THE NIGERIAN DREAM DESTROYED: LOOK IN THE MIRROR!
Written by Olumide Iluyomade



There was a dream in every young Nigerian heart – it was that positive force and pleasant expectation that motivated every individual. It was a dream about our fatherland, Nigeria, and all the wonderful things it would become for each person. As the years have passed, we have grown older but our search for the manifestation of this dream has not been allowed to die – the candle has been kept burning at all cost! So after so many years, after one might have studied hard, toured the world and laboured hard, one is finally ready. You are now ready to start building and living up your dreams. You go back home with a heart full of hope, aspiration and plans. But alas! ….the reality of the dream is not to be – like a mist, like vapour, it has simply disappeared! Your wickedly deflated hopes leave you a massive void and gaping hole filled only with an exasperated and hollow feeling.

Indeed the Nigeria of your dreams is long dead and buried! ….and it is almost useless to cry over that now! The nation you carried about in your heart is not the nation you found yourself back in. The nation you are confronted with now is a completely hostile stranger! Whatever little flicker of light and hope remained for you in the room has been doused with a gleefully applied, thick cloak of national decadence! The national cancer (corruption) has metastasized fully and the whole body is now consumed! The cycle of depravity is complete and there is now no respite to be found anywhere! Corrupt and abnormal practices are rife everywhere! Unbecoming conducts and depravity have been normalized and instituted in the culture and hence values are completely compromised!

The delicate fabric that holds the society together has been utterly ripped apart! Starting from ubiquitous religious institutions to under-funded schools, from Spartan classrooms to the over-crowded lecture theatres, from government establishments to businesses organizations, from idle factories to redundant offices, in private enterprise and in public institutions – It doesn’t matter, wherever you look, depravity stares you in the face! Whether you are dealing with government services or with private business, depravity will rear its ugly head and you will have demanded from you illicit settlement or bribe! In Nigeria, the word illicit is barely understood. Bribe and extortion are not optional, they are absolutely mandatory – it is a way of life! You are absolutely held to ransom if you are slow to respond favourably to their demands! You are insulted, mocked and ridiculed if you offer too little. If you refuse to play ball and ignore the demands, then they step it up with thinly veiled threats of sabotage and indefinite delay!

If you choose to stay put in Nigeria, then you are confronted with the dilemma of employment and the challenge of self-actualization in a hostile environment. If you are young, broke and unconnected then you are doomed to spend many productive years languishing in abject poverty, unemployment and misery – your education notwithstanding! If by some stroke of luck you do eventually find yourself some form of gainful employment, then you will soon realize and learn the unfortunate truth which so many before you have learnt – your salary will take you nowhere! The prevalent hyper-inflationary trend in Nigeria which the government has consistently induced and engendered with a long list of myopic, constipated and self-defeating policies, to say little of the acute and ubiquitous acts of corruption and ineptitude, will quickly ensure that what little money you earn is quickly rendered impotent in the face of untenably high prices! As it was with those before you, it will not be long before you go seeking illicit means of boosting your income so as to keep up with the Joneses. From that point on, decadence becomes heralded as a way of life and the downward spiral to the dark bowels of absolute depravity is but a short way off.

In the last two decades, Nigeria has distinguished herself, gradually and systematically becoming a haven for the criminal minded! It has become a nation that engenders, incubates and harbours abominable acts of corruption – a breeding ground for the worst kinds of criminals! For many, the only way to get ahead and make headway, the only option given for survival has been to engage in prevalent criminal activities. In Nigeria, criminals abound – in the government, in private enterprise, in civil service, in the judicial system, in the police, even in the churches and mosques! Criminal public officials do not even consider running away with their loot, after their illicit affairs have been exposed. Much rather, they become role models and heroes in the midst of the people – very much honoured, applauded and admired by an aspiring and money worshipping populace! Unfortunately, impressionable youngsters see this and aspire to the same standards! The message is simple; in Nigeria, criminality pays! Hence the society has become criminalized.

A man is called to serve his nation as a minister or a commissioner and within a few years he owns multi-million dollar Hotels, several palatial homes and a string of companies without a single explanation as to the source of his wealth! What do the elders and the people do? He is made a high chief in his hometown and an elder in his local church. He is exalted to chairman of this occasion and honorary guest speaker in that occasion. He even has an army of publicists and apologists, obsequious boot-lickers who have sold their soul to the devil in exchange for a morsel of bread, attending to his over-bloated ego and trying to convince those of us that are still sane that the ‘thief’ is a God sent messiah! It is a sad truth that in a country where there is no law, there could be no justice. Where there is no justice, there is no retribution. Where there is no retribution for wrong-doing then there is no conscience. Finally, where there is no conscience, there is no shame!

Not surprisingly, the corrosive and toxic social environment which we have evolved does nothing to nurture the young and does everything to destroy their potentials, dreams and aspiration. Young men who have never been privileged, neither having experienced the value of integrity nor having ever witnessed any honourable conduct in their society, are now expected to make a living through honourable means! Frustrated and without hope, they turn to the only alternatives they have – either a life of crime and heedless opportunism or a life outside the borders of their fatherland. Young ladies are not spared the harsh realities of our social failings either, as they are preyed upon and mercilessly exploited by older men. Short of being protected and shielded by her family’s wealth or influence, it is not often that a young woman accomplishes or gets anything done in Nigeria without being sexually exploited and harassed. The so called Nigerian ‘big men’ consider it an absolute right to sleep with any lady who comes under the influence of their office. And without any doubt, by the following morning, the same men are all too willing to occupy the front pew in church or mosque with white overflowing Agbada in pious displays and sanctimonious self assertion! Such is the perversion and depravity in Nigeria that even government operations make budgetary provisions and active monetary allocations for the sexual exploitation of desperate young ladies in entertaining state guests, officials and VIPs!

In Nigeria, to accomplish what could be considered a decent and reasonable quality of life, one would have to do extra-ordinary things! For a family to have access to basic necessities of life – things which are often overlooked and considered normal in other societies, the bread winner must become more than an individual – he or she must become the equivalent of a local government! In addition to the well known social infrastructural deficiencies which families have been forced to deal with in the past, families must now provide their own water (as before), their own power supply (80% of the time), their own waste management, their own fuel supply storage, their own vigilante security, their own educational alternative, their own healthcare infrastructure, their own street road maintenance and even their own justice system! This obviously multiplies the cost of accomplishing even the most basic stuff in the nation. Like a friend once opined; “I dug my own borehole, purchased a back-up generator, paid for street vigilantes and a personal watchman. I even paid to grade the street road annually and contributed for the installation of the neighbourhoods’ transformer. Must I now own my own refinery just to get fuel?……”

As residents in Nigeria will attest, predation and victimization is never far off and consequently residents are always edgy and nerves are always frayed! They have to contend with the persistent pressure of avoiding being duped even in the most basic transactions. There is always the constant threat of fraud and financial misappropriation in business dealings. Both at home and at work, they have to deal with the ever present threat of a disgruntled employee or domestic staff who might possibly act as a Trojan horse! When they are not bothered about employees, they are watching out for the threat of armed robbers. When it is not armed robbers at home, it is armed robbers on the highway! At night citizens barricade themselves in with a plethora of anti-burglary devices and barbed wire high wall fences making the prospect of escape for the resident, even in the event of a fire outbreak, a precarious one. Of recent the nation’s criminals have upped the ante – they now kidnap any well-fed individual and demand huge ransoms for their release! Oh, there are also the issues of extra-judicial killings, ritual killings and religious killings to contend with, …..but that is old news, I guess. What about the police?? Well, ….the police will be all too willing to take from you whatever the criminals haven’t yet taken!

May God have mercy on you should your health deteriorates in any manner. Should you or a member of your family ever require emergency medical attention in Nigeria, your chances of survival is at best, a 50-50 shot! Currently, Nigeria’s health infrastructure is so squalid, so neglected and dilapidated, that a simple fever or a tepid infection may very well just kill you! Relatively healthy people walk into hospitals with minor complaints and end up coming back in a casket! Whatever damage the health complaint has not yet done would be quickly piled upon by the inept, ill-trained, ill-equipped, nonchalant hospital staff. Who knows how many deaths could have been prevented, how many people need not have been sacrificed? In one of the nation’s premier hospitals, each patient’s family members are asked to fetch water daily to help sustain the patient’s water needs! News of dysfunctional and dilapidated teaching hospitals which have no access to clean water and limited power supply is rampant. The scale and extent of the squalid decay and dysfunction in Nigeria’s health sector beggars belief!

Travelling within the borders of Nigeria is in a class all by itself. It is arguably a riskier venture than travelling to the deepest parts of the ocean! If you decide to go by road then you run a very high risk of losing an arm, a limb or perhaps even your life. The roads are hideously bad and road accidents are rampant with hospital facilities being nowhere near capable of handling accident traumas. If you do drive carefully and are lucky enough to avoid road accidents then you may want to increase your vigilance so as to avoid running into a road block set up by emboldened and dangerously armed highway bandits! Not only do the highway bandits despoil you of your precious assets and belongings, they might just take a liking to your wife! Or worse still, they could simply dislike your face and decide that your life is not worth a penny thereby taking it!

If you are among those lucky enough to be able to afford Air travel, then I need not tell you about the palpable and pervasive fear that is experienced by flyers every time an aircraft takes to the sky or touches the tarmac in Nigeria. The slightest rain or weather change can be the cause of devastating plane crashes or accidents as most airports do not have functional instrument landing systems (ILS) and navigation radar systems that are mandatory for safe, all weather navigation and efficient operation. It does not help matters that years of mindless federal government’s policies has helped ensure the destruction of any form of profitability in the aviation industry thus causing airlines to cut corners. This is not to absolve airline operators (who themselves are shylocks) of any fault, as they would often prey on the Nigerian government’s ineptitude and corruption to commit egregious acts of negligence and fleece the system to the utter detriment of the people! In our usual fashion, candid efforts at improvements and reforms are ignored until disaster strikes and hundreds die. The government then puts on an ostentatious show of diligence, resolution and measured indignation. After idle speculations, rumours and blames may have made their rounds, a few licenses are then suspended, spurious investigations whose outcome is never publicly released are conducted and then it is back to business as usual!

Should you be travelling back to Nigeria after a trip abroad then upon the final approach to the derelict Murtala Mohammed Airport, you are suddenly made aware of the fact that you are entering into a lawless nation space! The chaos starts with the very same passengers with whom you have just shared a plane for several hours! You will witness the magical transformation and transfiguration of several fellow Nigerians, who seemingly up till this moment have been the picture of decency and model citizens, as they revert back to their ‘Nigerian’ forms. This phenomenon is still largely unexplained! Suddenly there is a widespread, irresistible urge to be the first one out of the plane, as Nigerian passengers climb over fellow passengers while cursing out at anyone who dares express displeasure or disapproves of their actions. As the plane decelerates on the runway, overloaded hand-luggages are recklessly pulled from the luggage racks atop slower moving passengers. Aisles are quickly jammed packed with ‘demon-possessed’ citizens who ignore the calming call of exasperated airline crew members! Everyone is suddenly VIP! “Do you know who I am?”, you will hear as two jostle for pole position on the custom’s queue followed by another counter threat; “I will deal with you in this country”. It is mayhem all over the airport. It is Nigerians being Nigerians.

As one steps off the plane and into the nation’s premier airport, should you still be basking in the relaxed and pleasant euphoria of foreign travel experience, you are quickly brought down to earth! One is greeted with the unsightly image of a poorly maintained, unkempt and dishevelled airport. Broken equipments and ripped chairs litter the arrival sections while dysfunctional toilet facilities do not make it any easier to ease the tension. Money grabbing, sleazy looking officials are positioned all over the place like predators sizing up the quality of the newly arrived ‘preys’! There is even an airport official in the restroom who is apparently charged with the ‘great’ responsibility of doling out exact measurements of toilet paper to hard pressed passengers – a service for which a handsome tip is often demanded! Retrieving your luggages from the luggage carousel may or may not be a nightmare depending on how much prayer you have done before travelling. On lucky days the carousel works, on other days there are either mechanical problems or power related failures to contend with.

Passing through the customs and security barricades is an experience that can only be matched by a war zone! The incessant demand and solicitation for monetary compensation is at the very least draining! You are subjected to both friendly and hostile demands while other officials engage in time wasting antics so as to force your hand. The attending customs officials insensitively paw through your personal effects as others gaze on in amusement and in eager anticipation of a handout. A careful inspection of your luggage may even reveal a gash or slash perpetrated by the baggage handling crew in a bid to retrieve valuable items from your bag! When you do ultimately come out of the Airport, unless you have made prior arrangements to be met and picked up, you are stormed by a mob of desperate hustlers – car hire, taxi drivers, baggage push-cart attendants, foreign exchange traders, pickpockets, airport touts and even unsolicited offers of security escort! This is but a snippet of what is to come. It can only be imagined how shocking and traumatic this would be for a first time visitor!

God help you if you have the burial of a loved one in Nigeria, then everyone sees you as a cash cow and a resource to be mercilessly exploited! You first have to deal with the bogus inflation and associated costs handed to you by ‘trusted’ family members, then you go out to experience hell! It starts with the clergy or Imams, then the mortician and mortuary, then the hearse company who won’t pay their pall bearers, which means the pall bearers may go on strike and demand ‘settlement’ from you before the casket is carried, right in the middle of the ceremony!! The choir and organist will accordingly separate their demands from the clergy! You will ‘settle’ the guy who allocates space in the cemetery and then deal separately with the grave-diggers and night-guard!

On the other side of things, you will have to deal with and perhaps accept the unreasonably high cost of caskets and hearse service. You will either deal with targeted exploitation of the caterer or deal with the deceit of family organizers. You will have to contain the demands of extended family members who want traditions to be fulfilled and ‘Aso-ebi’ to be procured. There is also the cow issue; the contracted butcher decides that outside of his agreed remuneration, he is ‘entitled’ to 20% of your meat! Crates of drinks and especially alcohol slated for the entertainment of guests arbitrarily walk away! There are other sundry and worrisome issues consistently threatening to sabotage the successful hosting of the occasion – renting the hall for one, costs more than the entire cost of burial in many countries!

In the past you will ‘settle’ NEPA to prevent the occurrence of power failure, now you simply rent a generator and bribe the gas station attendant for fuel supply! And while the ceremony is going on, there is the constant deluge of unsolicited demands and requests for money! All kinds of strangers look in your face and lick their lips in anticipation, as if your face had a mint press! Money here, money there! Money, ….money, and more money! it is the only language that is spoken in the nation! By this time you have burned a hole in your pocket and your eyes a blood-shot! You will be hard pressed to remember any tender moment, ….a moment of condolence or sympathy from those who you have come in contact with! It is hard to have any memory of endearment. It is a jungle out there…., a dog eat dog environment!

Alas, when all is said and done, we all come to Facebook and point a finger at the government! Yes, there is absolutely no doubt that the government is largely culpable. But was it the government alone? Was it the government that created all of the horrific situations and the corrosive environment described above? Makes one wonder who constitutes the ‘government’. Are the civil servants not in our midst? Is the government not constituted from the people and the people recruited to form the government? Every Nigerian contributes and carries a fair degree of the problem! – it is the market woman, the butcher, the businessman, the civil servant, the clergy, the politician, the professional, the mechanic, the educated, the uneducated, the old and the young. It is every one of us! Together we have created the hell called Nigeria!

The fact remains that in Nigeria, we worship money and material wealth – it is not just done but also done excessively and unashamedly! It has gotten to the point where we have actually managed to deceive ourselves into thinking that there is no difference between worshiping money and worshiping God! Hence money has become our god and our moral compass has been lost in the process! As one steps outside the border of Nigeria, weighty layers of stress and high-wired tension begins to peel away and fall off! There is no need to go far away – go to nearby Cotonou or Banjul, learn and experience simplicity and peace! It is no wonder there are now an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 Nigerians living in Ghana now, but because we carry our ‘disease’ with us, Ghanaians are now complaining!

The insidious and caustic effect of our evolved culture and our self-defined environment is now dripping with moral decadence, depravity, gluttony and Godless hedonism which has become like a noose around our neck! In due season the stool and support upon which the nation is precariously balanced shall be pulled from under our feet! The next time you are confronted with any obsequious, praise-singing government sycophant, think about the dreams you had about Nigeria in your youth and in your younger days and then think about where we are now, as a nation! How is it that our fatherland has become the hell that it is? As much as the government is guilty, are we the people not equally guilty? As is often said, a nation is only as strong as its weakest link. A government cannot exist in a vacuum – it is an arrangement that requires both leadership and followership. A government may indeed be forced on a people, but ultimately the people determine the character of their government. It must be understood that the circumstance that fosters and engenders a continuous string of persistently depraved leaders in any nation, can only emanate from the putrid bowels of dreadful followers and a deficient populace!

Yes,……. there was a dream called Nigeria in almost every heart and, ……it got derailed, it got abused, it got consumed, it was destroyed and got aborted long before it could be birthed! Indeed the geographical expression called Nigeria has never changed, has never stopped giving. No, ….not once! Her blessings and copious riches simply got abused, mismanaged and debauched by the very people to whom it was intended as a blessing! We should remember that Nigeria did not fail us, much rather we failed Nigeria! It would not be far-fetched to say that the only natural disasters to be found in Nigeria are the people! And peradventure, should you be out, looking for a possible solution to the multitude of problems in the nation, as I have been – look no further! All along, the problem with Nigeria has been staring us in the face – simply look in the mirror!

Interesting and self examining article. I expect that it would have been more popular if the author had written about Genevive or Tonto Dikeh? Naija people for you....

Midas02: Interesting and self examining article. I expect that it would have been more popular if the author had written about Genevive or Tonto Dikeh? Naija people for you....

Did he say "look into the mirror"?

He must be addressing those in position of power destroying this nation. And the implication is that he may only have written all this for less than 1% of Nigerians.

So @Midas02: it is not popular because he is only talking to the few in government - Abi you expect many Nigerians who are not sure of next week/month to look into the mirror? And see what?

@Egift, .....your statement suggests that you did not read the entire article or perhaps it was a simple case of you failing to assimilate its import. I will suggest that you at least read the last 4 paragraphs and then we might be on the same page. There is no doubt that those in power and those who are in positions of leadership are guilty and completely complicit in the destruction of the Nigerian dream, however there is more to it - the people have also failed in their duties as citizens and as informed constituents. They failed in their duties to the nation, to their fellow citizens and above all to themselves and their children. How else do you explain the 'caustic' environment which we have engendered in Nigeria - Is it leadership that does many of the things used as examples above or is it because the people have lost their moral turpitude? Is it the government in the churches and Mosques too? Is it the government in the private businesses that fleece the public? There are many questions and these are question we must answer on an individual basis. It is often easy to be in denial until one looks in the mirror....

Midas02: @Egift, .....your statement suggests that you did not read the entire article or perhaps it was a simple case of you failing to assimilate its import. I will suggest that you at least read the last 4 paragraphs and then we might be on the same page. There is no doubt that those in power and those who are in positions of leadership are guilty and completely complicit in the destruction of the Nigerian dream, however there is more to it - the people have also failed in their duties as citizens and as informed constituents. They failed in their duties to the nation, to their fellow citizens and above all to themselves and their children. How else do you explain the 'caustic' environment which we have engendered in Nigeria - Is it leadership that does many of the things used as examples above or is it because the people have lost their moral turpitude? Is it the government in the churches and Mosques too? Is it the government in the private businesses that fleece the public? There are many questions and these are question we must answer on an individual basis. It is often easy to be in denial until one looks in the mirror....

Actually we have few things we can agree on:
1. The responsibility to restore the drowning Nigerian Dream lies squarely on our leaders at various positions.
2. Ones in 4yrs when the people have the opportunity to elect the leaders, they should look at the candidates properly.

I therefore believe that all criticisms and advice will mainly have to laid on the leaders, because our current system (the failed Nigerian Dream) have been restructured and arm-twisted to keep favouring these few Nigerians in power (even when it comes to the time for the masses to choose their leaders).