100s of Years Later and Still Uncivilized?

Sink or swim, as empathy goes, so we go.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

If you are a Nigerian or if you ever have lived in or have interactions with my people, you cannot but wonder and ask “Why has my nation been increasingly becoming underdeveloped in recent years?” I think I’ve found the major reason. Read on.

Through the view of developmental economics wide lens, there has been much progress. But at the macro level, it’s been more like a journey of one or two-step forward checkmated by three or more steps backwards.

You don’t have to be a management or development guru to conclude thus.

In Port Harcourt where I live, it is easier to have access to the latest Apple and Samsung phones than it is to get regular electricity to recharge them. That is even if you can afford to purchase them. Here, new or “second new” flashy cars greet your eyes on our highways every day. But, apart from big cities, deadly potholes mark many of our interstate roads. Travelling on some of these roads, you will often wonder if our nation is just emerging from the civil war that ended fifty years ago.

Even where new roads are being constructed, you notice that the rural or urban communities they criss-cross are being swallowed up by poverty, filth and pollution. All these ills are continuously…