Nigeria: Hope of the Past, the Future not so much.

It becomes insanely difficult to retain the attitude of “suffering and smiling”. Suffering and smiling, the mantra every Nigerian has come to live by. It sounded novel at the time the phrase was coined. We beamed when Nigerians were found out to be the happiest people in the world. We relished the feeling of happiness in squalor. We loved the recognition. We never saw it as an expose. We never knew the world was laughing at us.

We’ve been taught never to forget the invasion and cruelty of the British: “Forget not how they bound your forefathers in chains and carted them off to cotton fields and plantations. Forget not the gold and silver, the artwork of bronze and copper they stole from us and continue to exhibit them in far away lands”. We cannot blame the British forever. Misfortune befell us when our forefathers sold their brothers their own people off as slaves just for a few shiny objects. This greed haunts us till this very day. Current Nigerian leaders have consistently carted Nigerians off to the world. They have sold us to poverty. They have sold us to shame.

Being a Nigerian has become hard. There’s nothing to foster patriotism except your parents. Hard. How does a country that’s wealthy in natural resources still rank high in corruption? Believe me being a growing country has nothing to do with it. It is a classic case of servants riding on horses as the princes walk. Nigerians with dreams for Nigeria have either been killed or had their voices drowned out. When a nation has no vision, the people perish. No jobs. Electricity is as constant as water in the desert. Food prices rocket. Fuel prices rocket. There was such a time in Nigeria when the Naira was on par or more than the American dollar in value. There was a time one could just walk into the Embassies of several nations without waiting in line for an average of 6 hours and not get denied a visa because your bank statement looked “suspicious”. There was a time you could get into a higher institution by merit. There was a time Nigeria glittered. Of course these are stories from my parents. I was born into a time Nigeria had begun its slow descent to the  abyss. I witnessed as the educational system crumbled. I witnessed the death of dignity. Every man for himself as they call it. I witnessed the death of a community.

Nigeria has become synonymous with online scamming. My stomach begins to convulse as I see people in the tech industry I so admire cackle about that “Nigerian prince” in the email they received yesterday. A broken system will always drive its citizens to insanity. This time the insanity is believing you have to steal to survive.If the country only made education of its citizens a priority again and gave them places to utilize those skills. Nigerians have made it so easy for other nations to assume a pseudo identity to rob people of their savings. They have chosen to be Nigerians at their convenience. A country is a brand. It takes business savvy leaders to see it as such. Once a brand has a flaw, everything in the product pipeline suffers from that mishap. Nigerian leaders let these cancers eat at its brand without an iota of care now its citizens suffer the “blowback”. Hell you’re with a green passport, you’re singled out for triple checks. Say you’re a Nigerian, people begin to walk away. Painful bad branding. Consequences of a broken system. The Chinese came in slowly paying off officials to win contracts whilst doing incredibly mediocre work. Striking deals with certain people to dip their finger into our resources. Killing us as our officials swim in their lake of gold coins. Appalling.

As a child, I have prayed for Nigeria in distress. I have lived with people who still believe the country will get better. I don’t believe that any more. Our problems cannot be solved by some divine intervention. Our problem is our mindset. Everyone wants to get into office and fatten their pockets no one cares for Nigeria anymore. I remember in secondary school classmates of mine paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln’s democracy quote  “A government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Now it’s a government by certain people for certain people.  We’ve become voiceless citizens hoping the darkness will someday wash over us. We’re desperately digging through our walls of despair with our spoons of “one day it will get better” but the walls become thicker each passing day. We have become a nation that now shuns dreams as the country withers. The solace of stagnation is more profitable. A nation of complainers. Life is only as hard as one intends it to be. Nigerians have chosen only to see it as spine breaking thanks to an ineffective government. Hope, that mistress we yearn for continues to elude us. Truly the children do bear the sins of the father.

There are many wonderful, brilliant, and talented people languishing in Africa looking for an opportunity to let their stars shine. No one is giving it to them. Africa does not need the benevolence of visitors. Africa needs accountable governments. That is the single best thing the international community can do for Africa. The aids will only remind the people of the inhuman state of life their governments have carved for them. It is a painful reality.