Nigeria may be eternally cursed

http://www.bantjes.com/index.php?id=68

Nigeria is going to be 49 years this coming week. I do honestly think that coming from those years, we have failed in terms of progress and our generation has learned history but has failed to learn from it.

We have various examples of this, we still have vigilante groups (like the Boko Haram) in the north killing Christians and southerners as well as destroying property. We have elements in the south still calling for a secession, groups like the MASSOB are still calling the the secession despite the civil war of almost 40 years back. We have the government still fighting the wrong battles like the battle against SONY PlayStation 3 ads and the movie District 9. We still have a dysfunctional society where nothing works: power, education, health care etc. Any system you can think of in Nigeria is currently in shambles.

I wish our generation was more educated in moving forward, but I do believe we are in a mess when we take a bigger view of the Nigerian picture. Apart from the vigilante groups up north, we have my south-south people kidnapping and causing terror to their own people in the name of fighting for their own resources. They have failed to learn from the struggles of Ken Saro-Wiwa. We have south-east elements (like I mentioned earlier) calling for secession like they never knew the history of the civil war, more so, they still hold on to the key strategists of the civil war as heroes instead of moving forward and making progress instead of reminiscing on days of unnecessary bloodshed and massacre. We still have the southwest that's slowly lagging in terms of progress as well, Lagos being the brain of the country continuously sees decay but no proper respite can be done to save a city when the whole country is in shambles.

Our resources are being exploited, both human and natural. Our best minds are flocking further away from the country, our cocoa, coal, rubber, groundnuts are all gone. Our oil is being taken away from us and sold back to us. We have no champion of our cause in terms of managing our resources. We just have people sitting down eating their share of the pie as the pie slowly decreases without them realizing it.

Our generation is filled with three kinds, those who can't do anything and won't do anything, and those who can't do anything but think they're doing something but they really aren't, and those that can do something but are not. I unfortunately fall into the first group, I wish I could do something about the state of the country but I can't. The other third is the funnier one, the idealists, idealists like the lightupnigeria coalition, who think that going on social networking sites and launching an online campaign especially with those outside the country receiving uninterrupted power supply can save the power situation of the county that has been in virtual darkness since I was born (and even before that). The last third is the saddest of them all, they are the politicians, their children who are in line for politics, the bank executives, the big shakers of Nigeria, those who can truly make a difference. They aren't doing nothing. Only contributing more material for your gossip magazines/blogs with their exuberant lifestyle while most of the country barely lives on a dollar a day.

So we've highlighted the problems but is there a solution to the Nigerian problem? That's one for us to ponder about as the country turns 49. Vision 2010 set up by the then dictator Sani Abacha is now as dead as him. We have a generation of Nigerians who (like me) have lost our sense of national pride even in our soccer team. It was like the military dictatorship had our mouths open to swallow it. But it was a bad pill given by an unqualified doctor, it only made us worse.

I am sad to say this but prayer may be the only option at this point, prayer and people, people who can not only talk the talk but walk it. However it does seem that in general with the world, black people can't make progress because as soon as we have one positive black leader coming forward to make a change, the world shuts him or her down usually by their own people. Case in point: MLK Jr, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Ken Saro-Wiwa...and Barack Obama getting his fair share of hate right now(I pray he doesn't end up the fate of the aforementioned black leaders)

We have to pray that God and someone comes to us in this time of our endless struggle, a struggle like the picture I posted is between good and evil. And frankly, in this real world we are living in, evil is winning. Hopefully good has the last laugh especially in my country.