‘Everyone is speaking and no one is listening’
‘Political leaders placing their children at advantage’
Most Rev. (Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins, Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos has spotted a big deficit in listening in Nigeria, as he pointed out that everyone is talking and no one is listening. According to the prelate, Nigerians, both leaders and the led don’t put their entire attention, interest or heart into listening; the country has continued to suffer poor infrastructural development; families are at crossroads due to the inability of spouses to listen to one another; parents and their children are at loggerheads over same listening deficit. Archbishop Martins made this statement on Sunday at his interactive session with the media in commemoration of the 56th World Communications Day held at the Holy Cross Cathedral, Lagos.
Lamenting at the state of the nation, Most Rev. (Dr.) Martins regretted that Nigeria’s federalism isn’t working because there has not been adequate listening to one another. Archbishop Martins stated that the federal character of the country has been a subject of debate with various groups claiming to be marginalised and shortchanged as calls for federal restructuring keep rising and have become a way of expressing dissatisfaction with poor economic performance and misgovernance in the country. Ethnic conflicts, religious extremism, deplorable infrastructure, calls for secession and a host of other issues point to the country’s deficit in listening as evidence that the leaders are not listening to the led can be traced to the number of talk shops on restructuring the country that have been held over the years, but the outputs were never implemented. Archbishop Martins noted that religious and ethnic conflicts would have been at its lowest ebb if only Nigerians were listening to one another.
The Chief Shepherd said, “There is a big deficit in the area of listening to one another. Our Holy Father mentioned the fact that in these days we hardly have dialogue, what we have most times is duologue; each person saying what he needs to say and the other one waiting for that person to finish what he needs to say so that he can just impose his own thoughts and ideas. “So, it is two voices speaking at different times, not listening to one another, rather than two people speaking and listening to each other in order to find common ground.
“This characterises what is happening in our time; duologue rather than dialogue. Listening is very much lacking in the world today as our Holy Father has said, and he calls our attention to it very, very vividly. “We can see that even in the situation of our own country that there is more of duologue than dialogue. There is hardly any communication because everyone is speaking and no one is listening. Very often, we don’t listen to one another. “Now, infrastructure is declining, infrastructure is going down. Now, the very fabric of human relationship is being pulled apart. I believe that if we have listening leaders, there will be a much more proactive listening to the discussion around restructuring Nigeria according to the true federation that we are supposed to be.
