A country can become great when its institutions are very strong and sincerely committed to meet the basic needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their
full potential.
A nation becomes great when it matters more where it is going to than where it has come from. A country becomes great if its citizens always make sure that their own culture remains realistic and resilient in the passage of time.
A country can become great when those
who are in power build loyalty and trust by consistently delivering on their promise;
when those in power think beyond what ordinary individuals think; when those who are in the government paint a picture of what they see as possible and inspire and encourage their people in turning that vision into reality.
A country is built by its people. It is the people who can or can’t make their country great. But what is greatness in a country? And how can we define greatness? Are people born great?
Most cultures link greatness to fortune, fame, and power. But greatness has more definitions than that.
People are not naturallyt born great. Nor do they become great overnight. Greatness does not come by itself. It is earned and achieved.
A country can be great in power, in technology, or in culture which is the manifestation of human creativity and innovation – an intellectuality regarded internationally.
The greatness of every country is basically measured by the well-being of its people, the strength of its legal institutions, the quality of governance and its fundamental principles. Progress and prosperity are mostly complements to greatness. And greatnes is the thing which every nation is craving.
Most people become great through looking and learning the finer things, through curiosity and constant exploration, through unity and utopian idealogy, through being dedicated and devoted to pursue power and prosperity, and through searching and seeking solutions to the problems of life.
People who pursue knowledge and know-how, not just to become more educated or knowledgeable than others, but to elevate values and virtues that lessen human problems are truly great. With knowledge and know-how, people can make their country great.
Societies who are task-oriented and take the decision to shape their life as they see and want, organize their ideas in a planned way, invest their time in building an elegant life and spend their resources collectively in a common cause are truely great.
Leaders who do things by knowing why they do what they do and what it means for themselves and other people in their lives can make their country great. A nation that reacts and responds to whatever life throws at them in unity makes great strides
A nation that becomes great is the one that has the ability to translate their ideas through the power of actions and intentionality to give great considerations in caring about the wellness of its people.
Societies that are committed to educate their young generation, make them aware more of what the time requires, upskill them and expand tbeir capabilities are surely great.
A society that is self-aware enough to know that it is not adept at everything is one which has taken the first step toward being a great nation.
Setting aside your own interests in favor of understanding someone else’s needs, wants and worries is a seed of greatness.
The seeds of greatness in any society are found in the history of its culture. This leads us to understand that the seeds of greatness are found in the evolution of human culture.
Greatness is literally found in how humans have evolved and in how they became who they are today as nations – what societies were yesterday, what they are today and what they want to be tomorrow? So the question is: Who we have become, as Somaliland people?
In quest for the seeds of greatness in the evolution of our culture, we should ask ourselves what exactly we did to create conditions in which we prospered. The facts will be found in knowing how our social, economic and political culture has evolved.
We have never enriched our life with any special contribution or concept of our own creation. For example, in thinking and sort of, we still think and do things as the ways we used to think and do things in the past. Evidently the he-camel is still holding the two water containers. Neither the rural society nor the urban community has even come up with initiatives enabling effective preparation for the drought and famine that result from the ever-seemingly-changing weather conditions.
We, Somalilanders, produce nothing. We manufacture nothing. We distribute nothing. We own nothing. We just live on food other people produce; wear clothes other people make; defend ourselves or fight with one another with guns that are not our own make; we build our homes with materials made in other countries; everything we use in our daily life is a foreign product. How Somaliland people could survive if the worse comes to the worst and every country imposes restrictions on exportation of their food to other countries? Predictions that food producing countries will enforce protectionist policies are already leaked out.
Excusing the limitations of my knowing abilities, which are myriad, there is, without any fuss, a clear coherent reality that the styles of how we have been taught to survive were not culturally designed either for achievement or innovation.
In fact, we are a nation that is probably roughed up by unplanned life; a changeless life that is enmired with constant calamities of drought and famine, simply because we born out of an atmosphere where it was customary to see life as it comes with a belief that the pursuit of a planned life is/was sinful – in other words, a walking contradiction to God’s will.
We, Somaliland citizens, neither make things we need in our own way nor do things in the way others tell us to do. We are just consumers
who always depend on what other people produce. Why? Because we never evidently tried to do what other people like us had done.
It is not the nature that has designed our way of living to always reside in a changeless status. It is us who actually have not changed our thoughts. Failing to make a change in the way we live, our life always looks like a rock being rolled on over to the top of a mountain which is getting steeper and steeper time after time.
The point is there is one evil, among others, that always lags Somaliland progress behind. What is this evil? Are we aware of it? How can we liberate ourselves from this evil?
One recent assessment on how a country
can become great points out that once good governance is established, it tends to be very, very persistent.
This assessment revealed that once checks and balances system becomes well established, the dream of good governance and greatness becomes also a reality, for the aim behind the checks and balances system is to emsure that legal institutions, the judicial branch, the legislative branch and the executive branch, are totally independent from one another and that each branch has individual power to check the other branches and prevent from becoming too powerful.
The intent of separation of powers is to prevent the concentration of unchecked power and to provide for checks and balances, in which the powers of one branch of government is limited by the powers of another branch, to prevent abuses of power and avoid autocracy.
What lags Somaliland behind is a lack of good governance and great leaders. As the old gag goes to say, “A misplaced faith in political utopias leads a country to ruins. The evil thing that prevents Somaliland from becoming great is a combination of corrupt leaders and clannish mentality.”
For sure, the only chance to establish good governance in Somaliland could be possible if Somaliland people could genuinely start to rethink to refine their thoughts, reform their ideas, remake their views and rectify their belief that politics is nothing more than consistent argument and conspiracy theories.
A long-term commitment to build up strong institutions only seems to be one factor of good governance and greatness in Somaliland. But many questions as to who could make that noble role happen will take time to answer.
By : Jamafalaag
Somaliland, Hargeisa.
jamafalaag@gmail.com
