PROFILING NIGERIANS MISDIRECTED VITAL RESOURCES

The problem with racial profiling is that it satisfies the chaos of the day but disproportionably deprives hard target of resources and focus it where there is hardly any threat. The best case in point is the profiling of Nigerians who are more obsessed with the problems within their own Country than any other. The misdistribution of wealth in that Country is internationally known and the agitation for justice and fair play vigorously portrayed by Nigerian Press and Internet.

If charity begins at home, Nigeria is it. We want a Country where charity, milk and honey flow at it natural level to all the people, not just the very connected few. At the risk of using absolute terms, Nigerians are survivals not suicide club members. Any idle fool willing to die as a dummy is a product of foreign indoctrination. Foreign indoctrination and malediction that are totally alien to our culture used to take advantage of the poor at home, has been embraced by an idle rich boy who ignored the anguish in the poorest part of Nigeria to debase us in foreign lands.

One would think that in Nigeria where the oppressed feel the daily yoke of injustice, structural adjustment of some years ago and daily celebration of opulence by praise singers of the very few, a Moses will rise up demanding freedom for his people. Oh no, no. It is in foreign lands where two elephants are fighting that the grass wants to rise to the occasion.

In spite of our past reputation Nigerians are not known for violence. This is not the time to give up on good character as demonstrated by most Nigerians, it is time to be reposeful and shame the bad apples. If anything, our silence and tolerance for crumbs have encouraged them. It is time to end indifference and make life sour for crooks inside and outside Nigeria. The harder it is for them, the more difficult it becomes for their children. Nigerians hold up your heads, our good character will prevail.

We must hasten to applaud a father who is willing to bring his son to face the scrutiny of international justice on realizing that he has lost control. That is the way we were brought up, if you do not learn at home, you learn the hard way from outside. Parents would report the children for bad behavior, not hide them from the force of law. But some countries will swear for their children no matter what the offence. Any justice is a kangaroo court in the same western world, if they don't get favorable acquittal.

There is no country in the world that does not have its mafia and 419s but Nigeria is one of the countries with so much potential that fail to turn into paradise for the majority of its people. We always look up to the “civilized” world. All the crimes committed there are mastered and imported into Nigeria. The brain it takes to master and redirect these crimes are needed to improve Nigeria. The first time some of us were fooled that we have become millionaires was outside Nigeria by people using 419 to sell magazines and other products.

Instead of making Nigeria a suitable place to study for most of our children, we send them out to foreign countries alone or at best with a single parent while marveling and absorbing alien cultures. Then we wonder why they value other cultures more than our own, why they become religious fanatics, drug pushers or drug mules. It is hard enough to control extremists' influence on young men at home, formative years alone in an unfamiliar environment is even worse. A mind that is idle and blank becomes a fertile ground for mischief.

Religion is supposed to civilize and instill the fear of God in us, except that some of us have “chop craze with religion”. It is not that God never gave us our own or that we never have enough religious problems that need to be sanitized; nevertheless, we swallow other culture's religion and their ancient heroes, whole without questions. This was the foreign religion that blessed us as slaves and promised us eternal life in heaven for accepting the injustices on earth.

Every human need the fear of God, retribution or our chi to dissuade us from evil ways but looking for sokoto in Sokoto is nothing short of insanity. Since the time of World Wars, Africans were recruited to fight for freedom they were denied at home. Our young children, with all the virgins in Nigeria, are still promised forty virgins in heaven as a distraction from noble causes at home. Yet, nobody has come back to confirm that either virgins or eternal life in heaven is true.

It gets to a point when self hatred becomes devious mind that gives in to unstable mentality. The act of this crazy mind, while funny to a crowd, none of them wants to call him a child: says a Yoruba proverb. It may be funny to a crowd when a guy that was paid to ram a petrol tanker into a building in Abuja conveniently used a brick on the accelerator instead! The tanker got stuck before the hit. Which of these elephants cares about the grass that suffers?

Realistically, we have called for individual sacrifice, including from this writer to tackle the problem of Nigeria. Since we know that every individual is created to make a contribution to our society, we must continue to hold ourselves responsible until that debt is paid. If children are not held responsible early in life and reminded of their contributions, even as chores at home, they will make the type of contribution we detect outside. A child that never suffers at home will look for a place to pay dearly. There is so much money amongst these filthy rich Nigerians, there is more left with their children to go to schools of radicalism where they learn to inflict pain and disgrace the rest of us.

Until we fix our problems in Nigeria, no country will respect us. Even South Americans are preaching to us to wake up. We have what is necessary to make Nigeria great but we continue to wallow in abject poverty. Our level of poverty in the Country as a whole and in the North in particular is a breeding place for religious riot with the promise of salvation. Outside Nigeria, they see us as one, so no amount of denunciation of one another will solve our problem. We need more of our young educated brothers in the North to join hands with us in the South to close germinating spots of indoctrination. All the Sharia in the North only for the poor, Catechism, gospel and Holy Ghost in the South will not do it.

Our reputation may be damaged temporarily by the misadventure of an individual, but as we have other character and desired markets to offer the world, we will rebound. If God does not want Nigeria to exist, we have already done enough with our own hands to squander the Country. But the most Nigerians outside the scattered developed jungles called cities have held Nigeria together and have held Africa in place. So there is still hope for Nigeria in children coming out of those places. The only barriers are the few overfed crooks that steal and pay themselves the highest salary in the world and the rest, peanuts.


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Articles by Farouk Martins Aresa