This essay is a sequel to the piece that I wrote yesterday on if you want to be liked by people you should not blame them even when they are wrong.
Fifteen years ago (2006), I began writing on Nigerian issues. I wrote essays saying that given what I see as Nigerians, their refusal to acknowledge the sins of their fathers in selling their people into slavery, their lack of guilt consciousness and always blaming the white man for their past ills and in the present each tribe’s tendency to blame other tribes for the fallen house that is Nigeria, and the incredible level of corruption in what I called corruption haven, also the thieves empire, I predicted that soon Nigeria would be ungovernable, with kidnappers and bandits running around and kidnapping people and holding them hostage until ransom money was paid to them.
I observed that the tendency to emphasize free enterprise and have each person take care of his self and or his children, ignoring other people’s children would lead to many children growing up and feeling left behind, abandoned and that they would be angry at the people who did not help them when they were young and would turn to criminality, which includes killing the children of those who did not help them.
(In an ideal society capitalism is practiced but is moderated by aspects of socialism, such as providing all children with publicly paid education through university and technical schools and having a single payer health insurance for all people.)
I said that folks would be kidnapped and killed or used to extract money from those who have money. I saw mayhem coming. I predicted that Nigeria would be worse than Somalia and South Sudan.
When I wrote all these things, folks felt that I was exaggerating and saying negative stuff about them; they would rather I said positive stuff about them, but I saw what was coming to them.
I saw their self-centered and opportunistic lifestyle and knew that that would produce an anarchic and chaotic world where, in Thomas Hobbes language, people lived in general insecurity and life is nasty, brutish and short.
Now what is Nigeria? Over 50% of Nigerians are unemployed. People in Nigeria today can hardly secure one healthy meal a day and their lives are lived in total insecurity. Kidnapping and killings are everywhere. People are living in hell on earth (while praying to God to help them instead of doing something to help themselves).
What we currently see in Nigeria is the tip of the icebag; a lot worse is coming. In ten years, Nigeria would be like the deepest part of Dante’s hell (Inferno). This is because I have never seen a breed of human beings who do not care for each other’s welfare but live to masquerade around as especially important persons, seeking each other’s applause but not helping those whose praise they seek, as Nigerians.
There will be total breakdown of law and order in Nigeria and then the mutual killings by the many tribes start. People will leave the country, sloshing all over West Africa as refugees.
I saw all these coming and instead of paying attention I was called hideous names for speaking the truth.
Now, I get it, prophets are always crucified by those they want to help. Thus, these days, insightful folks ignore Nigerians and Africans and let them take the consequences of their lack of empathetic and loving lifestyles.
The over one thousand years they existed to sell their people into slavery, to Arabs and to Europeans, have warped their values and sense of social justice and fairness.
Nigerians mostly know only how to insult each other but not help each other, they derive sadistic pleasure from degrading each other.
Some of us can see what is coming to people and articulate it and are ignored and what we said eventually happens.
Daily, Nigerians commit horrendous atrocities to each other and yet want you to see them as victims; condescending and patronizing Western Liberals conspire with them and buy their victimhood presentation.
No, Nigerians are not victims; they are victimizers of their people; folks who sold their people and as we speak steal their people’s moneys and do not care for their people are not victims but victimizers.
Nigerians should not be pitied but corrected; they should be shown how to love and care for one another.
Practicing political correctness that sees Nigerian criminal rulers as victims will not help them; what would help them is becoming draconian, using whips to whip these criminals into shape, into doing the right things.
Perform this little experiment; target a Nigerian that you know and ask him to do something for you; he would demand money from you; taking bribes is now second nature to these people; they are mercenaries and untrustworthy folks.
Nigerians must be taught to serve their people’s needs. Steal and you are arrested and punished; steal and you are sent to long term prison, not prisons where the public feed you, but to the Sahara Desert and you are used to plant trees, and water those trees, and turn the sand dunes to flourishing forested lands, as the place used to be.
The good news is that the prophets of God, people of goodwill who see where hard-hearted human behaviors lead society, will never shut up despite been attacked by the evil souls that rule this world; they will keep on telling people to do the right things.
In some form or another, I will keep reminding people that Jesus was right in asking people to love God, love themselves and love each other and to do to each other as they want to be done to, which is to love each other.
The basic truth of our lives is love, so love one another and you have peace on earth, but ignore each other’s needs and you sow seeds of thorns and thorns must be the crown you wear.
Despite their pathetic, help me look, Nigerians are the contemporary world’s most heartless and evil people; our job is to teach them to love one another and exist to serve one another’s interests, not just the interests of their false, bloated egos.
Postscript:
In yesterday’s essay, I alluded to the osu phenomenon in Alaigbo. Osu is currently used as designation for a class of people that folks commonly call ex-slaves. The term osu, however, is also used for other purposes in Igbo land. Osu probably was not the term for slaves, for how could a word employed as the ultimate praise for people be also used to categorize slaves. Osu means total dedication to what one is doing. In the old some children were dedicated to the gods and served the gods as the Jews dedicated Samuel to serve their God. Such children were called Osuji or Osuchukwu etc. In this context osu means dedicated to serving God. In other contexts, osu is also employed, such as calling the war leader osuagha. The Igbos have another word for servants, ohu. It was probably because slaves to be took refuge in the compounds of high priests and many of the high priests had osu as prefix in their names that the term osu became a category for so-called slaves. My perspective here is speculative; in a world of not knowing, speculations are allowed. And do not go telling me about Igbo culture for I know more about Igbos than the average Igbo person, and as a born Igbo priest, I know more about Igbo religion than most Igbos.
