I never expected that a time would come when I would have to
explain why I am against the government that runs my country. This is because
since I got old enough to analyse and understand what governance is all about,
I have not found a Nigerian government that I can wholeheartedly say I am in
total support of.
Even as a child, I saw many of the people that purportedly
lead us for what they were—selfish men and women who are more concerned about
the size of their bank balance than the diminishing returns that has
characterised the country for years. From my first vote, cast in the 1999
presidential elections that brought in Olusegun Obasanjo, I have continuously
voted against PDP and its band of nation wreckers. In other words, I have
always been part of those that occupied the mindset that until we do away with
PDP and any politician that have had lengthy involvement with that party, the
nation will continue with the downward spiral.
I boldly stand this ground today, occupying and unwilling to
back down, because the history of this country and my experience as a patriotic
law abiding Nigerian is riff with examples of how insincere and roguishly
criminal people in government can be.
As a child, visiting my grandmother in the foot hills of
Obeagu, Awgu LGA, Enugu state, the songs of otanishi—a play of the word
austerity using an Igbo word that loosely translates as head-biting, or a sting
to the head, referencing the austerity measures introduced by the Shagari
administration—was one of the lasting memories I took away. The refrain of
“otanishi egbu’go anyi o, ka’anyi’changie shagari o, o ’iwe di anyi na obi,
iwe!—austerity has killed us, let’s change Shagari, anger is in our hearts,
anger” rings in my head to this day.
As a kid attending primary school in Kaduna during the heady
IBB days, I still recall the much-vaunted structural adjustment program (SAP)
and how it was supposed to only bite for a while, but the bite lasted longer than
was promised and continues to this day.
Even though still just a child in 1993, I still remember
with pride how my dad and his friends would argue endlessly about the merits of
an MKO presidency and how SAP will finally be laid to a well-deserved rest.
Well, what happened to that expectation is well documented and Nigerians continued
the speculations of my father and his friends to this day.
For decades, I heard promises of reform that never
materialised; promises of good life that still eludes us; promises of increased
opportunity that goes no further than the vile mouth that issues them; promises
of better education in the face of increasingly ridiculous and never actualised
education policies, and can’t help but snicker at the promise of a coming magic
year that constantly kept being officially moved forward as each one loomed.
While sitting on the floor, in primary school, listening to
a teacher chalk away at the ancient blackboard in Army Children School New Cantonment
“A”, I exactly believed that was how life was meant to be, that sitting on the
floor is normal and that that it is our lot. I thought so, even though the
Command Children School that shared the same compound, and which two of my
siblings—using my dad’s old army ID and resultant quota—were fortunate to
attend, had desks, better-dressed students who eat cake at break time and more
teachers. I thought so because I felt Command Children School and others like
it were for academically gifted children who needed more care than we do.
Anyway, even the Command Children Schools of those days were not too much
removed from us—aside from having more desks and those juicy cakes, yes I tasted
them for my now late brother used to sneak into our zinc and wood classroom to
share with me.
True we saw standard classrooms in the few movies we got to
watch and in Sesame Street, but that was another life, one of fantasy, one that
belonged to the TVs we escape to at 4pm. I also felt there was nothing wrong
with there being two sections of the same school, one for morning, and another
for afternoon. Yeah, Command Children
School had only one morning section, but that was ok, they are more brilliant
kids, they don’t need to go to school under the morning sun. Can’t remember
much what I learnt in primary school, other than the best way to play dead
during the game of police and thief. Mind you, I learnt to read and write from
my father, who also taught me elementary mathematics, and much of what I know
about maths to this day.
Secondary School was worse; I got to go to Government
College Kaduna, a very popular secondary school renowned for its past glory because
my father could not afford the better private ones that were just then
beginning to spring up.
There, the sitting on bare floors was worse, especially with
our uniform being white on white. We also had to go to school in the afternoon,
at least those of us in the junior section had to. The memories I have of junior
secondary school were of not having teachers and spending the day playing fives
or shooting pigeons with catapults in the school’s extensive vegetation. Yeah,
the chairs did come—think I was in JSS 2 then—from Buhari and other alumni. As
for teachers, nothing changed until we entered SS 1, extremely under-educated
and most barely able to string English words together without blunders. I must
add that we had no teacher for mathematics and English the entire duration of
our Junior Secondary miss-Education.
I was lucky; yes, I was, for I had inherited the love for
books from my father and a fight, its resultant punishment and a kindly
librarian who supervised the dusty task of sweeping the school library
introduced me to a world far removed from the one I know. I began reading,
garnered knowledge on my own and managed to make the best out of a very bad
situation. I was not alone in this, and those of us who learnt anything from
Government College Kaduna, did so on our own.
Then came the battle to enter university, a mighty struggle
for us half-baked secondary school graduates. We struggled, paid for extra
lessons and read until our eyes watered until the university doors opened and
swallowed us. Back then examination malpractice in the form that it is today
was the preserve of those who can afford it and you only steal from those you
feel know more than you, unfortunately, I fell into the group that were
presumed to know, so I didn’t get to steal from anyone.
My stay in the university was marked by increase in school
fees. I got admitted in 1999 and paid N1600 (one thousand six hundred naira) as
a fresher, by the time I left five years later in 2004, school fees was N17,
500 (seventeen thousand five hundred Naira). Math understandably never became
my thing, so let someone else do the maths on percentage increase over a four-year
period. I can’t recall how many strikes from the Academic Staff Union of
Universities occurred while I was an under-educated undergraduate, but I know
it was enough to add an extra year to my four course.
The story of how I eventually got a job and the struggles
and anguish in between will be better told in the future, but the fact that as
an editor of a magazine and with a salary many times over the recently reviewed
minimum wage, I still find it very impossible to survive month to month. I
don’t have vices and have learnt from my years of struggle to respect money,
yet I can’t afford a tokunbo car on my salary or a house big enough for my
family, not to talk of taking proper care of them.
I am a half-baked Nigerian graduate, all my life the
Nigerian government has not shown it cared I exist or that I have a stake in
this country they claim is ours. Therefore, until I am assured that my children
will not pass through the same hard route I did to get here, I shall continue
to occupy.
