The veterans are crying, By Ayo Akerele

When you see veterans and old people in a nation dump their privacy and self-esteem to crave and cry for help and solidarity in the full glare of the public, know that the die has been cast. The matter has become a generational emergency. If Nigeria can’t be fixed, then break it along the lines of regions or nationalities. Otherwise, the crises continue.

I have just seen a video of a notable Nigerian Nollywood veteran, weeping profusely about her personal predicament and economic woes; no money, no accommodation, and nothing to show for more than thirty years of hard work. I was moved to tears. She has worked so hard, but as the reality of times is in our nation for many people, she’s got nothing to show for it. This is not an isolated case, but a widespread phenomenon. Nigeria has failed my generation, the one before us, and it is gradually failing the ones behind us. I wish I could help her. But we are maxed out after pouring ourselves into so many people’s problems back home.

This brings to the fore the same thing I and many other similar thinkers have been echoing — let’s build our nation and stop this selfish focus on personal success at the expense of national interests. There’s no single veteran of this woman’s standard and calibre in America or in Canada or in the UK who would be an inch close to her current situation. The entire mainstream media would be agog and awash to see Denzel Washington beg for food and accommodation on his Facebook page.

These nations aren’t perfect, but have made their societies attractive to many of us for greener pastures. Interestingly, many of us are cursing Donald Trump for his immigration policies and are attacking the UK prime minister? The truth of the matter is this: Let’s build our country and make it better and these Western nations won’t be this attractive again. If Nigeria was working, Trump‘s immigration policies would be immaterial to Nigerians in America.

A nation is not great because of its large expanse of gigantic real estate and arrays of exotic cars that common men would die to access. Simple things like access to justice, affordable health care, subsidised education, well paying employment, security, and basic provisions of social amenities would gradually and progressively birth a great nation out of any dummy state. But what makes our case really bad is that there is really no general consensus among our population as to what we want.

The mindset of the average Nigerian has been so much damaged by decades of weaponised poverty that the very thought of consensus or unity against oppression is viewed as rebellion. But it is better to be separated by truth than to be united in error. The scale of ethnic and religious bigotry in the land is legendary. You can’t gather 50 million Nigerians together to agree on one thing. Ours is a nation acutely divided along the needless lines of religion and ethnicity. Truth is very blurry. It isn’t about what is right, but about who we like. Corruption is only bad if it is not favouring me. My pastor is a servant of God as long as he is from my tribe and is a worker of miracles.

There’s nothing I’ve said here that I haven’t been saying for several years and on several other platforms. Other like-minded thinkers have also been saying the same thing. When you see veterans and old people in a nation dump their privacy and self-esteem to crave and cry for help and solidarity in the full glare of the public, know that the die has been cast. The matter has become a generational emergency. If Nigeria can’t be fixed, then break it along the lines of regions or nationalities. Otherwise, the crises continue. It is better to be small for something than to be big for nothing.

Ayo Akerele is the senior pastor of Rhema Assembly and the founder of the Voice of the Watchmen Ministries in Ontario, Canada. He can be reached through [email protected]

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