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In Need Of A National Orientation

July 18, 2010

No matter where we meet, is it at the African market, at school, at a joint, celebrating Isi Eghu delicacies with palm wine brewed and bottled in Ogun state, at marriage ceremonies, at wake keep, at cultural festivities or at a friend’s house, we Nigerians in Diaspora, of varied ethnic nationalities discuss with perfect harmonic symphony, and with nostalgia, the beautiful upbringing we had in the good old days in Nigeria?

No matter where we meet, is it at the African market, at school, at a joint, celebrating Isi Eghu delicacies with palm wine brewed and bottled in Ogun state, at marriage ceremonies, at wake keep, at cultural festivities or at a friend’s house, we Nigerians in Diaspora, of varied ethnic nationalities discuss with perfect harmonic symphony, and with nostalgia, the beautiful upbringing we had in the good old days in Nigeria?
Our parents, some well educated, others half educated and yet many not educated at all but they handed to us instruments of survival anywhere in the world, but we the recipients never knew what we had until we dived unto uncharted waters. They gave us values, respect for elders, that we should never harvest where we did not sow, imputed in us the hard nut of hard work. They sent us out to the world with warnings: thou shall not steal, maim anybody and we should show malice towards none, but love unto others and whatever we do in life will follow us.

Maybe, Nigerians in Diaspora should send a message in unison that the culture we were raised in those good old days has no rival anywhere in the world. We in the Diaspora should be taken serious because we have compared the culture we were raised with our host countries and we have discovered that what we had in those days was gold not in any way wrought. There are certain things that need some modifications in our culture, but to throw out our beautiful culture away through a wide opening is not acceptable in exchange with the rotten and rudderless western culture is nonetheless suicidal. My pain is that this is done in utter ignorance and improper education and we are now paying the consequences. If the western culture is studied carefully, there is nothing good to be copied except the patriotisms they show to their various countries, that it will be hard for those in governance to steal money and transfer it to Nigeria as our unfortunate leaders do.

I learned from a sociologist that family is the unit of a society and if anything is wrong with the family, the shock wave will be transmitted to the wide society and all will not be well. The rubbish that is going on in Nigeria is a glaring testimony to a total breakdown of our family system. The decay in USA is the inability of the families to brace up with the various challenges propping up here and there. In USA, violence, rape, gangs, armed robbery, divorce, single motherhood, early pregnancy, school drop-out, lack of respect, drug use and murder are the signs of family breakdown and absence of values and these deviant behaviors will envelop Nigeria to a devastating degree if we don’t return to the basics, the core values that ruled the nation until recently. In USA, though this is not an iron proof, but families with a father figure and mother in the same roof, their children are likely to turn out well unlike children from divorced homes and single motherhood. Fathers all over the world are symbols of discipline unless a dead beat father, they provide, shelter and protect their homes. I don’t’ know how I would have turned out if my dad was not around to discipline me when I was growing up and my mother, oh sweet mother gave me all the love I needed. Recently, some deranged Nigerian women are opting for single motherhood and the reasons they often give is the way it is done in the western world, but they don’t know the consequences of raising a child in the absence of a father; it is not our culture. The reasons the celebrated single mothers in USA don’t give for opting the single motherhood is their inability to listen to a man, they want freedom, to do whatever they desire without anybody telling them that they are crossing the borderline. They want a good man, but they don’t want to pay the price of having a good man; a man is the head of a home, to them, you are preaching to the choir, it irritates them. I say it the way it is, most of them have nasty attitudes, and this is not the issue of chauvinism, but a fact.

All that glitters is not gold and the means by which the USA rules the world culturally is by exporting their movies all over the world, but one will wonder, has USA a culture in the first place?  The nonsense from France, Holland, Italy, Germany and Britain stinks. Saudi Arabia, a move to protect their culture, banned American televisions from beaming to the Kingdom; they did this by restricting ownership of satellite, though this is drastic. I will advise the Nigerian government to filter all the programs that come into the country and there are certain programs that should be shown late in the night when the children are asleep. We should protect our children from programs that can corrupt their minds despite the fact that they get enough corrupt materials from our national and state assemblies. I don’t know why Nigerians claim that anything that is good for the western world is good for the nation. Most of the western countries are fast condemning marriages, a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, can we opt for that too?  For the fact that law makers fight in the British House of Common and in Korea, so our assembly men and women had to fight in the presence of our young children, what a shame?  I think one of our problems is that we feel inferior to other countries and this is so because of economic reasons.

Whenever I tell my wife that African nation, indeed Nigeria has the best cultural value in the world, she will retort with this question: why is then that Nigeria is underdeveloped and infected with corruption? Any person that is involved in corruption in Nigeria is a signal to moral and family failures. But greed is the forerunner of corruption and the only thing that can stop it is stringent law, because at times, man behaves like an animal. Corruption destabilizes family system and values in the sense that hunger can cause a man to do what is irrational. Many fathers and mothers cannot control their children because they have no economic powers and most of those with economic powers steal the country dry. For families to return to their traditional functions of cultural values vanguard, they need to be empowered, the father has to have a job and those retirees must have their monthly checks in order to ask questions if they see unusual scenes in their children. How can a father and a mother who depend on their child for bread ask question if such a child comes home with a jeep and tons of money?  This is the bottom of the problems in Nigeria and this singular factor will make it difficult for us to go back where we were before the present quagmire and cesspool.


A national orientation is needed and those ruling Nigeria will champion it. The problem we also have in Nigeria is that any program that will ask questions about how we are living will not see the light of the day, because it will challenge the life styles of our leaders and it will ask them to be more accountable to the people they are leading. For this, the nation is always in recidivism, a delinquent child who has no prospect of revival and correction. The question is how long will we be in this Earth after all and to make a choice of killing the nation and dwarfing the growth and future of those upcoming ones because of selfish desire, this choice is not elegant?  Nigeria has no choice because the way we are living is not good and it will not elongate the life of the nation. We need a cultural revival, we have to love who we are, we have to love what we eat, how we dress, the way we talk, the way we dance and we have to love our brand of music. It is stupid to relegate the music of Sunny Ade, Fela, Oriental Brothers, Osita Osadebe, Rex Lawson, Obey Commander, Onyeka, the elegant stallion, Kollington Ayinla, Kris Okotie, The Doves, Sunny Okosuns, Shina Peters and Sweet Breeze to the background in preference for gangster rap and hip-hop music, the music for violent people. Our youths are misguided and misled. Radio stations in USA play and still promote music played in the sixties and the young ones in USA sing these songs. I wonder if the sixteen or thirteen year old in Nigeria knows Kris Okotie as a wonder boy of soul music except being a later day preacher.

Kidnapping and armed robbery are signs that the family system is broken down and the problem facing us is mountainous. The way it is now in Abia state, it seems kidnapping is a business that involves the whole villages in Ngwaland and how did we come to this level? These villages are made up of families and these families comprise parents and off springs. Where are the elders, are they economically hamstrung? The kidnapped victims are held in people houses, who are the owners of those houses? They may be held in bushes, somebody owns that piece of land. We really need to go back to the drawing board; we have to find a fine line between when the rain started beating us and when we got dry. Ogbonnaya Onovo, the IGP said out of 600 kidnappers in their custody, Ndi Igbo or Anambra accounts for 400. Ndi Igbo that need clean bill of health, this is not a good news for them, so when the Senate President, David Mark called for state of emergency in that part of that clime, people should not blame him. He made it clear that he did not want the governors to be removed, and what if the governors are all removed, will it not be a good omen and good riddance since they have allowed the South East to be the den of kidnappers. Some people are behind this evil mess and trade, remember the Ides of 2011. If Attahiru Jega is not careful, only rogues and 419 idiots will rule the whole of South East. Decent people will be scared to come forward for elective offices for fear of being kidnapped.

If the elders refuse to show the youths the way and empower them, there may not be a Nigeria tomorrow. From all indications, our youths are in the wrong paths and they are following the footprints of the directionless elders. Most of the rejected ills of the western worlds are what our youths grab tenaciously. Our youths are now more disrespectful, some of our girls dress like whores, some of our boys dress like gangsters, hanging their pants (trousers on the butt instead of the waist). In 2007 when I flew from Abuja to Lagos, I alighted from the airplane and two of the ladies walking in front of me had no underwear (pants), exposing their raw butts and without bra, dangling their bare breast as they walk. I could not understand such rubbish and that was the scenery I could only see in the streets of Los Angeles, but I was mistaken, that was my own Lagos. My friend with Diamond Bank Owerri told me plainly that with time men would be marrying from brothel houses because decent girls will be in short supply and women would be marrying armed robbers and kidnappers as husbands. Are we there yet?

The federal government and the state counterparts have much work to do; to revise our cultures and institute a nationwide national orientation instead of the stupid external rebranding. The various organs of information have to be mobilized for this important assignment. We have to be willing and able to change the present curve and course if the ills ravaging the country are to be solved. The amount of billions siphoned outside the country by our politicians should be channeled into job creations. Our lifestyles that do not promote discipline, hard work, marriage between men and women, patience, love for one another, integrity, morals and our time-honored cultural values should be jettisoned for good. What we had before was good and there is no need looking elsewhere. Tufiakwa!!!!

In concluding this piece of essay, I will presume that our president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who is from the oppressed people of Niger Delta will instruct his information minister to evolve a national program that will bring us to once more to the path of honor, and that will include equity and fairness. No particular ethnic group should left behind in the affairs of the nation. I believe that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s ascension to power is divine. Our president is not a man of over ambition; his cool headedness during Umaru’s illness endeared him to many Nigerians. Nigeria is abysmally sick, we have no direction and with him for the next four years, we will surely find our bearings. I am not worried of Ibrahim Babangida, the natural force will sweep him aside and I am also not worried of the cave-thinking Northern oligarchy, time has made them irrelevant, and thank God we have some brains in the North now, who are tired of the status quo. The train is moving and those whom are sluggish will remain behind.
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Masquerade is back.
I was delighted when I watched Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo, alias 4: 30 on the external service of Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), though beamed from the Enugu station of NTA. Please, we need this and thanks to the sponsors. We also need Village Headmaster, Cock crow at Dawn, Supple Blues, Acada Campus, and Mirror in the Sun, at least a re-run. America does it and they call it Throw back theatre. Those big businesses that sponsor all kinds of rubbish on the Nigerian television stations can throw their weights behind these programs, to show our young ones that we don’t need to copy the ragtag gangsters in the street of Los Angeles, Chicago or New York. We need to show case our music, check our Shina Peter’s “Give Women Chance”, Omoge you fine, Ajala travel by Obey Commander, Osadebe ’75, Nwanne Abughi Enyi (A brother is not a friend) by Oriental Brothers led by Sir Warrior, Is it wrong to be in love by Kris Okotie and Who owns Papa’s land by Sunny Okosuns, Ije Udo by Tony Grey and those ones from Bongos Ikwue, Ofeges, the Apostles and the Original Wings. These lyrics and tunes should be the bench mark for our youngsters and not rap song by Snoop Dog. We have a rich culture and we should be proud of it. Until then, Alutaa Continua, keep shooting.

Iwuanyanwu writes from Los Angeles, California.

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