Foreigners have always been my favorite customers because they come with different perspectives on issues in Nigeria. My curiosity always starts off with the innocent question of how they perceive Nigeria. It (my curiosity) stems from the fact that the perception of Nigeria from outside may widely be different to the reality encountered by a visitation to the country. Alas, I was never disappointed when I experienced a lucky and epiphanic encounter with a Kenyan.
At first, she debunked my initial assertion that she might likely want to settle down in Nigeria, stating clearly she could not wait to return to her country despite the fact she claimed that theft and robbery are rampant on her home side of mother Africa. My shocker started when she told me she has not stepped her foot into Nigeria when her disappointment dawned. The airport here reeks of unexpected abandonment and disorganization in comparison to what they have in Kenya. Lagos on musical videos seems like African Paris, and New York combined but the sharp reality portrays a city choked and crowded with an array of stench and sweat. The plush areas are beleaguered by unplanned drainage.
To my question ‘what in her opinion is wrong with the country’, she commenced, distilling her analysis. In her sentence, a nation without constant power would suffer a threat of other concomitant issues: a rise in the cost of every household’s expenditure, industrial activities and other basics. Diesel/fuel cost is a budget inclusion that chokes households, individuals, corporations and even government parastatals. When compared to Kenya, where this ubiquitous cost in Nigeria has gone into other fruitful aspects of the economy, their individual lives well, their houses are better structured, their corporate organizations thrive more, their government with a better foresight and their education institute, and other institutions flourish better.
She wondered why despite our plethora of resources tapped and untapped we could not fix that basic aspect of national survival while Kenya with only reliance on agriculture and tourism as the national source of income had been producing in the last year more power than what she needed nationally. It is quite disheartening, she asserted, that Nigeria blessed with land mass for agriculture, population strength for tilling the soil, oil income, gold, and iron untapped could not fix her power which is the very source of every other livelihood and nationhood.
To her and other Africans, Nigeria from outside is regarded as a safe haven and a rallying point. South Africa is considered whiter than real Africans. Thus Nigeria is still considered a giant and trustworthy leader of Africa because of her unmixed ancestry and an unwavering population of core blacks. Yet we are losing that heritage daily as other Africans are leaving us behind in massive pace of development. Rwanda is going strong after her genocide and has become a model for economic growth. New Ghana is going stronger and unfalteringly. Niger is on the same pace after her famine. Ethiopia launched the first fully electrified cross-border railway to Djibouti 446 miles with other plans in the offing.
Health wise we are equally as pathetic, third in the world with the most incomplete vaccine for children. It just seems the nation is receding where the past is always better than the present and the future bleaker than before. Yet we are eager to jump on the bandwagon of the world technological innovation while we have not innovated our basic needs-hierarchy beyond the rudiment.
That response was actually solemn. She has hit a core deep to wash me with the reality of the entity called Nigeria. Her controversial quote can be loosely paraphrased as 'Northerners are not radical and revolutionary enough'. They have been at helms of affairs more than any other tribe. The west-power appreciates this because they (northerners) are less revolutionary. If a leader in Nigeria would emancipate the black Africans it is likely not going to be a Hausa. (In My own opinion) It might not be an Igbo too. They are becoming too much entrepreneurial to consider such selfless drive. Yoruba leaders of the fore have been known to be revolutionary, and more African. From the perspective of a Kenyan and those who still believe that Nigeria can still lead the emancipation of African, the sharp reality of what is happening in the country is disheartening. If you cannot lead your home can you lead a nation? If your nation is in shambles, can you emancipate Africa? She quoted the example of the plight of blacks in Libya and the need for a strong statement from Nigeria which surprisingly was not felt despite the fact that Nigerians suffered more of the woes.
My response, as usual, was simply; people complain of bad leaders but are the leaders not a product of the society? If you complain of morality, is that not supposed to be deeply entrenched in religions in a nation purportedly to be one of the most religious in the world? A nation where religious houses are more than schools? It is simply the lack of empathy that fraught our generation and the urgent hug of capitalism that worsens our bedevilment. Why is it that Nigerians are among the wealthiest yet we are in this state? A rich cannot eat more than a stomach feed, cannot sit in two cars at a time, cannot sleep on two houses yet they continue to seek more while a lump sum percentage of their nation wallows in misery because there is no empathy. Empathy is a kind of pity wherein you put yourself in the situation of the affected to feel their pains and facilitate the alleviation of such pain. Every one that is irreversibly above penury wants to be a Dangote forgetting that there are still millions helpless in that misery. Such unbothered competition is the offshoot of capitalism with little regards for societal improvement except for their ventures.
Institute empathy and national wealth will filter to the dregs through kindness and neighbors keeping. In the absence of chronic poverty, we can talk about contentment, healthy competition, a peaceful political atmosphere where everyone won't see polity as Business Avenue. Then, as development increases in all spheres: infrastructural, moral, economic, and individual, then we would have a great nation that would live up to neighboring empowerment and her citizen’s aspirations.
God bless Nigeria!
--Toonday
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