Video credit DW
This should never have happened. I will be able to update if more information surrounding her death are revealed.
Rest in power dearest sister!
May the ancestors receive you with grace and favour.
World
Intellectuals, Led By Mumus
Is Buhari the kind of person that should be ruling you? Is he sensible? Does he have the intellectual capacity of a 15-year-old? Can he solve a primary 5 mathematics task? Can he express himself clearly enough to be understood in any language of his choice? Does he, even as a farmer, know the meaning of animal husbandry? Does he represent you? Can he represent you? Can you employ Buhari to be your storekeeper? Yet, he is your president. That is a tragedy!
Intellectuals, Led By Mumus
By Adeola Aderounmu
One of the saddest things to think about in life as a Nigerian (whatever that means) is the fact that ordinary mumus took over power first through violence (two times in 1966) and a number of times since 1999 through questionable democratic approaches.
In so many ways, we have discussed these issues back and forth. For so many years, we have changed the headlines just to repeat the same things. We are getting nowhere what we desired through all these essays, write-ups, criticisms and even ideas for how to dismantle the colonial enclave coined Nigeria.
Hence, we will continue to repeat the obvious, and for me personally, for the sake of the unborn generations, if they wish to be free someday. Their fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, you and I have chosen the path of slavery. We are serving the mumus in power.
If not, there is no way in the world foolish people clumped into APC and PDP would be holding us to ransom since 1999. After all the price we paid for independence in 1960 and after all the cost of our (pseudo) freedom from the gangsters who reigned supreme from 1966 to 1999. We, once again, fell into another trap of re-accepting the gangsters through fake ballots, coercion and the use of terror.
Even if there is a Buhari in Aso rock, is that the kind of person that should be ruling you? Is he sensible? Does he have the intellectual capacity of a 15-year-old? Can he solve a primary 5 mathematics task? Can he express himself clearly enough to be understood in any language of his choice? Does he, even as a farmer, know the meaning of animal husbandry? Does he represent you? Can he represent you? Can you employ Buhari to be your storekeeper?
But for some reasons that l cannot understand, he is your president. Now, he is nowhere near a sane cognitive level, but together with an array of sick minds as his, they are running your lives and destroying your essence and future. Still we sit down here together, or we go online and discuss irrelevant things.
The most relevant discussion for any person living in the geographical space called Nigeria in 2020 should be: how did this happen to me/us and how can we correct this before we die? But this is not the case because the mumus really perfected the acts of keeping the minds of the sane and intellectuals with other stuffs.
They so much destroyed the essence of humanity in Nigeria that people are busy trying to fix for themselves what the state and country should fix for them. It is also hard not to dabble into the religious deceits in essays like this. For, all the things we seek in religion in Nigeria, the most developed countries in the world got them by doing the right things. They did not pray. They did not fast. I don’t know what else the African is looking for, to become free.
Let us be clear because we are soon going to die, and the future generations need to read that some of us actually wrote letters for their freedom. We may not be the majority voices, but we did what we could to instigate, provoke, act and sensitize. Nigeria is not going to work. It will not.
We are strange bed fellows. Our collective existence is first to the pleasure of the British. Then we were partly sold to the Americans. In the new world order, the Fulanis have sold Nigerians to the Chinese. It is only a matter of time before the Chinese would take command of your lives in that space called Nigeria. Unless the chain is broken now, it may become too late.
How can a people sit upon the most treasured area of land on planet earth and be slaves? It does not make sense then, and it will never make sense now or in the future. How can you be called inferior beings and you act true to type? They said you cannot run your own affairs and the mumus played the script to perfection on your behalf?
What do l want? I earnestly yearn for freedom. I want to belong to the kingdom of Oduduwa. I know what you would say. Is Tinubu and all these mumu yoruba politicians in APC and PDP not from Oduduwa? Yes they are. But right now, they are like slaves to the Fulanis and not acting with their cerebral hemispheres.
It is that chain of bondage that we want to break. Once we are free in our kingdom, we will race once again beyond UK and France like we did up to the 1950s. We will start the rebuilding of our region, our country and our nation-The Yoruba Nation.
I do not believe in Nigeria. Nigeria is a business empire for the foreigners who invaded our territories and almagated good and evil in 1914. That contraption must be broken and the reign of the mumus over the intellectual has to come to an end.
If we fail in our lifetime to become free, then our children and children’s children will be born slaves. Of course, we take the option of travelling abroad. That is not freedom. Over several generations, that would mean extinction of the race that once occupied the Yoruba country.
One of the reasons many people don’t care about the future is because we won’t be here. If this was the mindset of those who built the developed countries and civilization (which incidentally started from regions around Nigeria), the world would have remained one giant cave today.
So many things are taking the lives of our people in the most unnecessary manners. You name them! It is so sad. I want my generation to have something meaningful to die for-the emancipation of the Yoruba Nation. It is possible.
No Rage, No Change..!
In his eyes, he (Saraki) is fighting a political battle. In my view, he is a thrash that Nigerians have refused to dump in the un-recyclable bin. Saraki and the rest like him in/out of politics are not the shame of Nigeria alone; they are the scum of [the] Africa that we are hoping to turn around.
No Rage, No Change!
By Adeola Aderounmu
In Nigeria criminals in government do not resign even when they are discovered.
A bigger worry is how these criminals have found their ways into governance especially since 1960.
We have read about, seen, and experienced the misrule of Nigeria since the mantle of reign fell on the citizens of Nigeria after independence in October 1960.
What is sad is that the federal government of Nigeria over the years and till date is still very disrespectful to the citizens, failing to address issues and lacking any form of proactive-ness.
A global scandal swept the world a few weeks back. It is now called the Panama Papers.
What followed in many parts of the world following the revelations is instructive.
One of the major casualties was the (former) prime minister of Iceland. The man did not even try to go to court to ascertain if he was guilty or innocent. He just resigned.
Definitely, the prime minister could afford to put up a team of lawyers to defend him and his family. He could even point out that the country is a developed country and that the people should not worry about his wealth on a strange island.
His conscience was enough for him.
He resigned and took a bow out of governance.
There was another man working for Transparency International in Chile. He was indirectly involved in some revelations bothering on the panama papers. He has resigned.
Some prominent Nigerians got mentioned in the scandal. It is not as if Nigerians do not know already before that these men are criminals.
Nigerians know that but they have not taken the bold steps to pursue and chase these bad men out of governance. They should be facing justice outside of governance. Not within it.
If the men mentioned in the panama papers were getting favours from government thereby getting rich at the expense of the people and country, Nigerians care less.
Names like David Mark for several years have become synonymous with endless, shameless scandals. Names like Saraki have been associated with the spread of poverty in Kwara and now across Nigeria through the senate.
Yet these names and several others in their class continue to steer the affairs of Nigeria.
Nigeria is a special country and Nigerians are special breed.
No one can write enough or fill the volumes when it comes to corruption and the criminal tendencies of the Nigerian political class, their families, employees and friends. It is one of the greatest scandals under the sun-that criminals rule over the largest accumulation of the black people in the world.
There is a grading of political thievery in Nigeria, that much l have explained in several essays.
Then when the blend of tribalism and religion are added, you have an insolvent that is going to last for as long as Nigeria exist unless an unexpected revolution wipe things and people away.
It is not in the character of Nigerian politicians or prominent politicians with skeletons in their cupboards to resign.
Rather it is in the character of the people, due to more than 50 years of disorientation, to align themselves along tribal or religious lines and defend the evil people in Nigeria.
The role of the law in Nigeria is another disgusting aspect of the ease of evasion of justice.
The prime minister of Iceland could have stayed on and fight.
But there is justice and there is conscience. In Nigeria, we lack both.
The politicians and criminals in public offices have no conscience and the people do not understand the real meaning of justice. So the judiciary served them with rubbish as justice.
Mr. Saraki wanted to be tried in the court of law for all his crimes and at the same time hang on to power.
Everyday new scandal emerged about this man who now appears to be bigger than Nigeria.
In his eyes, he (Saraki) is fighting a political battle. In my view, he is a thrash that Nigerians have refused to dump in the un-recyclable bin.
Saraki and the rest like him in/out of politics are not the shame of Nigeria alone; they are the scum of [the] Africa that we are hoping to turn around.
Indeed we know that all the political parties in Nigeria harbour thieves. Our dilemma will remain how to weed all of them before the end of the next century.
If we start now, we are doing our children a huge favour. If we don’t they will curse our graves.
The thieves in politics are too many and too cankerous to deal with under a normal system. If there is a system called flushing, Nigeria needs it.
This panama paper scandal came up not long ago. Our problems in Nigeria are older than more than 50 % of the population.
The panama paper is not our wake up call. It will fade soon.
We, the people have actually resigned long ago and left our fate in the hands of tropical gangsters in uniform and mufti.
Since we have resigned, criminals like Saraki and the others do not see the need to resign.
There is no shame even to family names that are now nonsense and rubbish.
They will fight back tooth and nail; they will hide under the permissiveness of law to justify evil.
Things are not going well for Nigerians right now, so it’s very easy to fight for one’s survival at the expense of the prosperity of the country.
It is very easy to become fatigue thinking about fuel, light, road and other areas that highlight the failures of past and present government.
The problems confronting Nigerians give the politicians an ease of passage, a ride over the will of the people. This has been the way since time immemorial.
In the face of all the problems, Nigerians must know that change as promised by the APC is not forthcoming for several reasons beyond the scope of this essay.
I can recall several golden moments in Nigeria’s history where the opportunity for change were missed including but not limited to the June 12 elections of 1993 that was cancelled by the military gangsters led by one Ibrahim Babangida.
Every time Nigerians needed to react in unity and show their rage, they divide along political lines, along religious lines and along ethnicity.
Nigeria needs a political solution before economic solutions or true changes can be reflected. The system of governance is not working and it is not going to work.
One factor that is missing and which can propel or force changes to begin is the “people’s rage”. It’s long dead.
Nigerians, read this loud. No Rage, No Change.
You can start tomorrow morning by sacking the wasteful, inefficient, needless and scandalous Nigerian senate. Then the change begins!
No Love Lost
One of the remarkable ironies of life is that we see other people’s problems more than we see ours. Life is short and problems don’t disappear. If we paddle our canoes hard enough, maybe we will still be rowing when the storm is over. Life is just too unpredictable
NO LOVE LOST
By Adeola Aderounmu
Adeola Aderounmu
Lucy lives in Zambezi, until now anyway. This is where she has known all of her life. She was born here and this is where she blooms. She is a very beautiful woman. Some people spoke about her and said maybe she is a goddess. There was an artist in the town and he was convinced the gods took their time to mould her. He meant to say that Lucy was made with perfection.
Ever since she was a little girl there has always been an admiration for her beauty and her personality. People generally agree with Lucy. In her neighbourhood almost everybody she met respected her.
When she left home for the City College at Mongu, she already knew that respect and admiration were not going to be substitutes for love. We all need someone or some people to love us. So when Lucy left college the emptiness in her life began to manifest. Still she continued to pull through with the admiration and respect that folks have towards her. When she is alone she often asks herself: who will satisfy my soul? Respect is a wonderful quality but it is not love. Even admiration is not love.
Now a working class lady, Lucy almost gave up on love. It was not hard to find a job when she graduated from Zambezi University. She is a brilliant woman and with her kind of beauty, she can open any door. But when it comes to love and satisfaction for her soul, she seemed to be lost. No one knew this but her. She knew that she is not perfect like the artist had insinuated.
One day she was waiting at the bus station. Quite unpredictably the sky turned cloudy that morning and it started to rain heavily. As it rained, Lucy started to cry. The buses were not coming because of the heavy rain. But she was not crying because of the rain or the buses that were not coming. It turned out that the weather gave her a picture of her life. She thought that her life was cloudy inside. She was alone at the bus station, and then she cried even more.
This is not the first time Lucy cried. She has read a lot of novels and she had known about the travails of many characters in tragic literatures and even in some romantic books. She learnt to cry when she is sad because tears wash away sorrows, so she thought. Once she read a book where it was stated that the men who committed suicide are often those who refused to cry because they did not give in to their feelings and pains. When people cry, they feel refreshed and often that gives them the hope that they can carry on.
Lucy was so carried away in her thoughts she almost did not notice the car that had parked right in front of her at the station. Someone had stopped to her help get to work that morning. The man did not know that Lucy had been crying. He thought it had rained over her face. In addition it was too dark to make clear observations. The man recognised Lucy though and that was why he stopped to help her.
That weekend Lucy saw the man again as she took a walk down the street. Thank you Paul, you are kind, she said. It was nothing he replied. But on this occasion Paul noticed something unusual about Lucy. Are you alright he asked? Then Lucy looked at him and started to cry again.
Paul gave her a tissue and she wiped her tears. But Paul was shocked. Until that moment he was one of those who thought that Lucy could have anything she wished for in her life. Lucy did not speak about all of her emptiness but Paul knew from the short conversation they had that the vacuum in her life is enormous.
Paul was almost thinking out loud. So people can be beautiful, they can have good jobs, they may be admired, well respected and still be sad. Indeed many people often ignore the roles of physical beauty and clothes in covering the darkness and emptiness inside the human body.
In Zambezi there is a man who cannot finish his expressions without the use of proverbs. Paul thought about the day the man had a conversation with him. He remembered one of his sentences: lizards are always lying on their bellies, so we don’t know which among them have stomach problems.
He gave Lucy a hug and they parted ways.
Over several months that followed, Paul was visiting Lucy. There was no attraction between them because Paul had a woman in his life. But with his company, Lucy felt better. They talked about many things, some memories of growing up and now working in this commercial town where the fourth largest river in Africa took its origin.
Lucy also met new friends through Paul. These after-work and weekend companions helped Lucy to forget some of her problems. They filled some gaps in her life. Some of the people who admire her are no longer at a distance.
When she remembered how an unexpected rain facilitated her meeting with Paul, she cherished the moment. Then she decided to buy a car so that she does not have to be at the mercy of another man from the town on another rainy day. She already knew how to drive.
Lucy is happy. She felt she had leaped out of a shell. It was definitely a step in the right direction when people not only admire her but showed her some love through conversations and doing things together. Some people she spoke to talked about their travels and adventures.
Lucy became inspired and she decided that she will also take to travelling. She had always had the opportunities to travel but she never took them. She felt that it was a lot of hassles but now that she had listened to the stories about Paris, Berlin, London and Stockholm, she got motivated.
However she promised herself that she will not travel far. She learnt in geography about the different places and seasons in Africa. I will see my world in Africa before I see the rest of the world she told herself. In her mind she also made a decision to find love and never to let it go.
Lucy spent some of her weekends in Harare and sometimes she is off to Johannesburg. She also travelled to Accra because of the gold at the coast in Ghana. Once she was covering her hair in Cairo. Now she has a handful of pictures, maps and souvenirs from the West, East, North and South of Africa in her study at home.
One day, Paul left a note for Lucy. He wanted to see her again. Lucy did not understand. She just came back from Cape Town where she went on holidays. Zambezi had been warm and she wanted some experience of winter from the bottom of Africa. Lucy is a woman in search of balance and fulfilment. She came home to Zambezi and found the note in her letter box.
Paul’s relationship with his long-time girlfriend had fallen apart. They did not get along as they had dreamt. They had a few problems and they both agreed on one thing only: to end the relationship. It was a sad occurrence but they both felt it was better to do it now rather than trying to make it work at all cost. They have no children yet. He is now 32 and she is 28, so they still have their lives ahead of them.
Sometimes things are not always what they seem. We all make mistakes and our passions can mislead us. One of the remarkable ironies of life is that we see other people’s problems more than we see ours. If people stop pretending, maybe they wouldn’t have to run away from their problems. Life is short and problems don’t disappear. If we paddle our canoes hard enough, maybe we will still be rowing when the storm is over. Life is just too unpredictable.
Lucy met Paul at the coffee shop down the street. She was sorry to hear Paul’s sad story. Paul’s heart was obviously broken. But he cannot blame it on Lucy. Lucy did all she could not to be a distraction. They are close friends, true. Still there was neither attraction nor intimacy between them. Lucy was missing something in her life but her head was clear about what she wanted and desired.
In her mind, she knew that Paul is confused. He has just broken up with someone he had spent a substantial part of his life with. Lucy is quick to draw inspirations from books, stories and her own life. So she said, give it sometime maybe you will find someone new. Your heart will heal and you will go on with your life.
She continued: When I went to Johannesburg in February, I met Vincent. I like him a lot. He adores me. He respects me, but above all he loves me and I love him too. We spent the last two weeks together in Cape Town and he’s planning to find a job in Harare. Apparently 7 months after their first meeting Lucy and Vincent have concluded plans to move to Harare as expatriates.
Paul is not a novice. He too had always known that people must learn to pass through their own troubles, their travails. They must learn to conquer their fears. They may need some time and a little help but they must learn.
The best way to learn is through real experiences.
Goodbye Paul. I must go now. Take care of yourself and we’ll see sometime.
Paul was close to tears but Lucy showed no emotion whatsoever.
She gave him a tight hug and left.
(c) Adeola Aderounmu 2014
Postcards From Legoland, Denmark
LEGOLAND, Denmark
By Adeola Aderounmu
Happiness is one of the most important things in life.
When I set out on this holiday trip with my family, I knew my next article would be written in Denmark and I would like to find some inspirations, taking the time off my holiday mood and punching my keyboards. I write from Lanladia-Legoland.
Lanladia is a small settlement in Billund which is about 265 km from Copenhagen. We took a long road trip all the way from Stockholm. That was the plan.
Before we left Sweden we made quite a number of stops on our way. We spent the first night at a small town called Vetlanda in Småland, in the heart of Sweden. Actually we visited a friend of my wife and her family and spent the night at their country home. It’s situated on a farm area. The children had fun with the kittens and the cows on the farm.
Vetlnda Farm House
We also saw a friend of mine Olutayo Adegoke before we arrived at the farm house. It was an impromptu stopover but he was glad to take a short break from his work as we had lunch in a park near his office just outside Nörrköping. It was almost incredible when Tayo told me he would be travelling to Nigeria that night. What a stop we made!
Adeola Aderounmu and Tayo Adegoke
The next day our first stop was Avesta, also a small town in the South of Sweden. There lives Kelechi Udeh, a youg man I knew from Festac Town. We had lunch again in the open and near a car park at the center of the small town. We mingled with Kelechi for about 45 minutes and off we drove. He told me he is very happy to be settled in Avesta and I was marvelled how a Festac Town found happiness in a small town. Variety will remain the spice of life. It will always be in order to bloom where one has been planted.
With Kelechi Udeh in Avesta
We reached Malmö in the early evening. Tolu Taylor agreed to host us for dinner. We were not going to say no. Tolu, a big brother, was my senior at Festac Grammar School. Adeolu Sunmola who was my junior and my student at the same school joined us. Onyebuchi Echigeme completed the mini reuniuon of the Festac Boys in Malmö when he later joined us for dinner at Tolu’s house. Indeed, Festac Town and the people from Festac are always close to my heart.
With Tolu Taylor and Adeolu Sunmola in Malmö City
We spent the night in Malmö and drove off to Denmark the next morning. We left home in Sweden on Tuesday morning and arrived Legoland in Denmark on Thursday shortly after lunch. We have driven close to 1000 km without encountering a single pot hole. I called European (E) roads paradise roads.
with Onyebuchi Echigeme
When this essay goes to publication we will probably be on a homeward journey. If our plans work fine, we will make surprise stops at Gothenburg and Örebro to vist more of my friends and incredibly it’s all about the Festac Town connections. They were built connections built from 1977 to 2002. They will last for life. In Copenhagen, we will be lucky if Mary Owolabi is home when we make our journey out of Denmark. She spoke of other plans, but we’ll see what happens.
The children are having a blast. I read one day ago that Denmark is now the home of the happiest people on earth. It’s a good thing to be here when it happened. LEGOs are made or born in Denmark and it is a good experience for the children to see where some of their toys come from and how they come to life in Billund, Denmark. They are old enough never to forget the experience. The adventures have been awesome.
What will be hard for them to know is my heart felt wish or desire for the country where I was born. Unfortunately our experiences together in Nigeria in 2010 were mostly unpleasant. We spent 2½ hours at MMIA before our luggage were complete in our care, ran on generators for 2 weeks, nearly suffocated in heavy and static traffic, had limitations to where we could go and things we could do. The best thing about Nigeria was the warmth of our families and friends.
I have read the news, followed my twitter stream and stayed in touch with global events. I have read so many conspiracy theories on the Malaysia Airline plane that crashed in Ukraine. There are always more sad news than good news or maybe the good things are not always newsworthy. I am mostly worried about the things that are going on in Nigeria, a paradise lost.
Yea, Malala came to town. She was in Abuja to press for the release of the Chibok girls. Then the “bringbackourgirls” campaign group entered a one chance roforofo fight with the corrupt Nigerian presidency. Mr. Jonathan was at the fore front of a “fight” for once in a lazy presidential life time. I learnt he was bitter when he was refused the chance of meeting the Chibok parents.
I know there was an allegation of a missing $20 bn from a government that is now trying to borrow $1bn to fight Boko Haram. Who are the clowns in Aso rock? Everyday several billions of dollars are lost to oil theft only in Nigeria. Everyday too, Nigerian politicians loot several billion of dollars in the executive, legislature, state governments and local governments. That’s the way to explain their sudden riches and capabilities to buy up anything including the former tallest building in Lagos/Africa. They can buy customized private jets anytime they want. How much do they earn legitimately?
The government that steals so much money should be ashamed to even ask for the least borrow-able amount from any creditor. The same government is paying huge sums annually to foreign PR firms and lobbyists to help it repair its battered image and to label Nigerians in such ways as to promote the corrupt government. Only dubious creditors will be willingly to lend money to government that is supposed to be richer than it-the creditor. They call it business when they do.
There is no greater PR than eradicating corruption and serving the people rather than selves. The extremely low level of mentalities of the Nigerian politician leaves one in awe and shock. From the view of the rest of the informed world, it is mockery and easily set Nigeria among the countries ruled by nonentities. The classification, “among the most corrupt” is too easy.
There is at present a wave and fear of impeachment going on in Nigeria only in APC controlled states or in states where a governor brought a PDP-stolen mandate to the APC fold. My bigger expectation is for the Nigerian revolution that will totally impeach, sack and sweep altogether what is probably the most corrupt government in the world with headquarters in Aso Rock, Abuja.
Unless such happens, several million Nigerians will never experience the real meaning and essence of life. The witch-hunting and cosmetic approaches of politicians against politicians who are themselves the major problem with Nigeria are not close to the cleansing solution that Nigeria and Nigerians need. The Promised Land is getting farther.
I knew since 2011 that governance is on a long recess in Nigeria. The trend is common and predictable. Once an election period is over and the new captors of Nigeria settle down to amass, steal, loot and drain the treasuries, the struggle that will sustain or produce the next conquerors of Nigeria quickly goes into motion.
In the last three years, such a condemnable trend has produced the largest number of political prostitutes ever in Nigeria’s history. It is part of the reasons the wave of impeachment became the strongest weapon today, for rather than service to the people and fulfilment of electoral promises it was business as usual and psycho-egocentrism peculiar to the Nigerian political class. It is therefore too easy to line up impeachable offences against those on the other side of the power divide.
Nigeria’s politics is driven by insatiable lust for money and the highest bidders always buy the consciences of the ever-hungry looters called politicians (and sadly the populace too). In all, they are all birds of the same feather and 99.9% of them from Aso rock to Badagry and Sambisa local government areas ought to be spending time in jails by now. But we know that the institutions are dead in Nigeria, the worst hit being the powerless police and the strikingly corrupt judiciary.
The in-thing in Nigeria today is rice politics and stomach infrastructure. Nigerians have short memories and those who are old enough have learnt nothing from history. Even as a boy in primary school I was aware of the consequences of the politics of stomach infrastructure championed by one Shehu Shagari in the late 70s slash early 80s. The NPN was a short-sighted political group that distributed rice, clothes and even apartments to members to ensure that they rig and won the elections back in the days. The rest is history.
That history that includes the extensive reign of tyranny and dictators is what Nigerians have not learnt from. That the PDP, APC or any other party can distribute rice directly or through criminal sponsors is an indication that Lagbaja’s theory of 200 million mumus is a fact. I am short of words or expressions. The situation is not normal; Nigerians are caged, mentally and psychologically!
No matter where I go, no matter what I do. I will always argue for and on behalf of more than 90m Nigerians suffering in silence, disconnected totally from governance and having no idea of the meaning of life, how much more the good life in this temporary passage called earth or world.
I will always argue for social justice, the common good, and a clear understanding of the meaning and essence of life which is not far from the principle of live and let live. I know that illiteracy and total ignorance play huge roles in some parts of the country. I know that the North is a catastrophe based on narrations of friends who went up North.
What I saw in rural Oyo State during my service year in 1995/96 broke my heart. I saw very young and immature people having more children than the number of meals they can have daily. Even most of the adults have no clear scope of what types of life they were living. There is a lot of work to be done across the nations within Nigeria eventually. Education is a top priority now and in the future no matter what becomes of Nigeria or the regions enclosed within it.
My hope for Nigeria and the nations within it is that they will rise again and be on the path they were on the eve of October 1st 1960. The hope includes the rise of functional regional institutions that will usher or return good governance politically, economically and socially. Security of life and property through functional regional security is not the least of priority in a terrorist infected geographical space.
Nigerians are broken almost beyond repair and they need more than a miracle. Nothing short of a revolutionary ideology can save the day, nothing! It must be possible to wipe away corruption, nepotism, tribalism, looting and anything at all that stands in the way of the common happiness. There must be a way forward to build trust and comfort.
Happiness is all that matters in life. The excessive wealth piled up by Nigerian politicians is a reflection of their ill mental statuses, insensitivity to the plights of the deprived and an absolute lack of the understanding of the meaning and essence of life.
There must be a way to knock some senses into the politicians and public office holders that in a transient world, the senseless accumulation of wealth through direct stealing or looting is barbaric, meaningless and inconsistent with expectations of public services directed at humanity. If it takes a revolution of ideology or the over anticipated Saharan revolution, so be it. Silence on the part of a people being oppressed and misruled is not golden.
“Postcards from Denmark” is dedicated to:
1. A friend, Gbenga Akinbisehin (1973- July 16 2014). I heard about your death as a checked in at Malmö, you left too soon, too sudden. You’ll be missed.
2. Every non-corrupt Nigerian working genuinely hard everyday and never having the right to holidays. Your freedom will come.
aderounmu@gmail.com
A View From The Scandinavian 