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Chude Jideonwu during TEDxEuston 2014
It is a period of election in Nigeria. Vote counting is going on all across the country, and hopefully we will have one of the candidates declared president in the next few days. But that’s not the end to the current voting period as, in the next two weeks, we will be electing the governors of the 36 states in Nigeria. In the months prior to the presidential election, we debated intensively over the type of leadership we seek for our country and the hopes of what our leaders should deliver. However, there are very few voices out there holding our government to account for their performance when it comes to health. This must change. The leaders of this country are not going to report back to us from the goodness of their hearts; they will do so only if we demand answers from them. Questioning our politicians on health issues is our challenge and citizen duty for the next year and beyond.
We were told recently that Nigeria now has the largest economy in Africa. We know because it was measured and the economy was re-based with huge efforts. We are generally proud of this fact, even if it has not really affected our lives. We know that electricity generated in Nigeria is between 3,000 and 4,000 Megawatts, and, by knowing this fact, Nigerians are able to demand better. Now we also are beginning to know what the “voting population” is, how to analyse votes from across the country and what it means to have 25% in two thirds of the states.
