What If Nigeria Treated Her People Like Oil?

What If Nigeria treated her people like it treat’s her Oil?

What if we got mad over the fact that our top talent are being refined in Universities abroad and being sold to us at an inflated price?

What if we got mad about the fact that Nigeria cannot refine her talent in-country, because of the abject state of our Universities.

What if we got mad over the fact that Nigerian Universities in the 60’s which were able to refine special talent’s such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka are now in a state of embarrassing disarray!

What if we got mad that the small natural talent we manage … just manage to refine in our Nigerian schools are mainly substandard, inferior and low quality grade graduates that cannot power Nigeria’s economic engine.

What if we got mad over the fact that while our government inadvertently places a high import NYSC tax (equivalent to one years salary) on our Natural Human resources discouraging our foreign graduates to return home. Our counterparts in other places like America instead offer a Green Card permanent residency tax credit so that our talents are left working and developing all other countries but Nigeria!

What if we got mad when our Universities go on Strikes…I mean we get mad already … but I am talking about getting really MAD! As mad as we get when our fuel suppliers go on strike? I mean we get mad because we know that our nations future leaders who are meant to fuel the development of our nation are on strike and the future of our nation is running out of fuel and will soon come to a grinding halt!

What if we got mad at the Nigerian government for allowing the Ghanaian government siphon our talent as they fall through the cracks of our vandalized educational pipeline. Scooping the excess talent so fast that it literarily sparks an explosion in the Ghanaian economy.

What if we got mad at our educational ministers, professors, governors for polluting our streets with the carcasses of dead graduates with no job opportunities or ability to create jobs.

What if we got mad?

Because the truth is that we should be very mad…madder than we get over our Oil.

Because the greatest theft in our nation is the daily theft of our Natural Human Resources. A theft that takes place in Embassy pump stations all over over country which ensure that our talent is leaving at a much faster rate than they are coming back.

We need to be mad! As our greatest natural resources is not the Oil flowing underneath us, but rather the humans flowing in our streets and languishing in our classrooms … 180 million barrels of strong beautiful black people stuck in a quagmire of hopelessness.

Talents developed from years of NEPA pressure, corruption pressure, strike pressure. But yet like the oil in the ground they have withstood all the pressures … turning it into the potential ability to succeed no matter the circumstance! But yet we have not been able to exploit or refine this potential. We as a nation have failed our talents.

We have chased our graduates out, caused them to beg at embassies, to travel thousands of miles across the desert, across the sea, risking their lives to refine themselves by themselves. Often abused, insulted, neglected taken advantage off in other countries because our government chooses Oil over people!

But I don’t just blame the government, I blame us!

Because for years we have made ourselves believe that our greatest natural resource is Oil … not realizing that it is us … you and me. We are Nigeria’s greatest resource and we need to hold the government accountable. We need to demand a forensic audit into the misappropriation and mismanagement of our vast supply of talents and skills.

But more importantly we need to see ourselves as Oil … a precious commodity worth fighting for! THE END.

Written by Okechukwu Ofili of ofilispeaks.com
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