UNFOLDING events across the country have now made it imperative for Nigerians to hold their leaders accountable and should demand for good governance.

The ability of any national society to rise or fall depends on the vision, caliber, dynamism and attitudes of its leadership and followership alike, as well as their commitment to restorative and protective values of law, order, stability, security, morality, humanity, justice and progress.

It is notable that ancient empires and kingdoms that arose, flourished and later crumbled like the proverbial pack of cards, started to witness the gridlock that led to their eventual demise with the negation of these values along the line, and with the gradual erosion and breakdown of their principal institutions, such as government, family and civil society.

It is unfortunate that after 51 years of existence as an independent nation, Nigeria, the touted “Giant of Africa” and the most populous black ountry in the world, is still groping in the dark. It is also unfortunate that the beautiful dreams of our heroes past with which we commenced this journey into nationhood have remained nothing but an illusion.

Our leaders have truly failed the nation. There is no doubt about it when you judge by the grinding unemployment and crippling de-industrialization as well as the infrastructure deficit that have devastated the economy in spite of our nation’s enormous resources (human and material).

For instance, the coal and zinc industries that the colonial leadership sustained so well have since been forgotten by our leaders. The railways the Whiteman built have been left to rot away. There is no electricity, no good roads, no good schools and no good hospitals in spite of claims of the various state governments.

All the public water projects the colonial administration built have dried up and no leader seems ready to accept responsibility notwithstanding the billions of dollars that have flooded this country from black gold after the exit of the Whiteman from our shores.

Amongst the new leadership who have been the real beneficiaries of the petrol dollars, there is provocative affluence, but for the masses the result of the so-called self rule today have been hunger, poverty, frustration, disillusionment and of course hatred, violence and crime. In fact, Nigerians have accepted the bitter fact that the dreams of the nationalists had since been betrayed by our leaders each of whose monthly salary and allowances today can pay the monthly salaries and allowances of 400 professional health practitioners in public hospitals. We have a cult of hypocrites as leaders in Nigeria today.

Hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing the exact opposite. Our leaders preach against stealing, yet they are the biggest thieves around. They preach patriotism, yet from their actions we know they don’t love this country. They preach justice, yet they are unjust in their daily activities.

They preach hard work and transparency, yet their indolence and crookedness turns sinners into monks. There is no way we can actually make progress as a nation with a leadership that is knee-deep in hypocrisy.

So now is the time for us to act to pull our nation out of the woods. The era of watching from the side lines must be over if we are to achieve our aim of building a great nation. But the sad irony of the whole matter is the attitude of the followership to the whole issue.

The followership seems to have failed in their role of pointing the leaders on the need to be accountable in their activities even as they demand good governance that will ensure national wellbeing.

It is very shameful that the followership worship the leaders as if they are gods, coupled with extreme sycophancy, despite the fact that the people elected these leaders into power and therefore as servants of the people they should actually perform their duties diligently and creditably but instead they behave like tin gods.

It is unfortunate that corruption has permeated and over-run our national life having seemingly become part of our culture. It is a sad truth that we do not seem to see anything wrong with this culture of impunity that is working to steal our country away from us.

We, therefore, need to re-order our lives, and imbibe behavioral adjustments and change for good . Culture that tend to show support for people arraigned in court on corruption charges and top civil servants and politicians who have corruptly enriched themselves, when they appear in our churches to thank God for their time in office.

Unfortunately by condoning and respecting the evidence of sleaze, we perpetuate criminality. We must individually renew daily our commitment to integrity and truth. Our leaning towards primitive acquisition of wealth makes nonsense of our image among the comity of nations.

It is also heart-rending to think of the high level of corruption and mismanagement of funds that have stunted Nigeria’s developmental progress despite the presence of anti-fraud investigative agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, ICPC; Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB; Special Fraud Unit, SFU, etc, that abound in the land.

In spite of the fanfares that herald the arrest of high profile politicians by the EFCC over the years, Nigerians are yet to witness any concrete court conviction of these avaricious politicians. Nigerians working in these anti-fraud agencies and the general public must have it in mind that it is our duty to hold our leaders accountable to their actions and point them toward good governance for the benefit of all.

If we don’t do it nobody will do it for us. Our leaders should not think that the resilience and docility of Nigerians will last forever. Let them not wait for the youths to become restive before they change their attitude to governance. Otherwise, let them not be too sure that what happened in North Africa (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc) might not repeat itself in Nigeria. We must tell each other the truth.

Dr. SIMON OKOLO, a medical practitioner,  wrote from Aba, Abia State