MESSAGE FOR NIGERIA AND HER LEADERS

A MESSAGE FOR NIGERIA AND HER LEADERS!

    I've been trying to imagine what some folks who often call Nigeria Zoo really mean, honestly it has really brought me a thoughtful and puzzling moment. Was it because we are not developing in the correct pace with our huge Commonwealth? Or perhaps the citizens are being taken for granted and treated like an animal? Many thoughts were flowing through my mind in a bid to fix the meaning of the thought provoking and most embarrassing appellation given to the giant of Africa! Or what is Nigeria becoming with time...? But the vale just fell off my face now, and I could see and reason clearly why it wouldn't be better described than they have rightly defined it.
 
    If Zoo should be a reserved place for all kinds of animals, it would have better our lot, but domestic animals don't even stay in the zoo. It is specifically and deliberately designed for wild lives that were introduced into the living environment. They keep them in such a remote or rather barricade because of their notoriety, and serve a research purpose and often times a means of tourism. We raised and treated to be wild; fear of the unknown has kept many foreigners from coming to our territory for any reasonable purpose. Nigeria has become the least in the list of nations many foreigners want to visit because of our disorganized system of operation. A system that only wild and rugged individuals can afford.
The attitude of majority of our leaders, religious and secular are not far from the attribute of an animal, and unfortunately has now aggravated in an incredibly increasing degrees, so much that other African nations and the entire world have turned us to an object of research and mockery because of the mysterious situation of our nation.

    How come rain is falling and massive drought still grip our land; how come we live in a land flowing with milk and honey, yet majority of the citizens still go out of our domain in search of sugar? How come a land of dignity, honor, glory suddenly become a land of shame and reproach, and its mishap spreading epidemically?
I can't forget some unfortunate and pathetic experiences I had that drew tears out of my face and compelled me to personally take our nation to God in a serious, concentrated and fervent prayers while in Libya, and the answer the Lord gave me on one occasion. It is very irritating and uncalled for to see a Nigerian, who are mere house help and street beggars in Nigeria to be fairly dealt with, preferred and even adore to Nigerians. You need to witness the way our ladies are being molested outside, not to even talk of men. I remember one occasion where a young Libyan, who will not dare lay a finger on their women, beat one of our ladies in a manner you can't even handle a cow, just because he asked her to shift in a vehicle that was conveying us to the next destination, in spite of the inexplicable pain we have already gone through. Their only means of speaking to us is the staff in their hands, just like the Fulani herds men, and we are incapacitated to defend ourselves. Was it their fault? Did they invite us? Are we not the one who need their well managed and judiciously harnessed resources to survive, when ours have been trapped by wild animals in human skin who occupied our political offices and dictate the sharing of our rich resources.

    I met a young lady from Abeokuta who has a thriving hair salon business here in Nigeria, she was thrown out by her Libyan boss who refused to pay her salary and even feed her for many days as a maid, She was weeping profusely and helplessly on the high way trying to reach her burgher as we fondly call it (the person that brought her from Nigeria to Libya). I took compassion on her and brought her into my house until she was through to her burgher that day, an attempt that is dangerous in Libya. Time will not permit me to share her sad tales she communicated to me on that day. Many others are surviving on prostitution just to raise themselves capital to come and start their business in Nigeria.

    What would I say of our men who would be shot dead after working tirelessly for Arab man as long as he couldn't afford their agreed service fee. Many are in the prison for offenses they knew nothing about waiting for the day they would be shot dead or miraculously escape when they found a Libyan police that would collect a huge amount to sneak them out and replace them with innocent men on the street going about their daily hustle.

    You may say that is Libya, after all is a Muslim country; but is South Africa too a Muslim country where we watch the video of their men killing our people in such a ridiculous manner without any law or constitution to prosecute them for such heinous act. All of this does not move our leaders to rethink over their wicked habit of looting the treasury and sitting individually greedily over what 170 million can survive upon for many years.

    If we have our house in order and our economy favorable, what on earth would prompt anyone to go out and face such a humiliation that seldom by grace our day out there.
I remember the recent racial crisis during Obama administration that claim the lives of many black race, including Nigerians in a land where law and order is fairly upheld, yet nothing was done about it. There is no peace outside, neither is it even guaranteed at home. Nigerians become a sex machine outside, subjected to child abuse and trafficking just to meet the ends, and that in a desert land where only means of survival is crude oil; they risk their lives across the Mediterranean sea and take refuge in a continent where weather is not body friendly, all in search of survival. But my question now is, where do our politicians and those high ranking public officers who were caught stolen millions and billions of hard currencies get their money when the lives of the sons and daughters of this great nation who are by birth entitled to the riches of their fatherland, lied wasted and many at a condition that is rather inhuman in a bid to earn themselves a survival? What is their qualifications to make them different from those innocent souls who are wallowing in a deteriorating and abject poverty and risking their lives daily in a strange land from people who do not have their good interest at heart? I can't do anything less than raising a voice for them now that I am back home, if perhaps it could reach some reasonable hears that matter. Please, what is really their offense to deserve such a pay? Is it not animistic for single individual to take possession of such a huge some in a nation where medical personnel's with their years, money, and academic experience in the university have started committing suicide? Please I need a response! How would our politicians explain it when they leave our hospitals unequipped and in-accommodating for their class and personality, and fly overseas at every slight illness, is that not corruption, wickedness, bad leadership style in itself? Who exactly is attempting to fight corruption in this nation? It is leaders that are corrupt and lack self discipline? I'm persuaded, that none of them have the stance to withstand God's visitation when He mark sin. They leave us with greater and heavier burdens called law they themselves could not bear. Are we not indeed inviting God's wrath upon our land? It can't be lesser meted against them than that they are withdrawing their greedily amassed wealth to cure all kinds of illness, and filing lawsuit. There can never be peace for the wicked says the Lord!

    Beloved men of like passion, the Lord spoke to me at a time about this nation on my mission trip to Libya, and if we don't rise to our obligation of prayer and claim our land from the hands of this brood of vipers and sons of perdition who lord over our divine inheritance and cause artificial drought when God is still raining over us, I don't know what may bedeviled our future and that of our children. I heard over again in a short while to pray so that we don't buy cement for 6000 naira as time goes on..

    The Lord said and I quote, "Pray that the hand of God should change hands in Nigeria. Only one man has been ruling you since independence." Pray that the power of God should eliminate everyone that does not allow peace and justice to stay in the land in Jesus name.
Shalom! Happy sabbath day...

------- Babatunde Israel