10th April, 2014
Kindly allow me to explain this simple picture.
It looks almost like an ordinary picture nowadays. It perhaps does
not strike much in our desensitized minds. Take another look. What do
you see?
My brother (late) was once asked by the New York Times to describe
his experience as the only consultant treating HIV in a nine-county area
of the Mississippi Delta region of America. This was in the early days
of the virus when there were few specialists. There was something
peculiar he said. Quoting from the New York Times of July 3rd, 2001; Epidemic Takes Toll on Black Women:
“Dr. Brimah hears from his patients that H.I.V. is often the least of
their worries. ”There are issues,” he said, ”of looking after children,
trying to get insurance, the lack of a father in the home, alcohol,
drugs. They have so much going on.”
I could not understand and relate to how this could be in America;
that was until Katrina when the poverty of the Mississippi Delta region
was exposed to the world.
Take a look at the picture. What do you see?
The picture shows two boys. Did you notice them? Now look closer at
them. One, the one on the left has no shoes. He has no shoes. That
little boy is barefoot in the ash of the burned buildings.
I am not sure of the boy on the right, perhaps he is likewise.
Now look at their clothes. They are haggard. In that picture, I see
abject poverty. These are not beggars. These are children of Nigeria.
They are walking in the burned debris; looking for something. Perhaps
it was their home. Perhaps it was their parents’ house. Perhaps their
parents were killed and now they are scouring the burned ashes to see
anything they can salvage. Perhaps they are looking for charred objects
for memory of their parents lost.
Or perhaps it is not their home, but they are looking all the same for something of value in the debris.
Think about the lives of those boys; think about their hopes. Think
about the opportunities they had, the gifts of Nigeria they never
partook of or ever hoped to enjoy; and now they have gone from little to
none. The homes I have seen in all the burned images, huts, mud
buildings with thatched roofs. This has zinc roofs. These houses, are
they in Nigeria? I never knew of this poverty. Of the millions in rural
areas we have so abandoned.
Look at those boys and imagine what next from here. What did they
have before the fire and the death? What will they have after? What did
the government do for their area? What did the state government do for
that region with the nation’s wealth? What will the government do for
them now that all has been lost, perhaps even their parents?
What do we do for them? How do we strive, fight for them to have a
better life? Or do we just drive our cars, text on our phones and
believe their rights are not our fight, despite God blessing us with
knowledge, power, youth, technology and spare time to spend watching Man
U and Arsenal European games of men kicking leather balls?
Are we preoccupied with getting cars, perhaps private jets by looting the nation, leaving these boys to such a life?
What did those boys do to merit this treatment with guns and anger from our activities and our generation?
This picture is from Vanguard; I believe from one of the recent
episodes of ‘unknown gunmen’ massacres, Zamfara 250 perhaps. The ones in
which the culprits never get caught, thanks to our security department
being depleted –by the politicians in power—of all resources and not
having the modern equipment necessary to counter the crime –the
politicians in power arm and create.
This is what our nation is. As though the lack was not enough, the
chronic corruption has now caused intractable terror. The politicians
have made the youth, the herdsmen, the farmers, wild and now they are
killing the poor who gained nothing from Nigeria and partook naught in
the plundering of Nigeria. The poor who simply minded their business,
who unlike some of us even, did not criticize the government. What is
their crime, other than being Nigerians?
In that picture, I see the truth. I see the pain. I see darkness. I
see the crime and the sin. And most painful of all to me, I see my lack
of empathy, my cowardice and my ungratefulness and my failure.
We Youth have the power to correct this. We have the numbers to
overturn this shame that our nation has become. We have the capacity to
easily revolt and stop this madness and fight the wicked.
It is time for our independence from the plundering, wicked Cabal.
The over recycled vestiges of colonialism that have remained, dead
roots, with no leaves, twigs or fruit to offer, desperately stuck in the
corridors of power.
They do not leave, not because they do not want to, but because they
are too ashamed to; and in their inner souls they wish to right their
wrongs, but they fail to come to terms with the truth that they lack the
ability to. They have a sickness, a dangerous sickness.
Form your revolution at your location. Own your revolution. Collaborate. Join the revolution: http://NigerianMassesRevolution.com
We must declare our independence this year. It has been
one-year-too-many. A handful of Cabal must no longer hold the millions
of us down.
It is the God demanded duty of every nation to provide for its
weakest; else God punishes such nations that abandon their most
vulnerable with the terror and curse we now experience.
Our great men and women of the past, Mrs. Fumilayo Kuti, Enahoro,
were told that it would not work. They were young like us. They were
challenged with worse than us. There was no global human rights then, no
media, yet they stood up to the colonial masters and demanded freedom,
the freedom we got.
Now it is our turn to stand up to the Cabal and demand our second
freedom; freedom from their treachery, freedom from their tyranny. All
of them must leave the mantle of leadership of this nation.
They have done enough harm. It is time for a new attempt to re-found
and re-forge this great land and redirect the course of this great
nation and the great nations that make its many parts. Let us declare
our second independence this October 1st.
Nigeria Must Be Free! Nigeria Will Be Free!
#NigerianMassesRevolution #Our2ndIndependence
Dr. Peregrino Brimah
http://ENDS.ng [Every Nigerian Do Something]
Email: drbrimah@ends.ng Twitter: @EveryNigerian
http://ENDS.ng [Every Nigerian Do Something]
Email: drbrimah@ends.ng Twitter: @EveryNigerian
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