Something is definitely amiss and it has been a long time coming. Our treatment of each other has definitely gone to the dogs. We are mean spirited and treat each other badly in the main. If someone is not of our ethnic stock then he is a fool, good for nothing and useless to us and the nation.
Please remove the speck in your eye. My mum used to say there is a thief in every village. But in today’s Nigeria if the person is your brother or sister, he is not a thief, he is just poor.
We have elevated corruption to high art and do things only for the highest bidder. We arrive in church and take the front pew even when we know we stole from our neighbour the night before. We struggle to be friends with the Imam and yet all our friends are helping themselves to the till with us in the lead. Some of our Pastors and Imams are the ones counting ill gotten money and enjoying it.
Last week, a dear friend explained to me that we make crooked everything we touch, change the rules, put our cronies and rewrite rule books.
Please remove the speck in your eye. My mum used to say there is a thief in every village. But in today’s Nigeria if the person is your brother or sister, he is not a thief, he is just poor
I weep for my country. Once the cream at the top of the African continent, now the laughing stock of regional and international communities. Our children are doing great wherever they are – bright as the morning star, musicians breaking boundaries, artists, creatives, scientist, etc. We are everywhere breaking new grounds, but back home that fellow unable to bribe his/her way through a misdemeanour in the UK or Dubai finds someone back here who he can bribe when he has misbehaved.
Then there is the new divide. The Nigerians in diaspora, who are lucky to have good facilities out there and those who do menial jobs in London, who turn up their nose and think they are better than those of us who stayed through thick and thin. I am deeply amused. Too many of them are self-entitled and there are those who can’t even hold down a job, have no resilience and are too good for Nigeria. Pardon my French.
There are as many brilliant Nigerians if not more at home than there are in the diaspora. Just avail them of what they need and they will soar. So, because you schooled in some backwater school out there, are you now better than a graduate of a first or even second-generation institution in Nigeria? Please check yourself. There are good schools there no doubt as there are here. But brilliance, hard work, good values, humility, dedication, team spirit are the same no matter where you went to school. And, like I always say, foolishness and laziness are the same in 1923 as they are in 2022.
This morning, I went to a meeting at a federal institution and I arrived the gate prepared up for the meeting I was fully invited at the very highest level. The security man dressed in his ill fitted, clashing colours uniform stuck out his nose and instructed I be made to walk the half mile long passage to the main entrance.
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Even the fact that his CEO was mentioned in the mix did not matter. He, of course, allowed wig sellers and traders in. He was in his element, his momentary place of power. Nigerians love power. Listen to your maid and the driver. Give someone a small modicum of responsibility and they choose to be mean once given the chance.
We were never like this. Politicians, internet, power drunkenness, money only relationships, mediocrity, deceit, drugs and just loving another nation more than ours and heaping invective on the land that fed us has led to a revolt in the land. Add insecurity, kidnapping and dastardly killings, and the mix is deadly.
Nigerians, what happened to us? We go to a church on a pentecostal Sunday and kill anyone in sight. I am truly shocked and saddened. Who are these people? Who sent them? It starts small – you hide someone’s file. You are rude to everyone. You sow the seeds of hatred. You steal N5,000. Then everything grows and becomes a monster. Who shall we blame? Is it in our water? Where will respite come from?
The nation continues to give us mangoes, corn, pineapple but the people continue to maim, kill and rape their fatherland. Something is seriously wrong in the water, in the air. God rescue us… Amen.
