There is
today in Nigeria an entire generation of Nigerian-passport wielding men and
women who do not actually know, to borrow Achebe’s words that indeed “there was
once a country”. These children born in a season of austerity, and raised
during the years that the locusts ate, have become angry citizens. They are
angry because they live in a country that makes them feel less worthy than the
human standard. The only Nigeria that they know is a country that makes
them feel ashamed of their own origins. Many of them have enjoyed the privilege
of foreign education and exposure to some of the best traditions in other parts
of the world, but when they return to their own country, right from the airport,
the snow of failure and inefficiency strikes them in the face, leaving them
with no option but to wonder quo vadis Nigeria? It is the same
question that their parents asked and the tragedy is that their own children
except something else happens, are likely to ask exactly this same old and
vexed question.
The angst of this young generation is made worse when they are told that
Nigeria was not always like this. In their late 20s to thirties, these children
have only known that Nigeria where fuel scarcity is a fact of daily life, and
part of the mechanism of survival is to know how to draw fuel with your mouth,
or negotiate black market purchase of fuel, while lugging jerry cans, either at
the fuel station or a roadside corner where you cannot be sure of the quality
of fuel- all of that in a country that is the world’s sixth largest producer of
crude oil. These children have only known a country where the roads are bad,
services are sub-standard, people are mean, criminality is rife, and
electricity is available once in a blue moon.
What they know is a country where the pastors and malams are better known for
lying, swearing, cheating, calling the name of God in vain. In their Nigeria,
public and private officials are lazy, and unproductive, they just want to
reap, and they have sucked the country so dry, her glands are wasted, flat,
going South and no more presentable, the balloon has suffered a blow out, even
the blind can see that this is so. These angry children are no longer proud of
the green passport; because the Constitution allows dual citizenship, they’d
rather grab the citizenship of another country, and remain linked to Nigeria
only by blood, and that is the case because they have parents who would not
want them to de-link completely, but if they don’t, their own children and
their own children after them, are already being lost to countries where things
work, where the basic necessities of life are taken for granted and where the future
is not a distant, unknown, and impossible destination.
The anger and the nonchalance of this
generation of Nigerians is the pain and the agony of an older generation that
knew a different country before all things went kaput and Nigeria became a
byword for the unhinged, the dark, the ugly and the regrettable. Our generation
and the generation before us knew a different country. And because that
is so, memory is an affliction, a source of torment, nostalgia and regret, more
so as that distant past now seems so unattainable not because distance often
makes the past look better, but because in Nigeria, the past is sorrily
idyllic. Those who lived in that other country and are still alive could not
have forgotten so soon, because to forget something that important is to
self-deny, it is to pretend, it is to abuse, it is in all, an act of pitiable
abnegation.
How could we have forgotten? How can anyone possibly forget? That this was once
a country where Nigerians felt at home in virtually any part of the
country. Igbos lived peacefully in the North, and Fulani herdsmen were at
peace with other Nigerians, and there was no issue with the planting of yams or
the grazing of cattle. In this same country, Southerners lived for
decades in the North, acquired property and spoke the language of their hosts.
We grew up knowing Baba Kaduna, Daddy Kano, Mama Kafanchan, Uncle Porta,
just as persons from the East and the South South contested for elective
positions in the West and won. There was a civil war yes, and things
began to change but even after the war, it was never this bad. Nigerians from
the South still went on national assignment in the North, Christians and
Muslims tried to live together in peace, but today, things have fallen apart.
There is no open civil war, but this country is at war on all fronts, the worst
fronts being the ethnic, the religious and the political, and these post-civil
war children just can’t understand why the generations of their fathers and
grandmothers can’t run an efficient country. They have been taught in school
that every nation has problems, but leadership is about managing those problems
and building a happy nation. They hear about the big names of Nigerian history,
the statesmen who fought for independence, the Amazons who defended the place
of women in national decision making processes, the accomplished scientists,
the literati and cultural workers, but the historical figures who have made the
biggest impression on them are the ones who ruined the nation with their acts
of omission and commission.
In this same country, the Naira used to be at par with the pound and was for
many years stronger than the dollar. So strong was the Naira that many
Nigerians, including the lower middle class could afford to travel to
London on Friday evening, attend a party in Londonon Saturday, attend
church service on Sunday, check out one or two mistresses in paid-for
flats in different parts of London, and return to Nigeria early enough on
Monday morning to be able to go to work. All that was no big deal.
Everyone in London knew the Nigerians. They were the biggest spenders and they
threw the best parties. There was Nigeria Airways; owned and operated by the
Nigerian government and it was one of the best airlines in Africa. Its pilots
were rated among the best in the world. Its safety record was superb. And it
was affordable. It was the pride of the nation. Within the country,
Nigeria Airways was also efficient. A trip from Lagos to Calabar in those days
was just N44! Students enjoyed rebates too.
In this same country, once upon a time, public transportation was impressive.
In Lagos for example, the public transportation system was almost exactly a
version of what they have in London. This may sound like something being made
up to the younger generation, but it is nothing but the truth. The railway
system worked too, and one of the most prestigious jobs was to be a railway
staff. That same Nigerian Railway Corporation that is now a parody of its
former self, used to link up the entire country and it helped to build cities
and villages, as the various major train stations became commercial centres.
Today, railway transportation looks like something we are trying to reinvent.
Once upon a time in this same country, those who sent their children abroad did
so majorly out of choice, not necessity, because Nigerian schools were among
the best in the continent and the world. Teachers from different parts of the
world, the best and the brightest, sought employment in Nigerian schools. The
Naira was strong, investors -both commercial and intellectual - trooped to this
country in droves and they enriched us in many ways. The schools were
well-equipped; they attracted students and teachers based on their reputation.
Parents sent their own children to their alma mater out of loyalty,
and regard for tradition. That pattern of grandfather, father and son attending
the same secondary school seems to have ended; the public schools in Nigeria
have failed, the missionary schools of old have been destroyed by hostile
government take-over, back in the hands of the missions, the destruction is yet
to be fully corrected. The younger generation reflects on all this: mostly
products of private schools, they can’t understand why a country that still
prides itself as the giant of Africa cannot run a decent education system or
provide jobs for the products of its school system.
In this same county, we used to have industrial estates. In Lagos,
Apapa, Ikeja and Isolo were industrial estates. In Kaduna, Jos, and
Enugu, manufacturing companies created jobs and wealth. We had uncles and
aunties who used to do shifts in many factories and this country produced
things: from refrigerators to bulbs to vehicles to metals to books, to textiles
to shoes. Sad: many of those factories have become churches! In those days, if
you went into a bookshop, you could not miss the mint-fresh smell of the books
on display. I miss that smell. There are fewer bookstores today and the books
no longer smell the same, because by the time they are imported and passed
through dirty containers and the hands of thieving handlers, the books lose
their soul.
Once upon a time in this same country, there was so much hope
about tomorrow. Salaries were paid as and when due. State governments
offered students bursaries and scholarships. School was attractive
because the teachers were dedicated and they were smart. At the university
level, the government provided subsidized tuition and feeding; the rooms were
kept clean by staff, the libraries were well-stocked; there was light and water
and town-gown relationship was just fine. In the larger society, the present
regime of no water, no fuel, no electricity was unheard of. You may have
heard of the British standard, there was in fact at a time, the Nigerian
standard, and this was the standard that other Africans looked up to. This same
country dominated the continent, morally, intellectually and culturally.
Financially too: so rich was Nigeria that a former Head of State reportedly
boasted that our problem was not money but how to spend it!
But, sorry, we lost it all. And the rains began to beat us. The victims are the
younger ones who have not known any other country but this new one. The danger
is: they may never know how to make a difference when they inherit this
poisoned chalice called Nigeria.
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