`Nigeria´ is not a bed of roses -By Hussein Adegoke

Like a torrential downpour cascading hilltops, then bloated rocks and then, vegetation, before finally becoming interred in earth, our beloved country seem to be plummeting into what is not even known. We seem to have embarked on a journey forged by an uneven terrain and for which we are amazingly not worried about.

I saw some posts on the cyberspace very recently. They were extracted clips of two world leaders, the president of Nigeria and the current ruler in America, expressing contrasting ideas about the woes of their countries. While the latter shared, in rejoicing spirits, the statistics of recent jobs created in his country, and how he has had a good grasp of governance than his predecessor, the former–with no fickle of shame–bore the fangs of imminent doom at his subjects. The latter’s revelation that “every job space at the federal, state and local levels has been filled up and so, no vacant space for new graduates with new degrees” projects to us, someone, who lacks in the trajectory of the right path to follow. If a leader has no sound conviction in the scanty hopes left to his clime, why should the led? Would it not have been adequate if anyone speak these “truths” and honourably quit since apparently lacking in the ideas to salvage a wrecking ship? But no, such is a barbarity in African rule! Our leaders would rather sit and be onlooking while awaiting the lapse of time (as if the race of competence were some Tokyo Olympics) even after losing a grasp of everything.

I could still recall vividly how I still get invites for job tests after submitting applications around the time I finished schooling. Today, reasonable job vancancies are not even posted and the few ones that do would unsually belong in three categories: they are either unreal or have been sold (to cronies) or in wait of some “instalmental” buyers.

We are seriously doomed in the country and the sadder part is that we do not realize it, yet. Our collective patrimonies have been “weaned“ and long sold to known people. The son of the pauper can no longer thrive on competence as mediocrity has carted all slots away.

The future of Nigeria, sorrily, has become as blighted as the current predicaments we grapple with. To every angle you turn, there is a fraudster, a hoodlum and a fresh candidate at these ignoble trades. What then do we envisage from these lots whose paucity of legitimate surviving means (and, well, also greed) have taken to the zenith of immorality? To what phase of angle should the few humble faces left be inclined each time they become oppressed by their shortfall in aggradizement? What more time is left before these lots also yield and submit to Satanic temptations?

While I rode in my Uncle’s “Lexus” jeep a fortnight ago, I was humbled by the sight of motorcyclists and commuting buses who, upon their meagre earnings, were heavily extorted by our law enforcement officers. When I asked my Uncle why, unlike them, we were not so delayed at every checkpoint, he gave the sincerest logic of how this works.

“It’s an omen to be poor in this country,” he was shaking his head as he spoke, “if you are not poor, you are closer to getting a fair treatment. But as for those hungry plebs you see, their resignations to fate would yet get a smack every time for they are impoverished.”

When I reflected on those words, I realised that Nigeria, truly, with all the predicaments of her country people, is not a bed of roses!