What, to a Nigerian, is the 1st
of October?
I answer; a day that reveals to her, more than all other days in
the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which she is the constant victim.
To her, the celebration is a sham; the boasted liberty, an unholy licence; the famed
title giant of Africa, mere swelling vanity;
the sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; its denunciations of tyrants,
brass-fronted impudence; the shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; the
independence service, prayers and hymns, the sermons and thanksgivings, with
all the religious parade, and solemnity, are, to her, mere bombast, Fraud, deception,
impiety, and hypocrisy- a thin veil to
cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth
guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than in this very nation, at
this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you
will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel
through the Apartheid of South Africa, search out every abuse, and when you
have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of
this nation, and you will say with me, that for revolting barbarity and
shameless hypocrisy, Nigeria reigns without a rival.
Our distress comes from no failure of
substance, neither are we stricken by a plague of locusts. In fact, plenty is
at our doorstep, but the right use of it languishes in the very sight of
supply. Yet we occupy ourselves with divisive and hateful narratives sold by
selfish politicians who profiteer therefrom, while the evils of poverty,
disease and insecurity have become our eternal compatriots, which do not discriminate
against tribe nor religion.
At the time like this, scorching
irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I
reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting
ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
For it is not light that is needed,
but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the
whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the
conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be
startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crime against
God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
Oh that we will arise and collectively
tackle the challenges that bedevil this nation and liberate our country from
mental laziness and the incestuous relationship we have formed between mineral
resource and corruption.
Happy Independence Nigeria, the comatose
giant!
NOTES
1. President Franklin Roosevelt
1933 Inaugural Speech
2. Niran Adedokun, “How Nigeria
bred Hausa, Igbo, & Yoruba Miscreants” August 2019
3. The Frederick Douglass
Papers. Monday July 5, 1852
Photo credit: Alamy Photo Stock
Contact her via email: jtjemimah98@yahoo.com
Twitter/Instagram: @nikkyjates
