The trouble still with Nigeria
Over the years, I have come to realise that we can never get over our leadership problem if we refuse to address the where-are-you-from challenge.Some weeks ago, Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu appointed Miss Ngozi Ugochi-Igbo, an Igbo woman, as Special Assistant on Gender, Research and Documentation, and some clowns started screaming ‘she is not one of us’. If these clowns have their way, they would have rejected Mrs.
The furore over Ugochi-Igbo’s appointment once again brought to fore the severity of the where-are-you-from challenge. So bad is the situation that when politicians return to their states of origin to seek elective offices, they are reminded by home-based politicians that they are ‘imported’. They are not accepted where they reside and pay taxes and seen as lepers by people in their home towns.
Even within the same state, the part where you come from also matters. It is not alone for you to be from Kwara or Lagos or Ogun. In some instances, what part of these states you come from also counts. For me, we can never grow with this sort of mentality. If people within the same town cannot accept one another, how can we blame people from different ethnic groups? But what really should matter is the fact that Nigeria is one country which needs all of us to work as one to get it out of the crossroads. We are in trouble and everybody is needed to run and help the area they are born or where they reside.
I ask again: Where are we all from? And I answer: We are from God. And that should be what matters most. Every state or town or village begins with people coming from some other places to occupy it.