It’s hard to do anything else as a Nigerian than to despair these days. No matter how well you are doing in your chosen profession or vocation, it is impossible to ignore the trap that is shutting us all in. I mean, look at how Indonesians almost strangled a Nigerian diplomat! The world has zero respect or regard for us now. Some have put hope in the possibility that someday a Messiah will come, who will have it all figured out. I am no longer that hopeful.
There is still that chance that such a person could come. But I mince no words in saying that from what I’ve seen so far, only a proper dictator can fix this country where we have all become rotten from head to toe. No, I don’t believe in the endless quest for rights without responsibility. Call my views fascist – and I have heard that said by some – but I believe that we are not at the level of these other western nations that are on steroids with the quest for rights to the extent that they are now high on their own dope – focused on sexual and other transformations.
Our problems are pretty basic here. Not that these nations are free anyway. It’s all just a big myth. The laws in those nations are so stringent, and their compromises and paradoxes are a mile high. People are in jail for all sorts of things that we take for granted in Nigeria. A chap recently did a two-part, hilarious but revealing article about the 2.7 million people who are in jail in America – most of them black, and most of them for the flimsiest reasons. The 13th Amendment freed slaves, but also opened an eternal vista for blacks to be easily imprisoned and made to do the same hard labour. Freedom indeed. I think Nigeria needs to learn responsibility first before following these western nations that know that the path they have led us on will never lead to our emancipation. Responsibility is what we need; to ourselves as individuals, to our fellow men, to our unborn children, to our nation, to humanity, to God.
All I see that we should be doing in this country right now, is work, work, work; collective responsibility. There is so much to do that isn’t being done. There is so much to build that isn’t being built. There is so much to maintain and care for, that isn’t being maintained or cared for.
I write based on empirical evidence and experience. Nigeria is finished. Done. Destroyed. Deluded. Mortally wounded. Receded to the Dark Ages. The world has moved on and left us behind. This is not the time for self-delusion. We call ourselves the Giant of Africa, but we are instead, the laughing-stock, the sick, underachieving, malformed, good-for-nothing bully instead. We are no giant in any known form of achievement. I sat back and thought about Nigeria. What is Nigeria good at, or good about, or good for? Is it in tourism, or manufacturing, or services, or sports, or what? I couldn’t find anything that we are particularly good in, except perhaps in ‘banking’… and finance… and that is because most smart Nigerians would rather be collecting money from unsuspecting folks with a view to duping them. Recently, we saw the case of one couple (Gloria Igberaese and Muyiwa Folorunso) who were declared wanted by Interpol for financial fraud having ripped off thousands of people. The cases of our 419, yahoo-yahoo and other international fraudsters who have totally ruined the name and image of this country is unending and fresh in mind. What about our drug-pushers? Or our famously corrupt politicians? Or the fact that the average Nigerian has absolutely no patriotism and is daily emptying the resources of his country abroad – many times into rich countries where they have set up elaborate schemes to rip off Nigerians.
We cut a pitiable picture, the world over. If you travel these days – post the worst of COVID-19 – you will find that the world is moving on but leaving Nigeria in a lurch. We are only sometimes being helped along, limping, becoming a liability to the world. And that helping hand we get, is weakening on a daily basis. After all we don’t even have a leader that can inspire or speak up for us. That one is on his own personal agenda.
I have written angrily about our Olympic failure and underachievement and highlighted the refusal of leaders from the north of Nigeria especially, to even help their young ones by anchoring their passions, energy, intelligence, innocence, through sports. Rather they leave them to their own devices, leaving tens of millions of young people uneducated, only to empty them systematically on southern Nigeria. But in truth, the north, south, west and east of Nigeria have failed, to varying degrees. We have grossly underachieved, to varying degrees. Even the East of Nigeria, where we can find the businessmen, and where people strive the more for personal excellence than most, has grossly underachieved.
The talk about breaking up will not save Nigeria; it is based on an illusion, and the tragic proposal for us to become smaller nations. But Africa needs bigger, stronger nations, not smaller ones. Even if we were talking about restructuring – letting every region control their resources (because some are still thinking in terms of extractive resources) – it will not enable the economy to grow in leaps and bounds as we require. We need to play catch up, with countries even in Africa. The self-delusion has gone on for too long. It is totally acceptable, what our leaders over time have done to this country. They know the truth, but cowardice, selfishness, greed, myopia, wickedness, and plain stupidity have blinded them from seeing that this path that they have chosen will destroy all of us. Already, there is no escape from the perfect hell that we have concocted for ourselves as a people.
In Africa, West Africa is the black leg; the one that will emerge last. It is in this order: South Africa leads its subcontinent and is better than some parts of Europe in many respects – infrastructure, ambience, organization, maintenance, visioning, sustainable economy, integrated economy, economic complexity, and a higher reliance on technology. North Africa is already integrated with Europe and has since striven at some of the achievements that I counted for South Africa above. Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco are already part of Europe and a country like Morocco has availed herself for Europe to make incursion into the rest of Africa and take advantage of the African Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
Manufacturing indexes show that the above countries have rapidly built structures that can sustain their economy and societies. We here are used to much noise. We were on television hailing the Arab Spring 10 years ago not knowing what it is all about. We readily offer our brains and minds to the latest and cheapest hijacker since we have no use for those assets ourselves. We think we are on the same level – in fact better – than these countries because we are loud. They have however left us behind. We cannot feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, build our own basic housing, build a sustainable society, build our own infrastructure, or manufacture the goods that our people need. We cannot refine even the crude oil that white people help us get from the ground.
