When I was a teenager back in the northern part of the country I get wasted in a musical track of Tony Tetula, e go better, seldom do we take a critical reflections of what the song meant back then, we only dance to the rhythm and not to the lyrics.
In the later years, it came crashing on my mind and that of my buddies; we couldn’t even fathom the direction to which the country was taking, the conduit of our complaint are placed in different problems. I never thought that I will one day find myself in this mess- human right abuses, perfidy, corruption and ethnocentrism- the worst of it is that nobody is complaining, we all fold our arms and look up to God (a typical phrase of a Nigerian-God will save us), a Nigerian would rather see someone been punished for exercising his fundamental right simply because he/she thinks the practice is not convenient to him, a Nigerian sees bribery and corruption as a normal practice and they are never ready to change; I was queuing up in a bank trying to pay my fees but to cut the story short, we were asked to go and come back the next working day, as we were about to leave the cashier systematically selected about six girls that he will help access their e-Transact payments, to my greatest surprise no one spoke against the preferential treatment meted out against the boys, I tried to speak but my words couldn’t even petrify a fly simply because I had no backing from my peers.
I remember when Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State once made a statement that they are poised to siphon the national treasury simply because no one is stoning them, does this word of a popularly elected governor ring a bell in your head? $20 billion accrued from the NNPC varnished into thin air and nobody talked about it. The problem with Nigerians is that we believe that we don’t have a say, we are so passive like a Christmas fowl that wakes in the morning not knowing that it is going to be slaughtered in a matter of hours. Opium of the masses, our brains has been doldrumed by the governing elites who plunged a thousand naira note on our palms, compromising it with national stability and development and growth. Even in our university environment which is supposed to be a citadel for the upbringing and re-engineering of leaders of tomorrow is now a market place for the exchange of muscles.
Like I always say, let us not be like the Americans that were asked to die for the unity of their country, let us fight for the betterment of our country because beyond this terra firma there is no place we can call home. Let’s stand up for our right, let’s make believe that there’s hope, in the words of a philosopher, Aristotle, hope is an awaking dream. We need individual change and action irrespective of your social status or class. Let us observe the tenets of human rights, let’s eliminate prejudice, inequality, and discrimination, Susan B. Anthony opines that “the true republic: men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less.”
Written by: Ejioffor, Ikechukwu
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