Even rats know to jump out of a sinking ship. This is because with everything coming apart at the seams to jump out, to do anything remotely proactive may just make the difference between life and death.
Every country that has become great, or aspires to be great, usually knows that greatness cannot be divorced from the contentment of citizens. So, for those countries where serious leadership is in place, and serious steps are taken to engender or sustain greatness, the contentment of the citizenry is not taken for granted. This is because all those who have successfully built great countries know that in carrying out what is almost a Sisyphean task, content citizens form a crucial ingredient. Because no one pair of hands can do it, to get citizens on board, they have to be made happy first of all.
In Nigeria however, the experience over many years has shown the reverse to be the case. There has been failure to make things work in the country and over the years, an accumulation of these failures has spun a situation of deep-seated hopelessness, helplessness, haplessness and frustration. The response has been a spectacular one.
A visceral response
To respond to grimness of the situation, every day, Nigerians sit and put plans in place to leave the country. These plans, at once elaborate and exquisite, do not fail to smack of desperation and even folly. The urge is mostly to leave and no more. Whether it is through the Libyan desert or blind journeys to European cities where they live under backbreaking conditions, the desire to live the country almost cannot be curtailed.
It is many Nigerians fleeing the country to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Many Nigerians deliberately ignore everything implied when it is said that the pastures are always greener on the other side to make the journey to leave Nigeria. Always, their hearts are buoyed by the dreams of places where things work as well as they should, of systems that click into place to make life just a bit easier.
Those who leave Nigeria respond to the chaos back home. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has successfully ground activities in Nigerian universities for more than six months now in what has now become an annual sparring contest with the federal government. While a government stuffed with people whose children enjoy the benefits of schooling in foreign institutions drags its feet as it can afford to, Nigerian undergraduate students continue to sulk at home.
In a country where many people are increasingly starved of primary healthcare, doctors and nurses continue to leave the country in droves to search for better opportunities for themselves and their families? Who can blame them? They don’t even feel too homesick afterall for when people in government are as irritated by as much as an itch, they seek treatment in foreign hospitals making for an improbable reunion.
At the heart of the desperation of many young people to leave the country is despair: at what Nigeria has become and what it is becoming at the hands of those who could not care less.
But the troubling reality remains that with other countries carefully planning their affairs, and in many cases curtailing the number of people who can enter their countries, Nigerians cannot all leave for the practical reasons that there would not be enough places elsewhere for the country`s 216 million citizens.
If this is the case, the task of fixing Nigeria has never been more urgent and it can no longer be left for those whose impaired vision does not go beyond the lines of their pockets.
Kene Obiezu,
Twittter: @kenobiezu
