I am happy being a Nigerian, I am proud to be one, but I regret being one…P. C. Dickson

These are sad times for this nation. Chinua Achebe has just won the highest literary award up for grabs in the United States of America - not just 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.

Our boys were Golden in far way Korea, Ngozi and Oby 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.

The fuel and electricity situation is improving, though at a snail's pace. 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.

We are witnessing a mere and I dare say an ordinary hairdresser hold the third tier of governance to ransom, defying everybody and remaining adamant in the face of reality. Even death seems an inadequate tonic for a re-think. On second thoughts 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? Dr Aminu Safana has paid the price and yet sanity has refused to prevail.

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.  For eight hours my MTN line was without network in Plateau and when it was restored no one apologized or cared. I was just another bloody Nigerian.

Millions, billions have been spent on roads, yet there are no roads. Funny Madam Speaker said she would make the Benin-Ore road habitable. All the billions and the only place that would have had electricity would have been Etteh’s N600M palace.

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 full 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 three 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.

If Idris of Kogi State was denied by his Alma Mater, the tribunal judgment is only an icing o the cake, although we must limit our celebration because the system has not changed. Same INEC, same security personnel, the machinery is still there to create scenarios where elections are pre-rigged.

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 representatives 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, our social cultures are poor.

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.

Robot  Villager

# 1 We are witnessing a mere and I dare say an ordin...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 22.10.2007 05:17

Toku.A  Villager

# 2 It is actually true we are lacking values in Nigeria. Posted by Toku.A| 24.10.2007 09:30