By David Owaboye

There is this Nigerian saying that “what you’re looking for in Sokoto is in your shokoto”. That typifies the scenario panning out in Afghanistan at the moment which should serve as food for thought for us as a nation bearing in mind the fact that we almost always run to the western world for solace at every snap of the finger.

For two decades, Afghanistan was under the watchful eyes of the United States and its Western allies and together engaged in a serious war with the Taliban. During these years, the US was able to train and equip battalions of soldiers who alongside NATO had their way in the war-torn country.

The Afghan soldiers saw the Americans as their Messiah and had put all their faith in them believing that with their aid, they had conquered the Taliban, but did not know that the Taliban are like the proverbial ram that goes to war after a little retreat.

Now, the Taliban have come back to take what is ‘theirs’, brimming with aplomb while the ‘superpowers’ have suddenly and gradually taken to their heels leaving their ‘carcass’ behind. It’s now obvious that the only reason the Americans and their allies were affiliated with the Afghans in the first instance was purely on selfish reasons. The 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Centre by the al-Qaeda had not left the minds of the Americans so, their mission was totally that of revenge and not because they had any iota of love for the Afghan people. Yet, the Afghans joined forces with them to fight their own people. Now, they are at loggerheads with their ‘own’ to the extent they hung on the wings of a plane like a swarm of bees just to get out of “hell” and head to the ‘Promised Land’.

There’s a lot to take away from the Afghan debacle. One of them and I think it’s the most important is that local problems can be solved locally and nation building is a local project. No one can love you more than yourself and no country can love your country more than the citizens.

Most times, we hear people say something like they will report other citizens or even the government to the United Nations or to the British government and I find it laughable because some of those narratives simply mean that we are still enslaved mentally. The earlier we emancipated ourselves from it, the better for us as a country.

We are a country rich in natural resources, human capacity, extraordinary talents, intelligent individuals with huge endowments. Unfortunately, we somehow conspire among ourselves to press the self-destruct button by allowing the western world to dictate how and what we eat, how we dress, the kind of music we sing and dance to, how we speak; in fact, how our lives are generally run, which should not be.

The truth is that both the British and Americans have nothing to offer us if they do not have more than enough to gain from us. In fact, what propels their investing in this part of the world is because of how they will milk us of our natural endowments. Take that out and you may not see any of them around us.

That said, it’s now left for us to count our teeth with our tongue, as the adage goes, by coming together as a people and saying, enough is enough of bickering that would warrant foreign intervention. We are most capable of anything if we can put our acts together. Until we see ourselves as Nigerians and not wanting to become the citizens of other countries, we will continue to wallow in the colony of slavery. Until then, it will be difficult to realise that we are capable of solving our issues ourselves.

David Owaboye, President, Initiative for Global Change Lagos.