Does Nigeria have a soul, a cultural body, soul and spirit? In our complexities, our swag, our community and national cohesion ecosystem, do we really love this nation, do we really care?
Recently, I quietly sat through Otunba Segun Runsewe’s programme with the hashtage #PuttingNigeriafirst. The deep but bitter musing about our country, our people pained me.
From Calabar to Jalingo, Sokoto to Aba, there’s no denying that our country is sick and at a crossroads. It will amount to simplistic tolerance to ask how we got here, how we buried our love for neighbour, our prayers for peace, and the love for diversity exchanged for the devil’s porridge.
All those who spoke at the midday revolutionary national patriotic call by the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) pondered at the solutions to this pandemic of hate and unbridled anger against ourselves.
It would amount to mere gainsaying that blood is easily spilt at our village squares these days than laughter, incantations, sorcery and derogatory effusiveness freely accepted as means of conflict resolution and brigandage venerated more than equity and justice.
Runsewe, Nigeria’s chief culture administrator, seems angry and incensed at this emerging scenario in our country. From the boardrooms to village meetings and political gatherings, divisive tongues reign supreme.
Nigeria and Nigerians are no longer measured by attitudinal temperance and grace. We are quick to carry and employ cudgels to resolve our differences and brazenly submit to extreme tribal hegemony to butcher our fellows.
Cultural ethos, respect for our elders, and those in authority have been redefined. To be an elder in our national, political and religious space is to eagerly front emetic submissions, steal us blind and trample on our rights.
Accident victims are stripped bare of their possessions and allowed to die. Doctors chasing pecuniary persuasions other than offering care, examination bodies endposts to academic rascality, our children exposed to foreign entertainment influence, and the list of endless absurdities.
President, Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN), Mr. Nkereweum Onung, described Runsewe as a crusader. Susan Akporiaye, president, National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA), a biochemist, lecturered on Runsewe as a catalyst to national rebirth.
To confront this monster of national malaise, the challenge of putting Nigeria first gained incisive traction at the NCAC town hall meeting.
Though Runsewe held back his submissions and, in rapt attention, listened first to Gbenga Arulegba, a sociopolitical commentator on the Africa Independent Television, who cried out against what has become a tapestry among the political class who largely think about themselves first before Nigeria. Arulegba was also unsparing on the Nigerian media, which also has been divided along ethnic and political lines, failing to arrest the naked dance destructive to our cultural diversity and identity.
When a leader emerged, the AIT commentator submitted that it is expected that all allegiance should be to the occupier of the seat of leadership, until vacated through a constitutional instrument, noting that politics in Nigeria has literally gone to the dogs.
Akporiaye, who stirred the bee’s nest with her presentation on family values, warned that until women inbued with sensitive motherly gifts are allowed to contribute effectively to national development, thus engendering peaceful coexistence, putting Nigeria first may be hard to achieve.
Women, she said, are natural leaders, helpers and not competitors to men, and should be allowed to unite homes and our people.
She further described Runsewe as a great catalyst, acting boldly through the vehicle of cultural reintegration, freeloading Nigerians who have romped on sadistic opium of political hatred and tribalism back to sanity.
Akporiaye noted that the likes of Runsewe are the key national unifying agents, who we need now, at this very terrifying time in our country.
Taking a cue from a song popular on NTA years back, the NANTA president led the chorus on “Me I like my country, no where pass my country, Nigeria, make we make Nigeria better.”
The song caught up with young persons in the hall, students from three secondary schools in Abuja, turned the song into a ‘national anthem,’ while the older generation wept at the truth behind the song, swept off their feet by the nostalgic memories of once peaceful and united Nigeria.
Rev. Godwin Ogaga, who underpined religious overdrive in the Nigerian political space, noted that no man can play God, and warned of the consequences of division among Nigerians, adding that without Nigeria no politician or ordinary people can prosper outside the space.
Director-general, National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), Alhaji Nura Kangiwa, drew attention to the many shared prosperity across cultural, historical and hospitality timelines among Nigerians, which is the best cultural export identity brand in Africa.
He described the initiative of Runsewe in the campaign to put “Nigeria first” as timely, strategic and spiritual pain relief to a nation already trotting down the valley of ignominy.
No doubt, putting Nigeria first is the way to go in arresting our descent to rotteness and love for self alone. Onung believes it takes a social crusader at heart like Runsewe to remind us that we have gone down the bend and need deliverance. The cerebral president of FTAN advised the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to enthrone separate ministries for culture and tourism, saying Nigeria can only find its feet again and the people united through the diversity of our history as a nation.
“My days as a student in Federal Government College, Odogbolu, were the finest. Musa, Emeka, and Akpan were just Nigerian names, but we grew to love ourselves and bonded till today despite all the divisive lies of politicians,” Onung told us.
To me, putting Nigeria first is doable. Runsewe has set the ball rolling, and it’s no sloganeering. So, let the naysayers look for another country. Me, I love my country, so let us put hands together and rescue our nation.