by Stephen Oyedemi

When a government fails to provide the basic enabling environments and security for citizens to prosper in their activities, businesses and engagements, what we see is a descent into disorder. When families fail to live up to their role of raising responsible citizens, we experience a descent into disorder.

By nature, gravity tends to bring every object down to earth. This is as a result of a pull from the earth on every object around it. By nature also, every moving object tend to come to rest when you stop applying the force moving it; this is as a result of the friction occurring between  the object and the surface on which it moves. In short, by nature, things and life in general tend to descend into disorder, into a state of chaos, dirtiness and disorganization when the force keeping them in place seizes to exist.

This natural descent however does not exempt human potentials, talents and other attributes that beautifies the human. In view of this and in the context of Nigeria, it is however necessary for us to differentiate social and economic setbacks caused by governments from those caused by families, institutions and the individuals themselves. This is because every stake holder has a contribution in one way or the other to the downfall of order that today surrounds us.

When a government fails to provide the basic enabling environments and security for citizens to prosper in their activities, businesses and engagements, what we see is a descent into disorder. When families fail to live up to their role of raising responsible citizens, we experience a descent into disorder. When individuals fail to rise even in the face of difficulties and make things work, we experience a descent into disorder.

The government however has a significant responsibility as it has the potential to motivate its people into action or demotivate them into laziness if it so chooses. For a country like Nigeria which adds more than 4 million children to its population yearly, development and infrastructural provision would be about projecting and trying to meet the need of the projected population. The private sector will play a significant role in this if we are to ever achieve something tangible. Unfortunately, what we see is widespread unseriousness in government and prolonged public mismanagement and underperformance of critical sectors of the economy as a result of high government involvement and associated negative influences. It is worthy to note that ignorance seems to be a greater challenge than corruption. Therefore, the importance of a robust basic education cannot be overemphasized.

In the face of the disorder we have descend into, governments, institutions, families, and the individual should rise to save ‘order’ from the pull of ‘gravity’; help to control our population and environment; and make the world around us a better place to live in.  “…The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain.”

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This article was published with permission from Omojuwa.com

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