My Beloved Country is Slowly Being Set On Fire
My beloved country is slowly being set on fire. My beloved country is slowly being sunk, slowly descending into the deep. And it seems that most Nigerians I meet either do not know, or simply do not care. But I know, and I care. I see it every time I leave my house, every time I take a bus, every time I go to the market. Every time I go out things seem to be worse than they were before.
I have always known that the country was sinking. To not know, on my part, would be ignorant, downright stupid. But now I feel the rate of our downfall has been greatly accelerated. I see it through several little things, all seemingly unrelated, but all coming together to paint a bigger picture, a picture that frightens me to my bones.
I have noticed that a good number of Nigerians do not know much about anything. This alarms me because I know that an uninformed, uneducated people are a people ready to be controlled. This alarms me because I realize that not a lot of people know much about finance, or economics, or government policies, or even their respective disciplines. They only know what they are told. And when someone comes along who seems to know, it’s only at face value. I am alarmed at the apparent lack of intelligence and logical reasoning among the youth; our “future”. I once was told, by a fellow youth that by limiting our power supply to two hours of electricity per day, the power companies teach us time-management. I may not be a psychology expert, but I believe it takes a great amount of sheer stupidity to truly believe that.
I see the population slowly being “dumbed down”, slowly becoming more complacent, slowly learning to accept whatever the government or the corporations dish out, without question. I am alarmed not just because I see so many problems, but also because I see no one taking responsibility, I see no one demanding answers. I see no one trying to stand up, and when a brave soul does come forward to say “this is wrong”, the people he fights for are the same ones that devour his spirit. They say “this is how it has always been, chop your own and go”, and when this brave soul finds himself in a position of power, or fame or fortune, he forgets where he comes from, and allows himself get swept away.
Money is stolen constantly, so often it has become expected, so expected that someone once told me “as long as a governor does his job, he can steal money”. The ‘good’ governors or politicians are now the ones who steal but at least try to do their jobs, pitiful. People are being killed on a regular basis. Insurgents with no military training lay waste our military forces. The soldiers complain that they are not supplied enough ammunition to properly combat the militants, yet we are constantly borrowing money for military and “defence” purposes, and nobody seems to be concerned about what happens when we can’t pay all these monies back.
The ones who steal money are praised, and awarded titles like ‘Jagaban’ while the ones who try to do the right things are ridiculed, put to shame, left unheard. We praise the artists whose message is about getting money by whatever means necessary, and shun those who preach anything other. We judge people based on the content of their pockets rather than the content of their hearts, and calculate how much respect to show an individual based on who he knows, what phone he uses or what car he drives. And relationships, true relationships are quickly fading as people are constantly sleeping with anyone they have an attraction to, consequences be damned. True love is quickly fading as people can no longer be intimate with one another without involving sex. Friendships are faked, relationships don’t last, people are lonely and scarred on the inside but cover it up with filters for the gram. Our lives and reality are now online, in a place that isn’t real, so we become fake. We become whatever we think our friends, strangers or society want us to be. We become everything except that which we truly are, until one day years have gone by and you no longer recognize the person staring back at you in the mirror, you do not recognise the people you call your friends, you’re alone in a box, depression sets in, and next we hear someone hanged himself, committed suicide. And we all say “but he seemed to be doing well”, but he wasn’t, we just didn’t know because we too forgot how to reach out and have honest conversations with one another. It may not seem like all this relationship drama has anything to do with the health of a nation, but believe me, it has everything to do with it.
All this is happening around us, but what I mostly hear is “last last, I will still leave this country”. Loyalty, patriotism are slowly being replaced with individualism. The millennial, who’s defining trait is his narcissistic approach to everything. The ‘woke’ generation of the information age, who think they know it all but in truth are lost. A generation that is slowly deviating from almost every moral, righteous, upright principle or structure, all in the name of acceptance, and self-discovery, or truth and knowledge. A generation that gladly embraces the perverse, but point to others during times of reckoning.
It seems this is what we do the most, point to others as the cause of our problems. It has to be the politicians. If not them, then it’s the corporations. If it’s not them, then it’s the senators, we all know how much they steal, and if it’s not them then it’s my neighbour, or my “village people”. We blame everyone else except the one who matters, ourselves. It can never be our fault because we have become so blind that we cannot see past our noses. And because we just looove to play the blame game, I shall play one of my own.
I blame the old generation, for allowing themselves become complacent. I blame the young generation, for lacking vision, drive and being so short-sighted that they cannot comprehend anything that is bigger than their stomachs or their groins. I blame the politicians, for being so easily corrupted by power and greed. I blame the president, for being so clueless about the affairs of the nation he presides. I blame the people, for being unable to see what needs to be done and doing it, for being so eager to exploit and cheat one another. I blame myself, for not doing more than writing an article and whining about a failing state.
My beloved country is slowly being set on fire. My beloved country is slowly sinking, slowly descending into the deep. If she were to catch on fire, if she were to sink, it is not the politicians that we sell our votes to, it is not the corporations that we sell our time and allegiances to, it is not the powerful CEOs or captains of industries that we defend and place above our fellow man that will burn, that will drown. It is us.
