We Might Need To Tell Ourselves Some Truths

 I have vivid recollections of some periods in my childhood. I am sure there were moments in yours that you could also remember. I remember Uncle Ade back then in primary school. The dude must have just graduated from University then and had to make do as a primary school teacher for some kids. 

I remember his face, height, and how he sometimes spoke to us in chilled tones and always added random facts about just anything to his lessons. I remember how he once asked us what our favourite cities were, and as you would expect, we mentioned the places where our homes were, faraway Lagos, and some other cities we must have heard in passing from our parents. 

When it was Uncle Ade's turn to tell us what his favourite city in the world was, he mentioned the city of Dublin. He spoke about how much he wanted to explore the city, its food, and all the experiences he wanted to have in it.  As I write this piece, I check out Dublin (On Google) and marvel at how much the city must have grown. I am thinking about Uncle Ade and hope he finally made it well enough to visit Dublin; now, just give me a minute. A notification from X just popped on my screen, interrupting my thoughts. 

It is about Dino Melaye, the very controversial senator who just posted pictures and videos of three (3) bulletproof cars, with a tag of how it is 'no big deal', and how he is still 'coming'. However, while I have nothing against the man and how he chooses to flaunt his wealth, my mind shifts back to Dublin. I'm wondering just how different its leaders must have thought to build the long-lasting legacies of the city and the country of Ireland and how they are far from the characters we call leaders around here. 

And oh, Dino is not alone. It is common around here for our elected leaders to flaunt their wealth in our faces. Some even get on the streets and throw cash at the populace. They are the 'Happening Men'; if you want a piece of that booty, you should probably be ready to kiss the ring, pay some form of obeisance, and be ready to waddle with the worst of the lots. In a country with one of the worst indices of human development around. The irony is laid bare before us all.  

Talk about the number of out-of-school children, our failing public healthcare, the rising standard of living, the below-par social amenities, the high malaria burden, decrepit infrastructure, and the failing security apparatus.  Amidst all these issues, we have been so opportune to be 'blessed' with leaders obsessed with amassing all the material wealth while consciously neglecting society. 

Our issues are so multifaceted, so hydra-headed, and so grand that instead of electing leaders who are ready to 'soil' their hands and work to build a great society, we get to work instituting and sometimes travelling to the many conferences where we always have the best solutions and continuously talk about them. We must remember that the hard work remains, which is the urgent need to fix them. Around here, we have vultures with a serious consuming culture that keeps harming us all in the long run. 

This takes me to one of the longest-running arguments that I have always had with my brother. It is about the concept of racial superiority. I have always believed that systems make people. For me, the stronger the systems of governance, the more people are aware of the strong presence and proper enforcement of the concept of 'Actions and consequences', and the saner the country; however, in recent times, I am beginning to rethink. 

As part of the activities lined up to mark the one-year anniversary of the Tinubu administration, his advisers must have told him to ignore the very obvious problems staring us as a nation in the face and instead move to approve a return to us singing an old anthem composed by colonialists, ignoring the one composed by Nigerians, which better reflects our purpose as a nation. 

African Arguments, an opinions forum about happenings in Africa, posits that after 8 disastrous years of a Buhari Presidency, the nation needs some form of ingenuity that has been missing in the Tinubu Administration. It tags the last one year as a government of 'Shock Treatments' with policy drafts that have yielded nothing; and that cannot be further from the truth. As our senators and representatives gathered in that show of shame on Wednesday, you could just see the many justifications racists must have to always look down on us. 

No sense of purpose, no meaningful bearings, no passion for the very basics of governance that can positively impact the lives of the people, just a group of people gathered in their Agbadas and Babarigas to talk about nothing, lick the ass of the president and go back home with fat allowances. The inflation is hitting deep, food prices have more than doubled, and our large and subsistence farmers can no longer produce food as before because insecurity is the order of the day. They have to pay 'Homages' to many non-state actors before they farm; otherwise, they will be killed. 

This is also coupled with the many struggles of our healthcare system. Oh, I forgot about the many roads, the biggest being the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, which is intended to be completed with a budget a broke country does not have. Our leaders would instead budget for themselves the latest SUVs and the many irrelevancies in a budget solely designed to self-enrich themselves. 

We are all not angry enough, and that is fine. We voted for them, and as they say, there is an equal and opposite reaction for every action, so this is the bed we made, and so we must lie on it. Honestly, if I were a white man, I would not consider myself to be on the same spectrum of existence as a group of people who, instead of facing problems threatening their existence, would gather to focus on inanities that have no justification and no impact on their lives. 

So maybe Racial superiority is a thing after all. The ones we elect around here are just here to fuck, eat, and sleep like the voyeurs they are. Just consumption, consumption, and more consumption. I honestly have no idea how the country has existed till now with all of this bleeding, but that is one for another day. Maybe the religion we so much hold to heart, our biggest opium, is keeping us alive after all. 

Our leaders need to have a sense of preservation or enduring legacy, just blatant wastage that makes no sense, irrespective of how you think about it. However, this is one writing that I have been delaying for quite some time, and yesterday just motivated me to complete it. I will not be proferring any solutions or ideas because who do I think I am in the grand scheme of everything? 

I am done wasting my enthusiasm/optimism on a nation and a group of people not even self-aware enough to know what threatens their existence and come together to fight it. Instead, we would continuously yap endlessly about the very watery topics of our podcasts, celebrity beef (Wizkid vs. Davido), etc. Hopefully, everything will be fine, as that is what we have always coped with. 

Finally, if this writing speaks to as much as just one person, then my work here is done. If this writing spurs you to do better wherever you find yourself, hoping that our country will one day be better than all it has been reduced to, I have done something right.