For the love of country

                            By Bayo Ogunmupe

    The book, For the love of country, subtitled: Predicting Nigeria's Past, Foretelling Her Future, is an engaging work of analysis, critical essay which is educative, inspiring and upbraiding. It spreads the twin message of patriotism and the sermon from the pulpit for the empowerment of youth, the pursuit of accountability from Nigerian leaders and honest and responsible following from the people. The author, Bamidele Ademola Olateju passionately demands equity and justice from Nigerian leaders. She demands these attributes with a sharp analytical prowess and an uncanny ability to predict events in the course of a dissecting Nigerian economic environment.

    For the love of country was published in 2016 by Parresia Publishers Limited, Ikeja, Nigeria. It is in paperback with 208 pages, two parts and 43 chapters. Prior to Nigerian independence, we had a long line of female activists, in particular was Fela's mother Mrs Olufunlayo Ransome Kuti who founded the Nigerian Women's Union. Then, the struggle was for women emancipation, social justice, human and economic rights. What Nigeria has never had before and after independence is a female intellectual politician who combines activism with the struggle as an organic laborite aiming to achieve a better and fairer Nigeria.

    It is that intellectual woman leader seeking to make Nigeria a place where human dignity and justice reign that author Olateju represents. And true to type, she bestrides that figure like a colossus. With her book, she is seeking to free Nigeria from her asphyxiating condition as a preliterate society. Her focus is to right the self inflicted wrongs and errors of a Nigeria seemingly doomed to a fate of unrealized potential.

    "This book is evidence that Bamidele Olateju has emerged to fill the void in Nigeria's public sphere, to free the country from her asphyxiating wrongs: of a country seemingly doomed to a fate of unrealized potential." These collection of essays are not just your regular run of lamentation for Nigeria. They are the musings of an intellectual with a gift for analysis and originality of thought. This volume examines our persistent problems of power outage with an uncommon insight. Also, she offers solutions and the way out of our imbroglio.

    You read Bamidele feeling summoned to participate in a joint task of taking Nigeria out of the doldrums. On reading Olateju you become a member of a pan Nigerian force blessed with the intellect of the most influential female activist of our generation. Social dysfunction is overwhelming in Nigeria. But, as shown by Olateju, we've not all been silenced by the shame. Indeed, the love of country  and fame have lured Bamidele into refusing to distort the truth and our values. Thus, she wrote this testament in her strong believe that it is not enough to learn and think without spreading the gospel of Nigeria's return to true federalism, prosperity and self reliance.

    In part one, Olateju defined her role in the world as a woman. In her own reality, a woman is a human being of the female gender, who has gained full recognition of being a female and the weaknesses ascribed to her from birth. For this inheritance, she accepts her great battle in a world dominated by men. To her, being a woman is to bear the burden of caring for others at your expense and the changes your body bears at every phase of the journey. Being a woman means being strong because you will need all the strength you can muster.

    From a panegyric on womanhood, the author moves to an analysis of religion as a tool of domination, impoverishment and deception. In southern Nigeria the christian message governs everyday living and provides the concept of justice. That is the reason, according to her, why christians must participate in politics. She opines, Nigerian politics has not evolved past bigotry. Instead of framing issues around morals, the Nigerian clergy incites their congregation with the prosperity gospel, claiming they are doing this in the name of Christ.

    By proclaiming the name of Christ, the Nigerian entrepreneur pastors are corrupting the Grace and perverting the Law, making Nigeria an example of how political power corrupts the church as the bearer of the gospel of Christ. In her opinion, the clergy has been led to abandon the body of Christ for the love of money. The pastor entrepreneurs have lost compassion for the faithfuls and instead they have embraced greed building universities members cannot reach and shuttling the nation in private jets.

    They even preach violence and hate instead of love. By so doing the rich gets richer by fleecing the poor and looting the country. Bamidele believes the church has failed to provide the moral fabric necessary for a great Nigerian nation to emerge. Pastors and imams know that the greater your education, the more you understand the world. Education allows you to need less miracles and magic. So, they ruined education, made their colleges unreachable to the poor- collaboratively- both church and mosque.

    That is why religious organizations that invested in education made their schools expensive so their congregation can remain gullible. In that way they can continue the manipulation and the enslavement of the people. Nigeria will become better if religion focuses on skills acquisition delivered through subsidized education.

    For the second section of the book: Olateju dwells on  youth as Nigeria's  emerging underclass. But for the prevalent mediocrity of our psyche, the unemployed youth can use their permanent voters' cards to alter their destiny either by voting themselves into power or by promoting better leaders. Unlike the Israeli student who killed Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to stop a two state solution to the mideast crisis, Nigerian students can only undertake armed robbery to get rich quickly.

    "No nation can achieve greatness without investing in its youth. Yet, Nigeria cannibalizes her young through policies and through determined deprivation. The youth is usually energetic, vibrant, adventurous, learning and full of life. In Nigeria, the youth is disoriented, weak, miseducated, thoughtlessly shallow and directionless yet burdened by impenetrable armour of meaningless swagger and overrated sense of worth and exaggerated aspiration for material acquisition."

    But somehow, we cannot blame the youth for this exaggerated vision of grandeur. This is because they have seen the dregs of society come into stupendous wealth by going into politics or advanced fee fraud. The 18 to 35 age bracket is about 70 million and is growing rapidly. The youth have no credible role models. All they see are grifters who reinforce their believe that education is a waste of time.

    However, our missteps are traceable to our antiquated educational system. While most nations developed through skills acquisition due to technological revolution, our educators still insist in the ancient rote learning, the knowledge that has become obsolete because the communication revolution. The consequence of our poorly educated youth, especially in a Nigeria that is desperately in need of investors, is underdevelopment and insurrection.

    With a literacy rate of less than 60 percent, our nation cannot achieve industrialization without solid educational investment in our citizens. Finally, why Nigeria is good at picking bad leaders will cap this review. We are as bad as that because we focus on wrong things. We rely on contrived narratives such lack of shoes ( Goodluck Jonathan), exaggerated meekness and superfluous religiosity(Buhari) or even deep pockets(Bola Tinubu). Even then, a new leader faces daunting obstacles such as ethnic/religious pressure, sabotage, endemic corruption and a staggering mediocrity.

    In what qualifies a leader, Olateju examines seven qualities of eminent leaders. From integrity: the quality of being honest, having good morals and the absence of hypocrisy, the author  dwells on such others as courage, empathy and vision. She avers that we generally lack men of courage and vision because oil boom has made our leaders to be greedy and clannish. Lack of empathy, the inability to share in the agonies of others propelled our leaders to attend weddings befor sympathizing with the parents of the 110 abducted school girls.

    There are many ideas you will gain by reading this book. As you follow Olateju's twin themes of "for the love of country and the sermon on the political pulpit, you will readily imbibe her passion for justice and conviction for a better Nigeria. Olateju has masters in both Business administration and computer information systems. She worked in two top companies in the USA before establishing her own business in Nigeria. Apart from being a farmer, she is a member of the editorial board of Premium Times where she  maintains a weekly column on politics and social justice in Nigeria.