This Place Is Not My Home -By Azuka Jebose

Azuka Jebose

There is an eight month difference between my birth date and the birth of this independent nation named Nigeria. We are in the early evenings of our lives. My life is stroking toward a mid and perhaps late evenings: I am tired of waiting for Nigeria to grant me basic necessities of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. How long shall we continue to wait? What, after age 50, should I be waiting for?

My grandparents waited. My mother and father hoped. Hope neither arrived nor materialized. They died without living their Nigerian dreams. But I kept waiting, hoping and praying for that GREAT NIGERIA. I have waited for over fifty years: “everyday na the same thing”. It’s time to stop lying to my children; with a promise that Nigeria’s future would be great. It’s not. What’s ahead are frustrations, inequities, a fractured sense of patriotism and commitment, corruption and hopelessness. “E go better” syndrome, “na im make Igbo man tanda for im,” “Face-Me-I-Face-You” Mushin room and parlor for 30 years. By the time he finally realized he’d wasted 30 years hoping for improved condition in Nigeria, he’d fallen ill, died lonely, wretched and from a broken heart. Tufiakwa for this country!

I believed in Nigeria. I was a damn fanatical patriot. But my people, how long shall I keep sacrificing without tangible results? How long should we continue to love this once great Nation while few opportunists steal our common wealth boldly, blatantly and with reckless impunity, walk free to spend these loots buying our loyalties, thus further sinking us into our self made collapsed trenches? How long?

I visit my dear native land every 90 days. I am privileged to have a home in my homeland. My wife and daughter lived here. My last daughter was born here: I am not a stranger to Nigeria. I suffer with millions. I cry and get frustrated with everyday people who are the real victims of years of corruption and lack of organized planning and foresight by past military and civilian leaders. I feel their pains. I see their struggles to feed families and to survive. Middle-class Nigerians are not lazy. We do not seek handouts. We want a fare share of opportunities, evenly available. My dear country people, we are years from my hopes and dreams.

Few friends and family members appealed that I brought my children, born outside of Nigeria, to “Know their roots and where you came from. They are Nigerians. They should know your people. Bring them home to live so they can appreciate your culture.” Are these necessary in a changed world where we live in a global village? What are my children coming home to be proud of: lack of steady electricity, clean water, better healthcare facilities in case of sudden illness? Lack of roads and good universities? Bring them home to study in my country, spend years at the mainstream universities because of lecturers’ strikes for better pay? Bring them home to visit a lawless society where police and justice are sold to the highest money bags? Where their next day meals are not guaranteed? Bring them home to where roads are unsafe and road users navigate recklessly, where life has no respect? No.They will come when they decide, but today’s Nigeria is not where I would encourage my children or anyone’s child to visit. Visit wetin? What compares to the basic fundamentals of life that they are privileged in organized society? Let’s stop these deceits and look at our country: a great nation endowed with babanla natural resources and littered with the best of intelligence, now the basket of confusion, corruption, lack of care and sacrifice.

We are deceiving ourselves and our children. Nigeria has nothing for future generations. I was once a future generation. But here I am, in these times, still experiencing the same life nonsense my parents experienced. My future came and did not bring anything to hold onto. No jobs. No stable electricity, no clean water, decent roads. Most school buildings are still in a shambles, teachers are owed months and years of salaries, and lecturers sell copyrighted works to students as hand outs, just to survive. The future that I waited for patiently and hopefully brought insecurity, recession, inflation, no functional healthcare system for its children, high crime rate, religious intolerance and terrorism. Nigerians get killed by the common cold. Unemployment rages on. Suffering in the land.