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THE NIGERIAN IS ONLY INDEPENDENT THE DAY HE DIES –BY MOSES IDEHO



We love our Country. But does our country love us? We are born in hospitals without beds, with angry doctors and nurses owed salaries and underpaid to boot. Sometimes we are born with the aid of a generating set and at other times a candle. 

We love our country, but does our country love us? We are told we are not qualified to go to schools. So with begging bowl in hand, we take to the streets, shackled like wild animals, sodomized at other times, flogged in the worst of times and hungry in the best of times. Where we go to school, there are no teachers, no books, no teaching aids and our schools are worse, sometimes than poultry sheds.

We love our country, but does our country love us? Where we survive basic education, there are no universities to attend. If they are, the lecturers prey on our young flesh, force us to learn bribery in our adolescent years and make us criminals even before we grow beards. Where the schools are unavailable, we become thugs for hire, the Baba Alaye, in other times they call us Yan Daba, the children of animals, only sometimes animals even have a better life.


We love our country, but does our country love us? Getting a job is for who knows who, those who need it don't get it; those who get it don't need it. Where family and our wits get us a small startup, SARS (Special Anti Robbery Squad) and the local extortionists in uniform are on standby to rob us. The Nigerian seems forged for misfortune only.

We love our Country, but does our country love us? Today is a celebration of our independence, but on national tv, our President offers threats rather than hope, our Army seeks spiritual help, rather than getting to work. We have increasing foreign reserves and a suffocating debt burden, everywhere you look, it’s sorrow, bitterness and pain. 

We love our country, but does our country love us? They say it’s independence, but I think the Nigerian is only independent the day he dies.

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