By: Queen Muminat Azeez
I’m still confused over why so many people don’t like Nigeria and prefer to japa. Nigeria is a peaceful country with bountiful grains, just like the colours of her flag.
Nigeria is an understanding country that has realised that providing basic amenities should be a last resort. It’s a country filled with powerful and strong Africans. Besides, her citizens adapt quickly to new hardships.
If “basic” amenities are so basic, why would they be provided? The government should concern itself with more advanced things. If it’s water, almost everyone has a well in their house or close by. The government provided water to neighbourhoods back in the day. But when the plan to upgrade it to enter all houses began, people started digging wells in their homes, so she gave up. It must’ve been an extensive plan that took a decade to plan, and extremely hurtful for all that hard work to go down the drain.
When Nigeria started building quality roads and gutters, her people preferred gutter refuse dump to any other option. I actually agree with them. Rain washes it away and after the rain stops, the waste blocks something somewhere or enters the river and beautifies it with floating objects. And when those roads get damaged, out of love, they are regularly patched. No gutters. Or with the gutters still blocked!
Constructing quality roads would make construction companies and their supervisors poor. And why would anyone strive to be poorer? The solution is to construct a substandard road so it can be repaired soon. If the roads are so bad, why do people continue to ply them?
It’s not that some roads aren’t good. The fault is with the people who don’t know how to adapt to hardship.
“UP NEPA,” like Nigerians usually chorus when the light comes on after a week or more of blackout, shows the love and understanding between her citizens and electricity providers. If not for love, why would you hail them? There would’ve been light 24/7, but the love will fade over time and neither NEPA nor its customers will have reasons to visit each other as they do now. And the switcher who flicks the lights on and off will become bored of his job.
Education would have been free if not that naive children would innocently take it for granted. Apart from this, knowledge of the streets builds children better than whatever they might absorb in class. They can take to the streets and learn its ways. Besides, leaders of tomorrow need connection with the “street” to become successful. To achieve this, since they wouldn’t live on their own, brave Nigeria decided to wring the life out of their parents and spread them to dry in the hot sun.
Yes, and security. What a safe haven the country is. You can rest assured no harm gets to you unless, of course, it was pre-destined. Yes, the country lacks streetlights and equipped security agents (and agencies). But it has more than made up for this with the abundance of vigilantes. Perhaps the only precautionary measure needed as a citizen living in his country is ensuring you get home before night time or, better still, to not step out of the house at all so you’re not noticed by haters. You may also decide to walk around with a rifle or an equivalent – at all times. You snooze, you lose.
This is a country many are leaving for other places even when nowhere can be like home. Nigeria doesn’t feel the same because many loved ones have gone out to hunt for greener pastures. Maybe everybody should come back and let’s enjoy these developments together.
Queen Muminat Azeez was a campus journalist at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, until her graduation. She maintained a satire column for her press board, the News Digest Press. The News Digest was named the Best Press Outfit in West Africa at the Campus Journalism Awards (CJA) in 2020.
