I got inducted into newspaper reading at an early age. In those days, I would pick up the newspaper and read from the back page starting with the crossword puzzle. Then I would proceed, like I was writing Arabic, to the fun section where I would read about funny things happening around the world or about the cartoons with potent messages. If NEPA was being itself and I had nothing to do, I would read the dear Abby or Rebecca column to find out what kind of questions people were asking about their relationships.
After performing these tasks I would have a smirk on my face feeling like an ardent newspaper reader. However, as I grew I began to look at the front page and ponder on the headlines before I delved into articles that pique my interest and even spot out grammatical errors while reading. One of the things that struck me the most in all my newspaper reading years is that the pattern of news about Nigeria has been the same. Like they say, there is no news like bad news. If a leader has not embezzled money or the house of parliament is not in a ruckus, a senior government official would be scandalized about his trip to a dibia. News about accidents, militants, strike, upheavals and all fill the news daily and I wonder, can anything good come out of Nigeria? Can Nigeria have something great to celebrate about apart from the entertainers making breaks internationally? You find good news about other countries of the world in the Nigerian newspaper but you find our worst news on the pages of international newspapers. When will the leaders sit down and make a change? When will they fight for us? When will the roads get better? And the hospitals? And the schools? And the power supply? And the Niger delta? There are so many issues for them to attend to and we have so many leaders. If only one of these problems is solved Nigerians would feel a little hope.
When are we going to talk about our country with pride, with dignity and respect? Is it when all the children have died? Or when businesses are destroyed? Or when the oil dries up? Why can’t these leaders see Nigeria as their own and try to make it work? When are we going to disprove those who believe that there is something wrong with the black skin?
These days when I go through the papers, I recall a nursery rhyme with nostalgia. Nigeria is a classic case of the humpty dumpty rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses,
And all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
I certainly hope that one day, the king’s men would deviate from their lackadaisical norm and put humpty dumpty together again.
