By: Peregrino Brimah

My engineer cousin had called my
brother as he had similarly called me
sometime after Buhari won the
election. He had also told my brother
why he was very interested in moving
back home.
“We can generate electricity from
trash,” my cousin had explained to
my brother. “We can design cheap
H20 generators…” he had said.
My brother, who like me is highly
industrious – we all were the JET
(Junior Engineers and Technicians)
pioneers and representatives of our
secondary schools back in the day –
eagerly relayed the conversation to
me. “What do you feel?” he asked,
enthusiastically. “Don’t you see the
prospects with the opportunity a new
and fair government avails?”
I pricked his bubble. “Our people will
not buy. They will not use.”
I went further to explain:
Nigerians are locked in stagnation
laced with unrelenting and unending,
baseless hope. It is no accident we
have been serially branded the most
hopeful, “e go better,” people on the
planet. Nigerians will sit in darkness
for years, patiently waiting for the
power, “light” to come, rather than
purchasing a simple rechargeable
fan-lamp, talk less an inverter(+/-
solar) system. They will wait for
government water, rather than dig a
well. Colonized!

I went on to cite several other
examples including how my Kanuri
friends from Borno, who I now regard
as my brothers, resigned to me when
I swore at them for being cowards-for
not bearing arms and defending
themselves against Boko Haram but
rather watching as one-by-one their
loved ones were killed by the
cowards. “Yes we are cowards, worse
than chickens,” one had admitted.
It’s the same reason they put thumb
down for Jonathan. They know he
stole tens of billions of dollars that
would have changed their lives
forever, but they are stuck in a state
of pestilential consumptive
obduration. They have gotten so
comfortable believing that so it was,
so it is and so it shall continue to be,
that they are afraid of change, they
even resist it. “Ordinary pencil Nigeria
cannot make,” is more than a mantra,
it is a prescription; a policy.
Do not make it. Do not fix it. Do not
change it. This is Nigeria. Simply say,
“e go better,” and move on. Who do
you think you are? Leave it for the
government to do. Don’t challenge it!
My brother felt quite disappointed.
With a deep sigh, he retired to bed. It
is true.
Source:
m.news24.com/nigeria/MyNews24/Nigerians-do-not-want-progress-20150518

- MyNews24

The writer is a hopeless pessimist!