Address Both the Root Cause and the Symptoms

Those in the medical field would understand the term symptom. I quote verbatim Merriam-Webster’s definition of symptom as: 1 (a): subjective evidence of disease or physical disturbance; broadly: something that indicates the presence of bodily disorder (b): an evident reaction by a plant to a pathogen. 2 (a): something that indicates the existence of something else < (b): a slight indication: trace. As a practical example, if you’ve ever had malaria, some of the symptoms that follow are headaches, fever, loss of appetite, dizziness, vomiting, etc. The root cause of malaria is a protozoan parasite vectored by mosquitoes. In treating malaria a good doctor would prescribes medication to relive the symptoms, in addition to medication to fight the parasite. He knows fully well that simply trying relieving the symptoms is not sufficient; the real solution lies in getting read of the parasite from the patient’s body.
There is a parallel or analogy between the Nigerian situation today, and the malaria victim. Nigeria has for a couple decades been bedeviled by parasites largely vectored by the military and is very sick. We have for a while been, and we still are witnessing the symptoms of a very sick nation. Some the symptoms are a dilapidated electrical power infrastructure tantamount to an almost none existent electrical power supply, almost no-existent water supply, dilapidated and poorly managed telecommunication infrastructure leading to an overly congested cell-phone network, a dilapidated and poorly managed health care system, dilapidated and seriously under-funded educational institutions, a dilapidated and outdated police force with no public credibility, a dilapidated military of no honor, her citizens being maltreated all over the world, ever rising crime, rising secessionist movements, pockets of religious violence here and there every now and then, and the list goes on and on. It is a sad, sad, tale of woe that every Nigerian knows, but nonewithsanding the parasites refuse to acknowledge.
Nigeria’s problem must be addressed both from the root cause as well as the symptoms. If we choose to continue relieving symptoms as we have largely been doing, we would continue to get short term temporary relief and those parasites would keep getting stronger.
For Nigeria to be a healthy nation once again we must not only figure out a way to rid the nation of those ugly parasites, but how to make it impossible to for such to come back. We must all get our hands on deck, do something in your own little way; otherwise just like the malaria victim who is not treated dies, Nigeria would eventually die.