27 Dec 2008 |
|
Who am I? I am the Knight of Delta. That is my pen name. I am not a militant but I am not against them. I do not belong to any of the groups from the Niger Delta that is wrongly referred to as terrorists. They are not terrorists. They are freedom fighters. They do not like the way this country is run and they have decided to stand up to tell the truth. Many of their tactics may be seen as ruthless and inhuman but what can be more inhuman than a group of people who were not given power but who seized it in order to perpetuate their rule over a group of people who have no say in how their collective wealth should be distributed? What can be more inhuman than oppressing a group of people whose resources have been forcefully taken away from them and nothing is given to them in return than empty promises that do not see the light of day? Committees are set up every now and then; ministries and commissions are set up every year but they yield nothing. What can be more inhuman than telling these same people to shut up and not protest? These people do not have access to any kind of development and in their misguided way, the only way the rulers should understand since normal dialogues have led to nothing, they have resorted to acts to make the rulers pay attention. Yet, these rulers do not listen. Their greed has blinded them to service to humanity. Like I said, I am not a conventional militant. I am just a nobody from the Niger Delta who is scared of going home because I have nothing to go home to. I have therefore decided to take my personal militancy into my own hands. I have decided to fight my fight my own way. I have no gun, I have nobody, I have no money and I have no strength but I have the Internet and I have a laptop. I am not going to fight the government. There is no point fighting a government who is busy fighting anti-corruption crusaders. A government that is waging a war against anti-corruption, while at the same time floating an anti-corruption commission is talking with its tongue in its cheek. I do not believe that my country is ruled by leaders who have the best intentions for me or the average Nigerian. As the country gets wealthier, the average Nigerian gets poorer. When the country was poor in the times before I was born, the times my parents told me universities were built from cocoa, groundnuts and palm kernel, the average Nigerian was richer. We get windfall from oil boom and the country gets richer, the citizenry gets poorer while the universities that were built from cocoa, groundnuts and palm kernel wither away. What a shame! My militancy is against personal poverty. If I cannot have the good things of life, my children should. I do not look up to my leaders because I have no leader. I am my own leader and I have to lead myself away from where my leaders have led me. I grew up in a country and in a place where poverty is rife. In a bid to serve humanity in my own way while at the same time do good for myself I went to the university to study Medicine. I spent 9 years studying a 6-year course because of incessant lecturers’ strike. At the end of the 9 years I spent another 9 months looking for a job as an Intern so I could go and serve my country and I got none. I ended up working as an IT consultant. I got a job in a field where I did not have a formal education. It was then I knew that the health sector in this country was doomed. I finally got a job as a doctor through ‘connections’ that I was reluctant to use. It was then I came to discover that an honest doctor in Nigeria cannot change his shoes more than once in a year. More than half of my classmates are out of the country already, taking care of other nationals in other countries. They have run away from home because their home country treats them like trash. Life is full of challenges with so many things to scare us. It is only worth living if we could rise above our fears and face our challenges squarely. I have decided to face my fears. I cannot change who I am but I can change my career to do something, which will make me happy. I finished my youth service a few months ago and I am now an investment banker and I am happy. As I said, I am fighting a personal war. The best place I can fight my war from is from a place where I can help nurture private companies that will employ unemployed youths and give them hope for the future. A lot of people think I am crazy for leaving the medical profession. I agree I am because one cannot be sane and be happy in this country of ours. Despite all the troubles I have seen, I love Nigeria and I will do my best to make Nigeria a better place for me and my children in my own way. It is a personal war and I am looking for people to recruit into this war. That is why I have decided to start this blog to encourage people to make themselves better and change the place or anywhere else they find themselves as I change mine. I am learning everyday. I am the Knight of Delta.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
# 
Your Comments
Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.