Perhaps I'm just a sucker for the truth or I'm just being plain retarded but I think I should get this thing of my chest for real. To my fellow Naija people who care to stop by and read blab, I hope to hear your opinion about this one. I feel I should take care of a little splurge from my archive of Nigerian issues. I feel compelled to revisit this issue before I let it fade into memory's vault to be forgotten forever.
Okay let me stop with the preamble blah blah before I bore you out. Let's just take a few steps back down memory lane. I'm talking about a short walk back to October 2003. To the point where a poll survey conducted by some British scientists indicated that the happiest people on earth live in Nigeria (did you feel the sharp pain in your stomach too?). Boy did that hurt!
For what seemed like an eternity after I read the newspaper, I cringed in what seemed like a mixture anger and surprise, and then I felt my mouth move. I uttered a few questions. Which Nigeria? On what planet?
I had visited my optometrist a few days before. I had a perfect vision so my sight couldn't have been an issue here. Maybe I had the newspaper upside down. Alas, I'm not being delusional.
Quickly, being a CNN junkie that I am, I hurried to my basement and tuned my TV to CNN. News of such magnitude should make the headline news for sure. For the first time that night, I was right. There it was:
"ACCORDING TO POLLS TAKEN BY BRITISH SCIENTIST, THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD LIVE IN NIGERIA"- CNN news anchor.
The irony of this joke played out on screen like a tragic-comedy movie. Visuals which accompanied the news showed what seemed like black folks in long queues in gas stations in a country which is the seventh largest crude oil producing nation in the world. Women who labored to balance heavy loads on their heads while they secured their infants firmly on their backs with sweat socked wrapper. What I saw in this video clip was poverty stricken neighborhoods, shanty homes spread across the land. Far across the horizon you could see a few sky scrappers overlooking poor shanty towns. I guess that's where the fortunate ones dwell. Perhaps, that's the side of town where the polls where conducted. I refused to believe that these eyes, these eyes of young men and women which wondered in bewilderment, prying curiously into the future in hopeless anticipation are truly happy.
Forgive me if I'm being a little pessimistic here but I beg to defer. I don't expect everyone out there to buy into my opinion on this issue but dare to challenge their conclusion. This can hardly qualify for a joke. Of course they were Nigerians, my girl friend included, who believe that life's happiness cannot be bought with money. True, absolutely true! Happiness is priceless but in the Nigerian context it is worth 150 billion dollars foreign debt. Billions of dollars in foreign banks owned by public administrators and high ranking government officials while banks back home can hardly operate. Need I delve into the Nigerian education system where young men and women, though full of potentials languish at the mercy of administrators who'll rather send their children to foreign schools while they pay their tuition with money meant to run schools in Nigeria.
Okay! okay let me not blow my top here. Let's address this happiness thing critically: One dollar equals one hundred and forty naira.
419 is on the rise not because Nigerians are lazy or too darn greedy. Nope, there aren't decent opportunities to go around.
The presence of AIDS in Nigeria is met with defiant curiosity and lack of government funding.
Lack of infrastructure.
Public schools languish under the dominance of more and well-organized private schools. Where does that leave the poor ones who cannot afford expensive private school education?
Income per capita is one of the lowest in the world. (Gush! here I go again, money isn't everything. Pardon me.)
Road and communication systems are poor.
Ethnic war over oil pipelines
Election fraud
We could spend whole day talking about issues that all amount to a huge disappointment rather than happiness. Nigeria is a country blessed with human and natural resources. Why even buy into a stupid research by desperate scientists who want to make the front covers of newspapers in their developed countries while the true picture of the situation in Nigeria lay unattended. Although this survey may not be an issue, I believe that every reasonable Nigerian would agree that there are lots of issue that need to be resolved in that country. Issues which cannot by any means, shape or form resemble happiness.
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