An
Igbo axiom says that an individual who doesn’t know where the rain met him or her,
will certainly not know where him or her will get dried up. And one who
uses a gun to shoot Ojoko should
remember that famine will come one day. This certainly is
the pitiable state that most African countries are in today.
The
significant role which the right African values and rule of law had played in
the past in our society, have suddenly metamorphosed and gone down the drain in
this present day, where right African values, culture, language and religion
are gradually been eroded by wrong mind set and corrupt practices.
We
want to be free, we want to feel at home, we want to be strong, we want to
stand tall like a pyramid, we want to be labelled the giant of Africa, but we
don’t want to go down in the history of Africa, so as to make the wrongs right,
and as well make mama Africa proud.
She
cries all day, as we have jettisoned to answer her calls and heed to her advice.
She puckers brows, even when things are done the wrong way, yet we have rebuffed
to view things through her genuine, perfect and honest spectacle, which she has
provided for us – sorry mama Africa,
sorry Nigeria, you have killed you first descendant named ‘Agriculture,’ and
his blood cries for a revenge.
The year 1914 scripts the launch of a potential and outstanding great
country for Nigeria. After many decades, these potentials and greatness have
suddenly disappeared into the thin air, due to long years of both poor
leadership and followership. In spite of the unrivalled good gesture, which the
supreme being has bequeathed on our land inform of size, population, affordable
climate, fertile soil and all kinds of resource within, including blessed hands
and brilliant minds, Nigeria has not been able to transform all her endowment
into a long lasting monument. Instead, we have continued to be spineless and
unpatriotic, leaving ourselves all the time at the mercies of corrupt leaders
and directionless entities who think of nothing than their pockets.
They have succeeded in using ethnicity, religion and gender differences,
as an effective tool to distract the minds of so many Nigerians, who have sold
their conscience to biasness. Nigerian leaders have succeeded in crowning
corruption a ‘King’ in our nation, and they have successfully converted our
endowed country into a bastion of poverty, where nepotism has suddenly become a
way of life.
Yet, Nigeria is a nation where intellect prevails, a nation of ‘pen
pushers’, a nation of creative minds. But it’s so sad that majority of
Nigerians, both young and old have become slave to mediocrity, abuse of right
social values and rule of law because, they have jettisoned to uphold patriotism
in its smallest form.
Days are gone when hard work and patriotism pays. Our society has
decayed, to the extent that evil has become what we clamour for. Young men and women
now strode on the fast lanes and quick ways of getting things done because,
morality has gone down the cesspit.
We are now in a country where the grey hair fellows have automatically
sold out their values and dignity to the dogs. A nation where arms money was
shared by our so called leaders, leaving our dear soldiers to combat well equipped
terrorists with bamboo sticks and stones. May the souls of our fallen soldiers
that died because of the voracity of our leaders’ rest in peace, amen. This is
a country where leaders hide the public funds inside lavatory ditch.
I have so much pity for young men and women that are in my country, who
have the burning desire to actualize their dreams and be happy. The bad news is
that more dreams are been killed on daily basis, and good potentials are being
swallowed by the cemetery every second.
In this recent time, Nigeria can best
be described as a hilarious adventure movie, where the actor is supposed to
save a drowning child from an ocean, but he is busy throwing bananas to some
monkeys that never said they were hungry.
An Igbo proverb says that; he who
calls whenever Elder Ene kills a
deer, let him call if the deer kicks the living daylight out of Elder Ene, and a blacksmith who doesn’t know
how to forge a metal gong should look at the tail of a kite.
(Emeka
is a young Nigerian writer and public affairs analyst. He is a member of Nigerian
Institute of Management (NIM), Institute of Public Diplomacy and Management
(IPDM), The Royal Life Saving Society of Nigeria and Chartered Institute of
Purchasing & Supply Management of Nigeria (CIPSMN))
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