The Nigerian Factor

You are sitting in your house minding your business, the Electricity providers, truck passes by, you are not worried, they back up and stop at your house gate and try to bully your poor gate man to open the gate. You have however given him specific instruction not to let THOSE PEOPLE in again. It’s war. So they call you, you go to meet them and the AEDC people try to intimidate you into opening the gate, for them to check what you don't know as there is no prepaid meter.  They promise to come back another day for more action if you don't show them your bill. Bill you have paid oh, so you relent and show them.

                                 

The next month they bring a new bill and somehow, with the same amount of light they give you, you have managed to use triple the amount of power you used the previous month.  That first wave of hopelessness is felt before the anger sets in, that's the Nigerian Factor.

The Nigerian Factor is that extra thing that is in every single Nigerian whether regular of public citizen, individual or organisation, ministry or house hold that makes us feel the need to make life all the more difficult for each other.

If you are in traffic and though you know that if every single person stays on their space the line will manage to move faster, but you decide that since the narrow walk way, specially designed for pedestrians is free you will drive there, thus making it more and more impossible for the line to move at all, that my friend is the Nigerian Factor at work.

If you feel that somehow you are better than everyone else who has decided to respect themselves and wait in line for petrol, that's your Nigerian Factor at work.

The Nigerian Factor is when you block your neighbours car park because you can't  just be bothered to park well or sweep your garbage into their  yard because you want yours clean.

If your job is to collect money from a Ministry to feed fellow Nigerians, either prisoners or school children and you decide that your own needs are better and thus more important than those of the entire nation, then that my friend is your Nigerian Factor at work.

The Nigerian Factor is when you hear that Nigeria supports small businesses but you go as a small business to register for a permit and they try to make you pay money in millions, where are you getting that kind of money from and who is the support for?

If you are a lecturer in a Nigerian university and you enter the class and inform your students that ‘A’ is for God, ‘B’ is for me and ‘C’ is for the very best, then not only are you a special kind of nasty creature, your Nigerian factor is ruling your life.

The Nigerian Factor has taken hold of everything. We are wallowing in the squalor of our own creation. You want your child to create a better Nigeria for you, but you won't even obey simple traffic light?

What will the child learn?

You want your child to work hard yet you are master misappropriation of funds, then you stand on podiums and tell other people how they should raise hard working Nigerians, how now?

Is your ability to chop a super power?

Election comes and the man you know stole and lied to you previously suddenly becomes a saint? What kind of mediocrity is that?

Overcoming the Nigerian factor, is only possible when everyone works to overcome how they add to the chaos and disorder. We need to be more considerate of people maybe when we speak, when we drive, when we do everything. We are too focused on how much we are getting out that no one is bothering to put in, and this is causing a deficit that is affecting all of us.

I don't think that holding our government accountable when  we don't personally stand for accountability in our homes or places of work or worship  is wrong.  We have to do it in our  personal lives so that our children learn it.The next generation is expected to do more, give more and be more, because they have been taught  not because we want excuses  to take the focus off our own responsibilities  in the matter.

We need to be better, not only as a nation but as individuals. The only way we can stop getting garbage out of our system is to stop putting garbage in. If we expect better then the only way out is to be better .

Here is to being better Nigerians  for Nigeria.