MY FRUSTRATIONS

So many are my frustrations with our beloved country Nigeria. They might not be different from yours because we are telling the same story from different points of view. Locked up in the web of identity crises and an ultimate search for where I truly belong, my heart and head are so separated by differences in desire as much as rage. My heart longs for my fatherland, where I was born and brought up, where the cheers in the neighbourhood bring an unknown joy, where the language I speak is part of me from origin, where the song I sang were those of my ancestors, where the dreams I dreamt were those of progress, where communal humanity enriches our collectivity and individuality, where I greet and acknowledge greetings from all. Disappointments is all that I see, as leadership fail and citizens praise corruption, admire arrogance and demonstrate resignation and weakness. Waisted are the labours of our heroes past, yet we can be heroes for the next generation.

Yet my head, that lone ranger is more at home with the West, where the basic comforts of life are assured, where the dignity of human person is sacrosanct, where the infrastructures appear to be wonderfully fixed by the arms of the creator, where the police protect the rich and the poor, where hunger exist in the media presentation of the Southern divide of the world, where the leadership is answerable to the people and where majority of the citizens have relatively comfortable jobs or conducive environment to do business. They are reaping the labours of their heroes past. My rage towards the West is by no means diminished by the above, the so called civilized West, where individualism threatens human relationship and constrains us to a mechanistic co-habitation, the West where colours determine acceptance and integration a paternal extension of the good will of the West.

My spirit succumbs in pain because laced with the milk of human kindness, with the brotherhood we share, we could achieve more. We can save ourselves embarrassment of race bias, of doing odd jobs with advanced educational background, of blaming immigration laws just by thinking home, yes, by looking at our frustrations from the actors perspective because those who hold our future hostage, who make it impossible to think that things can change for the better will sooner than later know, when my mindset and yours turn to those precious values which permeate and transform all social relations, that the end has come for the masqueraders.