Have You CHANGED Yet?

Jeff Okoroafor

Let me begin with an acknowledgement, a simple one at that, sort of a pledge in reaffirmation of the purpose of my existence -my life and my whole eternity belongs to God. All this stuff -the money, fame, success, are temporary, even life itself. I choose to begin with this just to open a statement that call on us to be good, not just to ourselves, but to others and most importantly, be responsible to your country, living the life of a patriot and doing that which in overall, benefits your country.

Realistically speaking, the government have an enormous role to play in bringing stability in all sphere of our national life -economy, security, healthcare, education and all other fundamentals of a civil society like ours. However, we the people are not just meant to sit around and pluck fruits, we are also meant to contribute in this venture for a more seeming and holistic process. It’s easy to dismiss what you don’t understand, or what you don’t want to understand. It’s easy also, to leave what we can do, what our responsibilities are, not just to ourselves alone, but to our country, in the hands of the government when we want to shift or runaway from responsibilities. But the truth however, is that no nation or country becomes great on the strength of its government alone, its always a collective effort of both the government and the people.

Many negative things has happened in the past, several more are still happening today. Across the shores of this country, many more things, most of which are evil in the sight of God and man, are still happening. If we decide right now, to take a deep look at the things we did before May 29, 2015, that are wrong and didn’t add a thing to the development of Nigeria but instead, contributed in its destruction and reduction in value and essence, we’d see where and how we failed ourselves and our country.
Nigeria haven’t been truly fought for, either by the leaders or the followers, everyone is after their own interest. None of the rots that is being suffered in Nigeria today is borne out of nature, they are all a creation of man, an act that came as a result of greed and wickedness.

Almost everyone have a perspective when it comes to Nigeria’s independence as well as its entire structural setup, whether or not the founding fathers’ intention for it was pure and true. There’s also the question of whether or not the political and non-political leaders of this era are a true representation of what should be, what the people want and if their emergence is for the best interest of the country. Undoubtedly, Nigeria have a large reservoir of resources, natural and human inclusive. It provides everything that we all rely on today -the highest of it being OIL. Over 75% of the revenue many of us fight ourselves for, comes from its natural resources. Nigeria is drilled upon every now and then, its reputation dragged on the mud every passing seconds, laws are made not on its favour but against its existence…all manner of violence one can ever think of have been inflicted upon the entity called Nigeria yet, it has continued to provide and shelter a people with a population strength of over 170 million. Those who RUN THE GOVERNMENT claim that they’ve been doing their best but don’t often get the support they need from the people…how so? Decades after decades you promise them transition from one stage of their life to another but continue to occupy their OPPORTUNITIES, turning their lives around, negatively speaking and yet you expect the best from them?

There definitely will be no way out if we don’t begin to create the ways. If we don’t see any wrong in our many wrongs, then this change we fought for will only be a dream. Many of us still go about throwing trash on highways from our cars, we still shunts when we get to queues, we still offer bribe to get ahead, we still struggle for favours for ourselves and our brothers/sisters even when we know we/they are not capable, we still wish for the consolidation of godfatherism in Nigerian politics…how then do we expect change in Nigeria?

We will NEVER see a real CHANGE in Nigeria if we ourselves don’t CHANGE our wrong ways of doing things.