YOURS TRULY

I am a sunflower and I will never recoil from calling myself one. Sometimes (I mean occasionally, in the
pejorative sense), I want my heart to be carpeted with surging happiness as I would analogize
myself to a leaf fluttering, dancing in the wind. The glamour of it all is to see myself ensconced
languorously. I am not interested in anything of this world again, this earth. It would be a ‘dream come
true’ that one day I wake up in a utopian world of perfection where I am not under any responsibility but
in considerable latitude. The whole blah of it is contending to stride towards nothingness, mere
etherealness. Life in its entirety is full of discombobulating conditions that can push scorpions out of your
skull in no time. Okay, hearsay has it that it is a modernized world. I acquiesce, but not without
outweighing the immense consequences characteristic of our generation.
In the forties, just when things were considerably easy, the Britishness of it all, education was a ball of
fire. This outright appellation ‘A Second-Class Citizen’ was inconsequential, if I may conjecture. Yet, we
are in Nigeria where from the womb, girlhood or rather, womanhood is diminished, aren’t we? We are in
Nigeria where there is the marginalization of the rights of citizens even more than it purports to be
intrinsically, aren’t we? For how long will these dire infightings of anthropomorphism and animism
continue decades on end: north of Nigeria deifying animals? Oh, banish the thought! We have kept silent
for too long because we are accustomed to this silence. Where are our fathers who instigated the fight,
and where are they today to keep the ball rolling? They have all chickened out, to say the least.
I strongly believe that we can rise above taunts and channel our inward polemics until we ultimately
return our heritage. Nigeria may need rehabilitation, yet where do we start from? Is it the labyrinthinegeographical distancing, inward loathing of multi-faceted ethnic cultures, the mire of insubordinations,
even from where I fret to start from? All these are an anathema to our contentions to forging a new
Nigeria.
I know for sure that this cascading problem in graduated parameters is infused in the chassis of our nation,
if I may encapsulate. The quotidian progression of each day, of a truth, gallops exponentially. It is
comparatively easy to apportion blame on the government when on our parts we are gross defaulters. Let
us remove the log of wood from our lives and be law-abiding then we can concertedly remove the speck
of dust in the eye of our government. Perhaps it is expedient to do the former — blame it all on the
government. Why do we deign to consider other contributive problems? Paying scarce detail to the
technicalities in this regard, why do we think the basic structure of Nigeria is not also jinxed and
longitudinal assessments of economists would be exponential? Where are our law-makers and other
technicians acting under delegation who have spent umpteen years toting voluminous textbooks and
cannot now put all they have garnered into play, but capitulate on established polities? It is disheartening,
I must say.
So why then do we have to cram and cram the long materials and not put them into practice (as mentioned
above)? Espying the striking analogy of the Cameroun-Peninsula palaver of 1953 and the ultimate Civil
War of 1967, I suffice it to say Nigeria is better off under martial laws. How ironic is it that we are
endeared to espousing our enemies and despising our ‘mean-well’ friends — we deplore all their efforts
to make for the betterment of our nation already consigning into oblivion. Unless we tap ourselves from
this sleep of sheer ignorance, this charade to improve what we yet do not know of, our country would
remain leached out underground, in the chassis. I ponder pathetically with oodles of thoughts chasing one
another in my mind. In this government of injustice, I wonder why the military has not taken over power,
because Nigeria is in a state of disarray, dishevelment, extreme abeyance of sense, quasi-perpetuation of
nefarious crimes, gagged mechanisms of expression, i.e. Twitter, bitter-sweet decipherments.
It is tacit to know that intra-cephalous clamourings is just a tip of the ice-berg of our problems, but at least
it is a means to our end to re-organizing Nigeria from amorphousness. I still strongly believe we are
partially colonized, this time not by the British but by developed countries that our so-called leaders pay
obeisance to seamlessly. The United States is placed on a pedestal to all nations. Yes, I affirmatively
agree. But, do we divert our credulous-looking eyes to the façade of their attainments and forget that their
formidable anatomy today boils down to their perseverance in years. We don’t read their Law anymore as
did we during the aborted transition to civilian rule — we read that of the British. Shouldn’t that be
enough verisimilitude to clarify our discomfiture? We keep ranting about this, that, those,possible avail. Be that as it may, we unabashedly continue this rudderless behaviour when on our parts we
fail to do the right things? It is sheer hypocrisy; or what shall I presumably call it? I am not categorically
saying that they are not contributing to our problems. The callousness of our hands has enough proof to
exude for this, but in this fight, our fathers have passed down to us, our parts are invaluable for the
evolution of our Frankenstein-ish nation, the mere anatomy of our nation. Over again to the intransigence
of our leaders, we should sit back at home rather than go to school to learn the impracticable theoretical
aspects of the polities of our country rather than to leave it moribund. But if not, the pedagogical system
will thrive while our country will be marginalized. I stand to be corrected.
I must really commend the scrutiny of regional organizations like the Economic Commission of West
African States (ECOWAS), Government Action against Money Laundering in West African States
(GIABA), among others. My mother was graciously invited to partake in their yearly meetings at Senegal
and Niamey respectively. They, however, were saddled with the responsibility of funding flight tickets of
lawyers to and from countries all over West Africa. The outpouring of funds surreptitiously seems to be
enormous that they salt away national funds in the guise of their personal earnings in intercontinental
banks. It ostensibly is not having your cake and eating; it is also Janus-faced in that they siphon public
funds to the detriment of indigent citizens dying in drudgery. Abacha’s loot investigation is a case in
point.
Launching into the religious realm, human beings are likened to be co-pilgrims on a heavenly race. They
are embittered with worries, cataclysmic traumas, and orthodox beliefs about their chosen God (god) as
did the Israelites rebel against God by worshipping Baal intermittently. We lumber on tiring knees but still
press ahead with our eyes glued to the Star of David haloing in the distance.
Nigeria is oxymoronic of lethal ghoulishness. One cannot walk in calm, owing to the insecurity that is
rife. A visit to police stations emphasizes the inefficiency, lack of infrastructural facilities, immobility,
poor remuneration, and the saga of the gross endangerment of citizens. The police’s primary
responsibility is to protect the lives and properties of citizens; at least that is how it is in our constitution.
Unfortunately, they neglect their responsibility of protecting susceptible citizens to the protection of
rapacious governmental officials. Quasi-executive bodies are even more concerned with protecting
citizens.
If for nothing, we are operating a democratic system of government, we should not give undeserved
immunity to guerilla governmental bodies that in their orgiastic tantrums put us in trepidation. The
structural system of education in Nigeria is a living-dead on account of the fact that our rather anomalous
leaders do little or nothing to improve its barriers. In the interim, they send their children to schools indeveloped countries, i.e. America, Ukraine, England, even more so, Canada meanwhile, our children are
faced with grim-faced realities. It is not A-OK to think that with the established agencies of education,
candidates are dissatisfied to be patriots of Nigeria, a country that does not truly appreciate their little but
worthwhile efforts as a matter of fact.
Nigeria is attenuated by modernizations of revolution which in fact, makes our languages and underlying
traditions silhouetted in the scheme of things. English language meanwhile our children ought to be
equipped with our native language through and through. What we need is the English Language since we
have not fully resurrected our culture so that it may at least be principled in our way of life and remember
us of our progenitors who in anachronistic days showed us the ways of their own fathers that we may
filter down to our children. Why then is the chain broken? Why is it crooked or stolen from us by
colonization? Why have we brushed away the need to forge our old times? They are now to be seen as
inconsequential, unimportant and outdated times in the annals of modern history. Do we fail to think or
consider that our mire-soiled cultures would one day be sun-baked and it would be an indelible part of our
being? We mostly forget our heydays of joyousness. If our culture remains jaded as it is, then we are not
ready for a new Nigeria, a sacrosanct Nigeria to remain unchanged despite undulating envisions of our
colonizers. Nigeria is super-rich but too often that we do not recognize this matter-of-factness.
In years to come what shall we call our children? Yet we feel we need to continue this Britishness
and abandon our culture, the innate way of life of our fathers? Severally have we tried and tested
this to be a thorny issue. We are controversial; we never try to de-skill our children in the acquisition of
African cultures, for it is because of the obstreperousness of our country. We ululate ‘Let peace reign!’,
yet our chosen leaders in government do not have our full-fledged legitimacy to govern.
Political processes in Nigeria are not free and fair. Nigeria is practising gerontocracy — government by
the old or experienced. Why then can young men or women not take over governmental offices like
Folarin Falana and Aisha Yesifu? Why does our vote amount to nothing? Yet we ascribe our success to
the government that we did install in the first place. After all, Nigeria preaches components of democracy
— rule of law and all that jazz — but why then do we not practice free and fair election, the election by
the majority with recognition of the rights of the minority? It is all vain gloriousness in what seems to be a
leviathan, too large to express in plain words. We are silenced but never timorous. Though we are under
siege, we refuse to be incapacitated of what we already have by the marauding hyenas in the corridors of
power whose chicanery is all to enchanting to our ears. We shall continue to grapple with our colliding
ideas until we are able to ascertain what we truly want, a sense of direction. The gulf between the
government and its citizens is ineffably broad because of lack of genuine accountability. People gauche, and so are their mentalities. They, the government are actually in power not to maintain power or
anything of such but to feather their nests robustly. Citizens are clamouring everyday on the media with
their plaintive throats, ridden with water. Their wilderness-cries in consonance with the misrule of
blood-thirsty rogues are unheard of.
Citizens can barely feed their families because of the outrageous prices of foodstuffs. Is it owing to
diminishing returns or something? I can barely elocute, at least for words. Estranged policies are then
imposed on citizens who are indignant to have themselves filthily suffer. The pain of all multitudes is
untrammeled.
In conclusion, well I am not jumping to the conclusion that these problems are irredeemable. There are
beacons of hopes for the development of Nigeria to a giant sentinel of a tower by the wading through of
each day. I believe that the day of reckoning is awaited when we will all become attuned to our ordeals
and try to unclobber pressing problems ravaging our somnolence. And we shall in no time grow strong
like a rock of Gibraltar to contend with our lot, our problem in whatever dimension they come in.