Happy new year fellow Nigerian.
We thank God at an individual level for sparing our lives to see this brand new day and year. More importantly, we appreciate him ahead for that which he would do in our lives in the new year.
As a nation, we are grateful for the slight improvement in our security situation. Today, we can open churches and mosques to celebrate the new year in many parts of the country. Indeed, there was a time that we could not do this. In fact, on one of the new year eve, churches were either closed for safety concerns or curfews were invoked in many parts of the country.
Despite the marginal improvements in our security situation, our nation is on its knees. Still, the security situation is in a mess, the economy is in shambles and the lives of the average Nigerian is increasingly worse off than it was 8 years ago.
As patriotic as I am, I could not help but call the country a shithole and a gongpit a few days back when I reminisce on our experience as youths and the experiences of folks in their late fifties and above. These folks, who are mostly your parents, uncles and mine inherited a working country but messed it up for you and I. I describe them as a people born into easy times but created hard times for generations after them – They are weak men, thrown up by easy times who creates hard time for their children.
In a similar spirit and along the saying that easy times create weak men, weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men and strong men create easy times. I am positive that you and me have been thrown into hard times, we have learned to navigate many difficulties which have made us stronger. So, those in their late fifties and above are the weak men thrown up by Nigeria’s easy times, they have created hard times, the hard times are now creating strong men who would then create easy times. Here in lie the way out of the mess. But, I hope everyone who created this mess would support us or at best leave us alone.
In less than two months, we would all head to the polls. You have a choice to “vote anything” or vote for people with capacity, character and the competence to transform the Nigerian state. People with a vision to move us from a consuming and sharing nation to one of production. The choice is yours. As I have blamed a certain age group today, your children and mine would get the chance to access our generation, what verdict would you want from them?
Happy new year.
Vote right!
– Augustine Akande,
Activist and a believer in the empowerment of the black race.
