There are more private jets in Abuja than there are planes to fly all Nigerians on domestic flight routes. Daddy said as much but I finally confirmed it on our excursion to the Abuja airport. We were allowed into the Private Jets Terminal – I can’t remember the official name but it was used strictly by the private jet owners anyway. Nigerians are rich o and I told my dad the same but he disagreed with me. He mentioned that the reality of a few couldn’t be assumed to reflect the reality of a whole. I didn’t understand what he meant, how could anyone say Nigeria is not rich with all the big houses in Abuja and private jets? We are rich, daddy! He insisted I was thinking just the way a child would, narrowly. Without a care about who I might be hurting.
“But daddy, the President made the same statement about this, he said things were fine because so many Nigerians had private jets and all that.” Daddy did say that an adult thinks something is right doesn’t in anyway make it right if it is wrong. I rested my case. From PUNCH.NG reports , The saddest story of all has to be the abducted Chibok girls. At times, as a child, I feel guilty as though I could do more. I was one day left wondering how much guilt all these adults felt if I, despite my small body, could feel like I was not doing enough for the Chibok girls. So, I asked my father, “Dad, so if I got abducted today, this is the way Nigeria would move on as though it were a normal thing?” “Come on, dad, how can a country be so care-free about the lives of kids whose only ‘sin’ was the fact that they came to this world as Nigerians?” For once, dad didn’t have an answer to my questions. I felt it was just the perfect time to ask him more questions. “What if the kids were children of ministers or even the president, would our country’s response still be the same?” The mother of a powerful minister was abducted sometime ago, we all saw how the nation deployed all its resources to ensure her rescue.
Thankfully, she was rescued. Is there anything too much to make available so these girls would be rescued? Let us even pretend no other girls have been abducted since then, but we know better than to pretend. Have we as a country subtly accepted the fact that these girls are gone for good? We didn’t even lift a finger. We didn’t even try enough. Almost 200 days since their abduction, whatever is being done for their rescue, is definitely being done at the speed of a snail. It hurts.
I keep hearing about education reforms. Don’t mind me, I am a child but I pay attention to it all. So, do all adults consider education development as the construction of more classroom blocks or as the process of improving the quality of education? I am wondering if it is the stuff of adults to think to do better means to do more or it is just something unique to Nigerian governments from the states to the federal level. One continues to see a theme around seeing the construction of classrooms as the primary essence of improving education. At times, it feels like a loud joke to even see such achievements listed in “performance” brochures. I have been attending school for about eight years now, never at anytime have I been allowed to assess any of my teachers. Shouldn’t pupils be given a chance to assess the teachers so that the teachers can improve? If we, the people they teach, don’t help them to teach us better, who will?
The toughest country to be a child has to be Nigeria bar a few war-torn countries. Child mortality is extremely high, maternal mortality continues to ball with corruption tearing up scales in measurements. This is not to mention the fact that, if one were born in the northeastern part of Nigeria, one could easily end up as child slaves to terrorists. This is heart-wrenching. It does appear no one genuinely cares about the Nigerian child. Now, if I, an obviously privileged child by Nigerian standards, could feel this bad about how things are, imagine what would be going through the minds of children whose daily existence involves constant battles with death and the shades of death? One thing is for one’s country not to have, another is for that country not to care or be bothered about the rest as long as the privileged are in good hands.
Everybody has been screaming about terrorism. If you lived in a terrorised community, no food and no hope for tomorrow, no means of survival, no sense of belonging, no identity and no sign of care from your home government, what would you do if some men came and handed you a gun, and got you to understand that with it, you could do a lot more with your life? Isn’t that why terrorists continue to have people, especially young people to recruit from? Isn’t the very idea of today’s terrorism set up to appeal to the abandoned in society? Look at Al-Shabab, by its very name, ‘the youth’, already poses as the identity of the population it needs on its side to propagate itself. In the midst of this, children continue to bear the brunt of our failing society. In the same story, I see state officials moving on as though all is well and good.
It is not all bad though, look at how we dealt with the Ebola virus. Of course, we must continue to be vigilant as it appears the Ebola virus is still much on tour but you could always trust it to think twice about returning to Nigeria. For once, the nation genuinely united against the enemy. Ebola gave us a chance to see that in our country, people like the late super heroine, Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh exist. It was a great sight to see the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, reel out names of all the people that were involved in the fight against Ebola.
That was impressive because in a country where leaders take all the credit and blame their own shortcomings on others, it was refreshing to see a leader remember this was one achievement ordinary citizens could take credit for as much as the President. If for nothing, the defeat of Ebola shows that if this country ever decides to wake up from its obsession with mediocrity and all that is shameful, it would indeed be a country to be proud of, in truth and indeed. Is anyone out there listening to the cries of the Nigerian child for a better country or does everyone truly believe that our lives are currently being transformed? Nigeria can do a lot better; we are not even close enough to doing a lot more good. It takes accepting the fact that, this is far from being a country; this is far from how to run a country well for the sake and good of everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment