The mindset of political office holders constitutes a major factor in the content and direction of policies at the Federal and state levels.
Self-interest seems to be the guiding light of these officeholders in determining what is good for about 206 million Nigerians, who have continuously complained of hunger, poverty, and severe economic hardships. In this interview, the Founder, Spiritual Head, and Grand Imam of Shafaudeen-in-Islam Worldwide, Prof. Sabitu Olagoke says the cultural, educational, and religious systems play major roles in molding those who formulate and execute government policies. Excerpts :
The self-interest of political office holders now seems to determine what is good for Nigerians. Why is this so?
Self-interest at a time when human development is expected to manifest the characteristics of the superego reveals a situation of stunted growth and human underdevelopment marred with a perceived sense of underdevelopment.
At the superego level of human development, one should expect the characteristic features of charity, philanthropy, and living by altruistic philosophy. This is where the man is thoroughbred educationally, religiously, culturally, and politically.
Since this is a stage of thinking beyond self when the opportunity to serve humanity can easily be translated to serving God the almighty because we cannot see Him and He would not descend physically to help those who are seeking His help and intervention. However, when people charged with the responsibilities of serving the people in whatever capacity become selfish and self-serving there must have been diminishing returns at their age level to that Id and beastly characteristics. Some school of thought believes that in such people's developmental profile such manner of character ought to have been exhibited so often but without been corrected by those charged with the responsibility of child-rearing and nature nurturing starting from parents to teachers, peer groups, hall wardens and other agents of socialization, they must have passed through.
Another school of thought states that our educational managers ought to have been given special attention to these beastly characteristics because the blood of Timocracy must have been running through their veins right from the day they were born.
Such species of human beings will never see leadership opportunity for the purpose of serving the people, instead, they will gladly see it as an achievement in their lives to acquire wealth that is expected to be sovereign for their personal purpose of enrichment and building of empires around themselves perhaps to take care of the challenges of the future of their unborn children.
The trio of our cultural system, educational institutions, and religious terrain need to focus on every human that passes through them as an element to be rightly processed into good citizenry for the purpose of using them in our political sphere of life to selflessly serve and deliver. For our cultural heritage exemplary lifestyles of every citizen are expected through upholding the core values of integrity which the society must be very sensitive to human frivolities and waywardness to be out of the way and out of the mind. At the homefront, respect for culture needs to go beyond one's ability to dance, sing, and speak our languages. The general character for respect for values needs to be emphasized. at the educational terrain, growth and development must cut across the affective, cognitive, and psychomotor domains with more emphasis on the attitude and character certification for professionalism to be closed with gowns of organizational and professional ethics which must dominate our processes of service delivery in any sphere of life we may find our selves to serve.
Functional education, therefore, must be our watchwords at Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary institution levels for education(to support the cultural goals of the society for us to be able to develop ourselves without hitch and develop the environment which envelope the society.
The religious sector must go beyond Karl Marx's perception of the opium of the people.
Religion is expected to be people-focused for him or her to realize the socio-spiritual essence of life to be able to help in supporting the goals of education and culture to be able to produce reliable, dependable, and patriotic citizens for the nation that will not be tempted to be selfish in office when saddled with the responsibility of managing the sovereign wealth of the people. The spiritual content of religion is potent enough to detoxify the elements of timocracy and other forms of misdemeanor and aberrations of life. This can be possible only if religious leaders are Scripture compliant with exemplary lifestyles that is bequeathable to the adherents on their need to be culturally upright and educationally balanced, in order that they will not lose the trust of the people when it comes to serving the community or the nation, without recourse to corruption.
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