You think you know yourself, while someone reads your country’s entire history on a page in days, and he exclaims “wow! what a country indeed! blessed by everything, no wonder it’s called the Giant of Africa, but wait, if we let this country grow, it will be in near years what our countries has been in centuries”. So he went back to your history, walks in the paragraphs of your efforts, and he figured flaws. Because he knows what tempts you, he has seen you in wars and in peace, he knows what spites you, he has been around from day one when your Colonials hatched you. So he decided to reincarnate the demon your fathers killed. By him seeing how much you love your religion, culture and tradition, he made you hate each other’s differences by clouding your perception and leaving you with superstitions. He has blown the air in your eardrums making you not hear the untapped truth, he has turned your sights against reality by fabricating ill-stories of your past, and why does that win your belief? Because you dont know your history.
It’s not so difficult to make the country what it should be if we all want it. The Nigeria of respect during the1960s can still and be more in 2018. The Nigerian soldiers who liberated Liberia can still do the same to their homeland. The same Soldiers who stood with Sierra Leonne can stand with it’s domestic purge of violence, it isn’t so difficult if we all want to.
Herders who use to be nomads where a pride for your country if you know your history, your land has given them enough to graze, and when your country mentions “Agricultural Livestocks”, it surely means them, who then doesn’t need who if you know your history? You would know you will do better as a whole, there use to be no holes in all sides. But you went ahead to agree to the lies he told you, made you go against your leaders, he killed the staunchiness in you as followers. He destroyed the common symbol of respect in Igbos who’s “Igbo kwenu” is what we thought means “Elders” when we were young, as it must be pronounced in every Igbo Counsel of Elders in Igbo Land, he destroyed the respect of lying tummy flat when a Yoruba child greets his elders, he destroyed the Respect in Hausa Land that when a child is eating with his elders, he never removes his hand even if he’s finished because he will leave his elder behind.
All our common attribute as per definition of our cultures became intertwined. We lost tracks of our history and created a disconnect between our past and our future, how will we know ourselves then? We don’t know what we should know, we don’t even know what we don’t know. And youths are loud and raged that it is time we take upon ourselves the mantle of leadership, yes it is if we know where we are going, we don’t know our coasts, how do we know our harbors? Bad news is, that devil is still making us hate our individuality, we showed him we can’t live in a country fragmented as assumed North or South, he thought we can’t last it, now he is flabbergasted at our persistency, so he decided to break the very code of our existentialism and unity. He made differences soar and grade our capabilities and incapabilities on our differences and our mistakes, our mistakes are his pride. We kill just to dance to his tune, we forget the religion we so cherish that it has abhorr us taking our lives less to take others’.
I want to see the day this will tire everyone and demand for equity and unity in balance, that will be the day when the youths we so assume are not too young to run for Power will be very well conversant with our history. Not the history which we were told but that which was made, by not only the hands and sweats of our heros but the blood that trickled from the chin of the heros that gave their life to build a country they know they won’t enjoy.