This morning during my meditation, I wept as I prayed about Nigeria. I didn’t plan to cry; I’d only planned to pray for self until I stumbled on the instruction to pray for Nigeria.
The tears cascaded down my face and I couldn’t help it, overwhelmed by the parlous state of things in my country. For sometime now, I’ve been carrying too much pain in my heart over the state of things in Nigeria as well as its fate.
I love Nigeria so much; it’s a love I can’t hide no matter how hard I try. I still love it despite its current unenviable state. I have given up much for my country and my commitment to it is central to who I am.
I wear my Nigerianess with pride and confidence everywhere I go. I have tried hard to use myself to show what’s possible and good about my country and people. Therefore, it is in my interests and those of my children that Nigeria works at all cost.
So, this morning, with hot tears falling down my face, I passionately begged God to look down with mercy on Nigeria and see to it that my country works in my lifetime.
As a believer, I know that as things currently stand, without God and a miracle, I don’t see how Nigeria might work with the present crop of leaders and the operating manual being used to run the country by both the leaders and led.
At the moment, Nigeria is not working; it’s rudderless and faces a bleak, dangerous future. Nigeria and Nigerians have crossed the Rubicon. What I see and hear these days scare me to the marrow.
In the fields of education and healthcare, for instance, there’s a mass exodus of critical manpower and resources. Nigerian medical professionals and well trained and highly cerebral university teachers are leaving the country in their hundreds every month. It’s an exodus of the willing and unwilling.
Our hospitals and universities are being emptied of young professionals; only the old ones are left. In both sectors, many of my friends have left; others are set to leave. They’re telling me to leave before it’s too late.
“Olu, it’s time to leave. Don’t be stupid. Do it for your children”, they constantly tell me as I lapsed into silence of assessment.
The situation is so critical and dangerous, but those who should act fast and stop the tide don’t care.
No serious country can hope to survive the mass exodus of its young, vibrant professionals and population. It’s suicide.
The entire educational and healthcare sectors might collapse anytime soon going by the realities on ground. Yet we act like we don’t know the nuanced implications.
University teachers are on strike for the upteenth time. Who can blame them?
The hospitals are without personnel, required equipment and drugs. What we pay as renumeration won’t keep these professionals here in a competitive globalised labour market.
Everyone especially the masses are suffering.
There’s no electricity. No petrol. No water. No security. There’s a scant regard for the sanctity of human life. Values are dead or abandoned.
We’re a major oil producer. Sixty six years after we started exporting crude oil, we’re still importing refined petroleum products because we have no functioning refineries. Nothing can be that macabre and nerve racking.
Politicians come and go with promises of heaven and earth. But they always leave worse than they’d met us. The talakawas are pauperized and contrived to sell their votes. After the deed is done, they look towards heaven for help. Whereas heaven only helps those who help themselves.
Ours is a completely broken system. Yet we carry on unperturbed, talking politics and feeding on sentiments. We celebrate mediocrity and tokenism. With barefaced stupidity located deep in Stockholm syndrome, we defend our oppressors and eulogise the demons tormenting our land and souls.
Salaries are poor, there are about the worst on earth; and there are not even being paid in many places.
Inflation is soaring. Savings are disappearing like endangered species. Salaries stand at akimbo like sigidi.
Food prices and other prices are on high speed. Household budgets are collapsing like dominos. Everybody is running kitikiti katakata.
There’s no middle class again; it’s been wiped out by extant realities. In today’s Nigeria, you’re either rich or poor; there’s no in-between.
And for those who are still capable of thinking right, desperation has set in with regards to options. The question before them is ‘To leave or not to leave.’
No country can overlook the sickening level of decadence and rot in Nigeria and hope to survive or develop. Hear this, no country can survive the mindless stealing, corruption and leadership deficit that Nigeria deals with. Walahi, there’s no such country. To think otherwise is mere wishful thinking mixed with self delusion.
You just need to visit Abuja or have an idea of what’s happening within Nigeria’s political and public service space to know the scale of our challenges. In those places, corruption walks around on high heels prada.
It’s now criminal to keep quiet. No people deserves to be this badly governed.
Please, this is not the time to pretend, hide or equivocate. Nigeria is in immediate need of radical intervention. It’s now or never. I can barely stand the stench and wretchedness which pervade the land.
Lord have mercy. Hear the prayers of every righteous, patriotic Nigerian. Save us from ourselves.
By: Olumide Olugbemi-Gabriel
MBHS 95 Alumni Association 