Nigeria: Building a nation. Chinua Achebe once noted in one of his powerful pieces that “Nigeria is a child, gifted, enormously talented, prodigiously endowed and incredibly wayward”. In the same piece, he asserted “Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting”. The question now is: Is Nigeria gifted? Yes! Is Nigeria enormously talented and Rich? Yes! Is Nigeria prodigiously endowed? Yes! Is being a Nigerian abysmally frustrating? Yes! Is being a Nigerian unbelievably exciting without any hamper, impediment or with doubt? Yes! One can go on and on, asking both real and critical questions with the answer of ‘Yes’ reverberating countless times. The reason for this is not far-fetched. The frenzied atmosphere of the country is never ending, characterized by a convulsed existence. We have the record of being the only nation at some point in our history with an absent president for over two months, creating a power vacuum and leaving us in limbo. The average Nigerian has become prisoners and slaves in his own country with no one to reach out to and no one to voice out the inadequacies to. Brecht once said “in our country, a useful man needs luck, only if he finds a strong backer, can be prove himself useful, the good can’t defend themselves even the gods are defenceless. Thus, you can only help one of your luckless brothers by trampling down a dozen others.” Countless times, the mind of this writer becomes lachrymose and reprehensible anytime maximum time is taken to think about Nigeria as a nation and the great people living in it. One must be blatant, make it crystal clear, visible to the blind and strive as much as possible to make it audible to the deaf that in the process of putting pen on paper on this article, this writer’s worries about Nigeria stemmed from a chat with an amiable and placid intellectual, Dr. C. A. Akangbe, who shared little about re-branding this Nation. ‘Great Nation, Great People!!!’ was the slogan of a re-branding crusade championed by the former Minister of Information, Prof. Mrs Dora Akunyili few years back. What a great dream! What a good clamour! Like a product in the dying stage of its life cycle, Nigeria’s moral is moribund, vices have become virtues and vice versa. This is the hallmark of our individual and collective lives. Our righteousness (in its best) is but a filthy rag, to paraphrase the Holy Scripture. The government is grossly insincere in all ramifications.Read more...abujavoice/nigeria-building-nation/
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 09:23:18 +0000
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