Dear Nigerian Parent(s),
I know how painstaking reading this piece might be to you due to your busy schedules of achieving the day’s targets. Still, I hope you will find time to skim through this note. Of course, your daily routines have always been to fulfil your parental obligations. You are accustomed to toiling days and nights in search of the oblique prosperity for your children, just as your parents did. Even though the Nation failed your parents’ quest for securing brighter future for you and your siblings, you have remained resolute, as 21st Century parents, to bless your children with the future you never had. Obviously, you have kept behind you the troubling factors of being Nigerian, and living in a failed State. Despite the threatening woes of working for months unpaid by the government(s), unemployment, crippling economy, epileptic power supply, forbidden Health Care System, open-mouthed roads, among others, as being experienced in several States across the country; you have remained firm and unrelenting.
Sirs and Madame, I hope you haven’t forgotten your Childhood ‘dream profession’ so soon? If your response is in the affirmative, may I ask what that childhood ‘dream’ used to be? A successful: Pilot? Doctor? Nurse? Barrister? Astronaut? Professor? Engineer? Banker? It wouldn’t be far from the aforementioned. Then, have you been able to achieve those dreams? Now, your tongue is rolling! You need not ‘think’ in order to answer the obvious. Many of you would respond in negation. If so, why? Again, your response is not far fetched from the fact that it’s simply because you are a Nigerian who lives in Nigeria—where dreams are shattered! Majority of you have resigned your fate to being ordinary Teachers teaching in window-less classrooms, Bankers in bankrupt financial institutions, Professors without research grants, Doctors in drug-starved medical centers, hopeless Carpenters, Tailors, and unproductive Civil servants; and you call it jobs?
Beloved mothers and fathers, when would you stop being normal in the face of abnormalities? Your parents were born by ordinary people, gave birth to ordinary children, which is you, and now, you’re training your children to be ordinary and continue the cycle? No! No!! No!!! Something must be wrong somewhere! After your parents failed to fight for your rights and secure bright future for you, wouldn’t you make an attempt in the ultimate spirit of defiance for the sake of your offsprings? Your regular Strike actions at work places are only signs of your weaknesses and docility. That, have proven to be fruitless exercises. For how long would you fold your arms, watching the deteriorating situation of our country go down the drain of total collapse? Behold, your silence, non-challance and resignation to fate is tantamount to being culprits to the crimes against humanity as being perpetuated by successive administrations in Nigeria!
Dear Mummy and Daddy, it is high time you stopped lying to your children that they are the future leaders. It is high time you told them the truth that Nigeria is not a great nation nor is she the giant of Africa. It is high time you informed your wards that the so-called heroes of Nigeria being taught about at schools today are only products of illusion blended with high dose of fiction. It is high time you stopped celebrating the birth of a child in this country because the child is a victim of victimization in a victimized country! Your children deserve to know the truth about their country. Let them know that Nigeria is a country where only the smartest, connected, corrupted, and luckiest succeed. Your children should be made to understand that they cannot become pilots, astronauts, or scientists in this country. Tell them to stop ‘dreaming’ of becoming successful Medical Practitioners. Tell your wards that they shall only become Charge and Bail Lawyers, as there’s no vacancy for them in the bench of the courts. The average Nigerian child deserves to know that being a criminal, tout and extremist are the easiest and highest employer of Youth Labour in Nigeria. The ordinary Nigerian child should be told the truth that they will not achieve their dreams because the ugly tripartite of religion, ethnicity, and tribe shall be their stumbling blocks. Let the average Nigerian child know that tomorrow died yesterday. They are not the leaders of tomorrow because their grandparents are not done recolonizing the country, then the generation of their parents are next in line to rule, before they (today’s children) would be given the chance to lead, say, in Fifty to Sixty years from now. That is the tradition!
The average Nigerian child deserves to know that there is no job anywhere awaiting them. Let them know that their academic qualifications would not determine their profession in this land of ours! Then, in all, tell the ordinary Nigerian child that the Nation has lost her soul, and that, we keenly await the generation to discover it. Save the child from the pains of learning all these realities through experiences. Save them the impending scar such experience would leave on them. The best gift a good parent would offer his/her offspring at this moment is to tell them the truth so they can be well prepared to face the harsh odds of the Nigerian tragedy! May the sun rise tomorrow…
_Comrade Muhammed Adoke_ writes from Abuja, Nigeria. Email: muhammedjamiuadoke@gmail.com
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