By: Avami
It sounded like I had heard this before, but it was still profound to me the first time I heard my lecturer say it.
Granted, in his next breath he went on to shame his wife for spending his money on more clothes than she could fit into a school bag so maybe he isn’t the most reasonable person to be getting advice from but that saying stuck with me.
Nigeria is the poor, and prayer is our opium; what more needs to be said? We hold on to the belief that prayer alone without action will work. To us, prayer is our action.
When things get worse, we don’t rise to the occasion and actively seek a solution, like all God-fearing people we only raise the volume of our prayers.
I used to take pride in the fact that Nigerians are adaptable people. Whatever comes our way, we easily adapt to and overcome it. But I was wrong, what we do isn’t adapting.
When animals adapt, they adjust themselves to their condition in order to thrive in it, but also not to fall victim to those same circumstances again. But we Nigerians fall victim again and again and again to those same conditions.
Maybe we did adapt, adapt our bodies to become comfortable with mediocrity, that is. When the economy drops, we pray and lament about how things used to be better; when the economy drops even further, we pray even more and continue lamenting about how things used to be better.
The formula clearly isn’t working, but we stick to it. Adaptation involves going through a sequence of changes till you find the one that best suits your optimal survival in a situation.
We keep adhering to the same process until maybe, probably, our situation becomes better and then we say, ‘See? It worked, after all. Shame to all naysayers.’ Even though it took nine decades of toiling in severe hardship. Even though it happened because of those naysayers and not despite them.
Then again, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If the poor thought they only had opium, what else are they to do except become addicted to it?
Avami is a writer and a semi-artist. Her passion for writing started when her mother read her stories in the womb. She currently has her own hobby lifestyle blog where she writes about things that occupy her mind. Twitter: @happyaeons; Instagram: @happyaeons
