Election time (Revolution!)

Fellow Nigerians

Let us re-strategize

We surely can’t continue

To listen to their lies

They promise us the world

Before they get elected

But after all is said and done

It’s we who are rejected

For greed and lack of vision

We waste our potential

They feast on our resources

They have no good intentions

The common man and woman

Must rise up from the dust

Vote with your conscience

Revolution is a must

A new Nigerian nation

Sunshine after the rain

We all must play our parts

Victory is ours to gain

Don’t leave it all to chance

Insist on what is right

Oppose corrupt officials

Resist with all our might

Shawn Asala © 2011

NIGERIA's SALVATION IS IN US

Reform never comes to a class or a people unless and until those concerned have worked out their own salvation.
Joseph Ephraim Casely-Hayford (1866 - 1930)
Ghanaian journalist, lawyer, and nationalist.
Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


I just love this quote. Its message is spot on and poignant. Reform never comes to a class or a people unless and until those concerned have worked out their own salvation. Nigeria hear this! We cannot expect emancipation or change or whatever miracle of societal change we can conceive to come from International Aid, donors, expatriates etc.

Let’s say you are walking around your house one early morning and you discover the whole house is infested with cockroaches. They’ve virtually taken over everything. You see little droppings of cockroach turd all over your kitchen. Now do you sit down at your work desk and begin to draft letters and proposals to foreign agencies to help you clean up your own mess? Or do you sit down and begin to cast blame? “It’s colonialism! These white men who enslaved us brought these cockroaches upon us!”

That would be ludicrous.

I think it would be wiser and more economical to start to focus on the problem and work out a way to get to the root of the matter. Find out what’s making your house so attractive to roaches and get the necessary skills and tools to exterminate them. Of course you could hire a professional to do the job. It may solve the problem but until you take certain steps yourself, the roaches might just make a comeback. If you keep leaving leftover food in your kitchen sink overnight you can be sure there’ll be a part 2 episode of ‘The Roach Invasion!’

So Nigerians, let’s sit down at the drawing table and seek out the path that will rid our society of the roaches of corruption and poverty that infest our very existence.
A word is enough for the wise. But I welcome extensive comments because on the Nigerian issue, a word once spoken is hardly enough.