Lets ponder Nigeria of the last few decades without veering to the clich of bemoaning the civil war years or the perennially distracting hatred of one another and ethnic thaw it brought on us.Even if this throws up old laments let's sing of the oft swept under rug bedlam that brought us here because it is a past that holds our future in its belly. If we can muster the courage to talk, resolve and be resilient against distractions, we will get over it.We may opt to do politics with any issue of the day or even waste time bemoaning, blaming or bantering. We can even divert the advantage of the current developmental incentive of many mass media stations eager to give the public space for free expression, turn it to the disadvantage of plethora of distractive self-opinionated rants and petty comments. But the truth hangs conspicuously in clear view like a monument in the middle of our village square: there is danger lurking very near in the corner for Nigeria. The more we opt to wish it away, the more it asserts itself by dropping hints of its imminense. Yes, signals of impending doomsday (I wish it never comes!) keep showing up in several forms, soliciting attention before the hammer falls.Today, it's bombs, floods, road accidents, judiciary's loss of face, crumbling stock prizes and crashing banks. Yesterday it was electoral challenges (the post-poll crises and petty pre-poll partisanship); legislators loss of credibility via averise and their landmark laxity; and there was the nausiating power tussle between the kitchen cabinet and other folks in a President's courtiers which choked the country to near asphyxiation through the long period of his ailment to his death until we narrowly survived with life-long bruise marks. Before the yesterday, we have had more than a mouthfull to swallow as challenges of disasters. From a near recent deluge of plane crashes to a not-so-long-ago decades of millitary misadventure in politics that suppervised the death of social infactstructure among other havoc such as deliberate collapse of noble social ethoes and public adminitration institutions, to the running of the nation by a horde of further destructive former military men in the garb of civilian politicians, hence the continuation of a lacerating era of moral decadence, crass materialism and bullish enmasculation of political institutions, disregard of rule of law and gun-plied democracy.And the free fall in education, continues. General unemployment and unpatrotic business culture remains. It was encouraged by a regime of nepotistic practicies in governance enshrined in the system by military rule. Also a culture of frequent tribal conflicts coached on religious differences nurtured by civil war politics continues. At present, suicide bombing has come to join our already full mire despite the multiple political and economic challenges we situations have been having over time. Yet there are people who do not accept that we should pause and ponder this Nigeria now. Some tout something they call national conference, peoples forum, town hall talk or what ever. I do not believe in bandied identikits. All I know is that it is high time we did something radical to save this big troubled ship.By some design or providence events are goading us towards a situation of crucial national resolution. Though many appear not to note the visible pointers of the time, the truth is that we have gone beyond procastination and prevarication.Except we opt to delude ourselves, and that would be terribly bad, Nigeria is at the tipping point. Worst, our front wheel of our mangled troubled 'jalopy ride' is right at the precipe of the slippery slides. The options are two clear axis: turn and head towards the boom or trundle ahead in this our bungly, fumbly manner and slip quickly with the slide and head to the rocks. Our luck is that unlike the simpletoms we sometimes fancy and ape, we managed to have made up our mind earlier on which direction to go.The decision was long made after rounds of wastefulness and dilly dally. But lucky, us. We now have the compasses and ladder set by such documents as the now failed, Vision 2010, the approaching Vision 20-2020 and other national goals which we sat down to spell out including the late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's Seven Point Agenda. Even in their inadequacies, the joy in those developments is that they were given birth to by a set of Nigerians who were not engaged in the kind of 'wish-away' mindset that is persisting in many of today's men. They looked at our sinking ship and noted the need to do something. Though the need for urgency was not there in most of tomes of their report they, at least, spotted that we are heading to burst and must do something else the abyss welcomes us, soon.So the decision to do something about our drift has been reached even if I do not buy the visible myopia of the reports that were so conspicuously aloof as to ignore the goldmine in such our big areas of comparative advantage as the arts, culture, tourism, human resource consultancy and sports merchandising among others. But, remaining, is the realisation that now is the time for us to step out and take our future in our hands. And work, at least, with the template of those reports.Hence comes the issue of resolution, a step beyond mere decision making. One of the several definitions of resolution in the high school publication, Macmillan School Dictionary is 'a firm decision to do something' which reminds me of the fad among Nigerians every January 1. We call it 'New Year resolution.' It is high time Nigerians made a radical resolution about Nigeria. And that resolution must be propelled by a national resilliense in favour of that decision. Which means that the resolution will be short and popular to the extent that every citizen or institution will memorise, internalise and ply its vital components into its programmes much like the citizens of current China (since her Communism era) or Germany (since her defunct Nazi period) or the north American (since the federating of USA) or defunct Soviet Union did.Else, doomsday.'Resilience in psychology is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity... (it) may result in the individual 'bouncing back' to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a 'steeling effect' and function better than expected,'According to Wikipaedia, most researches on the topic now show that 'resilience is the result of individuals interacting with their environments and the processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors. These processes can be individual coping strategies, or may be helped along by good families, schools, communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur. In this sense "resilience" occurs when there are cumulative "protective factors". These factors are likely to play a more and more important role the greater the individual's exposure to cumulative "risk factors".'At a time like this when challenges come in beseiging number and gigantic form, it behoves on all of us, individually, our communities and organisation to realise that we are in a dire situation that requires the insulation of resilience and resolve to move the nation forward or sink.
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