Salisu Suleiman on Nigeria - I am 50, please celebrate me. October 7, 2010

I recommend reading this blog in full  - and the comments.

Then - celebrate the efforts of Nigerians, like John Dada  and others in different walks of life, who, against all the odds, are working to make Nigeria a better place

I AM 50, PLEASE CELEBRATE ME

Salisu Suleiman

I have enormous tracts of land and vast volumes of water, but cannot feed myself. So I spend $1 billion to import rice and another $2 billion on milk. I produce rice, but don’t eat it. I have millions of cows but no milk. I am 50, please celebrate me.

I drive the best cars in the world but have no roads, so I crush my best brains in the caverns, craters and crevasses they crash into daily. I am in unending mourning, please celebrate me.

My school has no teacher and my classroom has no roof. I take lectures through windows and live with 15 others in one room. All my professors have gone abroad, and the rest are awaiting visas. I am a university graduate, but I am illiterate. I want a future, please celebrate me.

Preventable diseases send me to hospitals without doctors, medicines or power. All the nurses have gone abroad and the rest are waiting to go also. I have the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world and future generations are dying before me. I am hopeless, hapless and helpless, please celebrate me.

For democracy’s sake I stood more...