I have felt compelled to comment on the trending video of Presidential- elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s (BAT) return to Nigeria from his weeks abroad. Seeing a crowd I would call a swarm of _Omoluabi people_ (I’m experimenting on avoiding adding ‘s’ to pluralise non English words) around him, really gets one profiling the Nigerian political scene in amazement, over again.

*For the benefit of non Yoruba speaking people, Omoluabi refers to a sensible, reasonable, civilised, well mannered, commendable person.*

Omoluabi, – the youths, mothers, _working class_, middle and elites. Not just politicians, swarmed around a man whose antecedents in government didn’t develop any notable, lasting or memorable *social welfare structure* for the people he served – or rather, ruled.

We must realise and appreciate, and be truly grateful to the colonialists whom we so love to agree to hate and criticise together, that *the current system of being pensionable after retirement was instituted by them – colonialists.*

Of course a system that our governors and the FGN find harder and harder to keep up with, and look almost tempted to strike off if it weren’t going to be the last straw to have their heads on spikes … and especially if the decision would not be detrimental to the fat payments to continue to receive after tenure.

Is it not a pity that since the departure of the criminal colonialists, we have been unable to develop any complimentary social systems to cater for our citizens? From health sector to education, it is nearly impossible to find any sustained structure to that.

The National Youth Service Corps, thankfully initiated by a military dispensation in the 1960s after the Nigerian uncivil war, was instituted to strengthen unity and further cohesion and nation building. However, can we truly say it has achieved its main purpose? None the less, it has provided a soft landing patch to wean off Nigerian graduates who usually do not know what to do with themselves right after school. This is because it is only recently the Nigerian undergraduate has started developing the culture of working while in school as is usually the way in other more developed continents especially as they offer schemes to accommodate students for mentoring, shadowing and apprenticeship- which naturally guide them on what next after graduation.

Thus the NYSC affords thinking time and an entitlement period of feeling like a precious property of the great Federal Republic, or in Nigerian parlance, as a _government pikin_.

Since the inception of NYSC, despite in recent times, seems to offer scape goats for rituals, human parts traffickers and violent elections, what else can we identify? Thus, as haphazardly as the NYSC has been run, there are merits that can be ascribed to it.

Therefore one wonders if it is the fear of being unsustainable and an inevitable failure that has caused Nigerian governments not to develop more people friendly aides for the life starters, the vulnerable, and the under privileged or it is a totally lacking in political will, and lethargy for creativity?

Watching this Omoluabi swarm touched my heart. It made me wonder what governance the hoped to have under a visibly feeble senior citizen. Watching swarm of BAT supporters who look like everyday people , one wonders what expectations they have. do they truly desire a new lease of life that strong and effective governance can offer or they simply want it to be business as usual.

O fellow countrymen, when would we truly mean what we say before over squeezing ear-pleasing chants like “_we want a country where a nobody can become somebody_”. Really? Easier said and said and said again.

To say and to do have no relationship in meaning, so it is worth wondering why both words often occur in the same sentence as the latter is hardly ever a consequence of the former.

To do doesn’t just happen because there was the ‘say’. They are both independent verbs in the humanities or variables as you would say in natural sciences- maths.

If Nigerians are to ever enjoy effective governance that care and cater for the peoples’ welfare and social needs, alongside development and provision of amenities, facilities and infrastructure, we need to look no further than ourselves.

We the Omoluabi swarm, the reasonable thinking people need to become just that and go beyond the naming.

Let us think right and choose our leaders accordingly. *Let us begin the doing, let’s step up and actually _do_. For in so doing, we would be doing ourselves justice. We would be serving ourselves what we deserve. Our leaders come from us.*

Julie A Dyer, is a lawyer and socio- political observer. She writes from London.