Nigeria, a great nation blessed with honey and milk, endowed with numerous natural and human resources whose citizens have never, at any moment, enjoyed any iota of the dividends of good governance and neither partaken of the good of the land; rather, the lot of the people is a perennial suffering amidst plenty.
Without any iota of doubt, and with the huge natural resources the country is blessed, Nigerians are not supposed to be living in abject poverty as the case has continued to be. Disheartening is a mild word to describe the protracted suffering of Nigerians to whom daily struggle, acute hunger, complete dehumanization, lack of dignity and integrity, etc., have become normalized. This sorry state of our people is the result of bad government and governance of the so called rulling elite who, because of their vested interests, have become principalities and powers: an albatross to the hapless masses of a great country.
Presently, nothing works in Nigeria, she is in a dire strait of hopelessness as a result of the wickedness perpetrated by a group of political jobbers characterized by monumental thievery, profligacy and I- don’t-care attitude.
Above all these things, I dof my hat for the uncommon resilience of Nigerians. It still beats my imagination, with many questions, as to how people survive amidst serious hunger and poverty, high rate of unemployment and inflation, corruption at its highest level, unprecedented insecurity, to mention but a few. In other words, no electricity, no fuel, no water, no security, no food, no money, no job, no business, no education, no hope of where the next meal is coming from, no healthcare services and so on….
With all these sufferings of our people, our rulers are living life of ostentation, life of “bamubamu ni moyo èmi o mo pe’bi np’omo eni kookan” … meaning: I eat to the fullest and do not care if others are hungry.
Coming back to the question above, is there anything wrong with us Nigerians?
This group who have over the years plunged Nigeria into a near irreparably failed state is now regrouping and vying for the office of president and other elective positions in the Republic, with mammoth crowds of sufficiently impoverished people running after, hailing, singing praises of their oppressors – the very group which put them in the current sorry state, made possible by a subtle weaponization of poverty.
It baffles one’s imagination to see Nigerian youths running around with those who are instrumental to their plight and the mortgaging of their future in the name of the 2023 general elections.
Bearing in mind all the above, one continues to wonder what, really, is wrong with Nigerians. Our case appears to be like slaves who refuse freedom because they like their masters.
*OGBENI KOLA OLAPITE
