By: Al Humphrey Onyanabo*
For once let’s forget that the dollar is trading at one thousand naira. Let’s also try and overlook the fact that a bag of rice sells at N47,000 or more. Let’s not think of the spiralling prices of other basic foodstuffs like Garri, Yam, beans etc. Let us conserve to the back seat the burden of parents who have to worry about increased school fees for their wards in nursery, primary, secondary and even Government owned universities.
Let’s also behave like we don’t know that transport cost has shot through the roof and the price of a litre of petrol is now over 650 and more depending on where you are and diesel to run generators and keep factories working about N1,000.
If we may, let’s also refuse to see our political leaders who ask us to tighten our belts will they loosen theirs. Who build new mansions and buy exotic cars with our common wealth while we struggle to buy a few liters of fuel daily to run our old cars.
Let’s pump hands and celebrate being Nigerians, despite everything, the rot and the wickedness in high places, the oppression and police harassment, we are a Jolly People. Let nobody tell you different.
Ease your belt and laugh a little, naija wahala no dey finish.
Nigeria is the only African country where people will throw a party and budget for uninvited guests.
Nigeria is the only country where you can see canopies and chairs set for a party and you walk in uninvited with a friend and you will be served with enough to take home.
We Nigerians are a jolly bunch. We have been dubbed the Happiest people on earth. No be joke; we can have a naming on Monday, a House warming party on Tuesday, A burial on Wednesday and a wedding on Thursday. People will attend, that’s for sure. Musician will play, people will spray money, stay up late and go to work the next morning with a hangover. We are used to it. Naija for you.
In some parts of Nigeria, people troop to beer parlours as early as 9 a.m. and start drinking. All the empty and destroyed bottles are left on the table for others to see, as their friends go by, they call them to going, if you don’t, you are harbouring bad belle. That is the Nigerian. This one choke. Loool
As Nigerians, we have the greatest support system in the world. A Nigerian is the only person who can call up a friend he hasn’t seen in five years and tell him, ‘Old Boy find me something’, and the response will be, send me you AZA.
Nigeria is the only country where adults of over thirty still reside with their parents, and they are proud to say it.
Nigeria is one country where big brothers and big sisters still look out for their younger one’s who are working, married and bearing children and still send them ‘something to manage’ every month.
In the caring department, we have no equal. It’s part of our DNA.
The old school boy network is alive and well in Nigeria….It in fact flourishes… We are the only country where secondary school classmates, forty years after leaving school will pull resources to bail out a classmate who has hit rock bottom. Yes, only in Nigeria.
Nigerian mothers are one of the few in the world who leave their husbands and homes( it’s not always funny or easy for the Daddies) for months to take care of their daughters when they deliver. It’s called Omugwo. Do you know why Nigerian young mothers don’t have post natal stress like oyinbo women? It is because of the support system provided by their mothers during Omugwo. Have you ever taken time to imagine the toll carrying a pregnancy for nine months takes on the body and spirit of a young lady? She now delivers, returns home and has to resume taking care of a little tot 24 hours a day. A little baby is usually unpredictably stubborn and strong willed. She wants to stay awake when the mother wants to sleep, suck when the nipples hurt and want a change of nappies just when the mother wants to grab a bite. At times, she cries non- stop and expects a bone tired mother to carry her standing up, and sing her a love song.
How will the young mother cope while also taking care of her husband, other children and her body that badly needs rejuvenating…hot water bottles, herbs and many more.
Great Nigerian grand mothers continue to sacrifice and provide love and care so the next generation of Nigerians can be well brought up. And young mothers will not end up depressed in a nut house.
Let’s drift a little. Nigeria is the only country where people will not help you with money to start a business but they will support you for a burial, buy your aso- ebi and help you invite people.
Nigerians will take the trouble to travel long distances to attend a burial ceremony but they won’t attend the church service or interment. They jump into eating and drinking the moment they arrive. Let the dead bury the dead, they say, life is for enjoyment.
Nigeria is also the only country where a guy we know has been jobless all his life, hanging out with us on the streets, complaining about the problems of Nigeria and it’s leaders, without a car or apartment of his own suddenly joins politics, uses thugs and violence, snatches ballot boxes and wins an election. Three months after, he buys a house on the same street for fifty million, knocks it down and puts up a fantastic two storey mansion with choice cars. We don’t ask him where the money came from. We don’t question why roads and schools under his watch are not built. We hail him, we call him honourable for the stipends we will get. That is who we have become, sometimes dumb and docile but regardless, we remain a jolly good people. Blessed of God with abundance of natural resources, yet we are poor, surrounded by thousands of acres of fertile land, yet we are hungry. We can’t even plant enough corn to feed our chickens.
Nigeria, we have crude oil, yet our refineries are not working, all four of them. We have to import fuel from all other the world and cough of scarce foreign exchange for our stupidity and lack of foresight.
We have the greatest work force of any black nation on earth; brilliant, committed and enterprising but we frustrate them till they flee to build foreign economies and the lowest, the worst of the worst run the show and take us for granted. Nigeria, my Nigeria.
We are 63, a grand daddy nation, but we still act like teenagers. Everything in our dear nation is trial and error. We take one step forward, and we back track five steps…meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on and the giant of Africa is stagnant, raped by it’s leaders and elites and abandoned by it’s best and brightest. Welcome to Nigeria.
At 63, we are still standing. Christened by Lord Lugard to serve the interest of his pay masters, we have been dealt wicked blows and battered by coupists and politicians. Used as lab rats by the military and political parties to test all manners of of social and economic theories. Our resources looted and carted to foreign banks, but we remain standing. No shaking.
