By Kelechi Deca… Sometime in 1961, Edward Lorenz, a meteorology
professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) entered some
numbers into a computer program simulating weather patterns and then
left his office to get a cup of coffee while the machine ran. When he
returned, he noticed a result that altered everything the world thought
it knew before then.
On this day, Lorenz was repeating a simulation he’d run earlier—but
he had rounded off one variable from .506127 to .506. To his amazement,
that tiny alteration drastically transformed the whole pattern his
program produced, over two months of simulated weather.
The unexpected result led Lorenz to a powerful insight about the way
nature works: small changes can have large consequences. The idea came
to be known as the “butterfly effect” after Lorenz suggested that the
flap of a butterfly’s wings might ultimately cause a tornado.
And the butterfly effect, also known as “sensitive dependence on
initial conditions,” has a profound corollary: forecasting the future
can be nearly impossible.
His insight turned into the founding principle of Chaos Theory.
According to Daniel Rothman of MIT, Butterfly Effect became a wonderful
instance of a seemingly esoteric piece of mathematics that had
experimentally verifiable applications in the real world. It challenged
the classical understanding of nature.
In 2011, exactly 50 years after this profound discovery, an unknown
Mohammed Bouazizi, a fruit seller in the town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia,
set himself ablaze, in protest against the Police, for confiscating his
wares because he lacked a permit to sell fruits along the road. I was
in Tunis then; holed up at Hotel Africa, Tunis for two weeks, what I saw
left an indelible mark in my psyche. It helped me to learn, unlearn,
and relearn.
Nobody could have predicted that that singular act will lead to a
cascade of events that will bring down governments in three to four
countries. It sparked off crises of unprecedented global proportion
engulfing an entire region, leading to one of the worst refugee crises
in modern history, and changing our world as we knew it. It took just
one man setting himself ablaze to start the Jasmine Revolution, and
before long gave rise to the Arab Spring, spreading to Egypt, Libya,
Algeria, Morocco, Syria, and Bahrain among others. That was the
Butterfly Effect.
Anytime I read educated Nigerians make predictions on what can and
cannot happen in Nigeria,I get worried for their sake and the sake of
those who read them. They use the past as their sole predictor of the
future. Even if history repeats itself, we do know that it hardly does
so in exactly the same way.
10 years ago, we all believed that Nigerians love their lives so much
that none will ever contemplate being a suicide bomber. For what, we
bellowed! Such idea was far removed that we couldn’t even comprehend it.
But today it has become an everyday stuff by Nigerians.
Anytime I listen to reasonable minds dismiss anything that falls
outside their idea of believeability, I tell myself that these guys live
in the Moon. As Alvin Toffler once said that “Idea-assassins rush
forward to kill any new suggestion on the grounds of its impracticality,
while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how
absurd.”
When we talk about the need to restructure Nigeria, we do so because we can’t stop the future, but we can shape it.
Restructuring is the ONLY option available to us to sustain this
corporate entity called Nigeria. Do not listen to governors who will
jump into their private jets to safety leaving us behind. Nigeria’s
unity and the unity of every union under the Sun is negotiable.
Let us sit down and agree to agree on the kind of country we want.
But to think that you can predict how tomorrow will pan out if we sit
here and do nothing to influence its outcome is a joke of the century.
Keep waiting for that Big Bang from maybe Abuja while the little
foxes are busy messing up the vine…..the democratization of knowledge
has equally democratized the ability to cause huge impacts.
….Na small small Butterfly dey take enter bush…..
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