Why is Nigeria so desperate to punish me for every breath of fresh air that I dare to take? It doesn’t matter if I am on the bus of a funky old Volkswagen or in my home, trying to decipher why the electricity bill for my studio apartment is higher than the minimum wage? It is something I think we do not talk about enough.
These things should be as adamant as Abiku in our conversations, resurfacing with old scars and bearing familiar anklets and tears while we birth and try to kill them with distractions. I do think we talk about fleeting sentiments long enough than we talk about the daylight robberies happening before our eyes. I will evade the flames of the north, burning bodies and leaving dreams ablaze in deferment. There is an executioner in the ministry of education, massacring dreams and sharing depression as souvenir.
Perhaps you haven’t seen how much whispers travel in the exam halls? Or the jamb scores and the post utme remarks where university are designating new ambitions to old dreams? Or lecturers groping after skirts and reliving their youthful paranoia with the grades of the leaders of today.
The future is now and global telecommunication networks are robbing us of our priorities and sucking dry the veins of our allowance by asking us to plummet deep in distractions. The hypocrisy when it comes to etiquette on social media has filled us with a shallow vacuum that no number of roses and selfies in toilets will fill. And even when we do not talk about these things, when are we going to be brave enough to finally speak on the things that matters, the defilement of our privilege that forces us into surrendering our wills daily.
To survive in Nigeria, one has to go outside and there are so many things that kill in Nigeria. The good thing is they kill you slowly that you do not realize how much you are dying inside. What anger fills up my thoughts when I have to enter a bus and watch old sweaty men with responsibilities pay every thug before passing every bus top in Lagos.
At every check point, thugs could wear police uniforms and extorts until their belly fills and move on to the next. We are not gullible in Nigeria but I must admit we share a fear in common. The badge has proven to be more endearing than the bullet. I see these men, try and fail to offer defiance against these taxes. What choices do they have? It is not every day that thugs bang at the croaky hungers of you bus and threaten to beat up your wife and children if you do not allocate your share of your profits to them? Taxes or daylight robbery? Bandits are taking their shares in the north with guns and thugs with badges are enjoying similar rights here in the west.
Nigeria treats me the same way a noble man would treat a bastard.
I am only recognized as a Nigerian when I am not in the country. In my own country, I do not think that I matter. I don’t know if the churches I have attended think I matter? But I know how they look at me precariously when I throw in slim wads of note in the transparent offering boxes and I see how they sing praises of men who surrender briefcase of money to the men of gods. I do not know if the bank understands how much pain I am in when they deduct invisible charges from me when I am sitting at home, hoping that my empty pot would grow grains for me to eat.
Perhaps if universities were not so desperate to subjugate students to depression? Perhaps if my grades were not a mirror of my lecturer’s egocentric bluffs? Perhaps if I did not have to pay higher than the minimum wage to enjoy good water so I would not surrender my veins to the taunts of snakes and dragons? How come when my cousin steals, he is burnt? And when richer men steal, they can faint in courts?
Why is Nigeria so desperate to punish me for every breath of fresh air that I dare to take?
cc. excerpt from the collection of essays ‘I am not angry; I am just a Nigerian’.
Written by Festus Obehi Destiny