I was tempted not to comment on this topic but i had to yield to my temptation. The writer of this piece didn't do a bad job at all, he has what it takes to be a perspicacious wordsmith. I believe in objectivity. I also believe so much that there are two sides to a coin. Nigeria has a bad side, very terrible side no doubt but on the flip side of the coin there is a very good side of Nigeria.

I do not have the power to stop anyone from writing objectively their own piece of mind. I can however recommend that we use our youthful exuberance to amplify in our writings the good side of this nation. In my company lately we have been aggressively marketing Africa and Nigeria to the world on the attractive side. We let them know that beside all the terrible things that they here about Africa, it is still one of the best places to invest at the moment because Europe and the Americas have a saturated market right now and investors are looking out to africa for some capital flight into the continent. I do not want to boast about the success we have recorded in convincing investors into the continent. Let me also say that this investments do not benefit us directly. It is simply an act of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Conclusively, I want to plead with the writer and other bright minds out there to do more of positive writing about these country. Our untapped potentials as a nation is vast and i think collectively we can achieve a lot. Remember "The Pen is mightier than the Sword".

I laugh at this God blest out may your ink not run dry. [/b]

1supremo:
Our good government teaches us timeless values. Frequent power outage is the way of reminding us that God created night and day; a balance that must never be upset as a slight imbalance could be calamitous; although most times the lesson we learn is that, “Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining” ([b]our power outage most times attain an uninterrupted status, briefly truncated for minutes per day). Our not-portable roads are meant to teach us that “The Road to Greatness is Not Smooth”.

Well done OP. Very impressive indeed.

1supremo: We are Nigerians; we live on the sky in the shadows of the earth. We are good people; after all we are very religious, only our attitudes let us down sometimes. Our heads are nicely capped with Italian shoes and our gloved feet are elegantly shod with bowler hats. Now, aren’t we perfect ladies and gentlemen?

We spend significant years of our lives struggling to outdo one another in a bid to get university education (my struggles paid off after four JAMB UMEs). Our universities have a record of successfully educating us till we attain imbecility; then we are churned out. Decades after graduation, we aren’t gainfully employed and we ask “Why?” the insensitive employers retort with the trite “We need no imbeciles in our establishments.” Trust us, we yell back at them: who are they to slight what we paid for?

We are yet to understand the rationale behind some of our government’s actions, although we know overall, our government is populace-centric. We always wonder why our policemen down south are armed with guns that only accidentally discharge when law-abiding citizens disagree with them over money issues: our unanimous inference is that our government must have inadvertently equipped them with bellicose guns that have intrinsic vampirical proclivities. We don’t blame either party; after all, “Police is Your Friend” is a universal truth. Would our friends kill us over trivias? No! Won't they be lonely upon our demise? Now, we all know that nobody enjoys loneliness, or are they reclusive? Very unlikely. We just have to blame the guns.

A terrorist group up north is perpetrating wanton decimation of our Police Force: they have made them an endangered species. Recent activities reveal that some policemen down south who have been posted up north to protect us from these terrorists are scheming to effect rescissions of their transfer. Is this not a cue for the civilian population to take up the challenge of protecting the police? Our police force needs to tell us first.

Our good government teaches us timeless values. Frequent power outage is the way of reminding us that God created night and day; a balance that must never be upset as a slight imbalance could be calamitous; although most times the lesson we learn is that, “Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining” (our power outage most times attain an uninterrupted status, briefly truncated for minutes per day). Our not-portable roads are meant to teach us that “The Road to Greatness is Not Smooth”. We are good people in this great nation. The hoarding of the nation’s resources is how our security is ensured- we don’t entertain fears of armed robbery attacks. Who will rob a poor person? By looting the resources of our nation, our good leaders make themselves susceptible to muggers in their bid to keep the populace secure. We appreciate their sacrifice and I recommend them for deification: they bear our sins for us. Don't you agree with me?

We do not check our population growth conventionally; we believe it is unethical to deny babies the privileges of taking some whiff of space into their lungs- we are a people with scruples. However, our humanitarian government compensates whoever takes the initiative to send some of us to “The Land Where We Never Grow Old”: MEND militants are on a Salary-For-Life and scholarship scheme; Boko Haram is soon to follow. Here’s a simple question for the unemployed, baccalaureate-waving fraction of the populace who are always taking on our good government; what have you done for your country? We challenge you to take a cue from the afore-mentioned groups and your efforts will not be unrewarded. Hasn’t our government been silently screaming this message all along?

Anomaly is our way of life here; however, we become aberrant when our “thinking shoes” malfunction or when we impulsively unshod our heads, uncap our feet and swap our shoes’ positions with our cap’s; then, we become perverted and see things in a new light, and only then do we agree with Chinua Achebe’s book title, “Things Fall Apart”- that’s our modus operandi.

What a superb an excellent piece...