31/03/2022
NIGERIA DID NOT HAPPEN TO YOU
I refuse to submit to the cynicism that Nigeria is happening to us. I reject it because it is a narrative to exonerate us from the seeds we have collectively sown. It is a balm to soothe our self-inflicted wound. Let us not pass the buck.
Nigeria did not happen to anybody. Bad governance did. It was in Nigeria that Igbos who returned to the North after the war got the rents their neighbours collected on their behalf while they were away. It was in Nigeria that Umaru Altine defeated Igbos to emerge the Mayor of Enugu.
It was in Nigeria, parents sent their teenage Children to Federal government colleges by train without a minder.
It was in Nigeria that I went on holiday to Maiduguri by Bus from Enugu with my sister at ages 11 and 10. We arrived at 2 am, and by 5 am, my Uncle came and picked from Federal Low cost to pick us from the Bus Station. We left in the darkness of early morning.
It was not Nigeria that happened to any of us. It was our collective surrender to bad governance. It is our collective acceptance of corruption as a way of life. It is our collective enthronement of mediocrity, so pervasive that our measure of Presidential Aspirants is by how much money they have somehow acquired.
We took a wrong turn and must retrace our steps or submit to descent to anarchy.
Bad governance will happen again if we sell the Presidency in 2023. It is not Nigeria that will happen. It will be our collaboration with evil that will kill the next Dr Chinelo.
We are paying the price of divisive & clueless governance, which we have refused to hold accountable.
We, and only us, can build Nigeria of our dreams, assuming we have dreams. It is not Nigeria. It is us, through our collective conduct, that defiled the land.
Osita Chidoka
March 2022
