NUTS & SCREWS with CHARLY BOY
CRACKED!
For some weeks now, I’ve found myself asking people this question: What exactly is going on in this country? Just take a minute and think about this: Can you ever imagine a country without a head? That country, as far as I am concerned, is far more than cracked. I have got to the point where I finally found myself so upset. It is so unimaginable to find ourselves in a situation whereby the powers that be decide that the seat of the number one man in the country of Nigeria will remain vacant, just because of their stupid, wicked, selfish and insensitive personal interest.
A man is ill and actually wants to rest and take care of his health, yet he’s being forced to remain a president. President na by force? Imagine the climate change conference that just held in Denmark with governors and presidents from different countries present except for our dear beloved Umar Musa Yar’Adua, who, unfortunately, lies dying on a hospital bed. Obasanjo decided that this dying man is the right man for us.
The question is, what exactly was the racket that Obasanjo played here? Why would he insist on making a dying man president of a country such as Nigeria? A dying man is equal to a dying nation. As at last week, report had it that over N900million had already been spent on the president’s health yet nothing. This minute we hear that he has lost his speech; next we’re told he’s regained it. What a joke for a country! Recently, I overheard some people saying that the president’s look on TV and newspapers these days appears like one who has already been embalmed for burial.
The most annoying aspect of this whole thing is the fact that Nigerians are just sitting and waiting to see if the man will die or live. Does it really make a difference whether he lives or dies? After all, everything has been at a standstill for as long as I can remember under his presidency. How can the whole nation be jeopardized just because of the interest of some men? Everyday, Nigerians are being laughed at and called all sorts of names, which other African countries are never called; yet we do nothing because no one wants to start the process of making things right again. An average Nigerian is happy to know that someone somewhere is singing his praises; so he makes certain that you never rise to that point of being independent because that will mean losing your loyalty as they are happy to see people beg them for everything they need.
Wake up fellow countrymen. It should be time to make changes. It is time to preach better sermons with our lives, than with our feeble words. It is high time we stopped winking in the dark. It is time we stopped applauding our stupidity and foolishness, for I am ashamed and fed up with our shapeless and ugly nudity. A lot of people are singing of how screwed up the country is. I don’t think that everybody wants to hear that all the time. We often times talk the talk; sometimes we work the work; at times, we talk and walk; most times, we walk the talk, as we all the time talk the walk. Charly is saying that for the first time in our lives as true Nigerians, let’s WORK THE TALK.
We get what we want by focusing on and creating it; let us create the Nigeria we need, by creating the experience we want. Yes, we want Change; we need change and we expect to reap the blessings of change; let us undergo the fatigue of supporting it, knowing that freedom and change are not given; they are taken. Stop waiting for others to fix these problems (economic, political and social quagmire), they aren’t coming. Forget your friends, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters in power; you have lost them, because a friend in power is a friend lost.
An average Nigerian knows the solution to problems in Nigeria; turn on your television, all you hear is “I think Nigeria is at a crossroad, I think Nigeria is bleeding, I think Nigeria is dying” hey! If you do not get off that road, you’ll get hit by a truck, and you bleed, and then die. Yesterday is history; tomorrow is spotless and a mystery. Today is a gift; that is why it is called the present; so that we become the gift of the tomorrow we need. The success or failure of our country is in our hands. We write the stories we want to read; we sing the song we want to hear, and act the scenes we hope to see. Let’s, therefore, begin here and now to rewrite the story book of Nigeria by standing up to our rights.
Listen all, if the president who has not really brought any changes to the situation of things in this country since inception, can’t cope, let him quit. If all the cry about strike, school fees increase, poverty, poor supply of electricity and the rest of them has had no effect whatsoever by our so-called president, is it now that he is almost a ghost of his normal self that it will be actualized? In fact, the major question I want to ask us now is, must he even stay alive? Must he be president? Must he continue to blindly lead Nigeria, thereby almost making us the followers equally blind? Did our forefathers plant any bottle in their family compound vowing that in sickness and in health, they must lead? Listen all of you out there, the earlier we begin to address all this mess the better for this country. Enough of the complaining. This must be time for affirmative action. We decide our future, destiny and the state of affairs of this great nation, which is almost crumbled from the crack it’s already dealing with.
Looking at the heading of this write-up, you see CRACKED! This was what I had another African call Nigeria recently in the course of a discussion. Imagine a Ghanaian telling me that Nigeria is cracked. I asked what he meant and the young chap said to me, the leadership is like a cracked glass cup, which, according to him, simply means that we are almost broken if something is not done fast enough. He said to me, I remain then when we used to migrate to Nigeria, make money, go back to Ghana and become a big boy. According to him, then they used to call Nigerian money “naira power.” He said to me, I have wept for the giant of Africa but what can my weeping do. My question now is, is this country truly cracked? Yes, it is but we can fix it if we wish and are determined and come together, yes we can!
In my struggle to make this brand Charly Boy what it is today, I learned earlier on in life that some of the most significant journeys of life often could never be embarked on by the weak-hearted. If you ever wished to go against the grain, don’t forget that you will face all the ‘bloody Nigerians’ who are your accusers. These are the mother of self-doubt which in your darkest hour will decide your fate. All I needed to have done was to let a crack in me then you see all the bloody Nigerians succeed in leading me to the direction they have all chosen to go because that tiny crack is usually where the termites and the lizards of this world crawl in through and fall the fence or wall of your house no matter the foundation. Now it may interest you to know that for a long time, I found myself fighting to defeat all the bloody Nigerians who surrounded me from every corner.
It sure was not a piece of cake but at the end I won. That light at the end of the tunnel should and must always be our focal point if we sincerely want to be a part of the uncracked wall Nigeria has to become. It may also interest you all to know that the so called leaders are completely oblivious of the pain and anguish they inflict on people. If they knew, and I suspect some do, they will boast to continue with their wicked ways. These debilitating and formless breed are the stuff of the abyss in which you should learn not to linger for too long else you become trapped with no hope of a saviour. Going back to what the Ghanaian said to me about Nigeria being a cracked nation, I now call on all of us well-meaning Nigerians to know that the responsibility of mixing the cement with all the right requirements and closing the cracked wall neatly and smoothly to avoid collapse rests on us.
If we are truly Nigerians who want, desire, dream and long for a better Nigeria, the time to boldly make a decision to go against the grain is now. As I always say, all my armour is set and shining, it’s now left for you to just whistle Charly’s name and I’ll breeze in like the wind that blows in its season.
Remember, Nigeria is ours; so we must come together and make it how we want it to be. In all of this mess, I look up to all the exceptional youths that Nigeria has, to stand up against bad leadership. NOTHING DO YOU BUT TAKE A STEP OF BOLDNESS.
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