Are You a Nation-Killer?

In the daytime, when robbers are asleep,

they’re awake — shaking down motorists:
“Oga, wetin you carry?”

And at night, when real robbers operate,
they sleep.

They do this for 35 years — tens of thousands of them —
and then they retire,
and we pay them pensions for life.

no one cares about Nigeria...

The refrains of Bob Marley’s “Survival” drift into my consciousness as I write this:

🎶 “How can you be sitting there,
Telling me, that you care?
That you care?” 🎵

Lest we point fingers and absolve ourselves of such behavior —
which has devastated this country —
I put it to you (I hate the phrase),
that every one of us is just as guilty as the police.

At best, we are only slightly better.

What’s the solution?
None.
Too late.

Iniquity has become our only motivation.

Don’t let your “joying” pastor deceive you:
We will never be great.

Yes, we will be lifted up —
but only because we cannot lag too far behind the rest of the world.
Not by any effort of ours.
(And that, my friend, is not greatness.)

So why am I writing this?
In the hope that each of us will take a little time to ask the simplest of questions:

How am I a nation-killer?
What can go wrong if I continue betraying this country daily?

From the judges who issue spurious judicial opinions without a shred of embarrassment,
to the senators who fixed their own salaries at — get this —
two million U.S. dollars per annum.

(Digression: I concede it’s no longer $2 million… but not through any effort on our part or theirs —
only because the exchange rate has collapsed from a disgraceful ₦170/$ to nearly ₦1,000/$.)

From the driver who steals petrol money,
to the nepotist in corporations and civil service who promotes or suppresses talent based on ethnicity or “connections.”
From the lying pastor unfaithful to the Gospel,
to the bribe-taking activist for whom activism is just another rung on the ladder to “prosperity”…

The same question must be asked —
and answered honestly —
if we are ever to change.

Thanks to your actions daily, Sir/Ma,
despite the immense wealth bequeathed to us by God and by nature,
our people remain destitute —
among the poorest in human history.

We alone can slow this mad race toward the cliff —
at the bottom of which lie the carcasses and relics of failed societies, nations, and empires.

I rest my case.

#dk