Active Citizenship Can Change our Country For the Better
                                                                      
                                                                                                    
      

Often I have heard people most times attributing the problems with Nigeria to bad leadership. However, I have over and over again noted that the challenge with Nigeria as an entity, though are varied and complicated could be narrowed down to lack of active citizenship. Active citizenship is a state of play where the citizenry of a country are collectively alive to their social, political and economic responsibilities. Where this happens, the citizens perceive themselves as an important fabric of the socio-political and economic development of the nation.

Where the spirit of active citizenship is present, the general ambience reflects collectiveness. In such milieu, the process of nation building is seen as a collective journey and the broad attitude is “we are in this together”. Everyone acknowledges that in the course of the journey, there will be unexpected hiccups and sabotage; but because it is a collective duty, every hurdle can be surmounted together with a dogged determination and unflinching focus on the destination. There will be throes encountered during the journey but the weight of the throes does not rest on a single individual or a cohort of individuals but on ALL.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. in his famous quote on civic responsibility sums up the principle of active citizenship. Rockefeller described civic duty as the social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force; we must instill a sense of duty in our children; every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. Duty to one’s nation is not so much what the country can provide but what you can give to your country as elucidated in JFK’s famous cliché, ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

I believe the only way to move Nigeria forward is for every citizen to develop a deep-seated sense of active citizenship where it is everyone’s right to demand better governance, accountability and do away with the characteristic attitude of it is not my problem, someone else will fix it. We should all learn to take responsibility. Taking responsibility for yourself and people around you is embedded in our culture.

The French Revolution was a perfect illustration of power to the people. The cliché, there is strength in numbers does hold true indeed. The French Revolution only happened because the people said enough was enough. They refused to be excluded from the French political system. They refused to be dictated to by the powers that be. They rejected the flamboyance and extravagance of the ruling powers.

In Nigeria of today, we accept flamboyance and extravagance from our leadership. We see it as the norm. We allow ourselves to be trampled upon by the same people we elected to authority. We allow them to flaunt our collective wealth in front of us and oppress us with it. We allow them to dwarf our standards and expectations. If anyone dares to criticize their excesses, we, the citizens are the first to give them strong support hoping that our own opportunity will come soon. We wait patiently for our time to come to plunder the national treasury, forgetting we are in this together.

We forget that accountability is not instituted from the top but from below. We have to make our leaders to be accountable to us. A lot of the things we say are not our business are ultimately our business. We need to empower ourselves as citizens and be aware of our powers, our rights and our duties.

Active citizenship is characterized by the spirit of selfless service, accountability, voluntary participation, voluntary disclosure of information which could be inimical to the state of wellbeing of the nation and its people.