I woke up one morning this week here in Abuja and asked God: ‘’How will positive change ever come to my country Nigeria when there seems to be no initiative whatsoever on the part of our country’s political leadership on what needs to be done, and urgently too, to bring about a better and more prosperous Nigeria?
And God told me that I should tell Nigerians that we should, as citizens of Nigeria and as members of our individual households, learn to declare among ourselves as follows: ‘’We, members of the Idang Alibi household of Nigeria (you, mention boldly the name of your own household just as I have done here in this treatise) have, today, come to a realization that we cannot continue to be like everyone else in our country and in our neighbourhood and expect that change will come to our country Nigeria. That will never happen. Change, genuine change, is never imposed by mere wishful thinking or expectation. It is a deliberately worked out thing through everyday declaration and decision-making. We cannot continue to be as lazy, as unproductive, as corrupt, as indecisive, indeterminate, as uncaring of our environment and our circumstances as our neighbours and expect our capital city Abuja to look beautiful and rich like an American or European city.
Yes, in the household of your neighbour who lives next door to you they do not wake up in the morning and you see or hear motions of their children, especially the teenage ones among them, jump up dutifully from their beds and spread out enthusiastically through the inside of their house and outside of their immediate household , to make their beds, clean their utensils, tidy up their previous night’s waste and place them neatly in a pile ready for disposal at designated points of the neighbourhood.
The head of the household, the deputy head his wife and the entire household do not care a hoot to sweep or keep clean their surroundings. No. They think such things are mean things not meant for the likes of them. They think such things are well beneath their ‘majesties’ dignities. It is not in their upbringing or in their DNA to give consideration to such a thing.
Well, incidentally, they have a neighbour, which is you, who keeps his place and theirs clean all the time because he is a man of a better pedigree and a better generation who learnt in his youth in those good old days that cleanliness is next to godliness. They, your neighbours, have therefore learnt to enjoy such an entitlement mentality because to be clean is not just in their blood at ll. And they are disposed to never learning at all. The man, which is you, they think, will always do it for them.
The rainy season is now here with us. The grasses have started growing. Your uncaring neighbours do not bother about the grasses that are encroaching right down to their doorsteps. For sure, your main neighbour, his wife and his children and househelps see and march on these sprouting and dangerously encroaching grasses right into their house every day and night. None of them ever fears that some slimy, slippery reptiles can follow this grass track and enter their household. Do not follow them in their folly. Learn to keep your own place neat and sparkling clean even if they and all their children laugh at you that you are an old school man who bothers about such mean things. Tidy up your place and if you have some time and strength, weed that their front yard and back yard for them. The sages say that if everyone learns to keep his front yard and back yard clean, the whole city will be clean Unfortunately, our Abuja is not very clean because very few ever bother to implement that wise saying by the elders or the sagely among us.
But our people have a saying that your neighbour’s cough should worry you. Because his affliction is a communicable disease. It can be transmitted to you by air and not necessarily by your near physical contact. Reptiles do not know or recognize neigbours’ boundaries. And as for the wisdom ingrained in that proverb about a nieghbour’s cough and why it should worry you, know that your children watch a neighbour’s behaviour, especially the ill ones, very intently. Bad behaviours are easily communicable. They are more easily communicable than the good ones. When they neither sweep nor do admirable things and get away with it, your own children will be more disposed than not to copy such examples. That is why we must learn to be what our neighbours are not.
We Nigerians can be such bad neighbours and very few of us realise it. You live close to a neighbour in a neighbourhold where the apartments were poorly planned and laid out. So your bedroom directly faces his. Knowing this, the man nevertheless goes ahead to mischievously install a flood light that directly lights your bedroom in the name of security light. You cannot sleep because the light penetrates your bedroom even when you spread your thick window blinds to keep them out.
You and your wife took the pains to go to him one early morning and respectfully plead with him to relocate this his so-called security light. He boasts about his being a follower of Asiwaju, the master strategist. He pretended he was listening to you intently and would do something to alleviate your plight. But a follower of Asiwaju he truly is. He told you that the electrician that he hired to install the light had gone out of town and that by next week he will be back and he will get him to refix the light somewhere else for your convenience. Well, Asiwaju his role model and mentor is speeding up to the end of his tenure and alas the security light is still where it was installed.
But be sure that one day the Lord your God will quietly relocate you and your household to more pleasant habitation where you will not be bothered by floodlights which are installed in place of a discreet security lights. That is the type of attitude to adopt towards some Nigerians that will bring peace and stability to the land. Do not follow them or else you will become known unfairly as a quarrelsome troublesome man. Never be that at all.
If you are touched by some of the hypothetical examples cited here, take steps to be different from your neighbours and our country Nigeria will change and be good for all.
