It is a common practice to refer to a nation state as a female, a mother, hence the use of she and her as pronouns when referring to a country or continent. The symbolism is very clear. The nation is expected to protect and nurture the inhabitants in the same way a mother nurtures her children. Even in the Igbo world, Ala the earth goddess is female. The import of this is not lost on anyone who understands what a mother means to a child. When faced with any threat or danger, the child runs to the mother for succour and solution. It is not uncommon to hear people shout “Ala Owere e! Ala Avuvu e! Ala Mbaise e!” when confronted with difficulties. This shows the attachment they feel for the land of their birth and the confidence they repose on this land. It is this attachment that breeds loyalty and patriotism in every clime.
Nigeria is a nation state and is also referred to as our motherland. My worry is that it is difficult to see the mother/child relationship as it affects Nigeria and her citizens. By the natural order, it is the mother that originates the love relationship between her and her child. She envelopes the young child with love and warmth, and teaches this little one how to love. The loyalty that every normal child has towards the mother is unquantifiable. The child knows that he owes his mother a life-long debt of gratitude that even death does not terminate.
This is not the picture I see when I consider Nigeria as a mother to the multitudes that see her as one. A mother’s primary task is to ensure that her children are happy, safe and content. If that is the case, what kind of a mother is Nigeria?
Every embassy across the length and breadth of this country bears witness to the fact that Nigerians are about the most distraught people on earth and about the least content with their motherland. Even countries that have no notable place on the world map experience a surge at their embassies in Nigeria as virtually every young person is desperate to leave the country. Countless Nigerian youths go through hell on a daily basis as they struggle to run out of a country they perceive as enemy to their progress.
It is normal to see pensioners milling about in local government headquarters, state and federal secretariats like sheep without shepherds in a bid to get their entitlements after serving their nation for thirty or thirty-five years. The system does not see the need to tackle this issue once and for all. Why is it so difficult to restructure the pension matter in such a way that the moment someone retires from service, he goes home with his gratuity and pensions in one lump sum. This means that his business with his employer ends as he leaves the office. By so doing, the evil of abusing old people that should be pampered and revered will come to an end.
The process of getting admission to study in the nation’s universities is very rigorous and precarious. Periodically, we see thousands of young schoolleavers thronging the banks to pay for and obtain one thing or the other as precursor to getting into school. Students will pay to take the JAMB exam. When they pass, they must also go through the aptitude test which is another Golgotha. At the end of the day, the same students can only get admission if they have the right connection or if they have the right amount of money to open the doors of the universities to them. Meanwhile the university that one has to go through all this stress to get into is one cesspool of rot. Is this how a mother deals with her child?
We have cases of establishments in this country exploiting unemployed people in the guise of giving them jobs. They are required to pay certain sums of money to purchase forms for jobs that have already been given out through the back door. How callous!
We have cases of establishments organizing phantom job interviews that did not take the people’s safety and welfare into account. These establishments ended up killing scores of citizens at a time. Such deaths are not consequential in a country where human life is worth less that a fowl’s life in saner climes. In the old Igbo world, for instance, no death was overlooked. Investigations were carried out to find out the cause of death and appropriate punishment meted out where necessary as a way to forestall future occurrences. Nigeria is a land that does not flinch even if thousands of her citizens groan, bleed or die in a day. Is this how a mother deals with her children?
Is it any wonder that virtually everyone thinks of using Nigeria, duping Nigeria, looting Nigeria, sapping and sucking, but never giving Nigeria? Yes, someone from another clime has said that we should not think of what the country can do for us but what we can do for the country, but how sincere is that saying?
The country must first show promise before anyone can die defending her. A country must have an ideology and be seen to be working in line with that ideology before citizens will line up to give their support. For decades, citizens of this country have been clamouring for regular power supply but it remains a pipedream. Water supply is still an issue in twenty-first century Nigeria. People still need to send their children abroad for studies because Nigeria has not seen the need to provide quality education to her citizens. All expired, substandard and outlawed drugs in the world find their way into Nigerian drug stores where citizens use their money to purchase their death. Of course nobody answers for such careless deaths.
Any mother that is alive and allows her children to go through so much inhuman treatment must be seriously sick. Yes, Nigeria needs urgent medical attention and I implore her handlers to stop applying all these foreign remedies that have not helped us in the past many decades. I advocate a home-grown remedy to heal Mother Nigeria. Only then can she show her citizens the love they deserve and only then will they give her the loyalty they owe her as duty.
Nnenna Ihebom
