“Afam, you are uncharacteristically silent about the just-concluded elections; hope all is well?” one of my devout followers said to me the other day without preambles. “My broda, wetin man wan talk again?” I obligingly responded. This devout follower had previously tried to draw me into discussing the 2019 general elections in particulars, but his endeavours had thus far been unsuccessful. Mum is unusually the word for me when situations prove too bewildering. It was a trait I learnt from a medical doctor pal of mine years ago. This boisterous polygamist (he has a European wife in Ukraine, and an Igbo wife in Nigeria) and I, once had a late morning appointment with a Federal Government agency in Abuja.

I arrived at his residence some one hour twenty minutes prior to our appointment. The man of the house met me at the door; when I stepped through the threshold, I was welcomed by a barrage of loud recriminations from the far end of the living room. My friend calmly invited me to relief my legs with a wave of the hand. To my surprise, he was completely indifferent to the unsettling barrage. Trouble brews, I quietly told myself, making myself comfortable in the settee. The apparently beleaguered husband disappeared into an adjoining room, promising not to be gone for more than few minutes, even as the barrage intensified. In the interval I pleaded with the enraged wife to calm down, even though I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what the bone of contention was. The recriminations persisted nonetheless.

The well spruced up husband soon re-appeared, preceded by an aura of high quality perfume. Gesturing to me, he made a beeline for the front door, again completely impervious to the persistent recriminations. Mechanically rising, I followed in his footsteps. The enraged wife was all the more enraged. We were soon safely in my car. “What in the world is going on?” I impatiently breathed, receiving myself and darting a quizzical glance at my companion. “Afam, please ignore that woman; I don’t have her time,” he responded as though taking a leisurely walk in a rose garden. “How can you say that, the woman appears to have a lot to say to you?” I countered with the car exiting the uneasy compound. The doctor turned his face in my direction, fixed his gaze on me and uttered these words: “Afam, the woman has nothing more to say to me; neither do I have anything more to say to her. We finished all we had to say to each other five years ago – end of discussion, period.”

All experienced couples could well relate to those words in the manner I expected my interrogator to relate to, “My broda, wetin man wan talk again?” Indeed, after 60 years (1959-2019) of general elections, what else is there to talk about elections in Nigeria? Absolutely nothing. All that could ever be said or written about general elections in Nigeria has been said and written decades previously. Consequently, 2019 had been foreseen with mathematical accuracy by many a commentator, not exclusive of this writer – it hadn’t been a particularly tasking exercise for me, I might add, thanks to our first generation commentators. Karl Marx, the heavily bearded one, remarked over a century earlier that philosophies have been describing human societies over the centuries, all that remains is to change human societies, or I should say, change them for the better.

So, after 60 years of reading about gross irregularities in our general elections, it has become necessary to regard those irregularities as no more than mere symptoms of a more fundamental dysfunction, namely, a limping economy, nay under-industrialized economy. Therefore, let us end that lingering discussion, and focus on the GREAT MATTER of Nigeria’s industrialization, of which principal components comprise:

Restructure the policy;
Effectively protect the national currency;
Refine (in-country) 100% of hydrocarbon production;
Grow the manufacturing sector from 8% to above 30% of GDP;
Export refined petroleum products;
Massively invest in gas exploitation;
Process 100% of Agricultural yields;
Massively invest in the solid minerals sector;
Transform 50% of Nigeria’s 800km coastline to tourists beaches;
Decongest/refurbish Lagos and PH seaports, and construct new seaports in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Delta and Ondo States;
Develop the inland waterways;
Extensively reform the education sector;
Massively invest in rail/road networks;
Massively invest in solar and wind energies;
Significantly review housing /road networks in the mega cities: Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Warri, PH, e.t.c.
In my considered opinion, these constitute the GREAT MATTER of the moment going forward.
•Nkemdiche, a consulting engineer, wrote from Abuja.