What Manner of Fatherland is Nigeria?

By Msonter Anzaa

For some time, I have carried myself as a little patriotic mind, struggling hard to advance reasons why my love for this country should be unconditional. I am always put on the defensive each time my friends speak angrily against this nation. As our fatherland, the convention worldwide is to defend, not attack Nigeria.

The above is a nice argument and our people in government would no doubt agree with me. Our leaders most times interpret patriotism to mean the love of a nation and its leaders. But patriotism is the love of a nation and all other parties only to the extent to which they enhance that nation’s interests. So in practical terms, patriotism may also means opposition to leaders whose behavior jeopardizes the larger interests of the nation. People who speak against Nigeria site a number of reasons. But as usual, my argument is that a nation- the geographical entity alone cannot be good or bad by itself. People who live there- the leaders and followers- make it whatever it becomes.

There are moments when I take breaks from my defending side to attack. At those moments, I criticize our attitude towards the governance of our country. I also take a hard stand against our leaders whose failure to present a solidly aggressive leadership is responsible for our woes as a nation. Today however, I’m neither on the defensive nor the offensive. I have chosen instead, to objectively examine this fatherland. Michael Host believes that “east or west, home is the best.” Home, especially when it means Nigeria may not be the best to many. Anyway, the responsibility of making it better belongs to the people who own it. Yet social and political forces in a home shared by many may make it impossible for such a home to be the best for all people. We have those who look at home in Nigeria as the best and also those who think it is the worst.

But I have wandered off my point. It is non-negotiable that our commitment to Nigeria should be unconditional. Logic then demands that Nigeria’s commitment to its own people be unconditionally fair too. This is where I have strong reservations. For one, there is no level playing ground in this fatherland. Some people work like elephants and reap like ants. Cases of unfair treatment or even outright discrimination against some fellows abound. I restrict my examples to my little concerns. The government does not if the youths perish, or does it care? Yet it would want the few surviving ones to support the fatherland. Justice teaches this: if our commitment to Nigeria is unconditionally strong, it means we rise and fall together as a nation. Unfortunately, when we fall, every one including the insignificant poor, falls. But when the time to rise comes, only few privileged ones rise. The rest are forgotten.

This is my allegation. The National Youth Service Corps has increased its coverage so that participants can be drawn from other tertiary institutions. Fine. This time, every one will serve the fatherland. When time comes for employment, “merit” will assume another meaning which favors only the connected. The rest are left at the mercy of those who demand ten percent or even more. Thank God however that they were lucky enough to go to school. What of the million unlucky ones whose lives have been sentenced to unending admission seeking with hard labor? Not only that, their hard-earned money has become more valueless. By now the universities and the JAMB would have made their budgets, each estimating how much it would raise from applicants next year. Writing the UME has become a seasonal ritual to those candidates. They can never “qualify” for admission or any other good thing for that matter. The universities are quick to argue that they do not have the capacity to serve all the qualified kids out there. True. And even this year, the federal government has not committed UNESCO’s 26 percent of the annual budget to education.

If I understand the federal government’s re-branding project, it also means we must talk positive about Nigeria. It means though hungry, we must say we are over-fed. In other words, we must in the spirit of love which is blind, save this nation from shame. We must always protect and advance the interests of our fatherland. It is only the fatherland itself which should not be fair to us even when it can. What manner of fatherland is this? What manner of fatherland is this?