I have been intentionally quiet for the better part of this year because the prevailing situation in my country has activated a combination of sadness and anger in me. I am just finding my groove little by little. I had lots to write on in the first month of the year; I was buzzing, raring to go. I had my articles- motivationals, politics, every day living, and others as early as the tail end of 2011. However, the unfortunate fuel subsidy removal crisis put paid to all of that.
My head just went blank after that infamous announcement in the afternoon of New Year’s Day. Everything I was to write about ran away and anger seized the whole of my being, sadness took up companionship with the anger. I was no longer myself. The well of ideas dried up, setting me back momentarily, and threw me into the no man’s land of semi-writer’s block. I would not write anything with the level of anger I was feeling.
Lots of events have happened after that period. Events that have shaped the way this year may likely go in my dear mother Nigeria. Government came up with different techniques – blackmail, appeals, propaganda and other things in their black book. People rose for or against the ‘subsi-sh*t’ thing. Some stopped short of calling some of us names because they felt we were unnecessarily antagonizing the President and his team. We were to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Virtually every Minister became a guest of the NTA, the state owned TV station. Even those ones whose portfolio have little or no relevance to national development. The other members of the team started saying their own bit of jargons, to curry the favour of their inept boss. The most annoying misfiring tongues in the heat of the crises belong to the dishonorable Minister of Culture and the now retired Hafiz Ringim. Words I don’t want to remember again.
A few weeks after all the controversies, what do we have? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Where are the hurriedly commissioned mass transit buses? Has electricity improved one bit? Has government expenditure been cut? Has corruption reduced? Is it still not business as usual? Where in God’s name are all the promises? Instead of that, terrorists have permeated every aspect of our daily lives. Bombing at will, taking lives at will, with reckless abandon.
I have seen that this set of people we have as rulers as of now, are nothing but rulers. Nothing seems to be working on the national front. Some people have seized the country by the scruff of the neck and are blowing the hell out of the northern part of Nigeria with the government either not doing enough or having their efforts sabotaged. Things we have only seen on TV now stare us in the face, they have become reality. It sucks big time that nobody is actually taking enough responsibility for all these.
Fellow Nigerians daily die avoidable deaths in painful manners. Deaths that could make one cringe, the kind of death you don’t want to experience. Someone walks on and unsuspectingly a bomb goes off. You cannot imagine these things happening in Nigeria like ten years ago. We saw these on TV. Someone said these are signs of the end time. I totally agree with them but how come these things don’t happen in Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Benin Republic? Is it not end times there as well?
What I think is we have loads of problem and the ones saddled with that responsibility are not doing enough to get us out of the woods. While they are not doing what they should, we should stick together as one, rise beyond ethnicity and religion or whatever divides us and confront our challenges. Nigeria shall be great again, end time or not. Preach peace, act peace, live peace and we shall overcome. It is our turn to do something about Nigeria, let us act.
I’m outta here…xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment