These are sad times for this nation. Chinua Achebe only last year won the highest literary award up for grabs in the United States of America - not just being a Nigerian but the second black man in history. The exploits of our brains are still being felt in Harvard and other Ivy League Universities.

Ngozi and Oby despite all, have prominent positions in the World Bank, and even if the dissidents refused to see him and he was missing for a few days, Gambari a UN envoy and a Nigerian was trying to bring a semblance of peace to Myanmar or whatever they call the place, sometime early in the year.

The Dream Team four brought respite to the face of sports, or is it football loving Nigerians. In the Diaspora many Nigerians are making us proud in various fields of endeavor.

The fuel and electricity situation has witnessed an up and down movement. The kidnappings by my own reckoning have improved as politicians are feeling the heat. Now it is their mother, father or kids. I crave that they too become targets soon.

Let us leave the albinos called oil workers to do their work. The nation needs the money in the absence of a leadership that cannot bring peace to the region and diversify the economy. And sadly the militants have declared almost full war.

After over a year we are reshuffling the cabinet, very little has happened. Even death seems an inadequate tonic for a re-think. On second thought I am forced to say serves us right.

What were we thinking when we gave meat to a lion for safe keeping, made a mechanic give us a haircut, asked a carpenter to tend to our garden? What is wrong with us, what on earth did we do wrong and when did we get it all messed up? We gave a farmer our land; he left us famine and told us he will be our Churchill with time.

Often I repeat a lot in my monologues praying that someone up there is reading and believing that down there someone is shaking his/her head and saying all this has to stop. Millions, billions have been spent on roads, yet there are no roads. I recall once upon Madam Speaker said she would make the Benin-Ore road habitable. 

In my nation, before you lose a loved one, you bribe the hospital to get admitted, then bribe to get his/her body into the morgue, you bribe you way to get the body out. Save you that the private resting place is beyond you, you have to bribe the burial ground hands to help you dig six feet. And strangely nothing is wrong.

I was at the Police Station to withdraw a complaint because the person involved had shown reasonable remorse and was ready to make restitution. The Police said I had no right as the case was now between the person and the State, but that could change, if my hands went into my pocket. And little wonder the Nigerian Police is 4th most corrupt in the world, the cheering news only being that Cameroun is ahead of us.

Government Officials divert relief materials meant for flood victims, collect pensions for dead soldiers, and develop sticky hands on immunization drugs for kids. We reward mediocrity with positions. We are patting ourselves that by 2020 we would be amongst the top 20 most developed nations but I blatantly disagree because I know fully well that the rest of the world will not be waiting for us.

Talking of reward, Singapore Airlines just bought the world’s biggest aeroplane, and we do not have anything other than Branson’s Virgin. Still, Kema Chikwe is rewarded as an Ambassador after her failure in the aviation sector.

I have a four year old boy whom I need to see a Board Member about so that he can get into school at prep level. He would need a note for primary school, another for secondary. I would then buy him question papers for his O/Levels and the scenario of the type of child one has raised is better imagined than experienced.

Frustrated Nigerians walk the street; there are no shortcuts. We have learnt to live a life of promises, and no fulfillment. Our leadership lacks solutions to the simplest problems, so they either make mountains out of them, or solve them on the pages of the paper.

Our big successes are ridiculed by the actions of our leadership, the constant abuse on the populace do not make matters any better. Someone called our leaders touts, and I disagreed on two counts - the fact that there are those that are unfortunate to be amongst the rascals, and the truism that even amongst touts there is a hierarchy, and they obey it. But here we see a house without hierarchy or leadership.

That is why they scream ‘ole, ole, ole…thief, thief, thief on somebody’s mother, a person’s daughter sister, wife and we act as all is well. Shame is alien; there is a high level of an Acquired Integrity Deficiency Syndrome. The good old days have become a good old phrase. We have thrown away our values.

We have become a nation that is not just poor in the pocket but that which is afflicted with poverty of the mind, our moral values are poor, and our social cultures are poor.

The sad situation about Nigeria is that most of the leaders that currently perpetrate poverty for the masses and create class apartheid were not born into wealth and positions of influence. Many got to where they are by crook, sheer luck or hard work. Unfortunately, Nigerians cannot truly distinguish who are the saints from the sinners in Nigeria's leadership quagmire and those that achieve their position on merit are in very little number to challenge those who are more of a clog in the wheel of Nigeria's progress in view of the way they measure personal wealth against national achievement and integrity.

For the nation to make real progress in the prioritization and management of public institutions and services, especially health and education, those that lead must be subjected by legislation to using those public services they purposefully run down and render useless for the rest of the population. There has to be a way of making them eat the food they cook for the people they lead. Leadership must be from the front, not sideways.

When will our revolution be, what will trigger it? Are we not tired of the sleep, when will it make sense to be proudly Nigerian? Almighty Allah we look up to you, give us leadership that we do not deserve in the hope that it will signal change. Because despite all these, something good can still come out of Nigeria.

Robot  Villager

# 1 After over a year we are reshuffling the cabinet, very little has happened. Even death seems an inadequate tonic for a re-think. On second thought I am forced to say serves us right...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 21.09.2008 09:06