The other day, a group of people I was hanging out with after a small house party started talking about Africa,
Nigeria and Nigerians in western world.
The main issue of the topic was Nigeria and its perpetual state of general shittyness, I mean yes you have some good things about it, which believe me a lot of Nigerians would be happy to tell you they are proud of but how about the million and one things that aren’t working.
At the discussion at first we all just shouted over each other to get our points across, we all had ideas about key things that needs to be faced, like the corruption (not only in politics but in everyday life), like electricity (having constant electricity would resolve lots of issues), the problems with oil and oil drilling in the Niger delta area and countless number of things. After a couple of hours shouting at the top of our voices; some more than others we decided to take turns making a few points and having people add to it or dispute it. We continued on like this for awhile, stating recent and historical facts to help make our case, everyone was passionate about the issues they brought forward, looking at their faces I could see the frustrations of the past, their anger at the present and their fears at the future of Nigeria running itself into the ground, at its possibility of it becoming in the future, poverty stricken, fruitless and its people completely devoid of their ability to fight to better their lives.
We talked about setting up associations that can help fight to make Nigeria better, of the rising of people like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to do what they did for the African Americans and lead Nigerians into a frenzied march of freedom from political hell, from prevalent corruption and abject poverty. To have their
daily cries heard, to stop the stamping of brilliant minds with lack of education. We commended the bravery this person or persons would have to posses to go up against a government with a history of silencing those that have spoken out in the past either by imprisonment or even death. We were all ready for a change, we are a generation that is tired of ploughing away in western worlds and using our brains to benefit that world, instead of doing this in our own countries, making our homeland a place to celebrate and live our lives surrounded by our culture(s).
We did all this and more, but we did not announce ourselves as the new world leader, the person to be the leader of men, the person to fight the cause, at the end of the day we all just got into our cars and headed home, to get up and go to work the next day, and the next and the next.
What i realised is not that we lack the passion to do something, but the dedication to do anything, a dedication so great, that could motivate us to leave our current lives behind and head off into this world that is surely to have, hundreds of obstacles along paths so jagged it is life threatening. No our passions might run high just not high enough to have us off our seats running head first into shark infested waters. After all we all have our lives to live.
