INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS

INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS

With the reality that Nigeria’s independence anniversary was drawing nigh, my head was clouded with different thoughts at different times last week. My dear country was clocking 51 and there was a heavy cloud of gloom. Tension was as palpable as it was close. It was so close that one could feel it like rain droplets. What with the security challenges headed by the dreaded Boko Haram and other problems presently bedeviling the country?
I have known my country as one that has gone and is still going through thick and thin. Quite a lot has seemed right and wrong, or wrong and right, as the case may be. I have memories of different things in my twenty something years on earth, all of which have been spent as a Nigerian. I have tasted a little of the goodies that the generation which failed us have left behind for us. I have had a swallow of the suffering with which we have been drenched as we grew up.
I titled this as shown above because the thoughts have come to me independent of our independence as a nation. While I grew my mother used to give to myself and my then only brother, two biscuits each to take to school. I ate the popular Okin biscuit and the equally popular Nasco wafers. We had cartons of both in our house. How many people can afford to buy that again? If it would be well said, then may the labour of the leaders in our recent past ‘ever be in vain’.
I do not want to lament about the wrongs in my dear country, I will try as much as possible to focus on the goods, the positives. Isn’t that what our leaders want? I will for once try to please them. Back in the days, we had the luxury of TCTC luxury buses (in Ibadan); we would queue and wait with glee while the buses plied the routes. Today we have Call-A-Cab. Isn’t that an improvement on Trans City? At least we charter Call-A-Cab at N600 per hour.
Even if the old NEPA also cut power then, we still had light everyday to watch Wrestlemania. Our black and white television never lacked regular supply of electricity. We saw Yoruba drama like Omo Arayele (how do I translate that?), Feyikogbon and Arelu; we saw Koko Close and New Masquerade back then. Now we have stepped up, we have provided a source of income to generator manufacturers and dealers all over the world and that has contributed some more to the revenue they pay the government. Our electricity generating, distribution and transmission equipment can at least rest very well now due to the inability of the people in charge to replace or maintain them as the case may be.
The water taps were running at full capacity but government was paying too much in salaries and allowances. Therefore little by little, the water corporations went into coma and if not for the fact that some state water corporations now produce sachet water now, they would have gone into oblivion. Of course, we have pure water companies now. So where government has failed, they have given us another source of income by making it easy to produce well water in sachets to help hospitals make more money.
Thank God things have improved a lot better as we do not have to go to the river to fetch again. For people who can afford it, boreholes can be drilled; others who have no financial capability to drill can buy water and pay a token. That has actually reduced the rate of cholera and other water-borne diseases. I therefore see no reason why we should not celebrate 51 years of nationhood. It is not all doom and gloom; there are reasons to be positive.
Need I say that there are lots of schools that litter our areas now? The government schools have been replaced by lots of daycares, nursery and primary schools, as well as private high schools and tertiary institutions. I served in a nursery and primary school built from mud bricks. Each class had one arm, I mean nurseries 1 to 3 and then primaries 1 to 5, all had one arm. Is that not much better than government schools where there is equally no furniture. Students at least can make do with whatever is available while the nouveau riche send their children to other schools where they will not learn what it means to be Nigerian.
I also thought about the improvement in the way we have bred different categories of people. Nigeria has brought up the very gentle set of people, who have in turn become mumus. They refuse to stand for themselves even when their rights are being trampled. They only siddon look, waiting for God intervene while they are being taken for a ride.
My country has birthed first class hustlers, who can thrive and survive anywhere. Thanks to our leaders past, most of who are heroes the other way round (I never called them villains), we daily struggle to achieve everything. If you do not know, that is something to be proud of. You can stand up to an American, a Dane, a Briton or even a South African, and tell them confidently that all you have achieved is by pure human effort, not government support via social security or whatever it is.
We have consciously unconsciously (I know what I mean here) created people who have to fight to get everything. Check out Niger Delta militants, Boko Haram and other freedom fighters. The Niger Delta peeps did not get the attention of the people that mattered until they took up arms against their country of birth. Same with the Boko Haram peeps now. I am also thinking of starting mine if per chance, someone will notice me for bombing vegetable farms and other notables.
We keep saying there is nothing good about Nigeria but have we not booted out the very corrupt military? We asked for democracy and we have it already. Democracy and even some more craziness, Lootocracy has joined our democracy. We chased those ones who told us to our faces that they stole our money and effectively replaced them with those who daily feed us with different reasons why the treasury is being regularly devoured and the foreign reserve is being depleted.
Some people curse my country but I see no reason for them to do that. Some call me names for saying what is obvious. Why do you expect us to buy fuel and petroleum products on the cheap? Because we are producers? That is not enough reason. It gives us the opportunity to know how much our country daily makes from oil and tells us nobody cares for us; we are on our own in this beautiful country. Expect more from next year.
I am even baffled when people cry because government wants to remove the subsidy on petroleum products. It only goes to strengthen the point that no one cares the slightest hoot about us. That is about the only thing we gain from them and they still want to remove it. It is to tell us to buckle up and tighten our belts that they say better days are coming, but some see it as harder days. I however see it as just that, better dey come. We will buy fuel at N250 per litre when the better days come.
Independent thoughts… I could go on and on but God, someone else should also comment. I still have them in my head and that may necessitate part 2 of this writing. In the mean time, please read this and let me know the thoughts that have been ringing in your head (like my coconut head) as we remember our independence in Nigeria. The only thing I want is your own independent thoughts in form of comments.
The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain; the labour of the leaders in our recent past shall always be in vain. Happy belated 51st birthday Nigeria; Happy independence to my family and friends; Happy independence anniversary to everyone. God bless Nigeria at 51 and beyond.
I’m outta here…xoxoxoxoxoxo