The generation of today has so much gotten used to copying other people’s ways and methods of doing things that it has it has left nothing out. And this in turn is eroding our own values and methods because it seems we prefer other people’s ways than ours. We have belittled our own culture and undermined our own capabilities.
It’s either foreign or none. Why should it be that we are the ones to emulate their ways, why don’t they do the same with ours? Or is it because we as Nigerians or Africans have been made to think that our ways are backward and uncivilized and I think we do not oppose or argue on such statements. To them, a black or African does not know the way out, he needs to be made choices for, simply meaning that we cannot make the right choices for ourselves.
We are neither leaders of a cause or oppose we are just followers who blindly follow the way with little or no consideration about harm or consequences.
More so, this act of ours has made even the foreigners think they are superior to us. Don’t we have this feeling of love and pride for the country? We are making them feel superior that is why we want to be like them.
We have shunned our countrymen abilities and talents, foolishly patronizing foreign products thereby generating revenue for them and further developing their own countries while our own country is struggling to get out of recession. If we do not want to help ourselves, someone somewhere will treat us the way they deem fit. We have been turned into a dumping ground because they know we will welcome anything foreign unmindful and oblivious of what it can do to our health and wellbeing. But can we blame them? We cannot because we are the ones that set the standard on how we should be treated and gauged.
We have contributed to the state in which we are in now. We refused to give chances to those with the ability and talent to create or invent useful technology, all some people needed was just one chance to bring forth something fruitful but blindly, we denied them that chance and some have stopped trying completely.
This is why there are a lot of wasted and uncultivated talents. Please give the people the chance. There are so many young people who have had their dreams aborted because they didn’t get the chance. This change really needs to begin with YOU and ME.
Fatima Zahra Muhammad,
IBBU, Lapai, Niger state
