Whither Nigeria

Monday: 250pm It has been a long day so far and I am thinking of what has been going on around the world and especially my own country of Nigeria. As a concerned citizen, it is not often that one takes a risk for the benefit of others. At times I shed tears for my mother land. My country has all it takes to be a great nation, given all her human and natural resources, yet she has not been able to take care of her own. Most of her well educated sons and daughters have fled her bothers to look for greener pastures yet nothing has changed. Government after government has come and gone and the story has remained the same. The more the government of the day tells us that things have changed the more the remain the same. What bothers this writer more than any other is the infrastructural decay that one observes especially traveling around the south eastern part of the country. No good roads, power upply is enimic, schools are now death traps.The education system has completely collapsed. Young adults who have been unlucky enough to make it out of what people call institutions of higher learning which I call glorified seconday schools have no place to go. The old politicans have no plans to cede their positions. Curroption runs rampant, Self preservation and aggrandisement have become the order of the day. People loot government cuffers with reckless abandon. No Accountability in any thing. The only man who attempted to bring culprits to justice has been vilified, demoted and God knows what else they will do to him. No jobs, where there are jobs young college graduates dont get hired for one or two reasons, first if your a female and you dont sleep with the powers that be you don't get hired, if your male and don't have the funds to bribe the bosses then kiss that chance good bye. As a result most of our young adults have resorted to doing things any thing to make ends meet, ranging from prostitution to armed robbry.
That brings me to another area of disaffection not only with Nigerians at home but mostly those abroad specifically in the US. Take a look at your emails on daily bases and see the insults they haul at each other. These are people who are supposely educated. Go to any meeting involving Nigerians especially those from the south east, it will be like a day in a box ring. People no longer have respect for old age, our culture has been destroyed to the extent that our fore fathers must be turning in their graves. If only those of us that have been priviledged to come out are able to put our heads together, pull our resouces we can address a few ills in our home land. Instead of showing the light, each person is consumed in self destruction and that of his brethren. Our elders say that "the high headed fly usually accompanies the corpse to the grave." While this write is no fan of the present administration, I can not also blame it for the stupidity that some of us have displayed abroad. If only we have common sense we could have been in a position to effect desprately needed changes back home through intervention and meaningful contritubtions to the body politic of our nation. Too many associations and every one wanting to be the leader and no one to follow has been the down fall of Nigerians in America. It does not matter how many degrees one has, one thing that can never be bought or thought in the university is common sense. Permit this indipendent observer to conclude that in the Nigerian community here, that is a very rare commodity