“The bitter truth is that ‘Black professionals’ are not out there looking for solutions to the African problems facing Africans. They’re simply hustling to make enough money so those problems no longer apply to them.”- SEM. 1st November 2021, Nigeria was on the global news again for the bad reasons. It was a black Monday, the beginning of the week and a new Month. For me, it was yet another time for deep reflection. A time for soul searching, a time for honest appraisal and introspection.
By noon, Monday, November 1, one of the three towers in 360 Degrees otherwise known as Luxury in the Sky , was reduced to mere rubble, burying in its bowels hapless lives and shattering the dreams of many wealthy Nigerians who had broken the banks to acquire the apartments. Gone with the building also are millions of dollars already paid by those desirous of premium luxury living in the project, which offered a mix of 3-bed and 4-bed apartments including maisonettes and penthouses.
360 Degrees Towers is a 63 apartments-unit residential project by Fourscore Heights Limited owned by Femi Osibona, a real estate investor with a large portfolio of luxury properties across Nigeria, South Africa, the U.A.E, UK, and the U.S.A.
Allegedly, Osibona, popularly known as Femi Fourscore, was said to be in the building at the time of the collapse. Whether dead or alive, his body has yet to be recovered.
The sad reality of our beloved country Nigeria; compromise has birthed personal aggrandizement and quick fix, materialism invokes unpleasant and a perpetually backward society. I am not unaware that, I represent the reflection NIgerians hate to see when they look in the mirror. My consolation is that, one day, if not now, maybe some day in the near future, the reality of the cognitive dissonance to the Mind Restructuring advocacy will done on us as a people.
Let’s Change Our Minds:
Nigerians are indisciplined.
That’s a given.
Its not out of place to call out a societal wrong with an unfeigned intent to fix it. It’s not self hate, it’s an exhortation for us to do better. To rethink our abysmal disposition and chart a higher course.
I don’t know some are having a meltdown over it.
I’ll, to your exasperation, even widen my circle of dissection; Africans are indisciplined.
That’s Africans, anywhere on the planet. From African-Americans, to Africans in the Americas – Haitians, Dominicans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians etc. – to Africans on the African soil, Sub-Saharan Africans, Nigerians being are large wodge in the shameful mix.
All indisciplined.
I’ll take out Rwandans. Except for Rwandans, in recent years, who have shown earnest ‘Ubuntu’ for societal change. The rest are just laggers.
You don’t need to look very far to discern what I am stating here, just look at the dilapidation and underdevelopment in their individual societies. African Americans are, perhaps, the worst off. So much retrogression living in the wealthiest nation on earth.
Before we begin to enact statutes to rework our wonky systems from the ground up, we need to rework the mentality of the average African.
Every great nation you know of today, did just that. The Japanese did it under Emperor Meiji Tennō, (Mutsuhito) in the late 1800s. The Chinese did same under Comrade Mao Tse Tung in the 1950s through the 1970s.
It’s not a curse nor an insult. Real developments, no matter the infrastructural upgrades, will only happen with a change of minds. Mind Restructuring.
Nigerians/Africans are indiscipline. Are we redeemable? YES!
