by Michael Ace
Perhaps you might want to remind me I am as well a Nigerian. The dirt I smell every time I breathe tells me that. What about the hunger in my belly? The news of my witty president who knows his own country isn’t suitable for rest? Or do I have to lament how hard it is to survive as a writer for you to understand quite well that I know my blood flows in green and white?
It gets to a time that you feel governance shouldn’t be in the hands of the elite because they actually lack the understanding of little lives. So there is a revolution and a slave is freed and coronated. He has been there, he knows how it feels to be a subject. He would make a better reign. But I would ask you, what other way of life does the slave know other than slavery? You cannot cage a newly hatched eagle, free it after years and expect it to soar beyond the cloud at instant.
That is to say every living thing is a product of programming. We are exactly what makes us, and in Nigeria, we are engineered to be animals.
In a Nigerian school, the authority needed a certain amount of money for a project and students were to contribute. Three hundred naira (#300) was required of each student according to the calculation. The principal told the class teachers their respective students were to pay a sum of five hundred naira (#500) each. The teachers went to their classes and ordered each student to bring six hundred naira (#600). A boy got home, informed his mother who was close by about the fee, he had inflated it to seven hundred naira (#700). The father who was to give the money was asked for one thousand naira (#1000) by the mother. Now tell me who among them is fit to accuse the other of corruption. They are all guilty in their respective offices and responsibilities.
And that is exactly what happens in Nigeria. The little man loots in his little ways. The boss cheats his workers. The big brother rakes money from his younger one’s shares, and then when the nation’s economy melts to solidify in some statesmen purse, when a huge amount of money goes missing, everyone starts pointing fingers. We talk about corruption like it doesn’t rise with our sun every day. We address the leaders like they are aliens. We forget that most of them were once led with such harshness and meanness. We are all products of the same programming.
An African man is programmed to cheat his fellow man, take more than his shares and satisfy his own belly and his family’s first, as long as others won’t find out or don’t have the power to fight back. A wise and strategic thinker once said Nigeria is the microcosm of Africa’s problems. That is, every notable fault of Africa as a race is found in a Nigerian. I can tell how right he is. Only an animal takes pride in killing its fellows unlawfully. Only an animal watches its mate dies of hunger and won’t be moved an inch. Only an animal behaves the way a Nigerian does.
If you see a stranger crossing our borders tomorrow, do welcome him into the animal kingdom.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Michael is a poet and writer who believes Nigeria is sick and needs healing.
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