Today I just want to talk to myself. But if my words strike a chord in you, do not take offence. What I expect you should do is to fix things and, maybe, we will have a better Nigeria.
Until I met Yinka through Nze Sylva Ifedigbo’s debut novel, My Mind Is No Longer Here, I never gave serious thought to the fact that Nigerians are in their best mood when at the departure of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport. There is a strong link between this statement and this quote from the novel: “When your home cannot offer you a bed to sleep peacefully on, a neighbour’s home becomes appealing.”
At the airport’s departure, you see lovers, especially the ladies, shedding tears at the departure of their loved ones. They cry because they will miss their lovers, not because their men are leaving the country. In fact, they are glad they are escaping what the narrator in Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities describes as “the land of lack, of man-pass-man, the land in which a man’s greatest enemies are members of his household; a land of kidnappers, of ritual killers, of policemen who bully those they encounter on the road and shoot those who don’t bribe them, of leaders who treat those they lead with contempt and rob them of their commonwealth, of frequent riots and crisis, of long strikes, of petrol shortages, of joblessness, of clogged gutters, of potholed roads…and of constant power outages”.
Our dear nation has not always been like this. There was a time when naira was more than a dollar. Time also was when naira was almost equal to pounds. We must never forgive the apostles of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), which saw to the devaluation of our currency. The Structural Adjustment Programme of the Ibrahim Babangida regime made things difficult for a lot of people. The middle class practically went into extinction. Inflation skyrocketed. The government removed subsidies on petroleum products and fertiliser, and deregulated the interest rate. Personal insecurity increased and personal satisfaction nosedived. For many, it was the darkest period witnessed economically.
Time was when going to the United Kingdom or any of the Commonwealth countries was as easy as travelling from Lagos to Ibadan. Time was when public schools were the in-thing, and time was when jobs were waiting for graduates immediately after school. Universities were great. Students were tutored and mentored by star local and foreign lecturers. Hostels were not bedbug-invested. Students had access to balanced diets. Our primary, secondary and tertiary health institutions were world class. The University College Hospital (UCH) was first among equals globally; its facilities were top notch and its members of staff could raise their heads high anywhere in the world. No thanks to brain drain, UCH and others are now shadows of their old selves. Ex-UCH Chief Medical Officer Prof. Emitope Alonge identified the brain drain that hit the health sector in the ‘80s as being responsible for the declining standard in the hospital. Alonge said between 1980 and 1983, the work ethic and attitude to patients’ care were top class. Brain drain began to take its tolls. Infrastructure decayed. There was poor power supply, lack of equipment, and sadly operating gowns were sterilised outside the hospital.
Many doctors are on their way to Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Some are even heading to Australia because of the poor state of medical practice in the country. Even those who are not leaving are not committed. Many a doctor in government-owned hospitals run private clinics and dedicates attention to their private practice than their primary employer. Our people come up with all sorts of excuse to get asylum abroad.
Thank God for Boko Haram, many now have new and comfortable homes in Europe and America. We also have overnight gay people, all because of the quest to have homes outside of the hell that their true home has become. The other day, I saw an advert in a newspaper in which a Nigerian, obviously seeking asylum abroad, made a ridiculous claim about his family. There was also another advert in which a guy claimed his uncle wanted to kill him over inheritance. All he wanted was asylum and he caused the advert to be done so he could use as evidence to back his quest for a safe haven.
Thinking of all these remind me of Pastor Sam Adeyemi. In one of his incisive presentations, Pastor Adeyemi pointed out that while those in government had their fair share of blame for the wrong things in the country, the ordinary folks were also not immune from blames. Or how do you react to a situation where a cart pusher finishes the water in a bottle and discards the bottle on a major road? What about a public school head teacher who collects illegal levies from pupils? What about a journalist who has turned to a blackmailer? What about the lecturer who sees in his influence the excuse to take female students to bed? What about the managing director who keeps asking low-rung female employees out for sex? Shall we blame the government for a company where there are no clear-cut plans for staff’s welfare?
Is the government to blame for media houses which take pride in reporting government failures yet owe salaries, fail to remit pension and tactically encourage corruption? Tell me, who should be blamed for electricity distribution companies’ failure to give service yet bill consumers arbitrarily? Many companies have folded up because of the epileptic power supply in the country. Running factories on diesel-powered generators for 24 hours is not sustainable.
I am looking for who to blame for pastors who dupe their congregation because they are sure that God is merciful and will not immediately strike them down like the god of thunder. Please show me who to blame for politicians who hide their children abroad and buy guns for other people’s children so that they can get power and use it to steal our commonwealth.
My final take: The government has its faults, plenty of them; but we are not blameless too. You and I have our faults too. We should play our parts and then look for ways to ensure rogues do not get to the corridor of power, not to talk of being in power.
