I am not yet born….

Salisu Suleiman

I am not yet born, but can see clearly the land that will one day be mine, the waters I shall one day seep and the citizenship that will one day become my millstone. I can hear plainly the cacophony of languages I will one day speak and the divisions that will be mine to inherit. I can see my future fellow citizens shuffling and hustling to mosques and churches with a fervour that burns hot and runs deep. Their faces are etched deeply by godless fervour, but hearts swathed by the shallow mosaic of deceit.

I am not yet in this world, but smell the putrefaction that pervades public life and the perfidy that prevails on private conduct. I see a leader completely disconnected from the pervasive reality of poverty: unable to grasp the enormity of his responsibility; unwilling to grapple with the inevitability of tough prudence and incapable of nurturing hope in the millions of hearts whose burden I will soon share. And so while others come into beauty and bounty, I know, before I am born that my yoke will be one of colossal debts, bone-crushing poverty and heart-wrenching hopelessness.

I am still to stare at the rays of sunlight that shines on our savannah, but its shadows have shown me clearly the similitude of the hospital where I will be born, the untrained hands that will be the first to hold me and the candles that will light my way. And I do know what the growling sounds in the distance are: the intestinal rumblings of the diesel generators that will shatter my present silence for all eternity and strum the arpeggio of my eardrums every minute, every hour, every day. I know that my solitary serenity will only return when I am deeply interred in the wombs of Mother Earth.

My eyes are still closed, my breathing shallow, but I sense the deep divisions that rend the land to which I will soon be born. I see a land where Muslims regard Christians with suspicion and where the latter regards the former with scorn. I see a land where the south feels it has been treated shabbily by leaders from the north and therefore see nothing wrong with being treated even worse by someone from the south, no matter how profligate, pernicious.

What I can see, but the older and supposedly wiser multitudes that came to this land before me refuse to perceive, is that Muslim or Christian, north or south, the elite eat together in private and share the loot as one while the masses are fed doses of hatred, intolerance and false hope. And so they wallow in poverty and regard the mismanagement of public resources as divine destiny, a prophetic mission.

I am not yet born, but already repulsed by the schools that I will one day attend. I can feel the cold bare floors, the shattered window panes, the peeling paints and crumbling masonry. I shudder at the cold stares my teachers will soon direct at me to and the hot volcanic anger that seems to spring from some deep-seated hatred of a profession they despise, but cannot leave. I know other pupils and I will bear the brunt. And because our leaders scoop funds for public schools to train their children abroad in select schools, I discern that I will go to school an unlettered ignorant and come out a certified ignoramus; no school will admit me for further studies and no employer will give me a job.

I am not yet born, but know that I cannot change the scam; I cannot exercise the liberty of choice because my democracy is a sham; I cannot evoke change by force because the armed forces will come in to kill and maim; I cannot flee to other lands because my passport is my shame; I cannot confide in my imams nor confess to my priests for they take part of the blame. And I cannot share these fears with my friends because we are not from the same zone, nor voice the truth because I speak a different tone. I cannot be myself because I have no right to be.

Dear God, I am not yet born, but pray thee: when I take my first breath and see my first sights, birth me not in the Nigeria of today; berth me not in a land sheared by lies, tears and fears, nor give me countrymen corralled by complacency and ignorance, unhearing, unseeing, unthinking.