What went wrong with Nigeria...by Patrick Wilmot

I have been reading this very powerful book, by Patrick Wilmot(can't find him on wikipedia), called INTERVENSIONS VI – Nigeria the nightmare scenario. I would advise any patriotic Nigerian to read this book. It is just a powerful insight to what went wrong with Nigeria and more importantly, what today’s intellectuals, include all Nigerian bloggers can do, going forward.

I simply cannot review this book. I will do it no justice. I lack the expertise, experience or even audacity to attempt to review it. I will simply make a mockery of it. However, I will humbly attempt to proudly, write down some extracts from the book.

Nigeria has been a failure. Nothing works – from health, education, housing, manufactures, telephones, roads, and the historic record is almost blank. In a thousand years scholars could look back and sigh “there is no sign here that wise men once rules”

Like the Japanese, the Chinese think of themselves as a group, a people, a collective capable of concentrating a national consciousness. The Russians, forced into collective action by Lenin and Stalin, have now followed the Americans into individualism and consumerism. Nigerians, associated into the tight knit communities in the past, now purse an extreme of individualism that is selfish and anarchic. Like the Russians the Nigerians have degenerated into corruption and criminality.

The future would have no pity for those men who, processing the exceptional privilege of being able to speak words of truth to their oppressors, have taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, of mute indifference, and sometimes of cold complicity.

Civil society, the opposition, press, judiciary are modern mechanisms for ensuring that leaders govern in the interests of the people rather themselves and their family. These were won in Europe and America through popular struggles, sometimes with inhuman sacrifices. They were not gifts of the leaders, and everyone who longs for freedom must be prepared to sacrifice.

p.s: All credits and copywrite to Patrick Wilmot, none of these are mine.