Nigeria as a country has always followed the anti-clockwise position. The past seems to always be fairer than the present. From the tradition, to education back to the home front and even the politics and economy we talk about today. We all say the past was bad and try to improve the present and all we do is damage it the more but unknown to us.
My grandmother of blessed memories wore a certain dress she bought for Two Naira for 30 years, that particular dress won a test of time. That dress is still alive as I speak and my grandmother is gone. If we ignore how things were before now, we will certainly feel we are doing better than then. Everything has changed either deceived by power or civilization, we have to admit we were carried away by the instant benefits than future implication of what we imbibe as a country to live with.
Before, parents are concerned about the welfare of their children, but today, an average home in Nigeria has their kids on the street without the parents having an idea where their children are or what they are doing. All some parents are concerned about in the welfare of their kids is if they are well and alive. Kids come home with exotics cars, building project to mention a few and the parents assume the kids got successful because God has blessed them. We don’t even want to know what youths of these days gets into just to be noticed in the society.
Look at our politics for example, it was once published in a Nigerian dailies that a man was executed for stealing 10 Naira and today, who will kill another person for 10 Naira? No one because 10 Naira is no longer 1 billion to us, someone somewhere somehow made that happen because of greed and to cover up dirts in his office. God bless the day One Dollar will equal one Naira, it will be a miracle if it happens in this generation. The same fuel price that got us on the street protesting in the year 2013, is why we queue in the filling station just to get fuel at that price because somehow in a certain way year 2013 is better than year 2016 in the aspect of petroleum, is it not funny how that plays out? Do the maths, within the space of three years after we thought buying fuel for a certain fuel price is what we cannot bear, has gone so bad that we now get fuel of 5 litres for 1,000 Naira, our highest denomination in currency can only provide 5 litres of fuel.
Back to tradition, Our traditional attire that is worn everyday of the week is now what we wear only when there is a traditional event and on Fridays at work. We chose to put on suit and tie even when we know our traditional attire is easier to put on. We put the white man’s clothes on without proper understanding of what it means. Here in Nigeria, we know how a queen, slave, princess, king, warriors, and common men dress back in the days, but today, we will just walk into the street and see any kind of dressing and we say it is fashion and that is the truth, when something no longer makes sense to a group of people, it becomes something extraordinary that they have to find a name for it. Madness in dressing is what is called fashion and we admire it from a mad angle too, that is how it works for our minds.
We can’t keep asking how it got so bad because it happened before our very eyes. We might just need to revisit the old structure to get it right or we might just need to look into the new structure to see what we are not getting right, but we cannot over-emphasize that something is wrong with the structure. How else can we explain things going backwards as the year moves forward? We can’t continue to consider that as normal or a coincidence. It is just totally wrong. It is a hide out of things that we believe is moving forward only to realize years later that we have taken two steps backwards if not more.