As Naija Clocks 50

Our Prayers/desires for our country, Nigeria....

Change...that Nigeria will experience the kind of transformational change that will be glaring 2 all that God has intervened. ...That God will sanitize our leadership system,... that we be no longer recognized as a corrupt nation, but as a nation that fears God....‘That Kidnapping & Insecurity will become things of the past, and that God's peace will reign supreme.

-          Odiba Igonoh.

I pray for a country that will wake up from its slumber. That provides smooth roads and a transportation system that encourages one to leave one’s car at home and lounge on a train to work instead of the stressful practices we endure every day.

-          Oyinkansola Suulola.

"I pray that fresh, visionary leaders would be raised among us; we need new wine in new wine skin”.

-          Sochi Azuh

That corruption be eradicated and the coming election would produce God fearing leader.

-          Kehinde Olanrewaju

I congratulate Nigeria on her 50^th independence anniversary. However, as I reflect on the nation’s natural endowments, it occurs to me that we should be years further ahead than we are today.

I wish the people of this country would adopt a different attitude as the sort of changes we desire in this country will only occur if we first change our attitude as a people.

I wish for a revolution in the Nigerian Police Force so they can ensure security of life and property; the reason for their existence.

I wish for a sound educational system which will serve as a pivot for the revolution of all other sectors of our system.

-          Bright Idemudia

And she clocks 50……………………

(Random Musings for Niger-Area )

Mary Slessor Christened, Lord Luggard Amalgamated…

She’s a beauty.  A beauty in the Sahara…..

Alluring vegetation, Undulating plateaus, the delta, confluence, olumo and more...

Even though she get wahala,

Plenteous katakata in summer and after,

Woe to the magas and saboteurs.......

Shame on those that brew wahala and make her children suffer

As I reminisce and ponder over her,….. (Politics, economy and all)

Nigeria; She stands tall and above all

With hope and advantage……

With grandeur and stamina……..

Pray; Good people- Tell her to wake.....

Thou sleeping giant….

Nigeria!

-          Femi Oni

Nigeria is Fifty! Fifty years is a long time to survive and the attainment calls for celebration. We should close streets and even whole states in celebration. We should take holidays from our jobs and spend a week relaxing, saying to one another “’Job well done!” But Nigeria IS fifty so maybe we shouldn’t. 

It’s been fifty years of roaming the wilderness unable to locate the footpaths to the Promised Land. It didn’t even take the Children of Israel that long. Fifty years of roaming blind in the dark (thanks to NEPA/PHCN). Fifty years of Ibo not being able to say “brother” to Hausa without flinching. Fifty years of begging the Western World “anything…anything at all to keep body and soul together”. 

If we were 5 years, it would have been pardonable, we would have said “omode lo-un se” (it’s an exhibition of youthful exuberance). But we’re not toddlers, not in our teenage or even young adults. Nigeria is like a full grown man whose hair is starting to go grey while his thumb is still stuck in his mouth with an adult diaper insecurely wrapper around his paunch.

No, we shouldn't block streets in celebration or even take the day off work ‘cos Fifty years after breaking free from our colonial masters, we should be anywhere but here, in this place of confusion, victimized by our own, starved in the midst of plenty. We should be the envy of our neighbours; People the world over should be looking up at us, not looking down their noses at us.But we can't even stand up-right for the shackles that bind us hands-to-legs... our shackles of ignorance and misguidance.

We should be that country that decides to make its revenue from oil this year, cocoa next year, and groundnut the year after. Our greed has however robbed us of that privilege and now …like children on the welfare line, we queue in wait for what oil can bring.

People say that we are a sleeping nation, but I fear our situation might be even worse. I fear insanity... Shh! ... the kind that seizes a rich man and causes him to roam the streets in rags and engage in acts that would embarrass him were his wits intact.

And so I pray! I pray that something would happen to knock the sense back into us or the scales off our eyes so we can see the squalor we’re living in and be appalled into taking actions.

As for our vampire-like leaders, who keep us chained like prey for their feeding pleasure, I pray that God would break the chains of our bondage and set us free, free to grow and blossom. Free to be the nation that by all standards and indications we can be. 'That light will shine down on our nation and send the vampires scurrying into the holes where they belong paving the way for full blooded humans; whose hearts beat with life and human passions like love and empathy, can step up to the round table.

I pray that our educational sector would take a turn for the better. So that we can set off to school with our heads held high; children of the rich and poor alike. And so on the return journey, we would be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with our peers the world over and say we have been educated.

I pray that every man who has an ache in his heart to serve will find a system that avails itself to his course, not a people who block his path and call him “Fool”. 

I pray that we would become a country for real, not this people that we are, who seem to have inadvertently found themselves thrown together in confusion with no love lost.

                                                                      -          Nora Gbagi