BURNING POT BY PRINCE CHARLES DICKSON
...The Dollar Once Owed The Naira, Now...
pcdbooks@gmail.com
It is a trap that the giant rat disdains that wrenches its testicles
backwards. Dangers that one belittles are liable to cause great havoc.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I do not know if grammatically I am permitted to start
my essay with such expression. But I will break the rules.
Nigeria, be it himself, herself or itself, is a nation that thrives on
breaking the rules, one of the major reasons for why we are at this point.
We refuse to follow the set rules, we killed what seemed ordinarily our
once moderately easy to follow rules, ethos and norms. The signs were
there but we refuse to see it.
What really is the raison de etre for writing this admonishment? Really
one wonders why repeat the same thing; it’s still the same people,
stiff-necked people bent on self-destruct. The truth is that one will not
give up as there might still be hope to bring us close to where we once
where or at least near a place we should be--Where the dollar can owe the
Naira.
We are in today's world of Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa (BRICS),
BRICS without the N.
From a history of when the Naira outweighed the Dollar, the Naira donated
to the Rand, and the Brazilian cruzero then was a debt currency,
everything Chinese was inferior and India was known for its many gods, and
cricket. Now we are miles apart, being deported and left to rot in jails
in these places. From the point where just a Naira gave you plenty dollars
to now a hundred dollar gives you plenty thousands, infact over ten
thousand Naira.
From a history when most nations where VISA free, to a gradual decline
where (1) we beg, pray, fast and then if successful we add a thanksgiving
for a VISA to Botswana. (2) To a situation where one of government's key
phrase is foreign direct investment.
A nation that cannot invest in itself yet believing that by treating its
calabash recklessly, we would get a better treatment from others. We watch
the gradual disconnect between governance and good governance, a people
and her leaders--that rather than provide leadership, 'rule' them.
The once upon a giant of Africa and big brother now begging to partner
everyone for any project from electricity from Ghana to fuel from Niger,
or Beans from Burkina Faso or what is it we wanted from Rwanda. Really our
testicles have been wrenched backwards.
When the dollar owed the Naira, to a large extent we may not have been a
hundred and sixty million people but we still had issues and soldiered on,
there was the Nigerian pride. But in strides, conscious and unconscious
cuts here and there, like an elephant, we kept slicing at it, it keeps
walking but walking to its death.
We killed everything that had an N--Nigerian Airways, Nigerian Railway,
NITEL, Niger Dock, Nigeria Hospitals, Nigerian Schools, Nigerian Police
(in spite of its force!), a step at a time we sowed hate, theft, political
violence and corruption, watered it and we are acting amused like we never
saw it coming.
So mobile telephone is South African, best hospitals is Indian, Egyptian,
or German but not Nigerian. We invite Mosaad, FBI, Scotland and anyland
Yard to solve our never-ending criminal puzzles.
Just for those that don't know, or are feigning ignorance. They are
schools in Nigeria where the tuition fees are dollar denominated, shops
that only sell in dollars.
Just listen to the old bloc, Maitama Sule, Emeka Anyaokwu, and though they
share the blame, when they talk; you hear of a glorious past and advice on
how to get to a desirous future where we can stand and look the Dollar in
the face like the Chinese are doing to US, like Brazil is doing to UK.
Sadly now the dollar talks, Naira shivers, public officials loot in the
dollar, and we citizenry spend Naira to cowardly defend them because of
faith, creed, religion and ethnic cleavages. He/she is not a thief, if
he/she comes from my own side of the wood or prays to my own 'god'.
Private miseducation has long replaced patriotic public education. Nursery
rhymes have long replaced the national anthem. Public officials are
applauded; people dance and come down with rheumatism for the building of
a culvert or borehole in 2012.
Nigerian has not become Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudanstan but how a three
hour journey to Jos now takes 5 hours because of check points, tells you
the story. It has all changed and how fast it all changed, from Jos, a
once peaceful haven to a conflagration of all sorts of bloody and violent
clashes. Its worse in Kano, terrible in Yobe and Borno, in the South West
criminality and robbery prevails—the militants are hitting these days in
the Niger Delta again and it’s no better tale from the east as leadership
is on a dream walk that all is well.
That we are now being forced to tell our kids the good old story is
painful, not painful because it is the good old story but because they may
never see such…They will not be products of good old public education…When
UI, IFE, Nsukka, Lagos, ABU were the schools to be…
I will end this short take, by asking us to recall those days when one was
traveling the Ibadan-Lagos Expressway or the Jos-Kaduna road. You had a
flat tyre, all one needed to do was wave down any car and the rest we all
know. Today one prays hard that your tyre does not have any problem and if
it must have, it better be at the right place or else you would be lucky
to tell the tale.
Fact is that we are where we owe the dollar because intemperate dandyism
lands a youth in a creditor's farm as a pawn. Squandered resources brought
us this destitution and we are still on the squander mania, believing that
by miracle of some sort there will be a turnaround—time will tell.
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