This is Nigeria where gluttons are celebrated in the public glare of the people they stole from.

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I am Hungry, Please Re-brand me
By: Salisu Suleiman
I am Nigeria. I have millions of acres of arable land and billions of cubic litres of water, but I cannot feed myself. So I spend $1 billion to import rice and another $2 billion to import milk. I produce rice, but don’t eat it. I have 60 million cattle but no milk. I am hungry, please re-brand me.

I drive the latest cars in the world but have no roads. I lose family and friends everyday on roads for which funds have been looted. I lose my young, my old, and my most brainy and productive people to the potholes, craters and crevasses they travel on everyday. I am in permanent mourning, please re-brand me.

My school has no teacher and my classroom has no roof. I take lecture notes through the window and live with 15 others in a single room. All my professors have gone abroad, and the rest are awaiting visas. I am a university graduate, but I am illiterate. I want a future, please re-brand me.

Malaria, typhoid and many other preventable diseases send me to hospitals which have no doctors, no medicines and no power. So my wife gives birth with candle light and surgery is performed by quacks. All the nurses have gone abroad and the rest are waiting to go also. I have the highest m aternal and infant mortality rates in the world and future generations are dying before me. I am hopeless, hapless and helpless, please re-brand me.

I wanted change so I stood all day long to cast my vote. But even before I could vote, the results had been announced. When I dared to speak out, silence was enthroned by bullets. My rulers are my oppressors, and my policemen are my terrors. I am ruled by men in mufti, but I am not a democracy. I have no verve, no vote, no voice, please re-brand me.

I have 50 million youths with no jobs, no present and no future. So my sons in the North have become street urchins and his brothers in the South have become militants. My nephews die of thirst in the Sahara and his cousins drown in the waters of the Mediterranean. My daughters walk the streets of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, while her sisters parade the streets of Rome and Amsterdam. I am inconsolable, please re-brand me.

My people cannot sleep at night and cannot relax by day. They cannot use ATM machines, nor use cheques. My children sleep through staccato of AK 47s see through the mist of tear gas. The leaders have looted everything on the ground and below. They walk the land with haughty strides and fly the skies with private jets. They have stolen the future of generations yet unborn and have money they cannot spend in several lifetimes, but their brothers die of hunger. I want justice, please re-brand me.

I can produce anything, but import ev erything. So my toothpick is made in China; my toothpaste is made in South Africa; my salt is made in Ghana; my butter is made in Ireland; my milk is made in Holland; my shoe is made in Italy; my vegetable oil is made in Malaysia; my biscuit is made in Indonesia; my chocolate is made in Turkey and my table water made in France. My taste is far-flung and foreign, please re-brand me.

My people are cancerous from the greed of their friends who bleach palm oil with chemicals; my children died because they drank ‘My Pikin’ with NAFDAC numbers; my poor die because kerosene explodes in their faces; my land is dead because all the trees have been cut down; flood kills my people yearly because the drainages are clogged; my fishes are dead because the oil companies dump waste in my rivers; my communities are vanishing into the huge yawns of gully erosion, and nothing is being done. My livelihood is in jeopardy, and I am in the uttermost depths of despondence, please re-brand me.

I have genuine leather but choose to eat it. So I spend a billion dollars to import fake leather. I have four refineries, but prefer to import fuel, so I waste more billions to import petrol. I have no security in my country, but would rather send troops to keep the peace in another man’s land. I have 160 dams, but can not get water to drink, so I buy ‘pure’ water that roils my innards. I have a million children waiting to enter universities, but my ivory dun geons can only take a tenth. I have no power, but choose to flare gas, so my people have learnt to see in the dark and stare at the glare of naked flares. I have no direction, please re-brand me.

My people pray to God every morning and every night, but commit every crime known to man because re-branded identities will never alter the tunes of inbred rhythms. Just as the drums of heritage heralds the frenzied jingles, remember - the Nigerian soul can only be Nigerian - fighting free from the cold embrace of a government that has no spring, no sense, no shame. So we watch the possessed, frenzied dance, drenched in silent tears as freedom is locked up in democracy’s empty cellars. I need guidance, please re-brand me.

But then, why can I not simply be me, without being re-branded? Or does my complexion cloud the color of my character? Does my location limit the lengths my liberty? Does the spirit of my conviction shackle my soul? Does my mien maim the mine of my mind? And is this life worth re-branding? I am not yet born, please re-brand me.

Nice write-up, this is one of the best criticisms of nigeria i have seen in years, the leaders are told their fault, so also, the followers, it not only highlight the problem, but the solution (if you read in btw d lines). i love it

Bleep who ever wrote that and Bleep you [b]ifeleke [/b]for posting. How the Bleep can you state the obvious man? How the Bleep can you criticize the giant of Africa. Bleep you man.

PeeDaVinci:

Nice write-up, this is one of the best criticisms of nigeria i have seen in years, the leaders are told their fault, so also, the followers, it not only highlight the problem, but the solution (if you read in btw d lines). i love it

I was woawed when I read it, so compeling and absolutely concise. I mean this alone is capable of arresting anyone's attention

IFELEKE:


I am Nigeria. I have millions of acres of arable land and billions of cubic litres of water, but I cannot feed myself. So I spend $1 billion to import rice and another $2 billion to import milk. I produce rice, but don’t eat it. I have 60 million cattle but no milk. I am hungry, please re-brand me.

ElRazur:

Bleep who ever wrote that and Bleep you [b]ifeleke [/b]for posting. How the Bleep can you state the obvious man? How the Bleep can you criticize the giant of Africa. Bleep you man.

More than the obvious. . .

I wonder where are those blind patriots of Nigeria. I wonder what they have to say. Giant of Africa my flipping backside.

If naija is the giant of Africa, then South Africa is the king of the giant. Giant my left boot.

I was reading a paper today about the 1969 expulsion/deportation of Nigerians from Ghana.

make una siddon dey smoke there.

Indeed,influential Nigerians in the private sector are not helping matters too with their trademark greed.
Aliko Dangote is a classic example:
Aliko Dangote, Oando in N29 Billion oil refining scandal

Inordinate ambition to maintain permanent membership on the list of world billionaires is what is being blamed for alleged connivance of Lagos businessman, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and other notable oil moguls like Mr. Wale Tinubu and Mr. Jite Koloko to cripple Nigeria’s oil refining capacity through elaborate bribery scheme which earned them a staggering N29 Billion profit. According to Huhuonline investigations, an honest approval said to have been given by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to three leading indigenous oil companies owned by Dangote, Tinubu and Koloko was said to have become the lunch pad for wide spread bribery of officials of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) leading to tampering with the nations oil refining capacity.

Obasanjo saw enough justification in a proposal allegedly drawn by MRS Oil group and submitted by its owner, Dangote. Obasanjo during his presidency allegedly allowed exclusive refining contract for Dangote to handle and supply Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) believed to be crucial in petrochemical industrial dye for Nigeria’s once bumming textile manufacturing holdings.
It was said that no sooner had Dangote got approval for the critical and juicy downstream supplies of the product, he was said to have acted in concept with the two other beneficiaries of the contract to purportedly bribe relevant NNPC operatives. Needed sizeable diesel meant for national consumption was diverted and used to mix HPO in other to get LFPO and also to practically shut down the installed domestic refining components.
Sources who elected anonymity said “Aliko Dangote in cahoots with owners of Oando group, ensured that the oil refineries in Nigeria operate epileptically. This they achieved by making sure that an important element of the refinery, the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit, which s breaks down the heavy hydrocarbon molecules that make up crude oil act malfunction all the year round.

In the process, all the refineries in the country are limited to producing just heavy fuel oils such as LPFO and HPFO which are the first bye-products from the fractional distillation (refining) process. Continuing the source said had NNPC not being the heavily induced, they would have ensured that the fluid crackers in all its refineries were functioning”

checks revealed that Obasanjo had intended that Dangote would make the LPFO available internally at ?8:30K per liter this did not happen. All the products were taken outside Nigeria and sold at $250 per tonne. While Dangote and co smiled to the banks Nigerians groaned under pains of unavailable refined petroleum products. Because the important product was not available for textile operations, factories were closed and workers were sacked. Jackson Gaius-Obaseki, the former group managing director of NNPC, admitted as much two Fridays ago when he told the ad-hoc committee investigating the operations of the corporation that companies like MRS Oil and Gas, Noel Energy, Haske Enterprises and Ocean & Oil Limited (the company that acquired the now defunct Unipetrol and Agip before rebranding into the Oando Group), have all been beneficiaries of the regime.

Since NNPC officials were allegedly bribed by Dangote and his associates that have now been identified as a "dangerous cartel," the fluid crackers in the refineries were removed to create the impression that the refineries have been completely grounded. They therefore export Nigerian crude and make huge foreign currencies.

An oil industry insider explained that Dangote and the others realized huge dividends of close to N29 Billion and that Nigerian law makers and the President must act with dispatch and honesty to make them refund nothing less than N25 Billion. The Insider who preferred anonymity because of recent notoriety of Aliko Dangote "as chemical Ali" said that Dangote and his friends remain the worst threats to the economic stability of Nigeria and they must be stopped.

tpiah:

I was reading a paper today about the 1969 expulsion/deportation of Nigerians from Ghana.

make una siddon dey smoke there.

Hi can you help us with the paper incase it has a link or better still start a thread or paste so we too can read as well,,,Ghana deporting Nigerians,,,,wowowo,,,we did that to them in the 1980's and about 30years later,,they re doing it back 2 us,,,