My thots are mine

My thots are mine; I think I speak the mind of millions of Nigerians, but with a voice of just a man. Many people have said it, those who know what they are talking about, and many who simply know what they are feeling. Some who have access to the media, many more just like me, blogging about it. Poverty among plenty, what can be done, the poor are crying, so loud they are wailing, but they even haven’t gotten a voice, so who hears their vociferation? All the world hears about us is the loud hubbubs of our over fed politicians who if asked cannot confidently spell the name of the country they represent. They remember nothing but their overseas accounts; they represent no one but their demonic interests.
They rig our votes, steal our heritage, loot our vaults, maim our minds, kill our hopes, rape our consciences, and worst still undevelop our faculties. Yes, that’s what they do, we know and have already come to acceptance of the fact that corruption is inevitable within our leaders, it is hereditary and since it has been the same group of 100 or so people ruling us since after independence, what do we expect. But sad is the notion that a ruling government can actually be bribed to make infrastructures not to work. I can understand if you are bribed to give a contract to a firm that is incompetent enough o execute it afterall, I am Nigerian what I can’t understand is the possibility of the fact that one oyinbo man can walk into your office, you being one of our many shameless leaders in the land and be bribed to make sure that the refineries don’t work so that some foreign firms that employ a handful of your citizens can smile. That to me is the height of it.
We are so complacent people, everyone knows that, we should be in the history books for that, they have all our hopes killed, if not why is it that we as Nigerians, we don’t ask for 24 hours electricity, all we demand is at around 6 hours of power a day and lets know when it will be, for where we go get am, instead we turn to our ultramodern rechargeable lanterns and the I better pass my neighbour generators, we don’t ask for modern schools with meaning libraries for our children, all we are saying is please put some benches under a roof and appoint some untrained school drop out to give our leaders of tomorrow any kind of foundation in education they can get. We don’t ask to have water running in our bathrooms and kitchens that will be asking for our leaders’ heads all we want are functional community water tanks we know how to get it to our houses ourselves. People are dying from bad water by the minute; all we do is develop some inefficacious concoctions to remedy it. When the roads are bad, all filled with pot and bashier holes big enough to swallow whole molues and 1414s, all the people say is call on the government to fill those holes up with anything but glass. Accidents are happening on the roads every day, all we do about it is pray to God for His protection.
Who dares ask for broadband internet technology in a country without functional land line telephone? Who can bring a bill for the provision of total health care for the prisoners in our communities before the House of Representatives when free citizens are even dying from pure water aka poor water? There is no water in the swimming pool at the Abuja national stadium and all you talk of is provision of sports material for secondary schools, is that priority? The senate president has not won his much sought after automatic ticket to run second term in office and you honestly expect him to care if all the beds in a wards in an hospital in his constituency are infested with bugs… you make me laugh.
The elites of Halliburton group are smiling to their banks with billions of Niger Delta petro dollars; does it matter if millions of Niger Deltans are crying for a cleaner environment? All our senators have automatic tickets to recontest the next election their jobs are safe for the next 4 or so years, does it matter if millions of Nigerian graduates are jobless and roaming the street. Our president can afford to go to the best hospitals in the world to get world-class health care, so who cares if fake drips or other intravenous fluids are killing the helpless children in Enugu.
One of our talented artistes sang a song but too bad, our politicians don’t listen to those, he said one day, the bush meat will catch the hunter more like one day the rabbit will catch the hunter, one day you will look into the overcrowded cells of Nigeria prisons and it will be filled with former heads of states, governors, senate presidents, members of both the judicial houses, and plenty of their police contemporaries, the prisons will be too full to find space for pickpockets, maggi, fanta and livestock thieves. That day, as many as those who wants education will get it, not just education as we used to know it, but education as our fathers used to have it. Our youths will be gainfully employed, not just as electoral thugs once every four years during votes or as Motor Park touts. That day, our mothers will no longer die from child birth, there will be needles in hospitals, malaria will no longer kill as it wishes, there will no longer be individual boreholes and without any personal generators, we will be able to confidently say, ‘I am going home to watch my favourite TV programme’ without fear of NEPA. When the time comes, Nigeria will be able to feed itself; we won’t be importing anything, not even chocolates. We will have a sincere and responsive police force that protects the people; no one will have to buy paper to write statements in our police stations, and of a truth, bail will be free. That day, we will have ultra modern highways with speed cameras and traffic calming lights.
Even with all these hopes and aspirations, the words of the great Awo comes to mind, he could see the future and according to him, it is ominous. God we are in the palm of your hands, deliver us for we know no other God but thee …