rusher14:
Nigerians have imbibed the spirit of negativity and they must carry the cross it brings with it.

rusher14:
Nigerians have imbibed the spirit of negativity and they must carry the cross it brings with it.

RuudVanNisteroy:
You want us to sugarcoat the truth. There is hardly any good news to report.
Every government is worse than the previous one and insecurity is at an all time high. We are the poverty capital of the world with a high unemployment rate, which is making people desperate and resort to ritual killings,armed robbery,yahoo yahoo, kidnapping and drug smuggling.

Nigeria is the modern day Sodom and Gommorah.

rusher14:


Government, government, government.

When would the people be held accountable?

MarrisManah:
A nice piece. Worth the entire read.
Our major problem in Nigeria is education... We need massive education of our people. We believe 'good' news about our locations are not newsworthy, well, except it's to show off against other 'ethnicities'.
When you look at our annual budget on education and place it with the UN recommended standard... You'll just weep.

RuudVanNisteroy:

Government plays a big role. Look at what Government of Botswana the least corrupt country in Africa achieved over 50 years.

rusher14:


A country of 2.5 million people?

C'mon now.

As of the time Babangida was in power, I could see various made-in-Botswana items through catalogues my dad had and i'm talking of plastic products that we are yet to make as of today.

By the way, the popular Bop TV (cable ) of the 90's was from Botswana.

In any case, the apple doesn't fall from the tree.

OruExpress:
Do they really look like warzones? lol
Honestly. You can say 'they could look better' or 'they don't look as good as they should' but the choice of WARZONE will link the word Warzone to the names of these three states in Google. And that will be your contribution to the country lol.

Are boys still militants? Was resorting to being a militant not the only reason those states are getting the money they're getting? Did .0000001% of the boys in that region join a militant organization?

OruExpress:
Do they really look like warzones? lol
Honestly. You can say 'they could look better' or 'they don't look as good as they should' but the choice of WARZONE will link the word Warzone to the names of these three states in Google. And that will be your contribution to the country lol.

Are boys still militants? Was resorting to being a militant not the only reason those states are getting the money they're getting? Did .0000001% of the boys in that region join a militant organization?

OruExpress:


The educated among us are even worst lol. Unfortunately i think the issue is spiritual if you believe in such a thing. Maybe it's time to start doing that difficult internal work of finding balance, self-esteem and purpose that many of us neglect. We fill our minds with evil and thus see evil.

If you wake up and think 'blue blue blue blue blue' over and over, blue things will begin to stand out to you through out the day. Often when a person gets a car or sees a car that's interesting to them, they begin to notice home many other people are driving that car on the road.

If somewhere in your mind, something is repeating 'pain pain pain pain, filth filth filth filth, hate hate hate hate, death death death death, enemies enemies enemies enemies'. That is all you will see. The question then is, what causing your mind to hone in on those words and how can we help you help yourself.

If you go to many evangelical churches (and increasingly catholic) you will hear it 'my enemies must die, my enemies must die, holy ghost fire, hold ghost fire, die, die, die, die, die, my enemies, my enemies, i am soaked in the blood, i am soaked in the blood'. Can you imagine the mind state of a person that listens to that 3 times a week (minimum)? Can you imagine how they will see the world and what parts of life will stand out to them? Or how that will shape their outlook as a person.

OruExpress:


The educated among us are even worst lol. Unfortunately i think the issue is spiritual if you believe in such a thing. Maybe it's time to start doing that difficult internal work of finding balance, self-esteem and purpose that many of us neglect. We fill our minds with evil and thus see evil.

If you wake up and think 'blue blue blue blue blue' over and over, blue things will begin to stand out to you through out the day. Often when a person gets a car or sees a car that's interesting to them, they begin to notice home many other people are driving that car on the road.

If somewhere in your mind, something is repeating 'pain pain pain pain, filth filth filth filth, hate hate hate hate, death death death death, enemies enemies enemies enemies'. That is all you will see. The question then is, what causing your mind to hone in on those words and how can we help you help yourself.

If you go to many evangelical churches (and increasingly catholic) you will hear it 'my enemies must die, my enemies must die, holy ghost fire, hold ghost fire, die, die, die, die, die, my enemies, my enemies, i am soaked in the blood, i am soaked in the blood'. Can you imagine the mind state of a person that listens to that 3 times a week (minimum)? Can you imagine how they will see the world and what parts of life will stand out to them? Or how that will shape their outlook as a person.

Xisnin:
Colonial domination along with the missionaries dealt a massive psychological blow
on the average Nigerian.


You can do your part by shaming people who spread lies about the country.
Don't just ignore them, shame them.

MarrisManah:

Lol... Despite all your points I still believe education is the solution. It's not going to be in the short-term though.
The difference between us and 'them' is education! You can imagine people that were intelligent enough to start colonization when we were still living in the dark.
What will a learned and fairly comfortable man be doing in a group shouting fire, thunder, kill, die etc...
With quality education comes liberation of mind and body, innovation that leads to better living standards. Sadly, even if we start now to make appropriate investments in education, it'll still take several decades to see a meaningful improvement. We, however, need to get started.
I like your emphasis!

rusher14:


Government, government, government.

When would the people be held accountable?

Esseite:


The people are a product of the Governemnt.

OruExpress:
Sorry that this is long but I'm going to start with 3 examples.

I make videos on youtube explaining concepts in Igbo cosmology. I was recently approached about my video explaining Ogbanje by a person that said I was being too positive about the concept. I tired to assure the person that Ogbanje is like a stone, neither good or bad, but something that just is. The person insisted and if you ask the average person, Ogbanje is purely evil and negative.

My village have a beautiful river, lush palm forests, a historical (not just for us, but for Nigeria) community hospital, one of the only world class factories in the immediate area. If you Google my village, all you will see are dead bodies from a truck tipping over on the federal road a few years ago. Everything else I mentioned, till this day, remains un-photographed online.

Not long ago I mentioned that Nigeria typically handles pandemics well (HIV, Ebola were my examples) compared to a lot of countries, especially where I live, the United States. The US has the highest quality when it comes to facilities and research but once it's time for people to have access to these things, you're in trouble. We also have a habit of making everything political to the point that nothing gets done. These factors make it hard for us to deploy our abundant resources towards helping ourselves and our country. Nigeria on the other hand with limited resources typically does a good job informing citizens, and making solutions accessible. If you want HIV medicine, you can have it. If you want medicine for malaria or typhoid, it's available. There is no debate on whether Corona is real or fake at the government level. Most importantly, everyone is 100% aware of what's happening. With the negatives we deploy to these situations, these positives still exist.

I was then told that I was viewing Nigeria with rose colored glasses and that 'if corona reaches Nigeria, it will be the end'. Again, Corona has arrived in Nigeria, I live in the US, and I can confidently say that Nigerians have handled it better than Americans. The death toll should say enough. By if you ask Nigerians right now, they will say the same thing. That Nigeria can't handled it. I don't blame Nigerians in Nigeria because there's little to compare it with, but the ones in America have no excuse.

Americans right now know that getting hydroxychloroquine in the US has turned into a political battle and when it arrives in this country, it won't be affordable to the average person. We saw the same thing happen with HIV. In fact when it was reported that a woman had Ebola, she left the quarantine and called her lawyer insisting that a quarantine violates her rights. Many with corona are opting to stay at home and suffer it out because the hospital cost in the US will be the end of their financial lives if they dared go. America is not handling it completely poorly. We have done a great job at shutting down while keeping the economy a float as much as possible, and there's at least a stimulus bill on the way that will give money to people in response to this so they can deal with the financial blow back. So with all countries and people, there are two sides of the story and here in the US, both are getting reported.

Nigeria, of course isn't perfect, but I think Nigerians are very bright, obviously capable people. There are things we do well, and things we don't do as well. But bring any subject up with Nigerians that concerns Nigeria -especially with 'an intellectual- and you will have a hard time hearing anything good or remotely encouraging, even if that person knows the other side of the coin. In fact, openly saying the positive is a mark of naivety or ignorance in the eyes of many.

I think it comes from our desire to get an emotional reaction from people all the time. Maybe because most of us have a hard time communicating emotions, we compensate by trying to trigger easy emotional reactions (dread, fear, anger). My whole life I have been hearing an non-stop flood of things that would make it hard for me to look at Nigerians and by default, myself as a human being.

Nigerian girls are prostitutes
The only way to get roles in nollywood is to sleep with directors
everyone in Ngieria is trying to rob you
everyone in the village is trying to kill you
you enemies are praying against you
this one did juju to that one
all nigerian men beat their wives
nigerians are stupid
nigerians are ugly
nigerians are liars
nigerian musicians don't make money
Nigerian men are rapists
Nigerians are scammers
Nigerians are drug dealers
Nigerian doctors aren't real doctors
Nigerian teachers aren't real teachers
There are no good schools in Nigeria
Nigerian graduates are illiterate
Nigerians are armed robbers
Nigerians will rob you at the airport
Don't say when you're traveling Nigerians will kidnap you


All from full blooded Nigerians that primarily choose to socialize with other Nigerians, trust other Nigerians and when they get time and money go to Nigeria to enjoy their life. For many in diaspora, this is all you will ever hear unless you're odd like me and do your own personal research (which you can't expect anyone to do if this is their daily intake). I can go entire decades here in the US without hearing good news about a single one of my family members. if it's not 'we're suffering' it's 'this one is dying'. Let someone graduate from school and you won't get a call lol. If nothing bad happened, there's nothing to talk about.

A few years ago I saw the effects of this in real time. With the example of my village. I am working on building a computer-lab and library in my community. One thing that's great about Americans is when ever you bring up an opportunity to do something good it's easy to mobilize people towards that end. I know that once the cornerstone is laid, getting support from this side of the world will be easy. One of my co-workers saw me working on the project and asked me what it was about. I told her and she became excited to be a part, saying that 'she's always wanted to do something like this' and 'she feels it's her purpose to help people in other countries'. She even began talking about going to Nigeria, asking about the weather, talking about the time she went to Atigua (tropical like Nigeria) etc etc. I told her of all of the things I enjoy about my village. As is usually the case with Americans, the question of safety came up. I told her that it's a very safe stable place and the city we live in in the US even has a higher crime rate than there.

I said great, and we began talking in depth. I came back from break and the look on her face was different. After some silence she asked me the name of my community again and I gave it to her.

That was the day I learned decapitated heads, dead children, and sprawled corpses is the first thing someone sees when they google my community and since then, she stopped talking about the project lol. I tired to explain 'Nigerians just like posting dead bodies, it's not like that' but that makes no sense to anyone outside of Nigeria. Because at best, you're going to be working with people that relish in sharing dead bodies with other people.

I can only imagine how many times this has happened. An investor, or volunteer, or someone that has good plans for Nigeria starts looking for information they can use to plan their deed only to come across a level of negativity that frankly doesn't exist anywhere on earth outside of Nigeria. I think we are collectively making each other miserable with the way we choose to talk about ourselves. If you have people in your life that are like this, try to create a distance between you and them for your own mental health. Hopefully they will get the hint and stop negatively impacting our collective social well being with their choice of words.

OruExpress:


we weren't living in the dark lol. What does that even mean?
Do you see what I'm referring to? Someone will use their own mouth and declare that they were living in the dark until someone came to sell their siblings as slaves and tax them. And why is it dark? Because the person selling you to you it was dark? What type of Mungo Park discovered my grandfather is this?

lol. Again, 'education' won't do it. With or without education a person has to divorce themselves with self hate and perpetual negativity. If you're educated and don't do this, you'll just learn new english words to use when being negative beyond reality.

rusher14:




See what someone is writing.

Esseite:


You just dont understand the statement... why then would Nigerian opportune to leave the country live better lives, the struggle is same, the system is not same..

I hope you understand better.

rusher14:


You want us to talk about the sheer number of Nigerians with advanced degrees yet get involved in all manner of crime such as fraud, racketeering etc?

The people need to appreciate their own role in society.

This is quite simple but it appears the average Nigerian continues to stick to the same pattern of behaviour over and over again yet expecting a different result.

RuudVanNisteroy:

What is true and what is a lie in the alternate reality you live in?This country is in a big mess and further sliding into the abyss.

Xisnin:


You live in a negative reality where everything is bad here and everything is good in your adopted paradise.
This wouldn't have been a problem except that it is other people's fault while you and your goons bear no
responsibility and are innocent.

If there is a faint rumor that something bad just happens, you guys will quickly post and share it to gain attention.
But if the reverse is the case, you will doubt, prevaricate and twist the story just to satisfy your biases.

What have you achieved with the negativity?