Who say we tire?  Na rest we dey rest ke!  The song chorused across the football fields of St. Gregory’s College, Obalende, Lagos.  This was a song rendered by the increasingly resigned students of King’s College as one of the ‘Up School’ football teams decided to offer a lesson in soccer mastery. The King’s College Lions had nothing to deploy in response other than a determination not to be humiliated. As the minutes ticked by, it became obvious that we were experiencing a massacre of monumental proportions and that the scoreline would be grim, reflecting the decline of the Lions.  

During my college years, the autumn time, rather than some fluke of an aberration, had become an annual ritual to hope against hope that our once mighty Lions would conquer everything in its terrain and lift the Principal Cup in the glorious summer.

However, it had become apparent in the very competitive world of football that we were fighting a losing battle. While other college teams graced football matches with skills and mastery, we were reduced to entertainment coming from our songs of praise and resilience. We were dazzling in our magic blazers and white shirts, but it was quite obvious that our songs signified the last roar of a dying lion. In the game of cricket, it was different but that story remains to be told at another time.

In reminiscing about my King’s College days, it is Nigeria that comes to mind; the arrival of the 50th year of independence from Britain. While many of our competitors, who started out at the same level of development or below us in the 1960s - Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan - have now motored ahead, our story is different.  We appear to be resting on our laurels with the song:  Who say we tire? Na rest we dey rest ke!  We are fond of the reference as the giant of Africa, yet, in our own backyard, Ghana shames us into silence, with its ability to deliver a stable environment for investment and progress.  

In Nigeria, at every conceivable level of governance we are confronted with a confounding and ravaging enemy whose name is corruption.  The characters masquerading as our government are busy looting the state through a variety of means and schemes. They are determined to lead us all into the realm of utter ruin and destruction and inflict more tears, sweat and blood on the governed. Recycling is a word redefined as part of a new vocabulary in Nigeria where old and discredited politicians with no credit to their names traverse the breath of the land seeking a mandate to redeem themselves.

The church that should be the glimmer of hope, the light and the salt in such a situation, as this is only beginning to be stirred by one or two ministers, Pastor ‘Tunde Bakare being among them. Most others are content to set up their own institutions and luxuriate in their own environs and the hope for the glorious heaven to come.

It would appear that Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State has now been left as a sole glimmer of hope in the whole familiar mess. In Lagos, where Governor Fashola is transforming the state and redefining the boundaries of governance in Nigeria, it would not surprise you that for all his efforts, he may not even be rewarded with an opportunity to renew his mandate for progress.  

We have become a nation of excuses, excuses not to do the right thing; we jaw-jaw, and talk, and even write, write just for the fun of it. Pull me down mentality is more powerfully revealed in our writings, rather than pull them up. We use history as a justification to maintain the status quo of rot rather than as a propeller to and of progress. We seem content to wallow, dwell and repeat the errors of our leaders past, in order to maintain some ethnic purity in Nigeria. But, maybe, there is hope, for in every of these dark areas, there are a few motivated to do the right thing and abandon old distractions.

Nigeria at 50 faces a stalemate, and as we rest, these rogues are coming out like thieves in the night to wreck what remains of the landscape. The vast majority of us are of course content to sidon look, to squabble, learn new words of insult and abuse and simply accomplish nothing but marking time! I choose to speak truth to power in the hope that we will arise from our rest of 50 years and impact the landscape of Nigeria.

Ojedokun resides in the United Kingdom

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