Tag: Nigeria at 59

Getting wealth before learning to work never did anyone any good. Unfortunately,
Nigeria got wealth before she learnt to work.

I don’t know about you, reader, but I find the stereotypes of Nigeria being bandied about in some stories rather distressing. One story says that judgement day in heaven will be different for Nigerians because, while being normally dressed to judge other races, God will have to wear a pair of knickers to judge Nigerians. Another story talks about how Japan invented a machine that nabs thieves and when taken to several countries for demonstrations including U.S.A., U.K., Spain, Ghana, etc., it effectively and successfully nabs thieves in their thousands. However, within five minutes of being brought to Nigeria, it err… gets stolen.

In yet another story, Obama, Queen Elizabeth and Buhari are said to have gone to God to ask when their countries would develop (or get peace). The figure given to Obama makes him burst into tears. The queen also bursts into tears when a figure is given her. However, when it comes to the turn of Nigeria, it is God who bursts into tears.

These stories portray Nigeria as a baby with a pea brain that is eternally doomed and so can’t learn a thing. Perhaps so, I don’t know and I don’t want to. Let the facts keep lying. They are lying, right?  Let’s look at some of them.

Over this week, I read a news report that the naira is now 480 to the dollar. The result is in a news report that says a man battered his wife over the fact that he could not find his two thousand naira (N2, 000). I panic and think, oh dear, the hunger in the land is getting unbearable. The economy is so bad now that domestic squabbles are turning into fisticuffs over what used to be paltry sums. In truth, the man may just have had an ill-governed temper and so his fists could not really tell the difference between his wife and his enemy.

If you think that is bad, listen to yet another report that says a woman organised the kidnapping of her own niece to gain N30, 000 to use ‘for a business’. Really?! What business, I ask, Kidnapping, Plc.? The wonderful thing is that the woman fully expected to succeed in that business and make profit.

True, these stories can hardly be said to be lying about Nigeria and the antics of her citizens. They show a country made up of professional dummies. But, if the philosophical theory that says ‘I think, therefore I am’ is true, then these people do not exist. They are only figments of my imagination. Nigeria does not exist; Buhari is not struggling to rule the country; kidnappers do not exist; no one exists, only my beautiful mind. Then, who on earth stole my housekeeping money?

There is one group though that I would just like to close down the shutters of my mind on, and that is our state governors. You know, in spite of the hunger in the land, I hear that some of them have placed orders for bullet-proof cars. I ask you?!

You know, I easily get confused. When Buhari won the election, I was a little confused. I asked someone: did I not hear that the last government had paid many people in dollars just to ensure that they would win the election? It took me a while to reach the conclusion that money can buy you a lot of failure. If you don’t believe me, just ask PHCN. They’ve had lots and lots of money over the years and it’s bought them nothing but failure all the way. So, I tell you, I’m easily confused.

This confusion is rearing its ugly head again in my mind. I can’t seem to make the connection between armoured cars and safety. The dots connecting them are sometimes turning into squares in this my beautiful mind. Governors are buying bullet-proof cars! Many of them do not have any good recording on their blood pressure machines. Why not get a bullet-proof panacea for that first?

In the midst of all the rhetoric about lack and hunger in the land and families eating amala with water or red oil as soup and people dying because they cannot afford drugs of a few hundreds of naira and people cooking up leaves to make vegetables and all kinds of unsavoury situations, someone can think of buying bullet-proof cars. I ask, is it to protect the occupants against the people’s hunger or anger?

I tell you, the people are hungry, therefore angry. If you want to know how angry the people are, just look at the spate of kidnappings in the land. As sad, terrible and despicable as that act is, it represents a loud cry for financial and psychological help. It’s a financial cry because lack of jobs soon makes people wander listlessly into the devil’s workshop and take up ‘occupations’ that don’t make any sense. It’s also a psychological cry because only an unsound mind can think that money made from depriving struggling people of their freedom, i.e., asking hapless people to buy back their freedom, represents good money.

The rhetoric of bullet-proof cars is similar to the rhetoric of private jets. It’s an attempt by the governors to escape these little things plaguing the rest of us lesser mortals – being shot by robbers, being kidnapped, being torpedoed with water sachets, rotten tomatoes and eggs. Oh yes, they happen. They happen though because of the absence of good governance.

Sooner or later, one has to touch ground from them jets and armoured cars and walk on this terrestrial earth, if only to go to the bathroom. Now, we do not know what these cars are supposed to achieve for the governors and their wives but I’ll tell you what it cannot do: show that Nigerians are serious about self-governance. Indeed, it’s a little like monkeys playing with stolen guns while swinging on trees. You can bet there will be some misfiring. Who gives a gun to monkeys?

More importantly, who is related to these governors? I really want to know them, if only to envy them. Perhaps, who knows, I might one day go to greet them as the friend of a friend of a friend and get a ride in one of them armoured cars. You can bet I will tell you about it. I don’t promise though to be happy all the time I will spend in that car, but I tell you, I will appreciate the experience.

At 59, Nigeria has not apprehended the art of self-governance and putting the right foot forward. All we seem to have learnt in the last 50+ years has been to take stupidity to the highest level instead of ideas and innovations. Who gets marks for stupidity? Only knocks, hard ones, on the head, delivered directly from above, can rain down. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why God burst into tears in our story above. How in heaven would He deliver those knocks on the country: through a recession perhaps?

There is not much wrong with this country that a few strokes here and there can’t fix. Like someone suggested, sell a few things like our oil rigs, the assembly, state government houses, the government itself … Who knows what good can come from there? Seriously, getting wealth before learning to work never did anyone any good. Unfortunately, Nigeria got wealth before she learnt to work. America learnt to work before getting wealth. Perhaps these hard times will force all of us to learn to put our backs to it and actually learn to work. Otherwise, we will be forced to conclude that at 59, Nigeria is still too old to learn.

***This article was first published on October 2, 2016 but is still relevant today.