Fantasies Of A Perfect Nigeria
If you eat gala and wash it down it with a bottle of coke and then dump the carcass at any side of the road, then you shouldn’t be seen anywhere around an argument about a better country.
If you give or take bribes, you sure do not deserve a space in a country which seeks growth.
If you are up to 18 and you do not care about obtaining a voter’s card how much more using it wisely during elections, then you do not deserve a space in the country.
If you are paid to do a job and you half-ass it and deliver a shoddy output because you want to have more gain, you should be in a zoo playing with any animal that is kind enough to accept you in their kingdom.
If you see a little child playing along the road and you fail to call him to order because he is not your biological child, then you should take several seats in some dungeon.
If you disobey traffic rules because there are no traffic wardens at sight, then you should be kept inside those traffic lights because you are the problem with Nigeria.
If you justify rape, armed robbery or any other social vices for any reason, you do not even deserve a prison but somewhere as horrible as a place where monsters are kept that has no perfect description.
If you use the little power you have to oppress your subordinates and make them feel lesser than they deserve, then you deserve a place in the animal kingdom because I can bet it will feel like home.
If you see others as lesser humans because they do not buy into your religious beliefs and principles, then you should be somewhere at the right hand of God or whatever you worship and stop occupying space in Nigeria.
If you see a borehole running and you do not care to turn it off because it is none of your business, then you are the problem with Nigeria.
If you use the toilet without flushing it because you feel nobody is watching and what does it really matter, darling you are a pig and should be kept in a pen.
If you belong to one tribe and you see your tribe as superior and others inferior, you should be living in a desert where the sun would shine some sense into you.
If you feign a blind eye to a neighbour’s clothes neatly spread outside while the weather gets cloudy, please do not step out when the roll call for Nigerians is being made.
If you jump queues at fuel stations, the mall or at the ATM stand because your own kind of hurry doesn’t have any mate in Nigeria, or because you feel the rest of others who actually endure the queue for hours despite their busy schedules are fools, then you deserve a ‘konk’ from the gods.
You see, often times we sit and complain about a failing government whereas we fail to do our own bid in making Nigeria become the country of our dreams.
We often put up a lackadaisical attitude towards things once they do not directly affect us.
Can you imagine a country where everyone takes responsibility of everything, like correcting a wrong when you come across it?
Oh wow! Looks like it will be heavenly.
Our leaders have failed us, no doubt, but like Mahatma Gandhi admonished, ‘be the change you wish to see in the world.’
If we all brace up and become agents of change in our different capacities, the country would have been a living paradise by now.
The blame game wouldn’t have had any arms to embrace it when it chose our dear country as its abode.
It is never too late to achieve a perfect country anyways.
It is not rocket science like people usually assume.
Just ensure that you dance to the tune of Theodore Roosevelt by doing what you can with what you have and where you are.
‘Nigeria go better, Nigeria go better’, this cannot happen if we all fold our arms and chant the theory without actions.
When Chinua Achebe talked about the issues facing Nigeria in his book ‘The Problem With Nigeria’, he probably did that with a foresight.
A perfect Nigeria is still very much possible. Let us join hands and make it the Nigeria that we have always had in our fantasies.