Before you start reading, a little heads-up the post is long, however very insightful. We need to go back to a society that reads anyway.
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 sorely 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? This was once a
country where Nigerians felt at home in virtually any part of the
country. Igbo’s 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 London on
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 of 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 centers. 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, and 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.
BY REUBEN ABATI
Has anyone else read “There was a Country “by Chinua Achebe? If you have not, grab a copy now.
I have always considered Mr. Abati as a really good writer, and this
write-up proves true. Today I choose not to criticize him on the role he played
in further destroying Nigeria when he served the people, however again I have to
admit he raised really good points and as Nigeria’s we have to start looking at
the prominence of our past and incorporate it in our future, not for us but for
the future generations . This write-up took me back to my childhood, when my
mother would tell my siblings and I stories of the giant Nigeria once was, and
we would listen attentively with voracious envy because we wanted to know that
Nigeria she knew. It is nostalgic for me, and it just got me wondering when “did things fall apart”?
