so wats our business if the ants are beefin or luvin each other? as long as they aint rabid or carnivorous im sure we're all safe. theres a new war in n/korea and all u can give us is ANTS!!! Give us a break pls.
---Some idiot
The above comment about this story on the 234NEXT
website is so indicatory of a lot of the problems that Nigerians face as a
people. Folks, we have a serious problem.
The problems with far too many people in Nigeria are
ignorance and complacency. There are so many Nigerians that have chosen, by
accident or design, to remain within their little comfort zones. So many of our
people have no clue as to how the rest of the country lives, and even worse, do
not want to know. This problem used to be endemic particularly in the far
North, and the West of the country. One of the great things I can say about
people from the East, and to a large extent the South is that they are more
mobile than the others. But then again, even with that mobility, how many of
them actually open their minds to the conditions of others?
I was once called a liar when fresh from my first
ever trip to Minna, I told some friends that neither IBB nor Abdulsalami
Abubakar did much for the place. The guys chose to stick to their (rumoured)
stories of eight lane super highways and solar powered street lights all built
with oil money from the South. Thankfully, as time has gone by, quite a lot of
them know better. As long as we don't know anything about one another, we would
continue to be suspicious of one another.
Personally, I like to think that I am a realistic
fellow. While I would not go so far as to call myself blindly optimistic, I
prefer to see the glass as half full, rather than half empty. You see, I
believe that a healthy dose of optimism is extremely necessary for the attitude
to exist such that things can get done. It is no news that there has been no
power in parts of Nigeria forever. It is also no news that as Nigerians, we
appear to have accepted our fate and are just going through the motions of this
appalling thing that we call life. Yes, a
lot of my country men are overly pessimistic, and worse, nonchalant. Pessimism
is a very dangerous animal. The effects of which include despair. I don't know
which is worse, the despair in itself, or the fact that many Nigerians are
involved in painting the country with all sorts of lurid colours to foreigners.
While there is a strong need for criticism if Nigeria is to improve, some of
this so called criticism is borderline disgraceful. People seem to forget that
at the end of the day they are still Nigerians, and when they make comments
such as, 'I can't do business with Nigerians,' the listener would involuntarily
add you to that list of Nigerians that he can't
do business with.
When a person gives in to despair, there is
absolutely no way back for that person whatsoever. Things are done, finished,
ended. That is what a lot of Nigerians seem to be giving in to in recent times,
and it baffles me because there is no reason for Nigerians to despair
of Nigeria yet. Why do I say there is no reason for us to despair? My
response is one word, India.
India is widely looked upon, along with Brazil,
China and Russia as one of the next set of super powers on the planet. Yet,
having spoken at length with many of the Indians whom I encountered during my
Masters, I realised that their country has more problems than the problems that
seem to be weighing Nigeria and Nigerians down. Whatever problems we think we
have in Nigeria, they have them on an even larger scale in India. Population
growth rate is a problem; Corruption is a problem; Lack of infrastructure is a
problem; Power is a major problem, although admittedly, Nigeria's power problem
is in a world of its own; Cost of doing business is about the highest in their
region; Rich versus poor divide is a problem; Ethnic tensions are a problem...
There are some people who believe that only
breaking Nigeria up into ethnically homogeneous nations would hasten
development. We have the MASSOBites who just launched their ‘international
passport' early this week (I wonder what passport Uwazuruike travels with, but
that is a topic for another day). Such a claim is terribly erroneous. The most
successful country on the planet at the moment is undoubtedly the United States
of America, and that country is in no way ethnically homogeneous. If you look
at the five biggest economies in the world right now (after the US), Japan,
China, Germany and the UK, only Japan can lay claim to being an ethnically homogeneous
country. At the same time, these people forget that probably the best example
of a failed state on God's green earth at the moment, Somalia, is largely
ethnically (and religiously) homogeneous. Breaking Nigeria into nations with
single tribes or ethnic groups will not make the current problems disappear.
People like Alaka, Uba and Yerima would still have their mortgages to pay in
the West, and would continue as is usual.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would say that
most of the advocates of break up are either semi-literate, or have simply
failed to think things through. To be honest, aside from the cry 'break up', I
have never heard any one of them ever put forward a plan as to how he would
make his new country successful if such a break up should occur...
Nigeria may well be a "contraption", an
amalgam of various ethnicities but so is the US - a colonial contraption that
was acquired through genocide against Native Americans, conquest and theft of
land from Mexico, etc. Germany is a "contraption" that was brought
together by Otto von Bismarck's hand of iron in various wars during the mid
nineteenth century. Italy is also a "contraption" of city states
brought together by Garibaldi, and sacrificing their sovereignty to become part
of a bigger entity. So is Spain with Andalucians, Basques, Castilians and
Catalans. Spain still has its own separatist groups, part of the legacy of
Franco's regime. The UK is a country whose constituent countries were all
conquered by the English. India has at least 25 active
separatist groups, some of them with governments in
exile!
Our people should stop trying to rewrite history by
suggesting the existence of nations of antiquity to which Igbos, Ijaws, Yoruba,
etc can return to. Yes, the Soviet Union failed and broke up, but that was a
case of the constituent republics returning to their pre-Soviet existence. As
the Soviet Union was breaking up, "contraptions" like Italy, Spain,
the UK, etc, were subsuming their sovereignty into an even bigger
"contraption" - a European super-state. We are still waiting for the
"contraption" of the US to return California, Nevada and Arizona to
Mexico. While all these peoples are consolidating their strength, a lot of our
people in their myopia and selfishness are calling for division.
What to do?
We talk about the lack of infrastructure in
Nigeria, but then we all sit down and wait for the government to provide it.
True, it is the government's responsibility, but when government continuously
fails, a little bit of self help would go a long way. We hardly see that in
Nigeria. Compare a mindset like that of the Malawian kid,
William - who went out to build a windmill
from scrap plastic and wood to power his family home in rural Malawi -
to the typical Lagos residents whose homes and streets always get flooded every
year but will choose to grunt and grumble and live life as it is. There
has been absolutely no power in the whole of Surulere for a week now, and aside
from the token moaning, no one has done anything save switch on their
generators at night. I am guilty as well.
Quick question, if we all march to Aso Rock, or
Alausa, or wherever else we have to march to and make this country ungovernable
for these people who are taking us for a ride, will things not change? Would we
not have been a driving force for that change? Instead we all sit down on our
arses hoping for the day to come when we would get into the government and join in the chopping of money.
What to do? Change our attitude. As Gandhi so eloquently
put it, 'You must be the change that you wish to see in the world.'
Author's note: I had written something very similar in 2007. Since then, things have become worse.
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