Something is Wrong With Nigeria

Something is Wrong With Nigeria. Everything is different here in the country, or maybe in the whole continent.

It is in the little things we do and don’t do. The little things we don’t know and don’t suspect.

The truck driver thinks he owns the road more than the car driver, the car driver is screaming at the Okada rider to get off his path or he’d kill him, the Okada rider sneers at the pedestrian, “Wo, I will break your leg, you will see!”

Whereas, they all own the road equally.
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Sometimes I’m in my home, here in Ibadan, in my 13th-century country, watching TV, seeing these white people riding bicycles in Japan.

Thousands of bicycle riders in that 21st-century country.

They say it is because they are too many and there’s no space to park cars. But they also say it is cheap and environmentally friendly.

A poor Nigerian in his 13th-century country will tell another poor man that he contemplates a bicycle. His fellow poor man will tell him:

“Na poverty dey worries you, so you mean to say you wan to dey ride bicycle upandan? Your mate dey buy motor…”

Is there something in our air that makes us think like this?
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The government likes banning things.

It is easier.

It is faster.

And it shows more muscle than brain work. The government doesn’t like brainwork, thinking work, researching the cause of problems.

Government officials can’t do brainwork because their stomach is too fat and heavy. Their clothes are too big and expensive, starched and white like snow. Brainwork is rough work.

Ban work is soft and easy work, with this work, there is no risk of dirtying the starched clothes, and there is enough time left to stuff the fat stomach further.
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The Psyche of government work in Nigeria is even more antiquated.

It is stuck somewhere in 80BC, long before philosophers philosophized and regents politicized.

It is designed so that the less you worked, the more you earned, and the less you earned the more work you did. At least generally speaking.

But specifically speaking, is the president doing so much than the bricklayer? Or the gravedigger? Or the alabaru in Bodija market?

Are those fatuous and well-dressed men in the Senate doing more work than the sim card marketers hawking in the hot sun, or the roasted corn sellers by the road?

Why is one thousand naira so valueless now?

It is because one person – just one person – earns 10 million naira a month!

10 million naira!! Doing what??
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In a 13th century Nigeria, there are no social innovators up there. There are only lazy and big-eyed, wide-mouthed, deep-throated, pea-brained leeches, bleeding through their A-hole every month end.

Down here the social innovators are tired, hungry and thinking about relocating to Canada and Australia. They have gone from being angry to being hungry, then from that to being sleepy. They just want to soak their Garri and watch BBnaija.