Towards Building a New Nigeria: National Re-Orientation or Transformation?

Nigerian leaders, since political independence in 1960, have come up with one sort of puerile or half-baked programme or policy or the other about mobilization and orientation.  They cannot be regarded as philosophies or ideologies because they were never anchored on any deep social or ethnic groundings accepted by the majority and propelled by the people to achieve set objectives and applicable to all without fear or favour.  Even a simple program like the onetime even and odd car numbers in Lagos exempted many powerful persons and interests as to make the program fail at the beginning.  Same with the so-called law on tinted car windows that applied only to a few, and was operated for a few weeks in Abuja and that was it.  The War Against Indiscipline (WAI), Operation Boycott the Boycottables, MAMSER, Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), Ethnical Revolution and so on, meant very little to the majority of Nigerians.  They were ephemeral, superficial, uncoordinated, ad-hoc or post-hoc and lacked any philosophical content and leadership.  While WAI relied in force and bred opposition and resentment alongside its implementation others like Rebranding Nigeria was nothing but a huge waste of money and time.  Nations that rebrand do not go about shouting that they are good people!  Rather, through careful, systematic and planned programs and policies of transformation, reformation, refocusing, regeneration, redirection, reconstruction, and positive leadership, they show to the world that they are indeed rebranding and thus attract tourists, investors, investments, foreign aid and respect.  India, South Africa, Vietnam and Brazil are nations that have used this effectively to address serious dents in their respective national image.