Fretting over the seemingly endless political absurdities in Nigeria would only drive you mad and easily make you give up on Nigeria.
Stagnant economy, human rights violations, internecine and fratricidal conflicts, depleting trust in the INEC and electoral processes, to mention just a few, are enough to prick your conscious.
Instead of being so concerned about all this, why not rivet our attention to the good sides of Nigeria?
You just need to cross a border to Cameroon or Chad, and you will find out that so many people wish they could enjoy the kind of democracy we have here even though ours is susceptible to meddling but it is not as bad as theirs.
At least there exist term limits, and no matter how brutal a leader is, he will one day leave the office. We have many patriotic Nigerians who have been promoting good images of Nigeria more than the microscopic few who are hellbent on vitiating our image through drug trafficking and internet frauds.
Despite ethnic tensions and religious hatred, a Nigerian can move freely to every part of the country as a citizen. We have the best creative writers and literary mavens in Africa. Nigeria has the largest population on the continent.
We have aggressively educated and entrepreneurial citizens who excel all over the world. The richest black man in the world is a Nigerian. The first African to receive Nobel Prize in literature is a Nigerian. The most widely read novel in Africa, Things Fall Apart, was written by a Nigerian. The richest woman in Africa is a Nigerian.
Majority of Nigerians speak more than one language. Despite being the second most linguistically diverse country in the world after Papua New Guinea. The majority of us live in harmony with each other despite intermittent tensions.
Our foods and rich cultures, clothes are intact and untainted despite decades of colonial presence.
We have a lot to be proud of Nigeria though we have a long way to go in terms of full economic growth and infrastructural development.
We just can’t go anywhere if we continue to overlook our achievements by unnecessarily fuelling political, ethnic and religious arguments which will never augur well for our collective well-being.
A positive mental attitude is a key to the development of any country.
By Aliyu Bashir Almusawi