WE ARE GROWING WHITE HAIRS AT SIXTY

 

Nigeria has celebrated her silver jubilee. Sixty years as nation is no fluke in a land as culturally diverse and unstable as ours. We should be very grateful to God that we arrived together in piece though with numerous scars we have had en-route.

Finally we are sixty. We have left the years of youth and we are fully submerging into old age when we should begin to look back at our years as a nation to see what we have done right and wrong and to mend those broken bridges. We should by now have learnt adequately from our past experiences.

Sixty isn’t just a number; it is symbolic of a new threshold of experience, and knowledge. A man at sixty is considered to have seen a lot through life to be able to give adequate and correct advice when situation demands. He should be smart enough to know that he has entered a new era when he should no longer be selfish with what he knows but he should be willing to look down at generations arriving behind to see where to offer help.

Nigeria has grown old, but the direction it is headed leaves citizens querying whether she has learnt any lessons from her past growing up. We are still faced with those issues we grew with. We are increasingly divided on many lines, corruption is growing on a frenzied scale, crime is the order of the day and ills are multiplying at a rapid scale.

At sixty, our present crop of leaders could easily have looked back to those early years to check the dreams of our founding fathers and to realign the nation towards those dreams. Sadly, while our present crop of leaders is big enough to know, they have been lackluster in how they push to give the nation the direction it deserves.

At sixty, nothing seems to be working. We are at loss what direction we are headed as a nation. Ethnicity and tribalism continues to tear us apart and helpless citizens continue to suffer dancing to a beat they have no idea about.

At sixty, our children are lost, our education system is in a mess and there seems no possibility of it ever going to work. The reason is not far-fetched; we are not willing to learn from the mistakes from the past years of negligence. We keep repeating the same mistake every year and hoping to get new results.

At sixty, our roads are terrible. It’s taking twenty four hours to travel between Uyo and Calabar, a journey of only two hours. Every state seems to have its own bad share of bad roads and there never seems an end in sight.

At sixty, our security forces are still having a bad time dealing with all the random security issues scattered across the country; Bokoharam, militants, bandits, IPOB, etc. There seems one security issue waking up every other day.

At sixty, electricity is getting worse with the years. Frequent outages brought about by poor electricity infrastructure are the order. We can’t give ourselves power but we sell the power we produce to other nations. Is that smart?

At sixty, we are still heavily indebted to nations across the world and we seem to enjoy collecting loans even when we know it is detrimental to our development as a nation. We choose to pay huge repayment for loans for what we can easily fund if we never padded out budgets.

At sixty, financial crime is rife. Organizations vested with the duty to fight this crime are the ones who are themselves engaging in the crime and supporting those who engage in the crime.

At sixty, our law courts are still full with injustice. Lawyers pervert the law to favour their clients and judges give false judgment despite a premise that is substantially clear.

At sixty, the cost of living is skyrocketing. Nigerians have to buy food through their nose at very exorbitant prices, people are struggling to survive and life is getting unbearable for the poor.

At sixty, our hospitals are not faring any better. Doctors go on strike every three months and our nurses join them at will. Our hospitals look more like death traps than healing centers.

At sixty, we are still importing petrol and other fuels from abroad even when we have consistently been one of the highest producers of crude oil for many years now.

At sixty, we grossly import everything we need including as little as match sticks. Our home grown businesses are crying for support but we dole out billions to support foreign companies that import their country’s technology to service us.

At sixty, our exchange rate against all major currencies continues to deepen. We can hardly buy foreign exchange these days because its neck breaking paying so much Naira for so less dollars.

At sixty, we are hopeless, and in need of help. The good news however is that despite the ills that has characterized this nation at sixty, young men and women are still working hard to put their names on the world map for Nigeria.

At sixty, the movie industry, the creative industry, the music industry and several other industries are working their heart out to give Nigerians a good image across the world.

At sixty, Nigerians must arise and take responsibility; else at one hundred we may still be having the same stories of failure and mal-administration.