The POLITICIAN 1000
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I can’t speak for anyone else but as<br />
for me, I am sick and tired of people who constantly<br />
complain about the state that Nigeria is in. <strong>The</strong>re’s no<br />
light, the schools are bad, the hospitals are terrible,<br />
the roads are suicidal, kidnapping is rampant, HIV is<br />
rapidly spreading, not enough jobs for graduates and<br />
on and on and on. Since when did complaining about<br />
a problem ever solved it? We can criticize the government<br />
till we’re blue in the face and accuse all the politicians<br />
of irresponsibility in the call of duty, but none of<br />
these will fix Nigeria. It was John F Kennedy, a onetime<br />
democratic president of the United States of America<br />
that said and I quote “Don’t ask what your country can<br />
do for you, but ask what you can do for your country”.<br />
Nations are nothing more than a concentration<br />
of individuals within an identified boundary. Human<br />
beings make up countries (real deep stuff right? Lol!),<br />
and it is the action/s of those individuals within that<br />
country that makes the difference.<br />
At the top of this article I have deliberately at<br />
tached the pictures of our founding fathers, men that<br />
34<br />
BY PAUL OKADE Jr<br />
decided to do something about the freedom and destiny<br />
of our nation. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa and<br />
Obafemi Awolowo were not Angels sent down from<br />
Heaven, they were ordinary human beings just like you<br />
and I who decided to stand up and be counted. What if<br />
these three legendary figures decided to sit on their behinds<br />
and criticize the state of the nation, like most of<br />
us do? Had they done that, Nigeria would never have<br />
gotten its independence, and we would still be a colony<br />
of the British Empire, instead of the sovereign nation<br />
that we are today.<br />
A population that believes that their destiny is in<br />
the hands of their government, is simply delusional<br />
and nothing more. <strong>The</strong>re is no government on Earth<br />
that has the ability to solve all the problems facing its<br />
citizenry. Even the nations that we admire such as <strong>The</strong><br />
United States of America and Great Britain are nations<br />
that were birthed by individual men and women with a<br />
pioneering spirit. Many towns and Cities in both these<br />
nations are named after their founders. Yes, individuals<br />
bought large expanses of land and began to develop<br />
them.