This is Nigeria……Where the Country Eats Itself -By Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor

“When there is too much dirt in soup, even the blind will see it” is one of my mother’s favourite Benin idioms – literarily translated.

Recently, in Nigeria, there is this phrase that gives me earache and heartache. Each time my country men and women tell me the phrase, a part of my heart dies, another part comes alive with rebellion that is diametrically opposed to the phrase while yet some other part of my heart wells up with pity at what we have become.

I was in the hospital theatre. A patient was awaited. The day before, we had concluded how the patient would be transferred by Ambulance to the hospital where surgery will be done. We planned to start by 06:00 hours. At 07:00 hours, the patient had yet to arrive. A call to the driver revealed that there was no fuel in the vehicle.  The patient had paid for all services, surgery inclusive and the staff in charge of protocol arrangement had been notified way ahead. Yet, on that morning, the patient arrived an hour thirty minutes post the planned time of knife to skin. When I questioned why this was the case, the response was……. “Madam, this is Nigeria”.

As I was meandering traffic in the capital city of Africa’s napping giant a few weeks ago, what I saw in front of me nearly made me convulse. What had snaked the traffic to a near halt was something that used to be a car. However, on this occasion, it was one mass of green unripe plantains, that seemed to emerge directly from four worn-out tires. The weight was so much that the erstwhile body of the vehicle had become as flat as a pancake in obedience to the force of gravity imposed by the ‘Zuma-rock-like’ mountain of green plantains piled on top of it. “What is this on this road? Have the entire plantain farms of West-Africa been relocated to the roof of this car? Whatever happened to safety? I asked my driver…… “Madam, this is Nigeria”.

Then, like a thunderbolt from the blues….it smashed me. That morning of March the 18^th 2021, I thought Zeus had migrated from Mount Olympus right into my head with his famed thunderbolt. Or was it Sango who led the entourage of the headache-inducing thunder gods that day? The news of the death of my friend and Federal Government Girls’ College Benin ‘94 Set Classmate Nneka Unachukwu Okaro was like thunder. I staggered onto the nearest patient examining couch in my consulting room as her signature gap toothed smile floated before my eyes.  “How did this happen?” I asked the bearer of this news who was wailing on the other end of the mobile phone line. She was involved in a road traffic accident. We lost our Nnex yesterday in Bauchi, she died when the bus she was in, crashed or was crashed into. “Jesus….! Did she make it to the hospital? Could she not be saved? There was a pause on the line. The next thing I heard from the caller was……. “Loretta! this is Nigeria!”

In my confusion, my head spun with all the different versions of “this is Nigeria” I hear daily. A phrase verbalised by Nigerians in ready defence of the lapses that our country has become with the non-verbal meaning of a countenance fraught with resignation to fate.  From our hospitals to our schools, on to our roads and all facets of Nigerian life, it is as though we think we can do things the same old way and yet, get new results. Many of us, without knowing it, now always slaughter excellence on the altar of mediocrity. It is an expectation that anything that adds proper value to human life and enables the standard of living is the outlier. The Gaussian curve of our national existence has at its midpoint, a central disregard for anything that truly grows the value for human life and promotes our nationhood.

Nneka Unachukwu Okaro was a fiercely patriotic Nigerian. She was a passionate promoter of Nigeria’s Domestic Tourism. Many Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike, lived their “Nigerianess” through her eyes. The sights and sounds of Nigeria were her unique aroma which one could smell on any of her social media handles miles away. Her physical presence was electric yet comforting and her drive to put Nigeria on the world map of Tourism was contagious. Her tall frame and stint with the catwalk, gave her the grace of an African Gazelle. Nneka (BehBeh) was an inspiring advocate of women and the less privileged in the society. She was a hundred and ten percent humanitarian with a career that started from Engineering, spanning Modelling, through Banking to Entrepreneurship in Image Consultancy and Tourism. Nneka had the brain power of a prodigy and the humaneness of a rare type. As part of her Nigerian Tourism promotion business, she had gone on a pre-tour to the Northern part of Nigeria only to wet the blood thirsty road of our clime with her almost forty-four years tasty old blood.

“This is Nigeria” where many Nnekas have been eaten by bad roads, poor policies, no emergency healthcare facilities, man’s inhumanity to man and diversion of public funds meant for life enhancing projects to the pockets of multiple wives-marrying, jet-setting, globe-trotting politicians.

I weep for my country that eats itself!

That I am sad at how the Nnekas of this country Nigeria are being eaten is an understatement. My only consolation are her words which echo daily in my heart. She said it, God made it so and I believe it, that “we are all work and walk in progress”. So, she is not done at all. My “Janenney the Traveller” lives on because she not only left her footprints on the sands of time, but more importantly, she left imprints in the hearts of women and men.  Nneka and I shared a common belief that Nigeria is the best country on the planet. She preached that if each of us do what is right and hold the person in the mirror accountable, then the change would snowball. She was always quick to point out this useful solution and tell anyone who cared to listen that though the adventure to turn our nation around was an enormous challenge, there was the need to understand that it is a marathon and not a sprint and that we could not afford to falter because we are all walk and work in progress.

“When there is too much dirt in our soup, even the blind will see it” Can we not see, that our Country is eating itself? Can all of us be blind at the same time? This soup called Nigeria is so dirty that those with eyes are blind and the truly blind can see that we need to stop eating ourselves. Rest in peace my dear friend and may the souls of the many departed Nnekas, awaken in us, the shared need to stop our self-destruction of the Nigerian Nation.

Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor is author of the book, My Father’s Daughter