WHEN I DECIDE TO DIE

It is not that life has become a hell or that the earth has shown traces of old age that makes the preacher shout every morning that the end is near, that the world will soon go into oblivion. Why he says so is what I have not found out but let that secret remain with him for now, because I am on a journey.

We all shouted in disbelief when the news hit the air waves that over two hundred girls have been kidnapped from government secondary school Chibok in Borno state, that was like a fairy tale, but more and more women and children have disappeared since then right under the nose of the military that was stationed there on a state of emergency and up to this moment, nothing has been done about locating the girls. Sorry, maybe something was done. The president did and is still doing something. According to some quarters, he paid millions of dollars to a public relations firm based in the United States to clear his image as a weakling in power and create a cover for him on his government’s inability to find the missing girls thereby giving him the legitimacy to run for a second term in 2015. 

That is not to put aside his earlier claim that his silence about the issues was for security reasons. That reminds me, what about the men from America who came on a rescue mission? Have they gone or are they equally keeping calm for security reasons? Fingers crossed.

Though it is the issue with the biggest publicity, but what about the kidnappings going on in different parts of the country, the high level corruption in different cadres of government and private institutions, they are more dangerous than the missing girls because they cost the country more than two hundred lives every day that is not to rule out the seriousness of the famous Chibok. After all, “Na only them waka come”

This is not to say that the President is the architect of Nigeria’s woes, he is just a part of it just like each and every one of us Nigerians home and abroad. 

When a people refuses to take responsibility for their actions, when a people in a country blames each other for a problem collectively created, when a people siphon a country and don’t give back, then they lay a foundation for anarchy, corruption and all sorts of atrocities which will one day grow and explode to consume both participants and non participants. That is the stage we have gotten to in Nigeria, could my end time preacher friend be right in his calculated preaching?

It is not right to say that there are holy countries, but when the inhabitants of a country refuses to help and develop the younger generation, then the end is near, when the government of a country and its institutions gives a blind eye to the sufferings of its people, then that may be signs of its end, when a country refuses to think right, I refuse to wonder where that leads.

On one of those soul searching discussions, my end time preacher friend who is a citizen of a country in the western part of the world told me “Joe, I am having a rethink about my end time preaching because of your advice, but I have to tell you the truth. I will be a Nigerian only when I decide to die” maybe he is right, maybe not. Your guess is my verdict.