Nigerians are a curious breed. Think of us as the proverbial coastal dwellers dying of thirst. We lament our parched tongues. But we defecate in our fresh springs and struggle to slake our thirst with poisonous waters from distant lands.
Beyond metaphor, Nigeria teeters on the brink of cognitive dissonance, the mental racket that fuels our habit to curse our fate after we self-destruct.
This dissonance seeps into the wellsprings of our civilization—corrupting culture, family, and our social institutions. The manifold failures that beset our country, from the bungled economy to our subversive partisanship; to our lack of universal and quality health care; to protracted terrorism and the neocolonialist grip on our politics and media, can all be traced back to the very institutions that mould and sustain our citizenry and political elite.
In this fractured landscape, the need to rescue Nigeria from destructive mentality is not just urgent but existential. Amid the chaos, some Nigerians endeavour to challenge the status quo or at least sound the alarm over a glaring social ill. Consider the sad case of a certain Simon Oladapo, who witnessed the final moments of a very dear one at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). The latter was taken to LUTH on an afternoon, only to be told that no beds were available—a familiar refrain in a country where scarcity often cloaks corruption.
Yet, hope flickered when a bed was suddenly offered for a price: N100,000 naira. The sum was paid, and a space was secured. Oxygen, the breath of life, was the next demand, and again, money exchanged hands. Then came the tests, a race against time that ended abruptly within three hours of admission, as the patient’s life ebbed away. Yet at the latter’s death, the real ordeal had only just begun.
The hospital, a place of healing, became a labyrinth of toxic bureaucracy. The release of the body was contingent upon the mortuary staff, who refused to act without a Coroner’s report. The Coroner, however, was conspicuously absent, a ghost in the machinery of death. Meanwhile, the hospital staff insisted on an autopsy before issuing a death certificate, despite the family’s refusal. The autopsy, they were told, would cost another N200,000 naira.
Hours passed in anguish before the Coroner appeared, signing the necessary documents. An ambulance, hired to transport the body to Ibadan, waited in the oppressive silence. The mortuary staff, elusive for over an hour, eventually materialised, moving the corpse to the morgue where a fresh demand for an autopsy was made—despite the family’s protests.
The morgue was then locked, its gate shut against the grieving family. The ambulance, hired in haste, stood idle as the night closed in, the family left stranded and broken by a system that seemed to care more for today and tomorrow’s fees than for the dignity of the dead.
In the face of such cruelty, Oladapo lamented, “No honour for the dead. No feelings for the bereaved. I understand that the management of LUTH may not be aware that their staff are doing this. Some of those demons probably went to Mosque today to pray for a better Nigeria. Some of them will probably be in Church on Sunday to pray for Nigeria. As long as you have demons running around government institutions like this, no matter how fervently people pray for Nigeria, it will remain an irredeemable country.”
The story resonates the pitiable fate of Dele Agekameh, an accomplished journalist whose life expired at the gates of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) in 2019. Agekameh was a victim of apathy and dereliction of duty from those who swore an oath to save lives. Nurses, who should have been the hands of mercy, turned away, leaving a dying man in his car – until he was pronounced dead.
Did the walls of LASUTH reach out and deny him care? No, it was the men and women within. They are the embodiment of the everyday Nigerian—entrusted with position, power or privilege, only to wield it as a sword against the weak.
Every Nigerian, in their silent complicity or active participation, chisel away at the foundations of the country, and then turn to curse the ruins they created. It is a twisted dance of self-sabotage, where the blame is artfully shifted to an abstract entity—Nigeria—an entity as lifeless as the earth and as pure as the gold lying dormant beneath it. But it is not Nigeria that fails her people; it is the people who fail Nigeria.
This grotesque spectacle repeats in the fate of several deceased and bereaved Nigerians, who are forced to navigate a maze of extortion and inefficiency, as hospital staff bicker over bribes and paperwork while precious lives ebb away.
What does this say about us? That in our quest for self-enrichment, even the sanctity of life is a commodity to be bartered? Such mean-spiritedness belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey. Several civil servants and public officers become the architects of a dystopia where justice is bought, where healthcare is denied to the sick, and progress is sabotaged.
Yet, amid the grand chorus of finger-pointing, how many Nigerians pause to consider their own roles? It is easy to lament that “Nigeria happened” when faced with hardship, to cry that this vast land is cursed. But Nigeria is no more than soil and stone, rivers and mountains; it is Nigerians who manifest on Nigeria, like a curse.
We see it in every corner of society. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), for instance, plunge the nation into darkness and a vortex of fuel scarcity, not out of some malevolent force of nature, but through the hands of saboteurs within their ranks.
The hypocrisy is staggering as the same civil servant who extorts and afflicts the public will bemoan leadership corruption and the state of the nation.
Consider too, the sad irony of the 2020 #EndSARS movement, a powerful uprising against police brutality that ended in bitter public squabbles over the embezzlement of donor funds. How telling, that even in the midst of a righteous cause, the beast within us reared its head. We saw how swiftly the noble became the ignoble, how quickly the movement for justice was tainted by the same greed it sought to eradicate.
This is not Nigeria’s fault. It is the fault of Nigerians, who pervert the promise of this great land. Until we confront this truth, we will continue to stumble in darkness, blaming the shadows for the sins we commit in daylight.
We have weaponised our social systems, perverted our institutions, and in doing so, we have crafted a narrative of national failure. We are the saboteurs, the fraudsters, the corrupt officials, the indifferent citizens who look the other way. We are the ones who have taken a country rich in potential and turned it into a cautionary tale.
But all is not lost. The first step towards redemption is recognition. We must see Nigeria for what it truly is—not a malevolent force, but a victim of our collective failings. And in that recognition, there is hope. Hope that we can change, that we can stop this self-inflicted tragedy and begin to build the Nigeria we dream of—a land where the soil is rich not only in resources but in the promise of a better future. Nigerians are a curious breed. Think of us as the proverbial coastal dwellers dying of thirst. We lament our parched tongues. But we defecate in our fresh springs and struggle to slake our thirst with poisonous waters from distant lands.
Beyond metaphor, Nigeria teeters on the brink of cognitive dissonance, the mental racket that fuels our habit to curse our fate after we self-destruct.
This dissonance seeps into the wellsprings of our civilization—corrupting culture, family, and our social institutions. The manifold failures that beset our country, from the bungled economy to our subversive partisanship; to our lack of universal and quality health care; to protracted terrorism and the neocolonialist grip on our politics and media, can all be traced back to the very institutions that mould and sustain our citizenry and political elite.
In this fractured landscape, the need to rescue Nigeria from destructive mentality is not just urgent but existential. Amid the chaos, some Nigerians endeavour to challenge the status quo or at least sound the alarm over a glaring social ill. Consider the sad case of a certain Simon Oladapo, who witnessed the final moments of a very dear one at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). The latter was taken to LUTH on an afternoon, only to be told that no beds were available—a familiar refrain in a country where scarcity often cloaks corruption.
Yet, hope flickered when a bed was suddenly offered for a price: N100,000 naira. The sum was paid, and a space was secured. Oxygen, the breath of life, was the next demand, and again, money exchanged hands. Then came the tests, a race against time that ended abruptly within three hours of admission, as the patient’s life ebbed away. Yet at the latter’s death, the real ordeal had only just begun.
The hospital, a place of healing, became a labyrinth of toxic bureaucracy. The release of the body was contingent upon the mortuary staff, who refused to act without a Coroner’s report. The Coroner, however, was conspicuously absent, a ghost in the machinery of death. Meanwhile, the hospital staff insisted on an autopsy before issuing a death certificate, despite the family’s refusal. The autopsy, they were told, would cost another N200,000 naira.
Hours passed in anguish before the Coroner appeared, signing the necessary documents. An ambulance, hired to transport the body to Ibadan, waited in the oppressive silence. The mortuary staff, elusive for over an hour, eventually materialised, moving the corpse to the morgue where a fresh demand for an autopsy was made—despite the family’s protests.
The morgue was then locked, its gate shut against the grieving family. The ambulance, hired in haste, stood idle as the night closed in, the family left stranded and broken by a system that seemed to care more for today and tomorrow’s fees than for the dignity of the dead.
In the face of such cruelty, Oladapo lamented, “No honour for the dead. No feelings for the bereaved. I understand that the management of LUTH may not be aware that their staff are doing this. Some of those demons probably went to Mosque today to pray for a better Nigeria. Some of them will probably be in Church on Sunday to pray for Nigeria. As long as you have demons running around government institutions like this, no matter how fervently people pray for Nigeria, it will remain an irredeemable country.”
The story resonates the pitiable fate of Dele Agekameh, an accomplished journalist whose life expired at the gates of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) in 2019. Agekameh was a victim of apathy and dereliction of duty from those who swore an oath to save lives. Nurses, who should have been the hands of mercy, turned away, leaving a dying man in his car – until he was pronounced dead.
Did the walls of LASUTH reach out and deny him care? No, it was the men and women within. They are the embodiment of the everyday Nigerian—entrusted with position, power or privilege, only to wield it as a sword against the weak.
Every Nigerian, in their silent complicity or active participation, chisel away at the foundations of the country, and then turn to curse the ruins they created. It is a twisted dance of self-sabotage, where the blame is artfully shifted to an abstract entity—Nigeria—an entity as lifeless as the earth and as pure as the gold lying dormant beneath it. But it is not Nigeria that fails her people; it is the people who fail Nigeria.
This grotesque spectacle repeats in the fate of several deceased and bereaved Nigerians, who are forced to navigate a maze of extortion and inefficiency, as hospital staff bicker over bribes and paperwork while precious lives ebb away.
What does this say about us? That in our quest for self-enrichment, even the sanctity of life is a commodity to be bartered? Such mean-spiritedness belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey. Several civil servants and public officers become the architects of a dystopia where justice is bought, where healthcare is denied to the sick, and progress is sabotaged.
Yet, amid the grand chorus of finger-pointing, how many Nigerians pause to consider their own roles? It is easy to lament that “Nigeria happened” when faced with hardship, to cry that this vast land is cursed. But Nigeria is no more than soil and stone, rivers and mountains; it is Nigerians who manifest on Nigeria, like a curse.
We see it in every corner of society. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), for instance, plunge the nation into darkness and a vortex of fuel scarcity, not out of some malevolent force of nature, but through the hands of saboteurs within their ranks.
The hypocrisy is staggering as the same civil servant who extorts and afflicts the public will bemoan leadership corruption and the state of the nation.
Consider too, the sad irony of the 2020 #EndSARS movement, a powerful uprising against police brutality that ended in bitter public squabbles over the embezzlement of donor funds. How telling, that even in the midst of a righteous cause, the beast within us reared its head. We saw how swiftly the noble became the ignoble, how quickly the movement for justice was tainted by the same greed it sought to eradicate.
This is not Nigeria’s fault. It is the fault of Nigerians, who pervert the promise of this great land. Until we confront this truth, we will continue to stumble in darkness, blaming the shadows for the sins we commit in daylight.
We have weaponised our social systems, perverted our institutions, and in doing so, we have crafted a narrative of national failure. We are the saboteurs, the fraudsters, the corrupt officials, the indifferent citizens who look the other way. We are the ones who have taken a country rich in potential and turned it into a cautionary tale.
But all is not lost. The first step towards redemption is recognition. We must see Nigeria for what it truly is—not a malevolent force, but a victim of our collective failings. And in that recognition, there is hope. Hope that we can change, that we can stop this self-inflicted tragedy and begin to build the Nigeria we dream of—a land where the soil is rich not only in resources but in the promise of a better future.
