Was Nigeria built to fail? Was the black man deliberately made to be thoughtless? Did our leaders deliberately ‘dis educate’ and disorientate us? Are we Africans truly white people who didn’t fully develop into humans? Who inflicted the black man with the mentality of inferiority? How exactly did we get here? Okay, let me explain what I mean. Over 2,500 ideas allegedly crosses the mind of an average sane human being every blessed day! But the black man as evident from our way of life barely executes any of them! Our collective lack of productivity, the parlous state of our pariah nation, our floppy reward system, the over-attribution of success and failure to religion without bearing in mind the realities of causation and effect, our mindless acceptance of our deplorable condition and political exploitation, brazen theft, endless corruption and brigandage by our politicos as an unchangeable fate, our inertia in declaring to our leaders that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired, our unpardonable lack of leadership and the disoriented mindsets of the followership often force one to conclude that no idea comes into the mind of a Nigerian or that those lofty ideas die on arrival!

Each time I remember how millions and indeed billions of our collective petrodollars develop wings and fly through the window without anyone raising an eyebrow and worse still seeing poor, famished old women whose monies were indirectly looted raising placards protesting the public ‘prosecution’ of the direct culprits under whose watch the monies were stolen by rights’ enforcement and civil society groups, I feel like screaming: ‘It’s official: we have all been enslaved’

I feel pained to see it in this clime that we pray to gain admission to schools in Ghana, Benin Republic, Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Canada, Cyprus, Norway and America, one then begins to wonder if there are no budgetary allocations for Education and long term plans to move things in the right direction in our country. We all know and see these things but have been intentionally conditioned to accepting the unacceptable as an unchangeable eternal condition. Do you know the extent of gruesome horror of having to live in a country where merit has no place and where the brilliant ones who have no privilege of human connection cannot work in deserving well-paying establishments whilst their mates who sit comfortably at the lowest rung of the academic ladder secure employment in government parastatals and blue chip oil companies? We are so used to the abnormal so much that abnormal is the normal to us in this nation where it is not normal for things to be normal! Maybe this whole “God will do it”, “It is well” when it is obviously everything but well and “the dividends of democracy are in the pipeline” are nothing more than a well composed, thoroughly fashioned out, supremely orchestrated, deceptive rhetoric after all. Maybe this whole Nigerian thing is a sheer political set-up to end in doom after all. Just Maybe!

I marvel greatly that the richest pastor in the world, the richest black man in the world and the richest black woman in the world all come from a poverty-stricken 3rd world if not ‘7th world’ country like Nigeria. How can we own so much yet have so little? How can there be so much squander in the midst of such a grim squalor? How can a few microcosm of the populace acquire so much in the glare of so much penury?

Indeed, mass poverty isn’t Nigeria’s problem, rather; it is wealth redistribution. So much is in the hands of so few whilst so little is the hands of so many! A similar injustice plays out in the political sector, how can a Senator ‘legitimately’ earn over two billion Naira in a year! That is legislative terrorism simply so called! Pure malfeasance and greed! Our nation is indeed a hub of lopsided reward system which gives pittance to the hardworking and plenty to the powerful! These ‘legislooters’ pay themselves so much for doing so little!

Most students have lost the steam to study and the will to move on due to the floppy nature of our national reward system where militants earn more than medical doctors and political thugs are accorded more ‘respect’ and recognition than University Professors. They often giggle as renown political prostitutes, apologists, butt-lickers and certified kleptomaniacs receive national honours whilst sacrificial lambs who risked their lives to save ours receive death and lack of recognition as recompense- you can be sure of which path they will tow. These children have witnessed how their elderly ones have graduated with good grades from institutions of higher learning only to return home for years without end jobless, to be fed by their old and retired parents. They have thus concluded in their minds that Education is not the best policy but a needless time-wasting distraction useful only for keeping the young ones from truancy.
This is just a mild picture of the problem on our hands! The time to act is now!

In a continent that accounts for more than 90 percent global malaria induced deaths, you begin to wonder If scientists and medical doctors are still produced in this country. They all fight for increased wages whilst they lack the initiative to find a permanent cure to malaria! But can we validly blame them when they practice in an inconvenient professional environment bereft of the requisite incentives and motivation for innovation. How can one think straight in an unruly, demoralising atmosphere of ‘peacelessness’ and rancor? I remember how the authorities in Scotland normally quarantine malaria patients (a norm in our clime) because its alien to their society. That alone can make one to question the very idea of raising your children here or ever having to give birth at all as a Nigerian! Indeed, in this country, everything will kill you!

I still can’t get over the shock of my European friend to whom I frantically explained what a generating plant meant to no avail. He had no idea. He asked me If I meant a transformer! I said: ‘you don’t know ‘I beta pass my neighbour’ Tiger generator you switch on that makes a mild noise and supplies electricity whenever ‘NEPA’ ‘takes’ light? (Power outage)’, I thought he was ‘forming’, but his 3 fore-generations have never witnessed power failure! Sometimes, I feel so sad like we are still in a stone age. I know of universities established in Europe in the 12th century whilst the ancestors and gods were still drinking blood and eating human sacrifice, cowries, palm oil, hot drinks and pap at three-path junctions as recently as 18th century in Africa! Why won’t I feel we are brief and brutish people who did not finish downloading and fully develop?

Honestly, whenever I see a large amount of people gathered in prayer meetings in churches and prayer mountains, I am happy and then I am bothered! I am concerned and deeply worried! I see Africa, I see confusion, I see contradiction in terms. I see chains on necks and padlock on mouths. I see the begging bowl, I see ignorance. I see foreign aids. I see conspiracy. I see thoughtlessness. I see vainglory. I see sincerity in naivety! I see pure stupidity! I see a people genuinely committed to not getting it right! I see a people who believe God for everything whilst doing nothing to change their despicable condition! I see a people who pray without working and a people who misconstrue God as a partial magician! I am thoroughly bothered. I shudder when I see people giving testimonies and thanksgiving offering because they bought a fairly used car, obtained a Malaysian visa to go and hustle and sell their kidneys, or just got married to a beautiful but hapless wife they are obviously inviting into a life of misery and mendicancy or when I see people giving prophetic offering for reduction in waste to the Pastor to pray that their Sienna space bus should consume less fuel, my heart bleeds at the sheer ignorance of a people! God cannot be mocked, whatever a man sows, so shall he reap! Sow indolence and reap lack of productivity! Moreover, God will not do for you what you can do for yourself!

With all these purely economic disconsolation, Administrative ineptitude and simple political brawl resolvable by dialogue, strict enforcement of laws, making the right political choices bereft of tribal sentiments, ethnic chauvinism and religious bigotry and conscientiously installing a different kind of selfless leadership, we have self-called Pastors who milk their congregation dry by anointing their feet for breakthrough in the midst of mass poverty, personal success in the glare of national doom and gloom and making altar calls for those who want American, Peru, Italian and Asian visas to escape from the gory and horrific nightmare Nigeria has become. But I ask: how did we get here? How exactly did we degenerate this low?

In a nation where we have more musicians than lawyers, more actors than doctors and more Politicians than Engineers, more layabouts than technologists, one cannot expect anything other than what we have presently. Sow sand and reap stone! It is that simple! It is even worse now that every unemployed Christian has become a Pastor! In the future that I see (God forbid) if nothing is done to stem the tide, there will be more people on the pulpit than on the pew! We preach without reaching out forgetting unwittingly that the etymology of the word ‘PREACH’ indicates that it was formed from ‘PEOPLE’ and ‘REACHING’! Thus, If all you do is preach to guilty souls like a parrot, hold out your feathers like a peacock and amass needless wealth with a reckless abandon like a rabbit in the sitting room without reaching out to the needy and the underprivileged, you have only made a sweet noise!

We seem to believe that an outside force will suddenly take us out of our murky and muddy water, profane realities and ludicrous happenstance someday, or at least, heaven is made of Gold, and we will make it there and walk on Gold though we trek on sand here. We have left the world for the ‘worldly’ and relinquished our dominion! We are now buying time and portray the world as a passing phase to be endured and not to be enjoyed! We no longer crave the good life or prosperity on earth but look forward to Heaven our beautiful home. We forget that God created us for His pleasure and He wanted us to subdue, enjoy and conquer our worlds! That was why He gave us the spirit of excellence and created us in His own image. Imagine such irresponsibility, such thoughtlessness, such warped and disoriented mentality that makes us think it is an attribute of heaven-bound Christians to be poor and hungry. But the truth is: poverty will take you to hell faster than prosperity! A debtor will tell lies to his creditor! Liars won’t make Heaven! A man who cannot take care of his family is worse than an infidel! I am sure you know infidels won’t make Heaven! A man who starves his wife and makes her to sleep with men to feed herself and her family will ‘rest’ in the hottest G.R.A. of hell! It is extremely difficult for an empty bag to stand upright!

But then, we cry endlessly to Heaven: Lord! Please save us your children. Same way Africa cries to America. Our solution seems to be everywhere but within us. We all clamour for change without starting to change ourselves. We forget that we are the change that we seek! Must we all misconstrue belief in God for the ability to replace our mental drudgery with excellent results? Do we all have to think that help comes from above without doing anything beneath? Haven’t we heard that Heaven helps those who help themselves? Are prayers not just the supplication that supplies speedy results to our earthly toil? What will God bless If there is no work in our hands? Would Christ have been able to feed the multitude If there were no 5 fish and 2 loaves of bread? Must we devalue our own collective capacity to succeed and rise up to the challenge and save ourselves from these evil plague of powerlessness, lack of productivity, lowered standard of living and mass penury instead of waiting on God or our insensitive leaders? Let us all reflect and genuflect on these words but most of all, let us act on them!

-Tosin Ayo (The ‘word bank’) is a Legal Practitioner, Essayist, Novelist, Energy Law Specialist, motivational speaker and a believer in a better Nigeria. He holds a LL.M degree of the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom.