Dear Nigerian in Diaspora by Atilola

Dear Nigerian in Diaspora,

Time and time again, you have justified your reason for leaving our fatherland. Or is it motherland? You said it is because you want to give your children a better life and opportunity than you had. We accepted your reason, as looking at the current state of our nation, we see every validity in your reason. And we did not trouble you or hassle you over that decision.

Just like we did not hassle you over this decision, we would like you to reciprocate this gesture by not hassling us over our decision to stay back.

Dear NID, I have noticed that the way you talk about issues pertaining to our country is far different from the way we here take it. Have you ever wondered why the tone of your comments about this country is far different from the tones of the Nigerians in Nigeria? Once there is a tragic event, you have a way of blowing it over the top, exaggerating, and wondering what our dear country is turning to. If only you reacted this way to every good thing that happened in our country, maybe the western world won’t always present a single story about us in their press.

Your comments of “I can never send my children to Nigeria on a holiday because they would either be robbed, kidnapped or used for rituals,” doesn’t really sound encouraging, especially as you have never suggested one solution to this problem we are facing. Please tell me, what percentage of the ones who came here during last holiday were subject to this cruel fate you imagine?

But Dear NID, I begin to wonder

Why are you always the ones to point out just how bad our country is to us, as if we are too blind to see it?

Why are you the ones that always hammer on the fact that we here are the stupidly religious ones? That we all follow our pastors like blind fools? Please, let the people that want to buy jets for their pastors do so. As you have tied your hope to the white man giving you a better life, they have also tied their hope to their pastors giving them miracles, since many of them would never have the opportunity to leave this side of the world. After all, they learnt it from the numerous pastors in America, who also bought private jets from money they got from televangelism and offerings too. Our pastors still have a long way to go when it comes to acquiring private jets.

Why are you always the first to mention how you don't see Nigeria ever getting better, how you lost hope in Nigeria a long time ago? We know about your lost hope, your exit already tells us that much.

Why are you the ones who dismiss songs of hope in Nigeria, such as Great Nation by Timi Dakolo, The Future is here by TY Bello, etc. as wishful thinking? Just because you have lost hope in our country doesn’t mean you should try to kill the hope of those left.

You have left, fine! Your children and grandchildren would probably never visit Nigeria in their life time, fine! We don’t have an issue with that, it’s your family, you can do whatever you like with them. You have said over and over again how you don’t care for Nigeria and her issues anymore. Yes, we get that. Since that is the case, we expect you to follow suit with your words, and really NOT care again, by forgetting that Nigeria exists in your dictionary. Or does the fact that you can’t stop talking and complaining about Nigeria despite the fact that you claim not to care really mean that your ‘care-less’ statements are not true? Selah

Dear NID, you should know that not all of us have the opportunity to leave like you, and even when some of us do, we just don't want to. We have chosen to stay. We were not forced to stay, we chose to. Live with your choice and let us live with ours.

Dear NID, even if you have stopped believing in Nigeria, and do not see yourself ever returning here, can you please stop asking us to do the same? Can you please, stop expecting us to stop hoping that we would get better, just because you stopped hoping? Cos unfortunately, some of us have nowhere else to go, and no matter how many people leave, some of us here still have to stay back, and make Nigeria good again.

Dear NID, you forget that when your family is bad, and you choose to run to another family because they are good, it won’t solve the problem of the ‘badness’ of your family. Your family will still be bad. Selah

Dear NID, why is it that whenever I ask you about the solution to this country you claim you do not care about, but can never stop talking about, you tell me the only solution is to split? Unity or splitting - which of the options would cost more? Are you ready to sacrifice the remaining family you left here to the unavoidable bloodshed that would happen if your splitting fantasies ever became a reality (no pun intended)? Wait no, you would move all of them out of the country and make them fellow NIDs like you - another fantasy that would never become a reality, thanks to the white man that would rather die than see that happen.

Nigeria is a big menace and it is like a time bomb waiting to explode, with the injustice, corruption, insecurities, and other negative nouns I would not even bother to mention, but rather leave for the political bloggers and writers to deal with. One thing we know is this, in no way would leaving the country ever solve all the migraine-generating problems of our country. But as we have said before, we don’t have any problem with the choice you made. After all, there is the fight or flight approach to be taken in any battle. You chose the flight, while we chose the former.

It is okay that you have decided to have as little as possible to do with us, but please, live and let live. Don’t tell me to shut up when I say something good can still come out of Nigeria – I will still say it. Don’t try to take away the hope we have left with your comments of how failed and hopeless we are. Hoping in this k-leg country of ours is very difficult, and we should be encouraged and commended for doing so. In the face of the unexplainable nonsense our leaders put us through in this country, our hope is honestly the only thing we have. Take that away from us, and we had better started committing suicide because a hopeless person is a walking-dead.

And if you are a NID because your parents stole our commonwealth, sent you out to have a better life, and you in turn, pay us back by trying to kill our spirit with your hope-sucking statements, thereby making me spend time to write this letter which would most likely generate comments I would rather not deal with my way, well… since I have no power to do anything to you, I leave you for God to judge. That is not because I am meek like Moses, it is because I really have no power to do anything to you – at least, for now.

Dear NID, in spite of all the nonsense happening in every sector of the country, you can call me deluded, but I still say Nigeria has a great future. Okay, I said it come and flog me. Oh I forgot, you would have to come down to Nigeria to do that.

Dear NID, I think I should stop here for now, as I strongly suspect that I am beginning to ramble.

Yours sincerely,

Nigerian in Nigeria

Atilola Moronfolu

Why You Should Stay Away From Poets by Alice Keys MD

You should stay away from poets. Far away. Poetry is a contagious, untreatable virus which is transmitted through the eyes and ears, directly to the heart. Even stuffing your ears with cotton and poking out both eyes won’t kill poetry, once contracted. There is no cure. 

One can, however, confer immunity to poetry. This works best with children. Poetry classes taught from volumes thick with chapters on syllable counting and meter, punctuation and rhyme can make the most poetically vulnerable, resistant. This works best administered after lunch while seated on hard wooden chairs in an over-heated room. Distractions from the natural world must be blocked by concrete walls, fluorescent hums and window shades.

There should be signs on the doors of the houses of poets. “Poet here”. “Keep away”. “Danger”. Poets should be forced to wear warning tags stitched to the fronts of their jackets so people will know to keep their children at a safe distance.

Poets are notorious for feeling and then writing the truth. This is another reason they should be ostracized and bound. They have no limits to what they’ll drag out into the light. They may fool you by beginning with bird songs or snowmen or a kelp-scented breeze. But beware. Poets sprout razors. They cut deep in the belly and tear open hearts.

Contracting poetry poisons one away from useful endeavors, like writing cell phone apps so children can practice killing at bus stops. Those who tear feathers by the handful from the bodies of half-live chickens at the processing plant are more valued than poets. They’re paid. They have jobs.

If you become infected with poetry and are find yourself inking couplets on the corners of napkins over breakfast, don’t quit your graveyard shift job unpacking truckloads of cheap Chinese junk. Keep flipping burgers. When one says “starving artist”, the poet does not even make it up onto this lowest of rungs on the socioeconomic ladder. At least a “starving artist” has that quirky patina people revere from a distance. Jazz musicians and landscape painters rate the secret awe normally reserved for yogis that meditate bare-bottomed in the snow. Poets don’t.

If you’re asked what you do and you reply “write poetry”, the questioner will go silent, blue then ask again. “No really. I meant, what do you do?”

It makes no sense for me to feel so good to be infected by poetry. The making of poems earns no money. Even family members sigh from having to live around me. They want dinner and attention, not clever words or insights into the horrors of our modern culture. My poor children. My sainted husband. My lost friends.

When you hang out with poets, you rub the folding corners of your arms with those who are too busy listening and watching, feeling and writing to notice the jab of your elbows.

by Alice Keys MD


http://alicekeysmd.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/why-you-should-stay-away-from-poets/