Daddy14

Nigeria is a country of magnificent contradictions. So funny that sometimes I see myself thinking and laughing and cursing about it alone. You say you don’t want open defecation. But there are no public toilets. You say you are fighting crime. But you are impoverishing the citizens. There’s a Yoruba adage I heard from one of the people I respect so much. Dele Farotimi. “Rationality ends where hunger begins.” You say you want an educated population. But tens of millions of children are out of school, the ones inside school are learning with textbooks and curriculum older than their teachers, and the universities go on strike so often that students now budget for it. You say you want foreign investment. But your power supply is a joke, your roads are an assault course, your ports are a bureaucratic nightmare, and your policies change faster than an investor can land at the airport. You say you are fighting corruption. But the men doing the prosecuting are the same ones who need to be prosecuted. Imagine a goat leading a protest to protect yams. You say you want a healthy nation. But public hospitals have no drugs, no equipment, and no reliable light. Majority of our doctors are in London and Houston because you gave them no reason to stay. You say you respect human rights. But your police force is a threat assessment, not a reassurance. They have placed themselves in the same category as bandits. You say you want national unity. But every four years you set ethnicity and religion on fire and use it as campaign fuel. You say you want to reduce road accidents but you allow importation of fake vehicle products. Our roads are death traps, and Road Safety Corps are paid so little to enforce rules that they now depend on bribes. You say you are promoting made-in-Nigeria goods. But government officials shop abroad. The president and all his cabinet members and governors are the biggest customers of foreign made cars and even office furnitures. Government contracts go to foreign companies, and the naira you devalued makes local production nearly impossible. You say you want to stop flooding. But you approve buildings on drainage channels, sell land in floodplains, and have never completed a single major drainage project in any major city. You say you want to develop agriculture. But farmers are being killed on their own land and nobody is in prison for it. You say you want to grow tourism. But your visa process is an ordeal, your heritage sites are abandoned, and your airports look like bus parks. You say you want to fix unemployment. But your graduates spend years chasing NYSC postings, then spend more years chasing jobs that do not exist in an economy that produces nothing. You say you want press freedom. But journalists investigating the wrong people develop strange accidents. Social media critics are picked everyday and are only produced in court after weeks of protest. You say you want to stop brain drain. But you do everything possible to make staying in this country an act of suffering. See eh, our problem is not spiritual. We are just a country on a self-destructive mission. -KAA #kaa_truths