At the end of the day, whichever options wins, loses or draws, the federal republic is stuck with ... a problem (or more).
It happens all the time, like a knee-jerk reaction to any stimuli.
The most annoying thing about it is people start to refer to stuff like "the Nigerian Factor" as if there is some special reason we have not resolved what are otherwise simple and straightforward issues.
I honestly believe that the citizens of Nigeria, if presented with better options and possibilities, would choose those options over the pointless pendulum we have right now. But at this point it would be difficult for anyone to present those new options because we have had at least three generations, since before freedom regained in 1960, that have been deeply inculcated in a particular set of "explanations" for every issue. These citizens are actually acting rationally based on the information available to them, making decisions on the basis of what they believe to be truths from trusted sources, and the outcome of the decisions is a continuous cycle of unnecessary problems.
No country is problem free of course, but we need to progress to the more advanced and complicated problems, instead of being stuck at stage one trying to figure out stuff everyone else figured out decades and centuries ago. Haba, we are still trying to figure out electricity.
But again, notice the explosion in cell phone use, once the barriers were brought down? Or the explosion in our video film industry, once entrepreneurs realized there was money to be made there?
Give Nigerians an opening, an opportunity and we will use it.
Give the citizenry a better set of options, a better set of choices, and you will be surprised at how quickly the federal republic will rise.
In the coming weeks I hope to find time to talk about some of these "choices" we are forced to make, and perhaps even present a few of the "better choices" we could make (and could have made in years past).
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