To make a new world is
sometimes not the work of reasonable men but rather the effect of the actions
of a few unreasonable men. This may be the only way that Nigeria can see past
the shambles of its current state towards a future free from the shackles of
inherited corruption and cynical mediocrity.
The world is full of reasonable men. Nigeria is
full of apologists of reason. Whether it is the obviously poor man who stands
on the street littered with his own excesses such as pure water bags, Tom Tom
wrappers and cigarette butts or the man who sits in his office no different
from the former. He drinks his water from a plastic bottle, smokes his
cigarette and pops a Tom Tom into his mouth to mask the strong and unmistakable
smell of nicotine. Then he disposes of his excesses in the waste paper bin, justified
in his self-righteousness that he is positively different from the other man on
the street. At least, he has done his part. And quite reasonably too don’t you
think? But then the cleaner cleans out the office at the end of the day and
takes out the trash. The trash then goes to the overgrown plot at the back of
the office and is discarded there regardless of the obvious caveat that reads,
“Do not dispose of refuse here, by
order.” By the next day the wind blows in its mischievous fury as it heralds a
rain storm or the relentless harmattan winds. The disposed trash is then blown
into the street and no one is the wiser where it must have originally come
from. He never asks how the trash is disposed of after all, he’s the boss
and he is reasonably not accountable for his employee’s actions in the course
of his duties. His chain of command ends in the trash basket, nothing more! How
reasonable.
Just recently, a third world country launched
its first space exploration rocket headed for the planet which has been the
subject matter of various speculations and curiosity in the astrological
community for countless years. That planet has also not been spared by
Hollywood who have also exploited such curiosity and made several block buster
movies one of which is titled, “The red planet.” And so, on the 5th
of November, 2013, India launched its first ever unmanned rocket scheduled to
arrive at its destination in approximately ten months. This launch in itself
was quite significant because India was in a race to beat the Asian giant China
to be amongst the elite few countries to have ever placed a technological foot
–or in this case a technological wheel, on Mars. But then here, we must be
reasonable. A third world country, spending millions of dollars to reach worlds
beyond the earth’s moon in a race which does not benefit the vast majority of its
masses, poor and privileged alike? It would simply have been reasonable if
India had just diverted such immense funds and sunk it into let’s say… its
growing medical field, the educational sector, infrastructure, social security,
food and of course its economy generally. How reasonable, a reasonable man
would have said.
But let’s now be unreasonable as the cliché of
reason may have been flawed from the onset by reason of the human factor
involved. After all, I did say that the world is full of reasonable men. What
then would be the gain to repeat to them what they already know? That would
only be tantamount to giving an answer to an obvious rhetorical question,
wouldn’t it?
I also did mention that Nigeria is full of
apologists of reason. But with all our reason, we have created monsters out of our
youth who have either seen more comparative advantage in being educated by militants
or insurgent terrorist organisations like the Boko Haram. With all our reasonableness, we have succeeded in
driving millions of people to seek employment in the lucrative world of cyber
fraud and we have even gone as far as popularly nicknaming such self-employed
entrepreneurs as “yahoo boys.” Yet, we have always been reasonable. Just as it
would be reasonable for us to turn up our noses at India’s rocket launch to
explore Mars and in the process beat China to it just like the United States beat
the USSR to land on the moon!
And so from here on, I have decided to see what
the other side of reason is, the unreasonable side. Or as some may say, that to
stand on the edge of reason is to be unreasonable itself! I stand to be
wilfully unreasonable when I say that Nigeria should start investing in sending
its own rocket to Mars. And by the word investing, I mean heavily so. For after
53 long years of being reasonable, I can without doubt say that we seem to
have found ourselves right back where we
started, arguably some even say we are worse off. After being ruled by those who
plundered our natural resources for their personal aggrandisement, it seems
fair to finally ask, where lies the edge
of reason so I may stand on it! We have blamed the colonialists for ever so
long. Laid woes and bitten our fingers at their legacy and cursed that
providence can bear witness to the current shambles and tatters of what remains
of our proudly Nigerian society. In our bid to shake off the shackles of the
past, we have turned on each other. Blowing ourselves up in the name of one
cause or the other, picking up arms against our neighbour while we vote
politicians capable of deadly machinations into the corridors of power where
boundaries are unevenly drawn like the face of an old woman. Nepotism hath
never seemed more righteous, bribery… familiarly justified in the name of
survival. Yet, after listening to this reasoning that seems to have worked as
good as using a hammer to slice butter, we grasp on to that same reason and
bare our yellowed teeth at any one who dares to upset that balance of familiarity.
So as an afterthought, being unreasonable may very well be better off.
But what does it mean to be unreasonable you
ask? I could outline a hundred meanings backed by several reasons but that
would only convolute the essence of this process. How about being unreasonable
by urging Nigeria to follow the example of India? We can say ours is a race against
South Africa or some other country where the balance of power presently lies
here in Africa. After all if Nigeria decides to invest advisedly just as India
did in sending her own rocket to Mars, by doing this, we would have
inadvertently caused certain benefits to present themselves as a result of our
actions. The benefits of such an endeavour to Nigeria are numerous. Suspend
your desire for reason for a brief moment and I will assure you that the
benefits of space exploration are numerous as America can undoubtedly testify.
For every now and then, we hear bits and pieces of these benefits yet we are
oblivious to them. For instance, the creation of the artificial heart is a
beneficial result from experiments on space shuttles. One of these experiments
was in partnership with a renowned heart surgeon Dr. Michael Debakey. So also
the popular hand held “jaws of life” used to cut twisted metal in order to save
victims of car wrecks. This piece of technology originated from the system used
to separate the space shuttle from its booster rockets. Moving further towards
the edge of reason, space exploration creates new job opportunities and helps
create a bridge between the public and private sector to partner in major
sectors of the economy; the nature of this partnership also extents to the
building of mutual understanding as a result of international cooperation among
space-faring nations. Other fundamental benefits can be seen in various
technological sectors with new innovations, new means to address global challenges,
culture and Inspiration of the society especially the younger generation, economic expansion, new
business opportunities as well as creating a deep sense of patriotic entitlement and national pride amongst the
citizens of a country only to mention a few.
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