I wrote at the beginning of this series about the two options for nation building that we have.

There might be more, but I see two clear choices –mass revolt or incremental change.

In the absence of a mass revolt, I said, those who seek to drive change now need to fall back on incremental change, a collection of little drops of activity by different sectors of society that will eventually deliver what some have called the Flywheel Effect. This will involve a deliberate, sustained effort to move from business as usual in the way our country is run.

It would sound like the violence that revolutions bring make them the more difficult option, but in fact the slow and steady change is the most difficult route to take, because it requires a collectivity of involvement; and a people deciding together that they will subsume short-term desire for long term goals.

Because of the nature of modern societies – large, divergent, mostly urban – this is not a simple process and usually has to be forced from the top by a leader conscious of the imperative. Which is why the choice of Nigeria’s president is so important.

As we work towards that however, there are a few things that we will need to know, to learn and to do. This brief below is by no means exhaustive, but – one for each of the 52 weeks in a year – I have done up the below as a list of some of the things that are important for our generation as we slowly engage the hard, necessary job of re-directing our country.

1      We need to keep voting – there is no alternative to choosing our leaders in the system of government that we have now; we must ensure that our leaders understand they serve at our pleasure. There is no better way to emphasise that than with voting with insight, and protecting that vote.

2      We need to test our democratic institutions with the knowledge that sometimes they will fail us, most times not even respond, but that the best way to get a machine working is to use it. Write letters to your representatives, send a complaint to your local power authority – test the system.

3      We all have our corners where we are doing something small or big – our country can work based on a collectivity of people committed to excellence. Whatever you do, do it well. It’s the least you can do.

4      For those who control processes or systems (SMEs, associations, NGOs et al), it is important to understand that society is the sum of its institutions – build your institutions with an eye on the long term; adding value to the country in the long run.

5      For the kind of country we have now, everyone should be an active citizen. You do not have the luxury of apathy, I am sorry.

6      The media in any society is very crucial – we need media that is intelligent, fair and well funded as a people-driven arbiter and a constant framer of the issues important to citizens.

7      Speakers of arbiters, our eyes must stay on the judiciary – the guys in the courts should know the public is looking at them, and counting on them.

8      We should encourage the good guys to get into politics as candidates – politics is a dirty game, but someone has to do it and it better be our best hands.

9      Those of us who haven’t decided on non-partisan roles should join political parties and get involved in local politics and influence especially. We should also work on reforming those parties so they function properly.

10   Let’s embrace social media – it is a deeply democratizing tool, and the only one that gives even more power to the led than the leaders.

11   We should take an active interest in what’s going on at our state governments.

12   It sounds clichéd– but a lot can actually happen at the local government level. Sometimes they are the guys in charge of things like your roads and water.

13   We will need to build coalitions and networks – our country will not be changed through silos; we need to build broad consensus and coalitions around issues, ideas and solutions. To do this, we will need to work on our tolerance threshold. 

14   We don’t need everyone to come home – Nigerians in Diaspora need to excel wherever they are so they are able to exert social and financial influence from a place of independence.

15   We must focus on our education – it is the foundation of our society and ours is a mess. Whatever else we are doing, this should be a prime agenda.

16   We must hold activists to account. Watch the watchers – like anyone else, they are not without fault.

17   Follow the money – we must always keep an eye on budgets, allocations and government spend. It’s what Western citizens do best.

18   We must embrace our faith – many advanced civilisations have evolved through a deep acceptance of their spirituality. We are a spiritual people, so we should embrace this.

19   Federal Character needs to go. It sounds great, but it hasn’t worked. It has, as Achebe said, replaced meritocracy with mediocrity, and it’s killing us. Let’s face it – if one part of the country has more capacity than the others, then we should come to terms with that and adapt it as a competitive advantage. 

20   Lets praise the small strides that our leaders make so that they can do more. Acknowledging the good is not fatal to the case for asking for better.

21   We shouldn’t just focus on government – what happens in the private sector is just as important.

22   Keep an eye on enterprise – a society is driven by how much it produces and small business should be at the center.

23   Pay your taxes – enter a contractual relationship with your government.

24   Read widely – much of the poverty in our national conversation comes from our acute ignorance of how much of the world actually works.

25   Know our history – the schools don’t teach it well, but history always helps in identifying what the future holds.

26   Governments fear mass revolt. It is not to be used all the time, but we must never forget the power of public protest.

27   The organised opposition is so indispensable. Sometimes they go over the top, and calling the president a scumbag doesn’t add much value to the process, but the friction between the ruling party and the opposition is important for a free society.

28   The creative industries capture the soul of the nation – music, poetry and art. It’s not just the West that understands this – look at Asia and the Middle East. Our art captures our essence and helps us connect with it emotionally. 

29   We must pile pressure on the wealthiest amongst us (young and old) to invest in our society – through philanthropy, promoting ideas they believe in, supporting causes they are interesting in, pooling ideas through working groups and think tanks.

30   There are a lot of processes that are ongoing in our country – especially as driven by civil society or led by government. We have Electoral Reform Conferences, Sustainable Development meets, Review Sessions with the National Youth Council. Get involved.

31   Don’t let cynicism win. Find out more about government-driven platforms – from YouWin! to the Lagos technology cluster. If the best of us don’t get involved in these processes imperfect as they are, we will leave them to be influenced by the worst of us. Nature abhors a vacuum.

32   Be ready to compromise. That is the one thing that should be non-negotiable. There is no one person whose “principles” are more important than a peoples’ collective aspiration.

33   Always search for alternative solutions to problems – we must resist the trap of a single solution.

34   We must avoid the temptation to be lazy – in ideas, in criticism, in engagement. Research is crucial. There is no alternative to facts. We need a society driven by logic.

35   Learn to question authority – teachers, pastors, ex-presidents.

36   If you’re a young person and you don’t have a job, then that should be your focus. Not criticising everyone you come across on social media.  The only assignment you should have is yourself.

37   Let’s actually pay attention to what happens in our country – let’s pay attention to the news, and let us be curious to understand what we read. Knowledge is power.

38   Our criticism should be tempered. One of the real tragedies of our society is that everyone is criticizing everyone else, when they have no moral authority. Think of it: what right do people who work in our telecoms industry have to accuse Nollywood of mediocrity? When you think of Nigeria in that log-in-your-eye way, we will realize the time we spend criticising can be better spent looking inwards; at what we are doing ourselves. When criticism emerges, we have a responsibility to be constructive.

39   Those who want to be leaders should build their capacity. Many of us are not equipped to lead – we have to learn, theoretically and practically. What Nigeria needs above anything else is competence.

40   NO matter how bad it gets, we must NEVER give up on democracy. Even if we decide to choose a different system of governance, democracy is our best shot at making the best decision. 

41   We have to set our agenda – in different sectors, we should work towards achieving some kind of consensus of what we need to thrive.

42   The only thing we have is hope. Hope keeps faith and passion alive and it is passion that translates into action. There is plenty of good around us – lets employ that to keep our hope alive and strong.

43   If you see a problem, do what you can to bring a solution to it. Most likely someone else is already do that, find that person and join in. If they are not doing it right, work with them to do it better.

44   Do not be afraid of joining government – we need to stop making that seem like a dirty thing.

45   Develop the courage of your convictions. We seem to have become a generation that plays to the gallery. Those who seek to lead it must be courageous to stand against both the establishment and our own constituency when we feel they have gone astray.

46   Kill arrogance – You are not the first person to be passionate about changing Nigeria, and you won’t be the last. The key is not the what – it’s the how.

47    Learn from the mistakes of those before us; there is much to learn. Listen more to your parents and those who have tried to change this country and either failed or given up – they made so many mistakes that we are repeating and will do well to avoid.

48   Greed kills. Kill greed. The rest is detail.

49   Mentorship is crucial. Sadly this is a tradition the generation before us seems to have killed.  We need knowledge exchange and transfer. Somehow or the other, we need to create that stream.

50   Don’t sweat the small stuff. In the task of nation building, as with much else, it’s not every battle that must be fought.

51   Keep our eyes on the ball – at this stage of our development as a nation, what we need is a nation that works; that functions.

52   Keep trying. Keep pushing. Never give up. We have no other choice.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31. 

I am a Christian. In expressing that identity, I align myself with the new dispensation of Christianity that is Pentecostal; described aptly by the strategist Leke Alder as “generally creative in approach, aggressive, uninhibited and resourceful”.

I am a born-again Christian. A tongue-speaking, Christianese-loving, church-working Christian. I love God with all my heart.

Unfortunately, in Nigeria that can immediately mean that I cannot be trusted, that I have no integrity and that I will in no way act like Christ. But this is not the fault of those who see us in this way; it is our fault; us Christians who have perverted the Gospel we are supposed to share.

The way we have served God here appears to have done us more harm than good; if anything the fact that most of our leaders who are corrupt and inept are some of the most religious people you will find anywhere in the world says a lot about who we are, and explains the disdain with which non-religious people hold those who profess their faith with joy and pride.

In September 2005, a sitting Nigerian governor, DiepreyeAlamieyeseigha was arrested and detained in London by the Metropolitan Police for money laundering. They discovered about £1m in cash in his London home, £1.8m ($3.2m) in cash and bank accounts and then uncovered real estate worth an alleged £10 million.

In December 2005, the detainee jumped bail. When he emerged in his state of Bayelsaand was asked how he managed this feat, he responded, “It is a miracle”. The fugitive who had stolen state funds gave glory to God for transporting him home; for helping him break the law. 

In that one statement, Alamieyeseigha captured the essence of what we have turned the creator of the heavens and the earth into – an aberration.

My friend, Elnathan John, in a piece that went viral last year and was even quoted by my pastor, Sam Adeyemi, captured the nature and character of this God that Nigerians serve impeccably:

First, you must understand that being a worshipper has nothing to do with character, good works or righteousness. So the fact that you choose to open every meeting with multiple prayers does not mean that you intend to do what is right. The opening prayer is important. Nothing can work without it. If you are gathered to discuss how to inflate contracts, begin with an opening prayer or two. If you are gathered to discuss how to rig elections, begin with a prayer. The Nigerian god appreciates communication.

When you sneak away from your wife to call your girlfriend in the bathroom, and she asks if you will come this weekend, you must say—in addition to “Yes”—“By God’s grace” or “God willing”. It doesn’t matter the language you use. Just add it. The Nigerian god likes to be consulted before you do anything, including a trip to Obudu to see your lover.

When worshipping the Nigerian god, be loud. No, the Nigerian god is not hard of hearing. It is just that he appreciates your loud fervour, like he appreciates loud raucous music. The Nigerian god doesn’t care if you have neighbours and neither should you. When you are worshipping in your house, make sure the neighbours can’t sleep. Use loud speakers even if you are only two in the building. Anyone who complains must be evil. God will judge such a person.

Attribute everything to the Nigerian god. So, if you diverted funds from public projects and are able to afford that Phantom, when people say you have a nice car, say, “Na God”. If someone asks what the secret of all your wealth is, say, “God has been good to me”. By this you mean the Nigerian god who gave you the uncommon wisdom to re-appropriate public funds.

Consult the Nigerian god when you don’t feel like working. The Nigerian god understands that we live in a harsh climate where it is hard to do any real work. So, if you have no clue how to be in charge and things start collapsing, ask people to pray to God and ask for his intervention.

The Nigerian god loves elections and politics. When you have bribed people to get the Party nomination, used thugs to steal and stuff ballot boxes, intimidated people into either sitting at home or voting for you, lied about everything from your assets to your age, and you eventually, (through God’s grace), win the elections, you must begin by declaring that your success is the wish of God and that the other candidate should accept this will of God. It is not your fault whom the Nigerian god chooses to reward with political success. How can mere mortals complain?

The Nigerian god does not tolerate disrespect. If someone insults your religion, you must look for anyone like them and kill them. Doesn’t matter what you use—sticks, machetes, grenade launchers, IED’s, AK47’s.

If you worship the Nigerian god, you are under no obligation to be nice or kind to people who are not worshippers. They deserve no courtesy.

Aren’t all of us – Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hinduists, whatever we are – ashamed that this is the God that we present to the world? Aren’t we disturbed that this is what we have turned the maker of all that is good and perfect into because we will not live by the standards that he has set?

Nigerians have used God as an excuse for failure: refusing to hold people responsible for their actions because we should ‘leave it to God’, not correcting mistakes we have made because ‘that is the will of God’, breaking the law at will because ‘God understands’, declining to understand and engage the world with sophistication because we are ‘praising the Lord’ and refusing to create and innovate because, after all, ‘this world is not our home’.

But is that the nature of God? Are a genuine relationship with God and excellence in the world mutually exclusive? Does God expect us to suspend our capacity to think and act right because we choose to worship him? 

Definitely not.

Some of the world’s greatest civilisations have grown hand in hand with a ferocious religiosity; the physical and the spiritual walking together, the church and the state almost inseparable for for many years.

Christianity (and I use its example because that is my primary frame of reference) became the pre-eminent thought driver for Britain after it embraced it in 1^st century. Religion has played a crucial role in the evolution of Russian culture, a country that embraced Christianity in 988.

And whilst the current elite of America understandably pushes a more non-faith based national agenda, it is indisputable that the rise of America as the world’s most powerful nation happened at the height of its faith; in the nation where “In God we trust ” was adopted as its official motto in 1956. A nation built based on God and Godly values.

The evolution of religion – with wars, slavery, and death – is a subject of deep controversy even now, but that is a matter for another day. The lesson I instead seek to draw here is that religion is in fact contemporaneous with progress for many societies, and has in fact been responsible for the ascendance of most of the world’s great powers.

Contemporary nation building also indicates the same. The Emirati have delivered economic miracles even with Islam as their official state religion, proving that religion can be a liberating, progressive force. The Asian idea of God defines the way that business and politics are conducted – the East influenced heavily by Buddhist and Hinduist philosophies.

There is nothing that says that a nation cannot be Godly and do exploits; and many of the world’s religious centers, from the Vatican to Saudi Arabia are themselves models of progressive governance and the most excellent attitudes to nation building.

Even in Nigeria, the homegrown church has historically been a force for good. The Orthodox Church establishment laid the foundation for modern Nigeria, a December 2012 piece by Alder reminds us. “They are the offshoots of missionary work. They educated the people we now refer to as the founding fathers of the federation. They established the first set of hospitals and schools in Nigeria. Methodist Boys’ High School, Baptist Academy and Our Lady of Apostles Grammar School are well known examples of schools established by missionaries.

“It was the Church that educated the first set of civil servants in Nigeria. And the Church has always been at the nexus of cultural re-orientation in Nigeria. Who can ever forget the work of Mary Slessor, the diminutive nurse who fought against the barbaric culture of the killing of twins? And so when we chant about the “labour of our heroes past,” we must not forget that some of these heroes are the missionaries and the orthodox establishments.”

That sounds like the God I know and serve. A God of excellence – in the spiritual and in the physical. In the Old as well as the New Testaments he speaks continually to his character and his expectation of his children. The fruits of his spirit are a summation of all that should be good in our world – integrity, hard work, dignity, truth, humanity.

In Ecclesiastes 9:10, the bible says ”Whatever your hand finds to do, verily, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going” and in 2 Corinthians 8:7, it says “But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, and in all eagerness and in the love from us that is in you—make sure that you excel in this act of kindness too.”

This is just one of many scriptures that make the same point, all through the Bible.

When the Bible tells Christians in Mark to give to Caesar that which is his and to God that which is he is, it wasn’t referring to the perversion in Nigeria where scripture like that is used to justificaty for corruption and amoral behavior. It means that the two can co-exist – we can be excellent in our faith and be excellent with the works of our hands.

We have to kill this God we have chosen: one of mediocrity, double standards, and filth; whose sole purpose is to give us wealth and multiply our resources. Making no demands on our character, holding us to no standards and teaching us nothing, this contraption we have put together is a multi-purpose excuse for the failure that we live with every day.

Nigeria, one of the most religious nations in the world, which has become Africa’s largest exporter of Pentecostalism and one of the biggest sources of Pilgrims to Israel and Mecca has become possibly the worst advertisement for religion. 

“Finally, brothers,” Phillippians 4:8 tells Christians. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

That’s the God I know. That’s the God I worship daily and that I have a relationship with. That’s the God whose Word has made me a better person and a work in progress, forging me through the fire that builds character and imparts love. 

Just imagine if the Christians in Nigeria and in authority follow these simple instructions in the scripture above. Nigeria would be a vastly different country, with a vastly different destiny.

Surely, God’s heart is broken by what he sees when he looks down upon us. We need to stop disgracing him.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31. 

I have taken to cracking a particular joke with my friends over the course of the past two years as I have paid close attention to the way that power and politics work in our society – that it is difficult to correctly see Nigeria’s problems from the penthouse of the Transcorp Hilton.

The Hilton – that pulsating centre of much of the elite action in the nation’s capital – in this case is of course a metaphor for the plush conditions in the much-talked-about “corridors of power”.

What I refer to is a social phenomenon that has confounded many Nigerians, including young people, over many years. How is it that perfectly reasonable and principled people, get into the Nigerian government and suddenly begin to speak in tongues that normal people cannot understand?

How does it happen that what is crystal clear to everybody is not at all clear to those who make and drive public policy – or how is it that people say one thing before they get into government and another when they are in?

I have come across three theories. One, as I have noted before, is that we thorough underestimate the length and width of the problems that afflict Nigeria in many areas, and do not take the time and calmness to dissect them rationally, and are thus caught unawares by their magnitude when we get the opportunity to solve the problems.

Two, we misjudge the character of those who enter government, projecting our principles and aspirations on to them and thus mis-imagine – or unfairly pre-empt – how they will conduct themselves in office.

But the third and most urgent: the trappings of government life in Nigeria are simply not conducive to reality.

You see, government in Nigeria is, ab initio, a corrupting influence.

Government in Nigeria is too comfortable, too lavish, too affluent, too wasteful, too obese; and under these circumstances, it does not lend itself to reason or reasonableness.

For instance, how does the government view public reaction when it announces that, as part of its expenditure, there will be an additional $9 billion allocated for the Vice President’s residence?

1.     It does not understand what the outrage is about, and immediately blames it on a mis-informed press and a hyper-activeopposition. After all, it says, this is how lodgings in the Presidential Villa have always been maintained, and the new vice president doesn’t understand why his case should be different.

2.     This money was properly requested for and approved per government processes, just as a lot of monies – millions, billions – are spent in government circles daily on the most innocuous things, and what outrages you does not stand out as a sore thumb to those on the other side.

3.     In an atmosphere of bloated contracts, over-invoicing, lack of monitoring and efficiency tracking, and a steady stream of revenue, no one used to the comforts of government life is immediately ready to question the log in the eyes of another government official.

Many of those who work in government are already used to its obesity. Before they join government, they do not understand how overpowering its allure is, so when they enter, they cannot resist it.

It’s a life too easy. It’s like living in a luxury hotel penthouse at the nation’s most famous hotel.

The rooms are plush, the food is rich, the service effusive and the company elite. Two rooms across probably lies a Minister of the Federal Republic, and a floor down, the publisher of a major government-friendly media, and in the elevator, a governor friend of yours. When you look across your window, all you see is Abuja in its splendor and finery – mountains, swimming pools, tall buildings, and the smell of fresh air.

It is a step above the real Nigeria; a place where all things are bright and beautiful.

Imagine that this is the life that the oil minister or a special assistant to the president lives in every single day – then you begin to understand how, from that position, it becomes very easy to be divorced from reality.

That is the mental zone from which government ministers take hundreds of aides with them to inconsequential foreign visits abroad; that is the zone from which they buy newer aircraft to make their bullet-proofed lives easier as they go from state to state; that is the zone from which they emerge when they block the Lagos roads on each one of their lavish visits to the state.

They come from a place where excess is a way of life. And when they get there, they want to preserve that lifestyle at any cost – they will delude themselves, they will shut down their consciences, they will make justifications for the ludicrous, they will ridicule their critics, they will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo.

What you need to understand is this – they have entered into their rest. And from that place of unaltered comfort; of private jets and motorcades, endless foreign travel and new houses, first class travel and 5-star hotels across the world, they will refuse to listen to those whoscream that they are crippling the nation.

In fact, as far as they are concerned – those screaming hoarse are only looking for an opportunity to join the train.

If we want to change our country for real, we will first have to start by changing the way its government works; the way its officials live, the way its functionaries spend, the expansiveness within which they are allowed to operate.

This does not mean that government should not be comfortable. Leaders need, perhaps have earned, a certain level of comfort,even luxury – and a knee-jerk response to every expense must be eschewed in favour of context. Excess is where the problem lies.

The president of America can launch an operation to defy the sovereignty of another nation in search of Osama bin Laden without any domestic uproar, but Barack Obama lamented to Vanity Fair last year about his inability to change furniture in the Oval Office without an uproar over fiscal responsibility.

Governance should be made unattractive to those who only want the easy life. It should be functional and purpose-driven, and former president Olusegun Obasanjo understood this when he began the process of stripping civil servants and public officials of free cars and houses, attempting to ensure that they gave value for what they used or took through the monetisation policy.

We have to fill up the gulf between the governed and the govern-er to such an extent that perhaps the only thing that separates the two is power, maybe influence – certainly not money.

You only need look at our country’s recurrent expenditure to wit, how much it takes just to run the government in order to understand the depth of our challenges – which is why it is a shame that the true value of the #OccupyNigeria protests seem to have been swallowed by our nation’s incestuous oil politics. The real issue is the cost of governance and then government waste. The waste also makes graft easy, even inevitable.

As long as we continue to make public life a bubble, as long as government committee members find it easy to fly first class only to submit White Papers that are exact copies of White Papers of the same content submitted two decades ago, it will be unable to attract, and sustain, the kind of character and discipline-driven people that we need to restructure our society.

Our government is one continuous ‘owambe’ party, and it’s time for the music to stop playing.

It will be hard, and those on the dance floor will fight with all they have – but what other choice do we have as a nation? We need to fight this #CostOfGovernment battle to the finish.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

I have to confess; I never really understood the concept of round pegs in round holes as regardsgovernance. Or to put it more directly, I had never understood it in relation to people who are competent or effective at their jobs.

My assumption was: if a person has a track-record of success, then that person will always find a way to get the job done even in the absence of experience or specific knowledge.

I began to better understand the dimensions of the concept, however, when Dora Akunyili moved from the National Food and Drug Administration and Control Agency to the Ministry ofInformation – moving from an assignment very well suited to her personality as a happy warrior to one that required intellectual heft and nuance. The honourable minister didn’t seem to understand that the information ministry wasn’t a project to be managed, and not even a problem to be solved.

Of course, as a continuing student of governance, my perspective is limited by my collective out-of-government experience, but from that position it appeared clear what the problem was: armed only with a hammer for tool, she began to hit on water. And she failed as the government’s information manager.

There is a reason for that pesky maxim: you’re only as good as your last job. Competence is good, it turns out – but you cannot wish away capacity.

But tragic as the still-admirable Akunyili’s evolution was, it was not, for me at least, as depressing as The Tragedy of Nuhu Ribadu, a man who was hitherto the moral face of Nigeria’s fight against corruption as founding chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to which he was appointed in 2003.

Not to be a hypocrite, I must confess that I wasn’t exactly a fan of Mr. Ribadu’s brand of what many termed selective justice – any appearance of unfairness or vindictiveness rubs me raw; and it did appear that he was carrying out the political agenda of his principal at the time.

But hindsight is 50-50. And, as one has learnt of Nigeria, that every time you think it cannot get worse, it actually does.

So, compared to the present regime, which moral authority appears weakened by a global perception that it is soft on corruption, I now appreciate the effectiveness and passion of Mr. Ribadu. There are many who say he was a media creation, and that is a valid criticism, but it was an image comparatively well deserved.

Fast-forward four years after he left that office.

In December 2011, a gentleman, who was later to run for the office of Senator and win, gatheredmyself and about three other young leaders and gave us exclusive news: Mallam Nuhu Ribadu was finally returning to Nigeria and was going to be the presidential flag-nearer for the Action Congress of Nigeria.

He was inviting myselfand another of the persons gathered to work for that campaign – no doubt giddy in the excitement that young people would automatically root for the man.

I said no to that offer as with other such offers; because I had no interest at the time in politics or public service.

But even if I had beenopen to the possibility, I would still have said no. Because I immediately knew that Ribadu the Politician was a very, very bad idea.

And he should have guessed by the reaction to the news – it landed with a thud. We weren’t uniformly excited.

It was of course a surprise, but it seemed as if we all knew immediately that this was the wrong job for the right man.

The next few months bore this out. Mr. Ribadu never seemed presidential, and it became apparent despite what his earnest, sincere and admirable supporters claimed that he had no revolutionary or even impressive ideas to change the country.

The only argument for his candidacy, it seemed, was his achievements while at the EFCC.

This inadequacy was painfully obviously – his interviews were meandering, his debate performances painful to watch (in one particularly searing spectacle; trying to fit into his role as politician, he made the nuanced but much ballyhooed statement that “Nigerians are not corrupt”), and sooner than later it became apparent that he and his party had very different agenda.

Mr. Ribadu was clearlynot a politician, and didn’t have the skill sets to convince, to persuade, to influence, maybe even to inspire. It was like watching a train wreck – wasn’t this the same man who could fight crime with a visceral single-mindedness, and who found the words to speak against this evil with the directness of a crime fighter?

But that is what he is – a police officer, who would hate the crime and hunt the criminal even if it put his life at risk.

This – canvassing for votes – however, was a different ball game.

And it ended up with Mr. Ribadu shaking hands with the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu he had once flambuoyantly called criminals, seeking the endorsement of an Ibrahim Babangida he once called unfit to lead; lifted by the resources of people he had once looked upon with luscious contempt. Stained in the eyes of many Nigerians who had once deified him, the failure of his candidacy was so spectacular that it was instantly forgettable.

There are those who will find this disrespectful to the man, and his supporters will certainly find these statements infuriating. But there is no disrespect meant. Mr. Ribadu was a fine public official, a a role model for effectiveness in service that has and will inspire a whole new generation – that remains.

But if we are to learnfrom him and others, then we must learn this – his 2012 presidential run was a mistake. He should not have contested for the Presidency. He should not have entered politics, at least not yet. He should have said no.

Some people are fighters and others are builders, some are made to bring people together, others do not have that gift. Politicians need that capacity/skill-set (or where they do not, they have a system that ensures that – SEE: Babatunde Fashola/Bola Tinubu); but Mr. Ribadu suffered a scarcity.

He was a square peg in a round hole. He was put in a position where he could never been effective. He should have said no.

The extent to which that particular misstep diminished his capacity to drive the issues – especially as regards corruption was on full display just last year.

Mr. Ribadu returned toNigeria in February 2012 after a hiatus to do what he knows best – find criminal activity and expose it through the Petroleum Revenue Task Force (of which he is still chairman), despite the objections of fans and critics alike.

This was a perfect fitfor him and a match for his abilities; expect for one crucial fact he shouldn’t have missed: he didn’t have a principal whose agenda was clear. Even more, he didn’t have the power to enforce.

It was therefore sad to see him reduced to arguing with his deputy, Steve Oronsanye over technicalities in the task force’s report. Orosanye clearly had a questionable agenda, but what was most striking to me as an image management professional was the reaction from the public.

It was obvious that Mr. Ribadu had taken a reputation hit long before this, one that had now reduced his moral authority and his ability to drive an issue solely on the strength of personality. The nation’s most famous crime fighter had been diminished.

There are many theories, but I am more interested in the lessons for me and for others who are in search of honest answers to our nation’s leadership questions.

This is the most important – one must pick one’s battles. This is more so in a country like Nigeria, where our situation has become so desperate, as I will not tire to point out, that the room for error is slim; where the rot is deep and where we need all public officials to understand the imperative of not making things worse.

More to the point in this case, there are some jobs that you should not take, some assignments you should not accept, and some roads you should not travel.

One should not be so blind either with ambition or with passion for change that one makes a stepthat ultimately limits one’s capacity to actually change anything.

When it comes to the deeply corrupt morass that is Nigeria’s governance, sometimes NO is the right answer.

It requires the painful process of self-awareness, humility, and what the Holy Bible calls a “multitude of counsel”, but we cannot fight every battle, especially those ones that we are not equipped to fight.

At the end of the day, there are no hard and fast rules of course and a lot will depend on personal principles, circumstances, and capacities – but a new generation of leaders must have these lessons constantly at the back of our minds.

We must always remember that in Nigeria, because it can be so easy for one to lose one’s way; our challenge our challenge is clear – we need to drastically reduce the number of us who fall by the wayside.

“To thine own self, be true,” we learn from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

God help us all.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV YNaija.com. He is also executivedirector of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

Mr. Momoh has so eloquently shown us by deploying the immense power of his institution, we actually possess immense power to make government modify behavior and get better without calling anybody “stupid” or “clueless”…

I had to throw away the original examples I had used to drive today’s theme because in January something happened that drove the point home for me even stronger – one of those times when Nigeria, in spite of itself, manages to inspire you.

Here’s what happened.

There are very few people who read the news who haven’t heard about the Nigeria Police College in Ikeja, Lagos. Before January, this was just another victim of the institutional rot that defines public life in Nigeria. One documentary after, it had become a national symbol.

I will recap the story for you: On 18 January 2013, Channels Television published a documentary on its website about the college – it had secure unprecedented (for a highly secretive Nigeria, even miraculous) access to both the highest cadres of the police force and the college itself.

As a journalist, I have found myself addressing the issue of public infrastruture including the accommodation of those who rely on government for housing, and so it wasn’t a shock – but for many Nigerians, it was beyond scandalous, or outrageous. The kind of spectacle that leaves your voice dropped to a whisper.

In the documentary anchored by reporters Deji Badmus and Ayoola Kassim, the decay at the Ikeja post (referred to some as the premier police college in the country) was brought into sharp national focus.

Themed ‘On the brink of collapse’, it captured what a writer on YNaija.com, Bayo Oluwasanmi, described as “littered, jumbled, jambles, and ram shackled buildings… they (looked) fidgety, collapsible, rusty, dusty, and dying” and the library like “a stuffed flea market for used books”.

Students are herded into dingy classrooms with ceilings that are collapsing and with lecture rooms that also double as cafeterias. Of course, the classrooms are overcrowded, with students hardly able to breathe – literally.

Officers have broken down chairs and typewriters for equipment, and one of the building consultants noted “we have no learning facilities here”. The deputy commandant of the college nadded that “since the establishment of the college, there has been no development or renovation.”

There is, of course, no internet, no ventilation, no fans in what passes as a library; books were last sourced in the 1970s. Male dormitories were built by colonial masters in the 1940s and have not been renovated or maintained since. No windows, no doors, no electricity, leaks everywhere; water on the floor.

“The students look like animals that are out of their cages for a brief respite,” another writer noted. “The dorm is adorned with beds propped up with bricks to avoid falling apart. Blood-stained mosquito nets form mushroom-shaped clouds over student’s beds.”

The places where the smelly, dirty, feral beds are placed many of us wouldn’t even take a dump in. And of course, the toilets themselves looked abominable – “one can literally smell the oozing strench of hazardous fumes.”

The dormitories were (are) dilapidated and clearly not fit for human habitation, least of all for those who are later to handle guns with little supervision.

The college was built for 700 students. But it now accommodates at least 2,500.

The final humiliation is how they eat – from plastic buckets not unlike those used for ‘packing shit’ in the villages; and an eyesore emerging from those buckets and bowls.

Watching that documentary, it suddenly dawned on many why policemen constantly look angry, worn-out, frustrated, hungry, depressing and always looking for “anything for the boys”. To use a well worn Nigerian cliché – it displayed the “shame of a nation.”

The excellent documentary subsequently went viral on social media, and by the next day had spilled over onto the headlines of newspaper, television and radio reports.

Without making any direct accusations or mounting a soap box, Channels Television made several eloquent points and posed several important questions: How did the N311 billion appropriated for the Nigeria Police Force miss this college? How was the N2.046 billion appropriated for police colleges and training institutions for a 3-year period from 2009-2012 spent? Even more to the point, for me, why was the Inspector General of Police- Mohammed Abubakar  looking helpless (though credit must be given to him for his candour and eagerness to get help) with regard to the state of his own charges?

It drew attention to the general state of police officers across the country – many of whose residencies include open sewages, stinking gutters, broken staircases, damaged roofs and refuse dumps, according to a The Sun report in December 2012, long before the Channels documentary. The special report revealed similar circumstances covering the Police Barracks in Falomo, Obalende, Apapa, Ojuelegba, Ikeja GRA and Iponri – all in Lagos. Kitchens, toilets and running water were non-existent. The situation is the same across the country – from Abeokuta to Gwoza.

The documentary was stunning enough for the Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces to make an unscheduled visit to the Police College, Ikeja on 19, January, 2012.

Sadly, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan ended up making the unfortunate statement, “The documentary is a calculated attempt to damage the image of this government” – a distressing choice of words that sparked outrage across the country and made even supporters of the president do a quick take. But it didn’t matter: the point had been made, this cat was out of the bag.

Reports indicate that there will be action that will affect the Police Service Commission, the Ministry of Police Affairs, as well the Office of the Inspector-General of Police. The legislature  through Usman Kumo, who is chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs, also used the opportunity to re-iterate a point the committee claims to have been making for a while un-noticed until the Channels report.

But beyond the storm, this is the real beauty of the series of events: Channels Television didn’t do anything particularly out-of-this-world – it simply did its job.

Its reporters did not insult or demean the government; there were no accusations made, and no over-statements, no reaching for political leverage and no mis-information – it simply did what the media is supposed to do as an institution – present the truth fairly, truthfully and with depth; shine the light where others would prefer darkness, and empower the populace with the knowledge and information needed to make informed decisions, and provoke action.

First, it identified the issue. Then it unravelled the news – doing its homework thoroughly. Then, it went even a step further, taking active interest in changing the situation – ultimately the station signaled it was kickstarting a fund-raising drive following the immense publicity to rehabilitate the college and make an active difference; making the leap from investigative to developmental journalism.

Following the public outcry, the entire project now appears to have lost a bit of steam – the proposed forum and fundraiser have been curiously post-poned based on what some have called ‘political pressure’.

Maybe that is the case, and that would be sad. But with or without that event holding, Channels TV has done the nation a favour by playing its part – it has also done more for the cause of the students of the police college than a motley crowd of activists and commentators have done.

More importantly, it is not government or a part of government; it does not have a budget to actually change the situation of the college, neither does it have the authority; but it has the capacity to focus on the issue and make that change happen and brought that to bear.

The station looked at its own ability to drive change from their corner of the world and then did it to the very best of its ability, even in a country where it is extremely difficult to do that kind of journalism.

The lesson is how much we can do to change Nigeria by doing that which we are empowered or trained to do well – whether as audit firms supervising fuel subsidy payments, bankers interfacing on public funds, lawyers facilitating the cause of justice, musicians driving the issues, or even as street cleaners making out cities habitable.

In a ‘Change Agent in the Tax Office’, a Princeton case study made available online last year (and which should be one of the compulsory reading for change-makers in Nigeria), Ifueko Omogui-Okauru who was executive chairman of Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service made a simple statement that captured her drive: “To build Nigeria, we have to build institutions.”

The mistake we always make when we hear statements like this is that we immediately think of government. But John Momoh, who owns Channels Television, is not in government. We all need to understand deeply that institutions are both public and private – and the task of building them isn’t the government’s alone. They’re everywhere around us – they’re our collective responsibility to build.

Trade associations, the boards of non-governmental organisations, collectives, professional organisations and many more are supposed to be committed to building and sustaining strong institutions. We need to begin to take this responsibility seriously.

As Mr. Momoh has so eloquently shown us by deploying the immense power of his institution, we actually possess immense power to make government modify behavior and get better without calling anybody “stupid” or “clueless” or any other word from the roll call of hysteria that nowpasses for engagement.

Sometimes, it takes taking a deep look at what we are doing with where we are or what we have – and how we can constructively drive our agenda and achieve tangible outcomes. Sometimes, what we really need to do is to do our jobs well.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

But there was something remarkable about her, and it wasn’t just the bulging eyes, or the raised voice, the effortless reeling out of data about her sector or the magnetism of this authentically Nigerian woman. It all came together in what I could hear her saying: that she didn’t know anything about this job when she was employed, that she knelt down and prayed to the Virgin Mother for help, and that she would give her life fighting the battle that she had just chosen to fight.

Her name was Dr. Dora Akunyili (she would later become a Professor). She had just been appointed by then President Olusegun Obasanjo as the Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control, and she was fighting a battle that no one else had been able to win – counterfeit drugs, that were taking the lives of so many Nigerians on a daily basis.

These days when we think about Dora Akunyili, the images that go through our heads are not altogether pleasant. We remember the woman who left public office looking like a power monger; who lost an election that took away the last shred of her public dignity when she refused to lose gracefully.

We remember the loquaciousness of her task as the government’s information minister – the Rebrand Nigeria Project that was a failure even before it kicked off, her battle against the way the national anthem was song, and the ridiculous war against young Nigerians emotionally engaging with their country through the empowering word ‘Naija’.

But there was a Dora Akunyili before higher office unravelled her – one defined by her relentless humility in doing the job she was assigned, not just to the best of her ability but effectively.

According to a report, she became angry because “so many of (her) countrymen and women (were) fighting killer diseases like malaria and tuberculosis with little more than sugar syrup and chalk tablets, cynically packaged to look like the real thing.”

So she set a new standard for public office; she took a problem and decided she wasn’t going to stop until it was solved – even if her life was at risk, and even though those she was fighting were very quick to fight back. She was tireless – as an educator, as an advocate, as a campaigner, as a woman dedicated to a calling bigger than herself, and as a reformer.

By the time she was done, Akunyili had completely transformed the way Nigerian consume food and drugs, she left us with an incredible legacy – the ubiquitous NAFDAC number.

There was another woman in the same government whose game was different, but whose outcome had the same distinctive quality, if you would ask some. Her name is ObiageliEzekwesili.

The concept of a reformer in government is alien to our culture – but Ezekwesilitook that concept and made it a beautiful thing. She was an activist in government, working hard to change it from the inside, with the same disdain and anger that one would expect from an activist.

It began when she set the tone for the Obasanjo government and set up the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit – cleaning up the morass that characterised public procurement and the entire system of contacts in the government.

During almost seven years in government, she continued her fight to dramatically change the way government works in Nigeria through the Bureau for Public Procurement legislation, laws governing solid minerals through the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and setting a new standard in accountability and transparency in the oil and gas sector. Within a short period of nine months, she also became the nation’s most remarkable education minister to date.

By the time she left the government she had left another incredible legacy – the acute understandingthat “Due Process”is indispensable to good governance.

When I remember these two women, both of whom I have been lucky to meet; one of whom I am lucky to know, sometimes it brings tears to my eyes.

They couldn’t be more different – underlying the fact that Nigeria doesn’t need a certain kind of person – it needs a certain kind of principle. One that does its job, one that solves problems, one that stays committed to the task of nation-building.

Of course, at the end of the day, the two followed different paths – one appeared to lose her bearings and ended up frittering the goodwill and moral authority that she had earned and deserved through an unending search for power, and more power.

The other, went from grace to grace – resisting the temptation of slothful wealth, irredeemable power and the colour blindness that follows many who taste government. She has now become an international symbol of public accountability and good governance.

The two women could not be more different. One was the product of the local system and the University of Nigeria Nsukka, one swooped in after her incubation at Harvard and with Jeffrey Sachs.

One was loud and stereotypical as a Nigerian can be complete with a love for the cameras, a loud fashion sense, aso-ebi at events and globe-trotting from one awards ceremony to the other. The other had a more simple style –the dressing was simple, jewely absent; the events she spent her time with were church, she refused to hug the cameras; and she cut the perfect picture of an intellectual.

But it didn’t matter – the same things drove them: passion, knowledge, competence, disdain for what is wrong, fearlessness. Above all – an irrevocable belief that Nigerian can work if there are enough of us, maybe even just one of us, doing the right thing in whatever our hands find to do.

I use these two examples because they are presently out of government, are shining, controversy-free examples of the principles I speak of, and are presently answering to no corruption allegations. Of course, there have been many more like them.

For those who keep making excuses that it is impossible to work in the Nigerian government and actually make a difference. For those who go in there and give in to the rot and are unrecognisable by those who once knew them, for those whose true characters were revealed as they reveled in the trappings of office.

For those that make it sound like there is something about us as Nigerians that makes it impossible for us to do our jobs and save our country through government, Akunyili and Ezekwesili, in two distinct ways, stand as a rebuke to that white flag.

For a new generation seeking models of effectiveness and positivity, we have a lot, very plenty, to learn from them.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

My orientation about how government began to change in 2009. Before this time, I had always felt – sadly without any historical or evidentiary perspective – that Nigerians can transform Nigeria, in spite of our government.

It was easy for me to believe this. I came into awareness of my country’s place in the world in at atmosphere of hope in the late 1990s and at the turn of the millennium as we embraced democracy and the opening of many social spaces. There were very many examples to point out.

Some are now cliché, like Nollywood, an industry that has been hailed for rising up like a rose amongst thorns, and had become Nigeria’s biggest cultural export to the world. Or our music industry – also thriving simply by grit and talent.Or it’s youth who from art to advocacy, technology to the media, had charted courses that didn’t depend on government patronage or ‘support’.

Surely if Nigerians could do these, in spite of Nigeria, then surely we could end up regenerating Nigeria – through a network of us empowered economically and by knowledge working to rebuild our country, step by step.

That’s what I thought.

That’s what drove our passion and our work withThe Future Awards, and its evolution into The Future Project–and our focus on identifying he most inspiring of our generation as strong, positive role models to motivate others to transcend Nigeria’s difficult environment and do great things.

The idea was – and it is still the fulcrum of our work – that this network of inspired, effective new leaders would create a flywheel effect that will change Nigeria.

A chance comment from a friend got me thinking beyond the box, however. He asked: how far will we actually be able to go in transforming our society before we have to connect those efforts with what government is doing or what it needs to do? How much could we achieve if the government fundamentally remained the same?

The more I thought of it. The more I realised – not far.

My experience over the past few years have made apparent to me what has been apparent to the world’s real change-makers in modern societies over the past few years It’s the same reality that confronts you when you read books like Lee Kuan Yu’s From Third World to First World, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracles – we can only go so far in changing our world without connecting with or transforming government.

Focusing on inspiring a network of progress outside of government wasn’t a wrong message however;it just wasn’t the complete message. Just like many of us, I was falling into a well-worn trap of the single solution, of the single story.

Of course, when you face a system like Nigeria’s, where successive governments appear to govern by default; where it appears there are no values or visions from on top and all the other clichés about our leadership that you and I are now familiar with it is easy to give in to the temptation to want to desperately ignore that government, to belittle it, to make it seem inconsequential.

With the acute awareness that it is a huge, thankless task to change a government like ours, and the abiding fear of the daunting path ahead transform the way it thinks and functions, it is very easy to hope that we can change our country without it.

Unfortunately, that ostrich needs to bring its head out of the sand. Nigeria is not going to be changed by non-governmental organisations digging boreholes; it will not be changed by advocatespushing for probity in government. No matter how earnest and well-organised they are; their efforts will be thwarted because they are not in charge of hiring competent officials and firing corrupt aides, the maintenance of an independent judiciary through responsible appointments or the judicious allocation of public funds.

In the same way Nigeria won’t be changed by the USAID or any other international do-gooders because that is not what they are structured to do, just as a war will not be stopped by the Red Cross or Amnesty International, but by the governments and their enemies which started the war.

This is the reason, in fact, that many donors and international organisations from the British Council to the DFID, the US government to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation prefer to supportorganisations that interface with government, or they just partner with the governments themselves.

Where they are not doing that, they are working with organisations that are in opposition to government, or that snip at the heels of government. Either ways, there is an implicit global understanding, honed by years of ineffectual interventions and a vicious cycle of good intentions with little result that it all comes back government.

The reason is simple: none of them have the budget, the resources, the reach, the weight, the capacity to affect all levers and layers of society. Even when they do –which is almost impossible except when one country violates another’s sovereignty – none of them can muster enough required toeffect the kind of change that can be facilitated by the full power of the state.

Perhaps we can findEgypt a perfect example. While its exemplary people have turned protest into an art form, arm-twisting their leaders into taking responsible decisions and sustaining the tempo of change leading from the Arab Spring, a people-driven revolution has still come back to the character and nature of the new government that they have – and what Mohammed Morsi decides to do (and not to do) in his relations with the judiciary, the military, and civil society will turn out being more important than the revolution that brought the Islamic Brotherhood into power.

Like Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, who is King of Jordan, told participants at the World Economic Forum in January, the revolutions were the easiest part of the work that they have – building a political culture, driven by their elected leaders in government is the major task that lies ahead.

The message is simple: no matter how dirty and slimy we find our government (and maybe we are justified, and maybe we are exaggerating), we are making a terrible mistake to think that we can transform our country without it.

Government is the singular most important force for change in any society – print that and paste it on your day if you really want to do something to change your country.

It doesn’t matter if, with government officials behaving like asses and the deporable behavior that passes for administration, government has become a dirty word; the dirtiness should not obscure that simple reality.

We need a government that works – one way or the other. We cannot, cannot change Nigeria without its government.

The tragedy, of course, is that the clamour for working with government or joining government is usually championed by people whose motives are largely questionable.

So it is important to note that joining government blindly, especially the legislature and executive, is not going to solve our problems even if it is important. And, of course, if precedent gives us any pointers, blind ambition causes more harm than good.

Fortunately for us, there is not just one way to make our government better. What we need to do, like I have mentioned in an earlier piece, is to find our positions in relation to this organ.

We need enough competent and vision-driven people who are transforming the government by working with it and helping it; or we have others working from outside: activists, freedom fighters, opposition politicians, radical lawyers, dogged journalists, progressive clergymen.

But whatever we do, we need the government in our sights. Whatever we do, where we want it to have a lasting impact on the way our society is structured and governed, we have to find the nexus where these efforts connect to government – and modifies its behavior. Either that or we push it aside, and work to get a government that will act right.

In my next piece, I will be sharing the example of two impressive people who provide a signpost for how one can step into those troubled waters and bring calm to the storm. I will also share examples of two people working outside of governmentwho have found effective ways of putting it on its toes.

We will need more people like them, who are self-aware enough to make a step that is selfless and purposive. That job isn’t for each and everyone of us – but there are always men and woman made for a time like this. And e fit be you o.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

I have spoken about the futility of a youth agenda. Indeed, what is needed in its stead is a clarity of purpose: what exactly is the “change we need”?

Let me quickly explain. South Africans had a clear idea of the change they wanted – the end of apartheid. Nigeria’s founding fathers – the end of colonial rule. South Sudan – ‘Give us our own country’. The American Civil Rights Movement – end of segregation. Obama’s 2008 army, despite the deceptive ambiguity was very clear – Obama. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya – unseating dictators.

Young Nigerians – actually, all Nigerians – unfortunately don’t have that kind of clarity. Nobody can really answer the question: What exactly are we ‘fighting’ for? That’s a tragedy.

While there is the danger of a single problem (or single solution), a people who want to transform their country must know the core of what they want so that they can effectively focus their strengths and get it.

Look at some of the few times in Nigeria when we had a real mass revolt that actually made a difference. When Igbos wanted Biafra, when Nigerians wanted MKO Abiola, when we wanted Abacha gone, and each time we have fought against a fuel subsidy increase that signaled a “wicked government” (Note: It wasn’t about the subsidy removal, it was about the “wickedness” of the government, which is a broad, galvanizing issue).

The reason behind the magic is simple: the majority – rich and poor, literate or not, male or female – wanted the same thing.

For a mass action to work, it has to be a cause bigger than all of us; a cause for which people are ready to stake their reputations, their freedoms, even their lives.

Right now, there are too many voices asking for too many things; refusing to submerge special interest once in a while under a larger vision. That is one challenge.

The second challenge is this, and this might be controversial: our problems are comparatively less dire than being treated as a slave in America, as a second-class citizen in South Africa, or being unable to run for office in pre-colonial Nigeria.

Nigeria’s peculiarity lies in the fact that our system should have collapsed finally by now, but by some miracle it’s still holding up. Our systems actually, somehow somehow, work. They are weak, they are corrupt, but many people still get minimum service from teaching hospitals, many get their pensions from government offices, many go to police and get some measure of protection – there is a deceptive appearance of normalcy, until there’s a huge event that showcases in stark terms the deeply sorry state of affairs. Unfortunately or fortunately, it always passes too quickly or we recover even quicker.

So we find our lives bearable, and think perhaps it can get better.

So maybe we should therefore stop berating Nigerians for not setting themselves on fire like the Tunisian hero who set off the Arab Springs.

Maybe the nation’s thought leaders should instead ask themselves: why haven’t we yet told a coherent tale; one that has a mass appeal and that can drive a national movement? If those crying for change have not yet defined the change they want to see, how do you expect people to die for what they cannot understand; something they do not believe in?

Then there is the third challenge; that Nigeria is a country too fragmented by ethnic and other divisions. But that should not be a fatal impediment. If politicians of all persuasions and stripes could come together to work for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to achieve a common purpose of achieving power, then change-minded Nigerians with an agenda can replicate that.

The 2011 elections were an example of this. Civil society groups, political parties, churches, mosques and everyone else had a single goal: preventing rigging and ensuring a free and fair elections. Many tried to distract from this focus by emphasising candidates and candidacy, but as civil society noted correctly – fielding candidates is largely a question for political parties.

That unrelenting focus paid off: despite what the opposition chooses to say, the elections were not without corruption, but they were free and fair, and largely reflected, in each state, the will of the people.

If you ask me, that singular goal should again be the focus of 2015. We should again focus on free and fair elections but not just on Election Day. It should start with persistent advocacy for internal democracy in political parties, it should insist that INEC widen the field of options for candidacy, political education for the electorate across the country, strengthen electoral funding laws and institute independent monitoring for enforcement.

People have said what are free and fair elections without good candidates? Then I ask, what qualifies a candidate as good? Democracy is not perfect – but as long as every qualified person can aspire and make himself or herself available to be elected; if apeople vote a particular person, then that is good enough for me. If the person doesn’t meet the people’s expectation, they can recall him in the short term or get him out in four years.

If the push and pull of elections are allowed to run unfettered, ultimately we have the change we seek, because politicians will have the fear of being voted out. As we have seen in Ondo and Edo, this is a real fear and it can be effective.

I am convinced that once we are able to prove through elections – consolidated over at least four electoral cycles – that bad leadership will not be rewarded; Nigeria will have made the right turn.

Nigerians should know that the voting card is the most important tool for change that we have and we should be pushed to deploy it maximally. I have outlined some of its major pillars above.

Again, some will say – and what happens after the free and fair elections are solidified? Well, the same people that forged the first consensus should begin to work on next steps. No nation in the world is ever developed at once or gets to development and stops – countries move from one great wave to another. After you solve apartheid, then the next big issue can be poverty. But you cannot sensibly deal with both big issues at once – that’s a seductive prospect, but that’s just not the way it works. It’s a slow, steady march.

If we decide the issue isn’t free and fair elections, then perhaps it can be corruption – which many have identified (and I agree) as the most important challenge Nigerians face. As inspiration, Anna Hazare’s courageous (if tainted) battle against corruption in India has galvanized the mass population. Maybe security – and the complete absence of respect for human life our government perpetuates? Or is it poverty? Whatever it is, we have to reach some kind of consensus – and consensus takes time.

Historically, political leaders are best able to frame this movement – think Ghandi, think Mandela, Castro, Mao, Lee Kuan Yew.

Unfortunately, in Nigeria, we have only the PDP and those who insist the PDP is Nigeria’s bigger problem. At the risk of awakening the “you are an agent of PDP if you say anything good about them” crowd, that is quite simply not true according to the facts. The No-to-PDP campaign might be a media success, but as elections have proven, that is not the case with the electorate.

It is the prerogative of the Congress for Political Change (CPC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and others to unseat the PDP, because, after all that is what a democracy is about, but that is not a cause that is going to galvanise the public. It will not galvanise them because it is not broadly logical, and therefore lacks resonance.

First, many don’t think the PDP is the problem, they think it is just as flawed as the rest; only bigger. Second, the PDP has delivered many successful governments includingthose of Olusegun Obasanjo, Donald Duke, Godswill Akpabio, Rotimi Amaechi, and Sule Lamido. Third, does any real change happen simply because of a change in politic parties? Has Britain changed since Cameron took it from Brown despite his rhetoric?

The political opposition to the PDP can perhaps be more effective in changing Nigeria if they sit down, frame their vision in simple terms beyond just a party change, get an attractive, capable candidate to drive this vision, and then build a national coalition around whatever this cause will be – something even business leaders and young professionals can buy into and run with.

Unfortunately, as I write, there is no one person or one organisation that has defined clearly this vision of the “change” that we seek and how exactly we will arrive at that destination – and managed to define it in a way that captures the imagination and buy-in of the mass population.

Realising how far awaywe are from this gives me a headache. It reminds me that we have far from started. Thankfully, we can start now.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

There is a truth young Nigerians need to know – and it is that if many of us find the privilege to step into public office today, we will act the exact same way as many of those whom we criticise, even despise.

Recover quickly and let’s interrogate that assertion.

The problem is neither a default in character (the “all Nigerians young and old are corrupt” doctrine) nor a sudden absence of conscience – the problem is, as I see it, one of understanding.

More than once, I have quieted down and listened to government officials who were once activists or critics or columnists or opposition members repeat that they “did not fully understand the depths of the problem that existed” or that suddenly they have seen the light.

That in itself is a major problem, and I don’t think we understand how grave a challenge it presents – and why we need to pay attention to what these people are saying.

It is very troubling to listen to the public discourse amongst young people and see them belittle and simplify the magnitude of the problems Nigeria faces or why it has been impossible for many brilliant, determined Nigerians in government to fulfill the promise that they made orrepresented.

They are preparing themselves to fall into the same traps that have caught their predecessors.

Let’s look back on perhaps the finest example of this tragedy – Bola Ige, that excellent man who government took away from us. It had been barely days since he joined the government, without looking at the files, sitting down with the decision makers, understanding the bottlenecks or indeed having a cup of coffee to think over the mountains ahead, but he went to the public space and declared that he would solve the problems of NEPA in a couple of months.

His timeline came and passed – and, of course, he failed.

Government in Nigeria is surely not a matter solely of good intentions.

If you are a politician, you face a number of woes: a severely corrupt set of grassroots politicians that subsists almost entirely on cash-patronage and is driven by primal, primitive interests. To break all that English into a simple phrase – it is cash-and-carry (to win a local government election in the South-West, I have heard, you need at least N20 million).

You face an electorate populace that will sit outside the home of a Senator to get their “dividends of democracy”, most times in cash. On rare occasions, they demand that a legislator sink a borehole in the community or build a bridge, a responsibility that is neither his nor does he oversee whose it is.

If you are, say a minister, your woes surely multiply – government is a complex layer of mundane, redundant, and gravity-defying bureaucracy that can consume (and corrupt) you. There are permanent secretaries who have outlived two decades of ministers whom you have to co-opt or circumvent (ask Adenike Grange). By the way, you cannot fire them, nor can you discipline them.

The Ministry of Youth Development is perhaps a good example here. It is a ministry that “handles” the National Youth Service Corps, but then, that is easily a joke.

Despite the fact that its budget is taken almost 90 per cent by the service corps scheme, the minister unfortunately has very little control over matters as simple as whether corps members allowances have been paid – in fact, effectively, the director-general and other officials of of the Corps are beyond his control No amount of “fire and brimstone’ threats can make any real change in those places unless he somehow finds himself having the ears of the president on a constant basis. Unfortunately, youth development is not a ‘powerful’ ministry – another major problem.

You find yourself beholden to a severely corrupt National Assembly whose members have been there since democracy returned in1999, who already know “how things are done here” and are armed, dangerously, with small minds and huge egos.

You are pressured on every corner to ease your own passage during sittings and hearings (ask Fabian Osuji) for everything fromyour budget to mini-controversies, and you find yourself having to learn a whole new range of social skills to get any work done.

And I have only mentioned two principalities.

One remembers Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tell a tale on her first course in Nigerian government about how she had to go out and buy pens for the ministry herself because the process of getting the monies out was about to drive her crazy. And that’s just pens.

Have I told you the story of a government minister who entered into office and sought to do the simplest thing possible –a re-design of the ministry’s website?

Ah, then maybe I should tell you. First and foremost, the directors in his office could give him no clues, claiming the previous minister had single-handedly managed the site. There was no email trail made available to the new minister, no proper handover in documented format (theminister before him had simply upped and left).

When he eventually got a contact, informally, to the special assistant to the former minister (whom, as you must recall was no longer in the vicinity), he was told that the contractor who managed the back-end of the site could not reached.

Cut a long story short, to get anything done, he had to register a whole new URL and get a new website designed, leading to a situation where different ministries in Nigerians government circles have wildly different URLs.

Of course, when you go down to Twitter to hear the chatter, you hear things like this: “Why can’t this minsiter do a simple thing like change the website of this country?! Why do we have such daft people in government in Nigeria?”

The problem unfortunately, is not daft people. The problem is a daft system that has made itself so impossible to change that it takes the will and guts of a mad man.

What do you find, therefore? Brilliant technocracts who have blazed trails internationally or in the private sector or in the development community who find themselves hampered by the labyrinth of government in Nigeria – where they are unable to do the most basic things. Cushioned unfortunately by the interminable luxuries of that same government, they will not resign, but will simply throw their hands in the air, do the little that they can to “satisfy their conscience”, moan about how terrible it is to steer any change in Nigeria.

Where they are smarter, they launch into quick wins – developing a string of nice-sounding ideas and projects that will quickly win them column inches and the admiration of donors and foreign governments. They are seen as visionary and transformative, but they know that the minute they step out of government, their unsustainable ideas will be churned out, along with their strategists, consultants, and other suits.

The result is that we take no step forward, and two backwards.

This is the challenge that a new generation of leaders faces. Government is the most important force for change in any society so ultimately to make any sustainable change, you have to have people in this imperfect, impossible governance structure.

Getting into public service without seeking to correctly understand how deep the corruption, the ineptitude, and the failure of common processes runs means that you are getting into government without the competence and the capacity that you truly need to make any change possible.

We don’t need another generational merry go round where people go into government all fired up and ready to go and come out with no concrete achievement – ending up as additions to the long list of failed “whizkids”.

Therefore, any young person who is desirous of joining that system (indeed, any system) on a tangential or major level, must begin to take the time to understand that system –indirectly through observation, monitoring, and knowledge osmosis (conferences, sittings, etc), or directly through internships, mentorships and other interactions.

That is what will truly differentiate a new generation of leaders from the old: knowledge, and the capacity to make change happen.

Not to complain about how hard it is when you eventually arrive there, not to be crippled by the relentless graft that defines it, not to be slowed down by its institutionalided inadequacies; but to come into those offices fully understanding the complexity of our problems and how deep they run and armed with a plan and a strategy on how to circumvent or de-mobilise those situations and achieve sterling results.

For now, we are not at that stage yet.

Many of us are still under-estimating the problem, and we are over-stating our own capacity to make that change happen simply because we have read a couple of textbooks that have outlined “alternative sources of energy in emerging economies”, we have not faced any situations that test our character, or have attended one or two conferences on “The Asian Tigers” during our summer holidays at Stanford.

Many of us still imagine for instance – and this is truly worrisome – that good intentions are enough to solve our power problems and dismiss the circling of vultures including ex-heads of state who have vested interests in that sector and will fight reform tooth and nail; or that it takes just one fiery senator to dismantle the wickedness in high places that are siphoning Nigeria’s oil wealth.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have anything to do with passion, or righteous indignation. It has everything to do with the competence and the capacity to navigate these treacherous waters.

The solution bears repeating – Any young person who is desirous of joining that system (indeed, any system) on a tangential or major level, must begin to take the time to understand that system –indirectly through observation, monitoring, and knowledge osmosis (conferences, sittings, etc), or directly through internships, mentorships and other interactions.

These are not times for trial by error.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

Time and again, as I have faced an audience, discussion panel or interview, I have been asked a question on the ‘youth agenda’ and it’s almost always, “What do young people want?”

Usually, the persons who asked the question is utterly uninterested in the matter and is only asking a generic, simplistic question, for which he also expects an equally generic,simplistic answer. But, for me, this is a particular vexatious question.

It is even more troubling because I have seen many a young person immediately lurch into an answer – sometimes insisting that the reason young people are not making a difference in and for our country is because we have not yet defined what our ‘agenda’ is.

Very worrisome. As worrisome as the way everyone assumes that because I am a young person, I have to be something called a “progressive”?

What does that even mean? When and where did we sit and decide that all young people think the same way and will act the same way?

Can there really be a singular agenda for any diverse demographic in a democracy? Is there also any such thing as a male agenda? A children’s agenda? An adults agenda?

I think not. Unlike the Nigeria Labour Congress, or the South-South Caucus of the National Assembly, there is no one unified body to present an agenda for young people, and neither should they be.

This is why.

The youth population is dynamic. In that demographic, we have conservatives and liberals, those in the People’s Democratic Party and those in the Congress for Progressive Change; some whobelieve fuel subsidy should be removed totally, and others who think it’s the band-aid we desperately need. Some feel the same-sex bill is a distraction, others believe it is a welcome affirmation of who we are as Nigerians; some believe it is time for the nation’s split, others believe in that enduring concept of “One Nigeria”; some young Igbos think Ojukwu is a hero for Biafra, others see him as a man unprepared for a war he started.

It is impossible to have a youth agenda, and by God there should be none.

Of course, there is a reason why we have this anomaly in the first place, and it is a simple one. You and I, who fancy ourselves as smart and cosmopolitan, have left defining the debate and even who we are to the Aluta youth’, and I mean that more as a descriptive than derisive term.

When we surrender the social space to obtuse young people in the National Association of Nigerian Students and the National Youth Council (and certainly, there are brilliant, well-meaning young leaders in these collectives), we end up with politicised, even militarised language complete with sound and fury.

We become like our fathers, mouthing clichés and rhetoric that thus cannot be constructive in problem solving. That is why, for an uncomfortably long time last year, there was the spectacle on the national scene where “youth leaders” continued to pressure the president to ensure that the minister of youth development had to be a young person below 35.

After rejecting overtures to join this campaign, I began to sit and ask myself, “How did we even have these kinds of young people speaking for you and I, in the first place?”

Perhaps the larger nation should also ask itself this– how did it turn out, for instance, that Lamidi Adedibu was making leadership and governance decisions for the likes of your parents and mine in Oyo State?

Because, we have ceded the space for defining us to those who cannot even define themselves.

More to the question in this particular instance: if there is no one ‘youth agenda’, why do these ‘youth leaders’ mouth it so often? Ah, that one is very easy: Because it makes it easier for them to secure political patronage in your name.

When they go to our disconnected political leaders and tell them, ‘this is the youth agenda’, the political leader who is afraid of complex decision-making and the kind of micro-targeting that the Barack Obama campaign is universally recognised finds that his life has been made easy.

Then he throws money or power at the “youth leader”and assumes the youth are ‘sorted’. Like the clamour for a youth minister, that is what it ultimately boils down to – what part of the ‘cake’ is for the youth?

I believe young people need to re-order that discourse in order for us to be clear about what it is we really want when we ask for“change” in our country.

As I have said in response to the question on what the youth agenda is – it is no more or no less than what every Nigerian capable of thought and action is seeking for: a country that works for everybody, and that allows self-determination for its citizens.

The means (agenda, if you may) towards which we want these might vary – some want privatisation, and others socialism; others want technocrats in government, and others better structured political parties – but the entirety of Nigeria is desirous of the same set of things: Can we have regular power supply? Can our infrastructure work on at least a uniformly basic level? Can we have roads, schools, hospitals, homes, and skies that are safe? Can our educational system be lifted to match the rest of the world? Can our oil wealth be judiciously managed? Can corrupt persons be punished?

To the extent that there is an agenda for young people– that simple collectivity of wishes, for a Nigeria that works, is the only agenda that we have.

Everything else is a distraction.

Young people joining or forming one political party? Nonsense, really. The multiplicity of voices that we have presently is crucial both for a functioning democracy and the new, knowledge economy.

More young people to be allowed to contest elections? Inconsequential. As everyone from the leadership of the youth council to Dimeji Bankole has taught us, Nigeria will not be different just because the ages of those in power suddenly changes – what matters is the age of their ideas and the strength of their character.

Where there is an agenda at all, it should focus on specificity – for institutions and processes. There should be an agenda for the reform of the National Youth Service Corps for instance, there should be anagenda for the usefulness (or not) of the Ministry of Youth Development, there should be an agenda to drive agro-involvement by the youth population, there should be an agenda to drive jobs and employability for young people just as there should be for older people, there should be an agenda to drive technological productivity, which tends to disproportionately attract young people.

Those are the agenda that we should be focused on as a nation: serious-minded, solution-oriented engagements, and ideas that will actually lead to productive outcomes – jobs, knowledge, opportunities, capacity, engagement.

It is time for you and I to find ways to join – and change – the ongoing conversation about what our desires as young people should be.

Because, if those who claim to speak for you continue to demand only for their own piece of patronage, then we’re just all riding full speed towards the wrong destination. And this is why you cannot afford to be be unconcerned with what other young people are doing – and saying – on your behalf.

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Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.