"this is the best news of the new year" said Thomas Ogwe Odekwueme a foreman at a building and construction company in Kaduna state and a father of five. " at long last after decades of back to back bloody military coups and corrupt civilian rule we can finally govern ourselves" he added.
the people's government has been running it's own film industry for quite some time now. By Nigerians, for the world
Though it was unclear to many ordinary Nigerians what a people's government is, political scientists interviewed explained "in theory it is a government by the people, for the people, through the people".
But leading global intellectuals questioned whether this new system of governance which has never been tried and tested anywhere in the world would succeed for Nigeria especially given it is an invention of and from a developing country .
Proponents within gave an example of People power, an invention of the Filipino people which has been successfully replicated in several European countries as the Velvet revolution, Rose revolution and Orange revolution in the Czech republic, Ukraine and Georgia respectively.
"yes,i do agree we might encounter some hiccups like in the case of Orange Democratic Movement[ODM] in Kenya; trying to unseat an incumbent. But we Nigerians have learnt to learn from other people's mistake and the use of the word 'Democratic' is a big no no and as you noted above 'revolution' is definitely the key word here which holds more weight than a mere 'movement' " said Prof. Aaron Abayomi Ewedafe a literature lecturer at the University of Ibadan
"History too has numerous lessons. Che Guevara ran a revolution not a movement; i believe there is a marked difference. If only the Kenyan political elite would have read more on our successful coups" he added.
Although a peoples government is considered leaderless, in practice the man still remains the head of the house, children go to school and women still work outside the home but are encouraged to stay at home, fetch water and firewood and take good care of the children; males to head future homes and females to take care of tommorows households.
The police and the army will keep functioning and so will the government ministries, courts and even the cabinet a fact which pacified many pessimists, put at ease international skeptics and those generally fearful of radical changes in the scheme of things.
But things were not rosy in every corner of this large behemoth of a county. With the lack of a federal government to fight, the Niger Delta rebels, juntas, militants and oil bunkerers[people/militants stealing oil from pipelines by diversion or bursting them up] faced a bleak future in this people's government knowing very well they will be beaten up [by their people] if they cause chaos in the name of defending their people from a government which doesn't exist.
With the peoples government comes greater self monitoring and freedom and with transparency and freedom comes responsibility thus the Nigerian people should brace themselves for tasks like providing their own drinking water,electricty and transport.
"but this is what we have been doing since independence and we have been doing fine without a president too at least for the last fifty days" said Chimeka, a bubbly twenty something entrepreneurial lady running a restaurant in Lagos as we walked along a patch of tarmac which she built with her own money, leading to her restaurant.
©2010 newsync
Eneza
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