The Solutions
In scripture we see that God said let there be Light and if we take a cue from this we see that God had to make separation for Evil and Good.
To help this we need to have
Good Police/law enforcement System
Good Judiciary made on merit (it should commence from the ward/council)
Good Correctional Facilities manned by Religious bodies.
I will now expatiate on how we shall go by this.

Good Police/law enforcement System
Crime is cumulative.
The thought of crime is the beginning of crime. The fear to commit crime is one factor that kills crime. We must however identify the people that have not been corrupted by the grand army of corrupt people.
A 9 year old is not as corrupt as 14 year old and it goes on and on. We must take stock of people that are not corrupt and prepare them to be able to die for not being corrupt.
The Love to serve the fellow man should replace all fears. There is a fear that cripples and that is fear that I will end up a criminal. Why does this fear send one to commit crime?
The option that crime pays is because a lot of people have gone into crime and are living large even though it is for a while. The age group people that are not yet corrupt is the youth.
Now I will illustrate how we shall go by the


You should federalise Your Police Service in Stages.
You can have a Pilot program with States like say KANO OYO BAYELSA ANAMBRA This means that the states in question will pay run their security service by themselves. what this means is that all arrest and intelligence info will be sent to the Federal police Service for review. Any Unrest or problems in a state will be put at the door step of a state governor. The State police will compose of Indigenes.

You need to revise your

A) Mobile Squad (They must be Single or married to one wife) (They must be six feet and above with good physique)
B) Your Police officer Must be First class or second Class Upper
C) Pay of police officer $5000 must have
i. Insurance to life
ii. House mortgage (any police that serves for 5 - 10 years must have a house to his name.)
iii. Police must have a police Purchase and Equipment service( they must be unconnected to the police proper)
The Government( NIGERIAN POLICE SERVICE) will make companies bid for the License and there will be a vote by the police service every year where the Junior police men will have 2 votes and their Seniors will have single votes wether to retain the supplier.


A police station must be a glass house where people can see through what happens.

Security is a Business if you are not ready to spend Wisely you will loose foolishly.

10 robbers will terrorise a population of 10 million and over for years. what makes them invincible?
They are Motivated in their trade and you don’t have rudimentary intelligence. Crime and criminals are like trees they have a place where you grow them. Nigerians are not the greatest criminals of the world.

You don't need plenty Police officer but you need a good well trained Mobile Squad.

Court of Law

A lot of people will tend to take the law into their hands because there is no place where they will go for redress. I say this, if you have a good police service and there little or no abundance access to quick legal system the police will take the law into their hands.
So you can set up
1) Motor Traffic courts
2) Civil court
3) Criminal court
4) Commercial court
Correctional Facilities

You shall set up correctional and penitent homes in the locality attached to the court. What you do is
1) Build penitentiary
2) Security of the prison should be handled by the prison service of Nigeria
3) The welfare of the penitent should be catered for by Churches and other religious bodies and this bodies will also monitor whether they have repented.

We need to make sure that we start to build from scratch. Once all Nigerians are law abiding then we can begin to move forward.

i must say I do appreciate ur views especially where u implied that the innocence in the mind of young ones should be nurtured and encouraged.

I believe that any factor that causes any form of division amongst Nigerians should be avoided. Nobody should be apointed any role based on thier religious belief or ethnicity e.t.c. Nigeria is full of people with different religious believes and culture when one grou seems to be getting an advantage over the other, the result is violence.

Education system should be changed, we have a lot of graduates who are uneducated and unskilled. Just like an Oxford graduate would have been trained to understand the british history and culture we need to train our students to understand and be proud of the Nigerian history and culture (if u ask what is the Nigerian culture? that's another story) so that our children are trained to love who they are and why they should be proud to be that and not try to copy the western culture so much because to often in the process they pic up the wrong aspects of the culture.

It is good that Africans readily embrace and apreciate other culture but it becomes tragic when we start to abandone our cultures, morals and values in the process

We need to change our trading system to one that really suits the Nation we live in. We trade assets for assets. Imagine we sell crops to the united states for a certain amount of money but who controlls the worth of that money in the foreign exchange? If we are giving away our natural resources we request for something that will benefit the country in exchange for example "if we supply you so so amount of crude oil every year, in exchange you will reduce the international fees for Nigerian students by 50%" (maybe a long shot but hey for example lol)

These are just a few things i wanted to point out

Our constitution isn't even that bad. What we need is a Stalin style purge against the godfathers and self interest old cronies. Toss them in camps somewhere in the northern sahara and let them rott there.

Confiscate their stolen wealth too.

Our constitution isn't even that bad. What we need is a Stalin style purge against the godfathers and self interest old cronies. Toss them in camps somewhere in the northern sahara and let them rott there.

Confiscate their stolen wealth too.

That is it. I concour with this. The old cargoes have been failing us yet they refused to give chance to the fresh blood brains.

@poster, wasn't that analysis a bit too comprehensive for a "first step"?
Personal view: the first step to making genuine progress in Nigeria is free and fair elections, everything else though progressive in their own respects will be artificial in the fight for through nationhood and democracy. It is like the difference between a house and a home, for a nation is not the structures that are built or any of that, but the people, the values, etc.

my first step towards our journey to making a great nation is a visionary,morally upright man or woman who will be able to not only ignite our collective patriotic fevour but unite the diverse ethnicities and religious affiliations into a single purpose, i believe nigerians both old and young know the right thing to do,but have not had such a person after m.k.o abiola who cut across ethnicities and different religious leanings and invoked hope of a better nigeria

@lucabrasi, is this great man of yours going to be forced on the nation?  . The thing is that although free and fair elections sound so simple you have to ask yourselves why such has not being achieved. This is because free and fair elections goes much deeper than one might think and actually represents genuine progress in nationhood which Nigeria does not have hence the scenario it faces. One of the problems has always been having to choose between the lesser of two evils come election day, this is because the values of democracy which stem from the ability to choose one's leaders are not there in the first place. When Mrs A knows that her vote counts and she uses such, that act of voting though simple is already MRs A investing her interest and hope in the nation. Such a simple act of participation in the way the country is run might surprise you on the scale in which it makes people more invested in what government is doing. It is like paying taxes, a simple procedure which also represents an investment (though legally obligational) in a government. The tax payer is hence more interested in what his/her money is being used for and spent on. Such things foster more participation in government which in the case of Nigeria has to be a good thing, doesn't it?

A genuine democracy based on free and fair elections also has the potential to foster a richer pool of candidates so that choosing a leader won't have to be equivalent of someone asking you wether you rather be killed by a gun shot to the head or slashing by a blunted knife. Such i believe is simply a matter of leaders being seen for their works as opposed to what they say or their political godfathers or how much money they have etc. Hence if Mr B wants to get good electricity he won't be so eager to vote for the renouned thief who gives him money but might want to opt for the man who has proven and convinced Mr A that he can complete such projects. An idea of fostering a richer pool of candidates will make it more likely that the Mr visionary you aspire for the nation won't be a one off ordeal.

For the leader chosen through a free and fair election it genuinely puts the mandate of the people in his hands. It would be had to imagine diversionary interests considering the people who got such into power are the people of the nation not a select few. Hence whose interest do you think will come first?

Such things might be more uniting than you think because i believe everyone from all ethnic groups and areas of the country want such developments. An act so simple as free and fair elections, and it has not occured in Nigeria, is that not hence a measurable index for the nationhood of the country that allows for leadership of the nation to continue to belong in crooked and questionable hands?

Personally, what Nigeria really lacks right now is firmness of purpose.
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character,
and one of the best instruments of success, without it, genius wastes
its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.

@skyblue
while im not disputing the fact,however you must realise that the impediment to all these utopian dreams(at least while the system is the way it is presently)is the collective cynism,ethnic and religious dis harmony that has pervaded the nation , the solution to this is an individual that ll tear down the walls of ethnic distrust,religious hatred,cynicism,defeatist attitudes e.t.c also that ll be able to inspire and ignite our patriotism, i beleive even after that person has served his/her term and retired or went on to do other things,he ll have started a movement that ll outlive him, look at the action of a random girl uzoma okere and the fevour it generated in nigerians both in nigeria and abroad?

even if you get a free and fair election,how do you mitigate against the wrong candidate using his/her superior financial prowress as an unfair advantage?the point being free and fair elections can still produce a totally wrong candidate, remember g.w bush?

im sure you agree that,if we had an individual with all the qualities above,then all of these atrocities either by the political class,leaders or even average nigerians will be challenged and slowly recede into the doldrums of yesterday, by the way i earnestly believe we do have nigerians who fit that bill in abundance, eidence?
look at our religious leaders, lets forget about the miracles,look at how they inspire both the rich and poor irrespective of their religious leanings, imagine thousands of individuals like that still undiscovered both in nigeria and abroad

@skyblue
seems we are getting our wires crossed here,im not against a free and fair election,im just showing one of the ways it can go wrong i.e its not as fool proof as you think,however you r right a country has the right to chose whomsoever they want, disenfranchised voters will disagree with you that bush won the second term though,that approach is definitely more sustainableWHEN we eventually get there, i am talking about a here and now roadmap, not something to be looked foward to in a a far off horizon

the point is if we dont have such a man,i really dont see free and fair elections being a reality,
there was always massive rigging in elections but when m.k.o abiola came along, people voted for him in overwhelming numbers, even rigging couldnt prevent him winning because he was accepted by all the tribes,same as oshiomole who won against the might of pdp political machinery.
you seem to be forgetting that the whole problem is not isolated but run like an efficient network?you r over simplifying it,if you think its as easy as citizens of a state coming together and having a free and fair election, do you realise that in any state in nigeria,if you are contesting against a pdp man,all the arsenal both monetary and otherwise will be channeled at you?

other governors and leaders from outside the states will support the candidate against you,so its not in isolation as you are inferring,
you are also forgetting that within these states,theres mistrust even amongst their citizens,which cannot be eradicated untill such a man as i have been advocating forfires up their collective zeal,
to buttress my point i gave you an example of pentecostal preachers,who have been able to do such a thing, pastor adeboye was named as one of the top 50 most influential in the world, millions,both rich and poor listen to him,imagine such a man emerging from the secular part of nigeria,that is my stance

The fact that there are so many topics going on in this forum with people giving strong views shows that we really do want a change and that we really do believe in this phenomena called Nigeria. But why is it taking so long why are we still so quiet?.

It doesnt have to be one big sudden boom it all starts from people doing things in thier local communities, development programmes, if the formally elected officers wont do anything why cant we get people together in our own communities to start our own movement. There are young people if inspired will get involved in a possitive movement that is going to bring about a good change.

If there is something that needs doing in an area we get people together to either raise money or workforce together. If this is going on in every little community both rich and poor working together gradually we will grow together and eventually be strong enough to stand against the leaders that continue to opress us. Unselfishness will play a big part in this growth, its not about what will i eat its about what will we eat. If we expect someone in power despite the temptation to show human compation, we must be able to show a lot more of it unless we be hypocrites.

Like an intellligent man said, those values of old; honesty, courage, hardwork, fairplay, patriotism, unity, as simple as they may be, they go a long way in dealing with the challenges we fac however new they may be.

How bout we all just refuse to vote untill someone who will truely make a difference comes along. Its like we always just settle lesser of the evil like some1 mentioned earlier.

Might not make a lot of difference but if we do pull it off it will show some form of unity and send out a message, will also make bbc news lol

mh i wonder what would happen in the case of zero votes for either candidates, would the person in office just remain?