**I LOVE NIGERIA MY COUNTRY, BUT I AM MOST DEFINITELY NOT PROUD OF IT!**

(Dr Ope Banwo, the Mayor of Fadeyi, vawolently responds to the viral video of govt sympathizers accusing Nigerian youths and agitators for better govt as being unpatriotic citizens)

I think somebody better go tell those clueless Ikoyi people and heartless govt sympathizers who are trying to use emotional blackmail to stop people from speaking out against the underwhelming performance of their govt, that being patriotic (or loving in your country) is very different from being proud of it!.. That one is not proud of this country called Nigeria   does not make you unpatriotic. 😡😡😡

Today, I say a big and very loud SHIOR! to those government apologists and some of our privileged Ikoyi people who claim that Fadeyi Side-Of-Life Nigerians who criticize the insanity in our land right now are being unpatriotic.

I recently saw a viral video circulated by government apologists showing some negative developments in America (e.g., many factories allegedly closing down). They argued that despite these issues, Americans have not gone on strikes or whined about their country, unlike Nigerians, who they claim would be screaming and abusing the government if it happened here. They pointed out that those of us demanding better performance from our leaders are just not patriotic enough about our ‘beautiful’ country.

Seriously???

I am triggered by those government apologists who stand in their glorified and expensive slums called Ikoyi and Victoria Island or Lekki I, seeing the worse deprivation and hellish lives people in Fadeyi and even worse neighborhoods live, and then demand that these people must keep being proud of their nation.

They even have the gall to label them ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘disgruntled’ for voicing their disappointment with their beloved, underperforming nation and government.

That attitude from the privileged few, who probably want the average Nigerian to labor in vain until they die, is a very triggering and heartless posture from those benefiting from the madness Nigeria has become.

So, today, I say a big ‘SHIOR’ to all of you in your Ikoyi ‘prison houses’ and overblown ghettos that flood during a little rain. There is something sinister for YOu to still be demanding pride in Nigeria from much worse-off Nigerians about their country, when Nigeria and its government have done NOTHING to earn such adulation from the citizens for decades!

I also wonder some privileged people like to compare Nigeria to America when it suits them, or when they see something negative about America in the news?

Frankly, let’s just call it, on what planet can you even compare Nigeria to the USA? Except maybe if you want to compare our so-called above-average intelligence, and even that is debatable right now. With all our vaunted over-intelligence, we still can’t provide power for ourselves, feed ourselves, or even run a clean election to select leaders without BVAS ‘failing’ overnight. So what is the basis of this assertion that Nigerians are smarter than those in America or other developed nations? I am sure we only appear to be smarter because we have no choice but to be pretty smart just to survive (the same way the average black American has to be doubly smart to get a seat on the same table with the average white guy in those very dark days of racism in America).

I am sure that If most Americans were subjected to the same conditions as most of us in Nigeria, they would probably be much ‘smarter’ than the way we perceive them now.

Americans can afford to be ‘lazy’ as some see them because even a minimum wage earner can afford to drive a new car with their credit system, and live in a decent apartment as long as they are working. In Nigeria, even most of our top 10% workers or salary earners still cannot afford to buy ‘Tokunbo’ G-Wagons to show off unless they steal. Forget the poor or middle class. They can work for 100 years and never own a home or a car with their $20 a month minimum wage, and less than $1,500 a month wages for even some of the workers.

Yet, when some of us talk and criticize our underperforming government out of pain and disappointment in a nation so blessed, yet so cursed with underperformance, some unfortunate beneficiaries of our lackluster systems will say we are unpatriotic.

FYI, there is a reason the average American appears to be more patriotic than the average Nigerian (though Nigerians are, at heart, MORE patriotic than Americans). Americans can see and count tangible things their government does for them. Plus they know that if the govt is really messing up they can change it peacefully by voting. In contrast, a Nigerian is being asked to be patriotic despite receiving nothing but aggravation, apathy and in your face abuse from their government, and have to endure corrupt politicians who build mansions in office while the government owes more than eight months of salaries to its workers!

You would have to be pretty stupid or insane to be ‘proud’ of such a country. So, NO!, while I love Nigeria as my country of birth, I am most definitely NOT PROUD OF IT RIGHT NOW.

Now you can come and beat me!

In nitride We have no good roads, no drinkable tap water, no electricity, no jobs for most of our youths in their prime with university degrees in their hands, no basic things of life for the majority. Yet, some unfortunate idiots call them unpatriotic when they dare to complain? I say SHIOR to you!

When those complaining try to tell those in government and their supporters that America is doing better here and there, the unempathetic government officials and their mindless supporters will tell them to shut up and not compare Nigeria to America, and then give them some really stupid reasons why we must never try to compare the two nations.

Yet, when these same HYPOCRITES, who call others unpatriotic for daring to compare our miserable ‘hellish’ conditions in Nigeria to America’s ‘heavenly’ condition, see the bad parts of America, they are very quick to share the video and gloatingly tell them ‘see, America is worse! So stop complaining’. What a SHIOR you all deserve!

My point today: Stay in one place! If you don’t want us to compare the two countries when it does not favor our government, then stop showing us examples of bad stuff there just to tell us things are better here when you see those. It’s called ‘hypocrisy’ and lack of intellectual integrity!

Yes. I will call it: When it comes down to it, the fact is you really cannot compare Nigeria to America in ANYTHING (you can’t even compare the worst in America to the best in Nigeria most times) and calling it as it is does not make those calling it unpatriotic. It makes them realists. It has nothing to do with being patriotic or unpatriotic. It just means they refuse to play ostrich just because they love their country. I am one of those guys and I bristle when someone now says I am unpatriotic because I saw something bad in my country or my govt that I want to speak against!

In case you are all confused, Being patriotic is very different from being proud of your nation. If you all still don’t know the difference, then Google it!

As Mayor of Fadeyi, I consider myself more patriotic than most government parrots who refuse to acknowledge uncomfortable reality. I boldly say that those claiming to be proud of Nigeria, as it is right now, are either wickedly deceptive people seeking to prolong our pain for their gain, or gravely delusional about the realities of our land.

I say again, for emphasis, that being patriotic and being proud are two different things! I am a Nigerian patriot but I am most definitely NOT proud of my country Nigeria right now. Come and beat me if you think I am unpatriotic!

You may love your Father, but you will be a confused child if you tell your father, who is pretty smart, has visible amazing potential to be awesome that all your neighbors children keep telling you about in school, but who refuses to go to work, busy smoking Igbo every day, sleeping in his own vomit at 40 years old, and fighting your mother physically every day for trying to get him to focus and take care of you and your siblings . Only an unfortunate child will be proud of such a parent, though all children love parents since that’s all they knew and their parents are supposed to be their safety nets .

I love Nigeria but I am totally disappointed in it and its successive governments as of now for living well below its potential and being a ridicule of the world when it should be leading the world or at least leading in Africa.

Those of you insincere apologists  who want us to say we are proud of our country Nigeria, wrong or right, because most Americans are proud of their nation no matter what (which is not even true. Americans complain about their country 10C more than Nigerians. I know this for a fact because I have lived there for 30 years!) should please list just five things that we should be proud of in Nigeria as of today!

Is it our oil wastage and theft?

Is it the bad roads?

Is it the No water situation?

Is it the perennial No light?

Or is it our Elected Officials during N3 BILLION cars ($200,000) while our masses are unemployed and those working minimum wage are being asked to have a life with their families on $20 a month salary (ie N30,000)?

Or should I prefer that my own president cannot find good doctors to treat what they shameless told us was ear infection for 8 years ? Or that we have a president even know who must travel out for medical checkup every 3 months or less when we have some of our brightest medical minds and their hospitals literally dying of neglect in our hospitals ?

Or Is it our judiciary where simple cases may take 9 years to reach judgement? Or where it recently took me 7 years to get a simple Governors consent to a plot of land in Iju, ogun state for a client simply becos I refused to bribe anyone in land registry? So what should I proud of?

Or is it the knee high flooding when we get a little rain, even in our over expensive and over glorified ghettos in Ikoyi or Victoria Island  or Lekki or the disgustingly overpriced Banana Island? Sure I also have houses in some of these places but I am sure I need psychiatric help for doing it if not love for my country

Or is it Soccer where the world recognizes us as one of the better nations in the game but we cannot even keep local coaches and must rush to war torn Ukraine or is it Yugoslavia to get a coach?

Or should I be proud of the fact that we have some of our richest, most influential and most powerful citizens and even govt officials who are proudly addicted to English Soccer when most of our own stadium and soccer fields have been turned to crusade grounds and our local league has become a joke even to those who were given authority and power to run it?

I once listened to a big govt official, in the misery of sports no less, wax so strong about his love for UK Arsenal F without even showing any sense of shame or self awareness about how ridiculous he sounds when the local league that pays for his houses and cars in nigeria is in the toilet of sports. Should I be proud of that too?

If none of this is worthy of genuine pride, So what should we be proud of in nigeria right now ? I DOUBLE DARE YOU to list just 5 things I should be proud of about my country of birth right now other than the fact God loved me, or maybe it’s for His love for Nigeria as some pastor keeps telling us , so much God decided I would be born there? Yes, it’s true we are all born Nigerians without a choice in that decision, so we must love it and be patriotic about it becos for most that’s all they have, but don’t insult is or gaslight us on Monday morning by insisting I must be proud of it as well!

So I boldly say that while I love my country (as they say, monkey no fine but its mother loves it🤷🏿‍♂️), I am also saying boldly that I am NOT proud of Nigeria right now though I do love my country of birth because I had no choice but to love it, the same way all children love their parents no matter the abuse they are taken through, or the same way all parents love their wayward children even as they may ‘disown’ them by words to show their frustration. We know Anyone can disown Nigeria but it does not change the fact that they were born Nigerians but please don’t add insult to that injury by insisting we must be proud of it even when it is making us live in pains if we don’t want to be labelled traitors .

In case you want to know why no privileged Ikoyi side of life person should be telling those of us in Fadeyi side of life to be proud of our embarrassingly underperforming country or be deemed ‘unpatriotic’, here are some reasons you should not be telling us to be proud of our country no matter what, just because Americans are not going on strike over some closing factories as shown in your lame videos:

– I am not a socialist (on the contrary, I am a capitalist), but our welfare structure to take care of our people in Nigeria is zero. The poor are on their own in Nigeria while the super-rich just grind them into the dust instead of helping, but the USA has a robust welfare system to take care of those who have no job or lost their jobs. They have food and home shelters for anyone out of luck and needing a place to stay.

Sure, the USA also has homeless people on the streets of blessed places like New York and Los Angeles, but it’s not because those homeless have nowhere to go. Most of them choose to remain on the streets just a few steps from a free shelter! And even while on the streets, the government still protects them and their rights to be on the streets, but in Nigeria, we lock our own up for jaywalking while they await trial for seven years!

I SHIOR to our government and our nation for being so callous!

– In Nigeria, almost every citizen is also his own electricity support company because our country won’t or can’t give you more than two hours a day of light. Billions are allocated every year to solve the problem but it simply disappears into the corruption black hole. After all, if our politicians are sane and upright, how can we not figure out how to solve our electricity problems when the Republic of Benin, that we supply, has good electricity supply??

In America, their light is on 24/7 as long as you pay your bills. Most houses I know do not even know what a generator means. I have been there for 30 years and yet to meet anyone using a generator to power light to watch TV over there, even among the poor in their ‘ghettos’. I was reasonably exposed and well-to-do before I left Nigeria in 1995 and I lived in an American ghetto in Omaha for six months without even realizing I was in a ghetto until I heard someone was shot on our street on TV and the newscaster referred to the street as ‘one of the most dangerous ghettos’ in Omaha. I was so stunned I could not believe it until my Nigerian host confirmed it. Yet in that place, we had everything I thought was a luxury in Nigeria. Light. Drinkable water. Clean environment. Good roads. Almost every adult there had a car as far as I could see. Yet it was a ‘bad’ ghetto.

So SHIOR to Nigeria and its leaders again who will like to compare ‘bad’ in America to bad in Nigeria but don’t want to compare good in America to ‘good’ here. Even many BILLIONAIRES in Nigeria still live in glorified ghettos. Or how do you call a neighborhood where the average house is like $100,000 (over N120,000,000) but no light for more than two hours a day, knee-deep floods after just a little rain, no tap water and where drinking tap water where you find it, is almost a suicidal exercise? Fact, our ghettos in Omaha (a city which is even considered rural by most Americans) are MUCH better than the conditions of living in most of Ikoyi and Victoria Island and Lekki combined… yet you want to show some videos of bad stuff in the USA and then tell us to keep quiet about our hellish conditions in Nigeria?

I say SHIOR to you and the Tokunbo G-Wagon you rode in on!

– In Nigeria, our companies and even governments can owe workers 6-18 months salary (and owe pensioners for YEARS) with no consequence, while the owners of those companies drive Land Cruisers around, and our legislators that we elected to protect us drive around in $200,000 imported cars paid for by the government, though most of them already had five cars of their own before even winning elections.

In the USA, it’s actually a crime to owe workers, and if you owe Americans just two weeks of salary, your company will be shut down by the people themselves, without even going on strike since most live from paycheck to paycheck.

I have been in America for 30 years but I have NEVER heard of a situation where the government ANYWHERE in America can owe their workers for one month and their politicians lived to tell the tale. It’s a wonder that our government still doesn’t understand why someone with a Master’s Degree prefers to Japa to the USA or UK or ANYWHERE decent to work as certified nurses or grocery baggers at Walmart. At least they can have a MUCH better standard of life even with minimum wage.

Yet our over-pampered Ikoyi side of life people, most of whom are too dumb to even realize they themselves are living in glorified ghettos, will tell us things are bad in America too and we should keep quiet.

Ejoor o, don’t over-trigger me, please. It’s Monday morning!

So we ALL, Ikoyi and Fadeyi combined, need to stop this stupid ‘I am proud of my country no matter what’ nonsense. It’s why we are not progressive. Faux patriotism is not helping us. So me, I say a loud SHIOR to our Nigerian nation and its leaders for being so overwhelmingly underwhelming in its lack of living up to expectations. If you say that makes me unpatriotic, then I say triple SHIOR to you!

– In Nigeria, your own government pays you a minimum wage that can’t even take care of a street dog (not a thoroughbred one, o) for a month and then tells you your union leaders are unpatriotic for daring to call a strike to protest a minimum wage of $20 A MONTH that has remained stagnant for five years while inflation has quadrupled in the same period. You want us to be proud of a country where our President, who just spent N25 BILLION to renovate our VP’s house that the previous government also spent just billions to renovate, with our elected leaders driving around in cars that cost more than N3,000,000,000 EACH (yes, a $200,000 car IS about N3,500,000,000 today folks), looks Nigerians in the face and says they are greedy and unpatriotic for asking for a N100,000 minimum monthly salary.

So that you understand, the annual pay at even N100k monthly minimum wage (which the government has not even accepted to pay o) is N1,200,000, which is still VERY MUCH LESS than 0.01% of the cost of the car our government officials are driving around.

Yes, just 1% of a $200,000 car is still more than 300% of the annual salary of a worker in the same country, and you all want the people to be proud of their land? What are you all smoking? I say SHIOR!!

Yet, in the same America you are telling us citizens hate their nation, the equivalent of minimum wage in America ($10 an hour calculated at 40 hours a week for four weeks of work) comes to over N3 million Naira per MONTH, which is higher than the salary of more than 80% of our highest working Nigerians!

You don’t want us to talk about that comparison, so how dare you then compare the bad things in America with citizens still remaining calm to our anger in Nigeria? Shior! Shior! Shior!

– Our Nigerian government is full of thieves that we all know stole our money but cannot do anything about. But America prosecutes even its own past president for paying off a prostitute with his own money, and for inflating the price of his house to get a loan though he fully repaid the loan and nobody really lost any money. Seriously?

I think I just need to stop here or my headache will just get worse before Nigeria kills me like it killed Prof. Awojobi who simply died of a broken heart just by seeing the downward spiral of our nation… and that was over 40 years ago. I can’t even imagine what the unforgettable and patriotic Prof. Awojobi, who spent many weeks carrying a ONE-MAN placard protest against our leaders, would say if he saw Nigeria today.

All I know is the ONLY hope our nation has for forcing our leaders and privileged citizens out of their lethargy is their unceasing agitation on social media. I may not be an active Obidient anymore because I need to be in a neutral position where I can hold both sides accountable with my rants without being overly partisan (because sometimes I want to be able to criticize their excesses), but I have an undying respect for those youths, and adults, who would not be consoled and will keep wailing until we see a better nation. Much love and respect. Only diligent anger and agitation can bring about any change.

To me as I go look for what to eat, I sincerely the REAL TRAGEDY of our realties today is that some of our Patriots of yesterday years who literally put their lives on the line for a better Nigeria, and some who actually founded student cultist societies and who brandished guns to threaten election riggers over 60 years ago are still alive today, to see the mess our govts have become after spending a lifetime fighting for it, but who are shockingly embracing our govts that are performing so underwhelmingly and joining others to call the patriotic youths of today who are inconsolable at the state their nation, and about how their future has been badly compromised by corrupt and inept leader,  ‘children of anger’ and ‘fascists’ for daring to do same thing they did 60 years ago and which actually  inspired many of us to see them as heroes even today when they have sold us out to our oppressors and shamelessly embracing them in public

Ha… That image of the Lion embracing the Wolf made me more sad than angry. Just seeing a Lion throw his JEWEL to the wolves after a lifetime of fighting for its progress is more heartbreaking than annoying. 

In my sadness, All I know is the ONLY hope our nation has for forcing our leaders and privileged citizens out of their lethargy is their unceasing agitation on social media . I may not be an active Obidient anymore because I need to be in a neutral position where I can hold both sides accountable with my rants without being overly partisan (because sometimes I want to be able to criticize their excesses) but I have an undying respect for those youths, and adults, who would would not be consoled and will keep wailing until we see a better nation. Much love and respect. Only diligent anger and agitation can bring about any change

As the Mayor of Fadeyi, I will stand on my balcony in Fadeyi and keep calling it as I see it as I observe the landscape from afar. Sure I am privileged myself in my american abode, but my heart and soul is with those brave souls struggling in gritty Fadeyi side of life and other neighborhoods just like it or worse, where just being alive these days is worthy of a national award

I will be back!

As the Mayor of Fadeyi, I will stand on my balcony in Fadeyi and keep calling it as I see it as I observe the landscape from afar. Sure I am privileged myself in my American abode, but my heart and soul are with those brave souls struggling in gritty Fadeyi side of life and other neighborhoods just like it or worse, where just being alive these days is worthy of a national award.

I will be back!