My tale as a country

I'm not likely to explain to you the reason for my hope, but then it's probably enough to tell you I had one day met a middle-aged woman who told me stuffs. Sad and interesting and hopeful stuffs. She had no shoes and it's about impossible to question the reasoning of one without shoes. Such a sad sad little woman, clad in a faded richness and a sleepiness that made me think she's incapable of seeing outside her cosy little world.
It was in the farming years and even though the pleasant palms and nuts and cocoa trees were about all gone from my gardens, I had at that time retained the pleasure of relishing the stretch of my land--the richly dark forest nourished by coast and rains, and the sandy brownness Northward ploughed into richness by Nomads' feet. I must say it wasn't always this way with me that I should relish in the tell-tale marks of my extinct crops like one rejoicing at the vestige of a departed Sunshine. Instead I had lived my days as night and my night to sorrow over a growing apprehension: would I again regain my rich coat of white and green and be able to feed my children with meat unborrowed? But then the Messenger of the Winds visited me on one of my gloomy nights with report of the vast richness by my springs. I despaired to believe, to trust any good should come from turning springwardt rendering my house panting after and tearing apart one another for a bite at the strange nourishment. Also, who shall fight to restore my greens, my crops and my trade? And what shall become of a house raised on hand-downs after the springs do dry?

The Messenger in words was sweet and in motive ruthless. He was also very good at commerce for he sold to me my own possession and in exchange took my pleasant gardens of nourished forest and sandy brownness. And when I thought all I ever had was now lost, he showed me a means of being at peace with my destiny. For, he said, a man must accept his destiny or be crushed by it. With many such words he separated me from my miseries and preserved me comatosed and proper for his use. I contended vigorously, within me, to tell him I was no longer a man but a piece of rag soaked in oil and hanged on termite-infested props. That mine was not a destiny but a woe of my own gullibility, the doing of an indifference to the state of my father's house. That I was already crushed, long crusehd, the very moment I tarried to hear his message of Winds. Yes, I contended vigorously but my contention died within me for my very voice was owned by him.

Was I deceived? I have no means of judging. I am so far removed from my own conditions and from how things should be or should have been. My surviving children were born in the time of oiled rags and are all grateful for the remnant oiliness in our rags, and the older ones dig insatiable wells with million pipes running underground on their deepening bellies to drain out the little breath that in us is left.
Was I deceived?
Perhaps. But then that was the last of the deception that I should suffer,  The Messenger of Winds having these days grown somewhat quiet and distant, or perhaps bored by the vastness of his loots. And gradually I have found some way to grow my own crops from the brilliance of my children-from letters and inks, and make the remnant of my oily inheritance cater to my house. Some disturbing tales from abroad had sometimes ago breezed in that some of the goods stolen from me were found on foreign shores, and then returned to my land. I've asked around but none could tell me where it landed-within my yard or in The Messenger's barn. But when some said it had all invisibily gone into oiling my rags I decided to let the matter rest for I have no way of deciding whether or not I was being deceived. It had seemed enough that a small fraction was recovered from The Messenger. It had also seemed appropriate, that I should be left alone to tend to my fading embers especially now that I have met a shoeless friend.
Sitting there opposite and facing me on my rotten bench, I had never felt a deeper connection to anyone. She's clad in the skin of my own offsprings, and in a shoelessness that echoes my own nakedness. She had stared long at me and suggested she would champion a cause to recover my stolen life. I patted her softly on the back to solidarise in her meaningless ambition, I was very much at home with much meaninglessness. She swayed back and forth and from side to side, lifted up one foot after the other to make sure I had not missed the pitiable sight of her unshod feet. I told her I saw it all and that it's nothing to compare with my broken will. She answered every one of my questions with a blank stare, and had proposed befriending the Messenger as a means of compelling him to return my stolen goods. It was a simple plan, easy to memorise. It had also come with the tenth of a bag of rice and the rat-size of Ankara cutting; my children hailed her so I gave her my vote and companied her with drums and the last of our breath to the Rock. But suddenly I found myself arguing over the ownership of our remaining metre-square land, praying to the Winds to give light, and begging a shoeless friend for a chance to shoe my children's feet. My sandy brownness now enriched in blood to the overflowing, and in my dark forests robbers and kidnappers form an empire.

Did the shoeless woman deceive me? I have no way of telling, for my bent back and feverish gash are to me a much closer reality than those that though shoeless shall deprive me of my last oily rag.

Tribalism and the Nigerian model of racism

It was my first time in Europe, London to be precise, and I had gone to check this apartment that was advertised in the Loot weekly. At that time I was still living with a relation, and I was quite happy that the advertised apartment was no more than 100m from where I was staying. So, I walked up to the indicated address, rang the doorbell and waited for a response. After a few seconds the door opened and a male Caucasian appeared. I'm never going to forget the look on his face after he discovered that an African had come to rent the room. He didn't beat about the bush in informing the room had been taken the next day I had called as agreed. Well I had expected something like this from my encounter with him the previous day.
I never quite realised I was Black until that particular evening. Being a first experience I wasn't sure whether to be angry, sad, indifferent or simply laugh it off. I could have gone ahead to brand the whole White race as racists, but then I would have to account for the countless kindness and friendship I had met in many Caucasians that I have come across. A similar incident occurred about two years ago in Germany, when I had gone to (again) look up an apartment for rent. I had this time gone with my colleague and friend, an Indian, and the German owner bluntly stated she could not rent the apartment to foreigners.
I live in Europe, and issues like these boardering on racism are not far-fetched. And expectedly, I had received calls from friends in Nigeria wanting to know how I had coped with such. And in my quiet moments of reflection I have found it outrightly dishonest to put forth life within the Nigerian boarders as devoid of similar attitudes from fellow Nigerians. That is, being Nigerian and living within Nigeria is likely to expose you to similar treatment from other human beings who generally consider you as less deserving of certain considerations for no other reason than you belong to a different tribe. Or a different religion. I considered our national politics, where the Northerners famously claimed power belonged to them. Or should one now consider the Igbos and the Yorubas who, among others, would in many cases not give out their children to marry members of the other tribes?
This might appear trivial, but then it's in context: during my undergraduate education at Ife an Igbo boy had blantantly refused to sell an extra bedspace of his to a non-Igbo student. A Yoruba person close to me had also jokingly raised an objection to my having an Igbo female friend.
How about cases where only individuals from particular families are allowed to monopolise certain political offices?
We find the same pattern in corporate bodies, in sport, in education, in health,... in fact, in the entire social structure we've come to know as Nigeria. What right do I have then to blame a Caucasian, an Indian, or a Chinese for discriminating against me for being African? And historically speaking, what right do we have as a nation for speaking and standing against apartheid of South Africa? In my opinion I think we've spent so long discriminating against fellow Nigerians on the basis of tribe and religion that this pervertion has come to be viewed as normal in the Nigerian context. The picture becomes more deplorable when we consider that this tribalistic tendencies are daily being fuelled by the parents, and other respected members of our societies. How many Nigerians can confidently say their parents and persons close to them have never made malicious comments about members of the other tribes? And when they do this, do we not join in in laughing against the Hausas, Yorubas,and Igbos, as the case maybe?
Our entire culture and subcultures have been founded on this tribal divisioning, how hyprocritical of us to stand against neo-apartheid in different countries around the world. Hardly would an unfortunate incident affecting most of the tribes in the country occur in some parts of the country and certain tribes not cry out that it's nothing short of a conspiratorial cleansing of their tribe. I allude to Boko Haram's murderous campaign that has seen countless Yorubas, Hausas, Igbos and other tribes and aliens slain, and yet some tribe fuelled by a tribal paranoia keep alleging it's an attempt by Nigeria to expunge them. This in their case is a a peculiar manifestation of the same tribalistic outlook.
I have been to different parts of Nigeria, and also to several countries around the world, and everywhere I have noticed that human beings are essentially the same, with both kind aspects and at the same time with a predisposition to maltreating other races and tribes of men. On a lighter side now, an Italian-American had once asked me in Philadelphia if there were actual houses in Nigeria. I suppose she thought we were living on some trees or inside some caves. Such stereotypical view as this, is usually not an evidence of a defect in the victim of such view, but on the other hand it is nothing short of a demonstration her shocking and shameful ignorance. And yes, that was just two years ago, not two centuries ago.
I have heard Yorubas who have never been to Northern Nigeria tell me things about the Hausas. The Igbos do the same, the same thing the Hausas. The sad thing is that such stereotypical and entirely ignorant branding of other tribes is not aways caused by illiteracy. When I was a kid I had been made to believe that education should liberate a people, in our case it seems to drive us further down the path of bondage.
Let's for a minute consider how it has affected every splinter of our national experience. Do you need me to write about the politics of blood and greed, where each tribe sees the privilege to serve the nation as no more than a golden opportunity to divert the nation's bleeding wealth to his own part of the country? And as a result of the competitive scramble for loot, no one cares that the nation remains stagnant, once the misguided politician is from your tribe. How many politicians do we have that can claim exemption to this? It has become a status behaviour for them to establish a university, a hospital ,  or any other such structures in their own states and villages once elected. And we all look away from the fact that such institutions could have better served Nigerians in some other parts of the country.
What of sport? Some weeks ago the whole world gathered in London to watch the open shame of Nigeria, the self-acclaimed giant of African (too sad being merely numerous isn't enough to merit such description). I am sure not many Nigerians were disappointed or shocked by the outcome, that we didn't leave London with a tiny medal. Had they included copper, or wood in the awarded medals I am not so sure we would have come home with enough wood to light our frozen national heart. One would then ask, how come such a country with so many people could not lift a single medal? Well, we are from a country where the last time we heard of merit spoken of was in the fairy tales told by our parents, in turn told them by their own parents. Instead, in the name of being faithful to some spurious Federal character, we ended up enlisting athletes who were below average. Should it really matter which tribe the athletes come from as long as they are the best the country could find? If for instance we have 15 slots to fill on a football team, and out of all the interviewd candidates 12 Igbos (or Hausas or Yorubas) possess performance superior to every other person, one should think it makes more sense to choose those ones rather than to push in members of the other tribes who have no competing chance, not even within our own country.
The educational sector and the principle, for instance, of catchment area scores. I wish I could laugh at this policy's silliness, but that it's a very sad phenomenon. That smarter candidates are turned away from an institution just because they are from different states: Then we go ahead and lower the pass mark for the indigenes of our own states. The sad thing is, that poor boy from another state who probably gave his best to writing the exam, is turned away empty-handed. And if such individual has no such institution in his own state, he though being a Nigerian becomes an education-destitute in his own country. But then you'd ask, shouldn't the state be able to actively enhance the education of its indigenes? By all means, it must. But then should it be by lowering the standard and thus prematuredly aborting the surviving notion of merit? Certainly not. Lowering the pass mark (catchment score it is called) for the state is analogous to Britain deciding its own sprinters would only need to run half track to qualify for a medal. But instead of adopting the Nigerian model, it spent billions of pounds in training its citizens so they had more chance of qualifying without having to selectively beat down the pass mark for the Britons. Any serious state interested in enhancing its indigenes education should be read invest in infrastructure acquisition and students' training especially at the the primary and secondary school levels. If a state invests in hiring exceptional teachers and in equipping the education at these indicated levels, it can then be expected that its indigines will have no problem meeting a unified entry qualification into the higher institutions. In addition, the state can also (and should) give worthy scholarships to exceptional and hardworking indigenous students, which should directly stimulate and motivate their interest in knowledge education. To round this paragraph off, I must say University of llorin is about the worst in terms of ambushing university education (a Federal university at that) for its own indigenes. Perhaps there are other universities like this within the country, and one only needs to interview more students to find this out.
Racism, tribalism, nepotism and all the other forms of negative human relational isms are a disease inhabiting the dirty crevices of the human soul. They are often symptomised by absurd stereotypes, fuelled by ignorance and thriving in the mind of the mentally, morally and spiritually stunted regardless of whether such predisposition is found in an illiterate person or an Emeritus professor. As Nigerians we need not look too far afield for a demonstration of its unfortunate effects, it's right here in our homes, in religious and educational institutions, and in governance. And until we shed this contemptible cloak of immaturity, we are going no where as a country.

For GEJ and cronies on asset declaration

"A person elected to the office of President shall NOT begin to perform the functions of that office UNTIL HE HAS DECLARED HIS ASSETS and liabilities as prescribed in this Constitution and he has taken and subscribed the Oath of Allegiance and the oath of office prescribed in the Seventh Schedule to this Constitution." -Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Section 140(1)

It has never failed to amaze me that many refuse to understand this requirement of our Constitution, and that GEJ die-hard supporters must interpret every effort at demanding transparent and competent leadership from the Federal Government as an attack on the personality of GEJ from the opposition. I submit, if this is how we think, then Nigerians rightly deserve to be treated as slaves and mediocre in our very own fatherland. [I'm taking an offside stage right now to talk to us as you]. Come to think of it, Nigerians, what exactly are you good at? Your economy resides in the pocket of a numerically few public officers, your roads are pathetic and in shambles, your power supply non-existent, your agriculture amiss, your national football team a perpetual disgrace, your education...I indeed cry for your education. I cry for your science research and technology, with your professors exchanging gossips for want of resources while graduate students in neighbouring countries make useful discoveries for their own countries. Your children walk barefoot and scavenge every dunghill for the next meal, your graduates now beggars lurking on every street corner, or selling plantain chips on Lagos' busy roads. Your jobs are absent. Your airline killed hundreds of your own people. Your oil has been commandeered for heirloom by the very people you hail "Ranka dede!". Your police officers are thugs decorated in fearsome black uniform donning guns and a vacuous head clueless how to tackle crime. A scion of religious wickedness in the North kills your children and brothers and sisters and parents and friends in broad daylight and right before your eyes. Religious scammers rob you of your pittance, rape your breast-less  children, and encourage you to keep quiet lest the wrath of God visits you. Your females prostitute themselves in exchange for Blackberry. Your houses are unlit yet you pay higher electricity tariff.

And you suffer it all, like an imbecile suffers disease-bearing flies to feast on his wound. 

Your hope daily vanishes, and your lazy hearts petitions God to deliver you a saviour from Heaven and while He is at it He should also send some manna and deliver at your doorstep. You cry and weep and fast and pray while your very hands install robbers and thieves and the incompetent to rule over you. O foolish Nigerians, who has bewitched you?! Who? Your spiritual leaders, or your public officers who have continued assuring you of better days to come. Foolish Nigeria, isn't it better to now give up your misdirected and ineffectual hope, than continue finding comfort in this sad comedy. Foolish Nigeria, with your many professors and learned, and huge wealth of human resources you still are no more than a lame, dirty and pitiable giant! Foolish Nigerians, supporter of all that is evil as long as it hails from your own tribe and from a corner of your stunted village! Foolish Nigeria, biting everyone that requests that justice and equity contained within our common Constitution be served! Foolish Nigerians... how on earth will you not remain vulnerable to your own stupidity and suffer agony from your sectarian politics!
Let Nigeria live, let her live; perhaps our brains someday will work aright  and we shall then happen on a fresh hope.