So, President Buhari took his daughters to New York while on an official engagement at the United Nations. To justify his actions, many Nigerians shared photo and video evidence of President Obama, ex-Prime Minister David Cameron and other leaders who also took family members on official visits. I am not against President Buhari attending functions with his entire village (if of course they can pay from their pockets and we are informed that the family members did not use tax payer’s money). What I detest is this indiscriminate evidence to justify actions that do not help us to move forward as a country.

This is not the first time we are looking for evidence to justify actions of our leaders. When the Boko Haram menace started, our former president and well-meaning Nigerians were quick to say that terrorism is an international problem and not peculiar to Nigeria alone. They cited cases of America (a world power) and other developed countries experiencing murderous mayhem.

Why don’t we refer the many cases that will help us move forward? For example, do other countries pay employees on time? If they do, can we not emulate them in that regard? Why do we continually resort to puerile rationalisations? However, because we cannot find such examples in other countries, we resort to national reference, where for example, a governor or his aides would make reference to other states owing workers 6 months’ salaries as well. Why must we always seek justification in the lowest common denominators – surely such excuses are the causes of leading to our own destruction. We are on a treadmill of circular arguments that lead us nowhere.

Let us consider for example, what a difference it would make if we followed the examples of developed countries where when people are being investigated for an alleged offence, they step aside or resign either to prove their innocence or to save themselves and their supporters from the shame they would have caused them. However, in Nigeria we label investigation as “witch hunting” and make invidious comparisons like “is he the only one corrupt?” or “Is it because he is a PDP (or an APC) member?”.

Furthermore, our leaders have travelled far and wide. Why don’t our leaders see that in developed countries, the government provides free and quality pre-tertiary education and free or subsidised healthcare for its citizens? Strangely, we are silent about the major issues and tend to voice our opinions on the minor matters.

So, until we start benchmarking the good practices that will help our country to move in the right direction, I am afraid we will just be a country running on a treadmill but going nowhere. Hamsters look cute when they turn the wheel but …