As I write this piece, I feel very hot on my inside, my heart beating a little faster than normal ( the way you would feel when you are taken advantage of, and told not to speak). It's just crystal clear as a plain glass on a sunny day, that there is a fault in our thinking system, on the average, as a nation.
'We cannot innovate anything!' One of my lecturers just spilled out a few minutes ago. 'Thank God you're reading medicine, you would have been victims the more' he said. The students cheered him with laughter and chuckles in a unanimous agreement, except for myself and another female student who was even bold enough to defiantly defend Nigeria, at least, the future.
This is how it all started. An inquisitive student raised his hand to ask a question in the Anatomy class. 'Sir, is it true that over-usage of the brain can cause Parkinson's disease? Then the lecturer, who I respect for his academic prowess, gave an analogy to address the question. "If Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln and others who we consider as those who really used their brain did not develop Parkinson's disease, then it's not likely that over-usage(if there's anything like that) of the brain can cause the disease. Then he went a step further to say, "Even if it can cause it, it will never occur amongst us blacks because we don't use our brains!" I just got startled and wondered if I had heard him right. To worsen the case, a 95 percent of the class thinks same.
In an attempt to further substantiate his claim, he mentioned that the whites invented phones, made cars and the jets. And how you'll definitely get a job for yourself if you travel abroad unlike here in Nigeria where a greater part of the populace wallow in abject poverty. The claims are objectively true until he said; "and we don't have what it takes, talking about mental capacity, to stand our Caucasian counterpart". That was when a strong electric field of repulsion grew within me. "We cannot innovate anything!" He concluded.
I could only imagine. How would an older man implant into the next generation a feeling of inferiority, incapacity and make us feel a little less than mediocrity by saying such words!
Well, for me, I am of the view that nothing is new anywhere. The US didn't come to be a place every of our children dream to be until some persons stood up to defend their country. People who were not so careful if they be the one to take all the glory for causing the change but were more interested in living in the change they want to see.
I don't see myself as being inferior to anybody! My skin? I think we need to see the advantage in being dark-skinned because it is actually an edge of protection from harmful rays.
You see, with this experience and other things that have come my way, I have truly realised that failure is not is getting scores below average, it not in having a poor background, not in being physically challenged or even having bad leaders, failure is to disrespect yourself so much by thinking you don't deserve a place among the best ones.
I believe Nigeria begins from me and from you. The way we see ourselves and how we act thereafter. It is not necessarily going into politics, it is the way we respect law and order. The change begins like this: next time you have finished taking water from a sachet, you would look for a waste bin to drop it in , and if not available, you would keep it until you find one. That you wouldn't litter!
Finally,let me add that, no one would come and change this nation for us. As you don't leave your parents and siblings to join another family automatically, same way it is for you as a Nigerian. We just have to stand for ourselves.
Hmmmm....
Thank You.
~Mayowa Olar Williams
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