Without argument, I believe we will all agree that there is always room for improvement in our society today. The need for these improvements is triggered by the changes we experience in different parts of the world, and they can be either good or bad, even though the bad changes call for improvement the most. The human race should be applauded for always trying to improve even though perfection is a million miles away from us, and no matter how much we try, there will always be something we are missing or lacking in today's society.
It extends from society to every individual in the world, and if we are honest with ourselves, we can point out a few things we can work on to become a better person.
As I mentioned earlier, every society has something they are lacking, and the list is long if everyone starts mentioning the things their city, state, or country is lacking. Recently, the community where I reside experienced massive development, and one of our problems was taken care of.
The community road was fixed, and it's made transportation a lot easier for us. We were happy about the road, and everything was fine until the recent rain that made us realize that the drainage wasn't big enough because the water overflowed from the drainage to the road, which isn't a good sign. It would have been great if we had bigger drainage, but that would be difficult since it would require destroying the present drainage.
Electricity is another big challenge here as well, and it makes life difficult for many business owners who have to burn gas just to run their businesses. Many of them run at huge losses every day, but they don't have a choice. It's a long list, and there are a lot of things that need to be worked on, not just in my community but in Nigeria as a whole.
Making our society better involves a lot of things, and I will like to correct an impression about us depending only on the government for the improvement the society needs. It's understandable that we are paying taxes, and these funds are meant to be used to build infrastructure, provide amenities, and other things, but it doesn't end there.
I thought about it deeply and came to the conclusion that many citizens aren't helping matters when it comes to this improvement of a thing. I know the government isn't doing enough, but what role are we playing to keep the little infrastructure they have provided in good condition?
Maintenance isn't just a problem in my community, and many communities in Nigeria are struggling with maintaining the little things the government has provided.
I mentioned the small drainage system that was built for us in my community. Would you believe that as small as it is, the drainage has become a refuse bin for many people, and these same people would complain about the government doing nothing? Do we expect the government to come cleaning the drainage every morning when there are pressing issues in the country that should be attended to?
Another instance of lack of maintenance is the electricity in my community. This is a community of over 100 houses using a single transformer that was installed by the government.
The transformer has been having issues, and instead of creating a permanent solution, the community leaders choose to always patch it up whenever it breaks down. They will continue like that until it finally collapses and we start blaming the government for their incompetence.
For a permanent improvement in every society, the people and government need to work together. There are communities that complain about not having clean water, whereas the government provided it but it was damaged due to a lack of maintenance.
Naturally, anything that's not properly maintained will definitely breakdown one day, and we will start from scratch trying to get that thing back.
I went through a part of Lagos recently and saw their street lights damaged. It crossed my mind who was expected to fix this because those lights were installed about five months ago. Do we expect the government to come fix it when there are other places that need the same thing?
The importance of maintenance can't be quantified, and for a permanent improvement in every society, it must be taken as a priority. A community leader must ensure that infrastructure and amenities are properly maintained. The government, on the other hand, has a lot of work to do, and we can't make decisions for them, but since there are things we can do as a community to help ourselves, we shouldn't hesitate to do them.
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