Malala is better than all Nigerians put together…(Really?)

Let me first of all congratulate the most famous teenager in the world, Malala Yousafzai, who emerged the youngest winner of the Nobel Prize (in all categories) of all times when the Oslo committee last week chose her as the winner of this year’s prize for peace, alongside Indian child activist, Kailash Satyarthi.
She became the second Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize (Abdus Salam won the Physics Prize in 1979), but Malala is the only Pakistani winner of the Nobel Prize for peace. And she is only 17.
Malala, a United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, is also the recipient of the Sakharov Prize in 2013 and she had also won the first Pakistan National Youth Peace Prize. In May this year, the University of King’s College in Halifax conferred on her an honorary doctorate degree. In the April 2013 issue of TIMES Magazine she featured on the front cover and as one of the 100 most influential people on planet. Just six months back, she was only an obscure village girl in the North-west Pakistan district of Swat.
Malala is neither a genius nor a super-talent in music or sport. Just one thing catapulted her to world acclaim – courage. She is a girl of tremendous courage, an attribute missing in present day Nigerians.
If not for her courage, men, made of flesh, would have twisted her destiny like the Nigerian elite did to millions of feckless Nigerians. With a gun pointed to her head, she chose to speak out when most people would have preferred to remain silent, and still die anyway.
If not for her courage, she would have ended up a normal Pakistani countryside girl, who gets married at 13, with no chance of realizing any of her potentials. This is the life bequeathed to millions of Pakistani girls by men. It is certainly not the wish of God. Never mind they pretend to be carrying out the desire of the almighty Allah.
Millions of Nigerians have and are still being confronted with what Malala faced that afternoon in the Pakistani School Bus in Swat on 9 October 2012. But unlike Malala, they are not faced with imminent death, rather a painful torture, with a slow death as one of the natural consequences. The other possibility for Nigerians, who are lucky, is that their destiny will get twisted and they will, for the rest of their lives, live a life that was not intended for them. This has been the fate of millions of Nigerians of my generation due to the culture of callousness perpetrated by a greedy and callous ruling class, and made possible by the lack of courage and “sidon look” response on the part of the governed.
So much have been written and said about the trouble with Nigeria. Bad leadership and corruption have always been singled out as the canker­worm tearing down the fabric of the Nation. Yes, they may be part of the problem, however the main problem is the lack of courage by Nigerians to stand up and say to their leaders: enough is enough!
Malala’s courage is exemplary. I ask Nigerians to emulate her. This writer was a very young boy when the late legendary musician, Fela Anikulao­Kuti, sang: “Suffering and smiling”. He had mocked Nigerians for doing nothing to end their predicament.
So many years after, Nigerian are still suffering, but not necessarily smiling, rather only moaning and complaining about their plight, without taking action against their tormentors.
The tormentors of Nigerians are the so-called leaders. The sad thing about it all is that since the Biafran war, at least, all the people, who have had the opportunity to lead the nation, have been children of the poor. There has been no one Nigerian President or Head of State with an aristocratic background. They all knew what poverty and hardship is. Unfortunately, once they get to power, as the once shoeless Jonathan has again shown, they turn their coat and begin to serve only the interest of the rich.
Nigerians have for too long being denied the good life the gods intended for them. In spite of over 600 billion US dollars raked in from oil export alone since independence, the simple things of life, such as water, light, housing etc remain elusive. There is simply nothing on the ground to show that Nigeria is the 7 healthcare system. Not even the guarantee of security, which is the primary duty of a nation. The Nigerian child remains an object of abuse, torture and are frequently victims of ritual killings.
As I write over 200 Chibok girls are still languishing under the captivity of the terror group, Boko Haram. Six months after the mass abduction in that Chibokschool, it thus appears that Nigerian leaders have shamelessly moved on. They have aggressively started campaigning for the 2015 elections. I continue to wonder how any leader with conscience can look Nigerians into the eye and ask for their votes, when over 200 young girls remain unaccounted for.
“Is it not Nigeria?” The people are not taken seriously by their leaders, which accounts for why the leaders continue to misbehave recklessly. There is nothing typically wrong with our leaders.
People are the same all over the world. Nigerians leaders do what they do simply because Nigerians fail to hold them accountable.
Nigerians would continue to suffer and die of hunger until they summon courage to hold their leaders accountable. And until they are able to do that, Malala will continue to be better than all them put together.
The largest exporter of petroleum. No infrastructure, no good schools, no working.