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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.

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