‘Jola Sotubo: Welcome to Nigeria, the land of broken dreams

by ‘Jola Sotubo

I grew up in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria at a time when children could roam the streets freely without their parents being worried about bombs and such. For all we knew, my brothers and I could have been living abroad; so sheltered and protected were we from the harsh realities of the country we were born in.
I was a voracious reader even as a child so I managed to keep up with some of the happenings through the newspapers my father forbade me from reading. I remember Fela’s death even though I didn’t really know who the man was at the time and I have a recollection of Abacha’s regime and the jubilation which followed his death. However, not even all this could prepare me enough for the eye opener I was about to receive.
In 2003, my mother had finally had enough of Kaduna; it had deteriorated from the peaceful city we’d known for years to a town prone to eruptions of violence. It was time to go home, my parents said. Home to them was Sagamu, Ogun state. My father could never really stomach the idea of living in Lagos and so he settled for what he called “a country home” in his hometown.
The first time I saw Sagamu, I was sure my parents were fooling around when they said we were going to live there. Never in my life had I seen such desolation and poverty, hopelessness hung so thick in the air that you could almost cut it with a bread knife. It was a nightmare – and it was reality.
I saw homes with no water and with no toilets, I saw children with protruded bellies whose main source of sustenance was ‘garri’, I saw a land under abject poverty, the kind from which one could only hope to escape. Gone were the GRAs we lived in where we hung out with only the crème de la crème of society, gone was the bubble of the perfect life my parents had created. This was the real world, and I didn’t like it one bit.
For the first time in my life, I saw Nigeria as it truly was. It was a land where parents couldn’t afford to send their children to school. It was a land where aged people still bent their already crooked backs in hard labour. It was a land where human beings could be killed indiscriminately and nothing would be done about it.
That was in 2003, 11 years ago, and I really wish I could say the situation has gotten better. The demons we were fighting then are nothing compared to the ones we are fighting now. Night marauders now come and sweep away our children leaving death and destruction in their wake. Blood is flowing in our streets as day after day Boko Haram claims even more lives and what do we do? Nothing.
Our future, the future of our children is being wiped away right before our eyes and we sit helplessly by and let it happen. The Aluu 4 boys, one of them could have been Nigeria’s first astronaut, yet they are dead because of our failures as a nation. The people who died in the recent Abuja bomb blast, they had dreams and their families had dreams for them. Where are they? Gone.
You only need to look in the face of the average Nigerian on the street to know just how badly this country needs change. I see faces etched with grief and despair but worst of all, hopelessness. A man who has hope can still be saved, but a hopeless man is broken indeed.
I’m not an activist or a motivational speaker; I’m only someone who knows that she cannot leave this poor excuse for a country to her children. I’m someone who knows that we should not rest until the green passport we carry stops being a curse.
One day, one day very soon, Nigerians will realize that no government will build us the country of our dreams, we will have to do that all by ourselves. Average Nigerians will build state-of-the-art hospitals, provide security, constant electricity and water for their fellow citizens and build good roads. We will have to stand up and take care of each other because only then can we have the country we truly desire.
Until then we must remain a global pariah, we must remain the killers of our own future; our beautiful, beautiful children. Until then we must remain Nigeria, the land of broken dreams…