Some of the questions on my mind

What are the key questions that we need to seek answers to to bring transformation to the current state of Nigeria and Africa?

I am a questions man. I like asking questions. I believe questions open space for discovery. Give an answer and you close a query. Ask a question - a good open question - and you open the paths for exploration and who knows what you might find.

I know this is counter to everything we were taught at school. School is not about who asks the right questions, it's about who can give the best answer. If you question too much, you are called disruptive and possibly sidelined. Plus, you must be really, really dumb to ask so many questions. Why can't you just be like the other smart kids and give the best answer so you can move to solving the next question. Maybe that was why I was never really a school-ly person. Yet, I was once nicknamed professor :)

Anyways, back to my starting enquiry. Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. I am of the same school as this great man.

I want to be sure that we are spending the valuable time we have answering the RIGHT questions on what Nigeria and Africa needs to transform. I want to contribute mine to defining some of the questions I see as pertinent if we are going to move from our current state of crisis to one where we are a place of pride.

Some of the questions that occur to me include:

1. What exactly would a developed Africa look like in practical terms?
2. What is it about our make up as Africans that is hindering us from attaining this level of development?
3. How do we create the conditions so that everyday, everywhere all Africans are contributing in their own small way to the advancement of the continent?
4. How do we restore a sense of pride to all Africans so we stop seeing ourselves as a backward race and place? or as Bob Marley put it How do we emancipate ourselves collectively from mental slavery?
5. How do we empower ourselves as individuals to make our society better instead of waiting for it all to be done by government or whoever else has positioned themselves as the figure of authority?
6. How do we get the power back to the people?

These are some of the questions in mind. They are not all the questions and they are by no means the right questions. I am not looking for a single answer that stops the enquiry. I want these questions to motivate a search for solutions as mine and all our life work.

And still I need more questions...

Posted via email from Femi Longe's Zone