Nigeria’s inability to just let herself heal

Image by Crea8t from Pixabay 

“I’ve never seen a useless country like this…”“I can’t believe I’m from this country”“Nigeria is a huge joke”“God have mercy, where are we heading to in this country? Everything is upside down?”

These are all real statements, by the way, I didn’t just make them up. I have for sure said an equivalent of that sometime in my life but that doesn’t help me or the situation.

We forget our history or rather, we want to move past it like it was just this thing that happened. Nigeria was birth out of a huge trauma, and much like any other trauma, there must be space and time to heal from it. Acceptance is also important.

You cannot, for instance, get hit by a car, lose a leg but expect to walk like nothing happened. You must first heal from the wound, get a prosthetic leg that fits you and then practice walking one step at a time. You will not walk like a person without your wounds and that is as should be.

Before colonization, Nigeria was not even a concept that existed. The country we know and understand to be ours is a random collection of tribes and small communities that once lived close to each other. Some separated by forests and rivers and deep cultural differences.

Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay 

Now, 54 years later, amidst colonization of the mind and culture, and devoid of a clear identity except one bound by our murky past, here is Nigeria.

We were brought up with these ideologies you know, this same way of thinking that is somehow supposed to shame you to do better. The one that constantly compares you to everybody. ‘Does your friend have two heads?’ ‘Why can’t you be like that other person’s child?’  Basically, why can’t you be anybody other than yourself?   Nigeria is a country with its own path, just like we are people with our own stories. Our ability to recognize our story and claim our identity in totality is the only thing that would give us the freedom to heal and grow.

In summary, don’t be hard on Nigeria. Give her space to heal and find herself. We know that the present leaders of our country are the same people that led in the beginning. We barely even have “founding fathers’, we don’t have beliefs we live by that were not adapted from our oppressors or contaminated by them, we don’t yet have our own clear voice. 

We have passed our shock phase, but we are only steadily and barely acknowledging our hurt, we don’t even teach ourselves about our civil war, we are only learning to crawl. 

Be patient with Nigeria and give her space to heal. Practice compassion for her like you should be doing for yourself. Speak kind words about her and watch her bloom. Words do matter, they are, after all, seeds. Don’t forget you are in the end, Nigeria. What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below and lets talk about it!