(http://www.saharareporters.com/sites/default/files/page_images/articles/2011/better_naija.jpg?1295227624)
Photos from The Nigerian Nostalgia 1960 -1980 Project
Days after the assassination of his father, Shehryar, the young son of late Pakistan's Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, told the killers of his father, "this is not your Pakistan."
Apparently, Shehryar knew of a safer and saner Pakistan long before that simmering country blew up in his eyes. That knowledge of a once free Pakistan will galvanize him and his like-thinking countrymen, if they so desire, to fight to reclaim their country.
Tunisians and their neighbours, Algerians, have been rioting because of rising food prices and growing unemployment. In fact, Tunisia's president of twenty years has abandoned power in light of the riots. To have placed their lives on the line of fire, those youths must certainly have known a Tunisia and an Algeria of better days. Could the urge to reclaim those good olden days have become the motivation for sacrificing one's life?
The point is that the knowledge of a system that once worked is necessary in order to identify the wrongs in a crumbling one. Would someone who never knew that manna once fell from heaven, pray to experience it?
Which is why I ask: did you know of a better Nigeria?
Young or old: what was your perception of Nigeria back in your early years? This poser is, however, particularly directed at members of my generation, the computer age class.
Let me tell you about the Nigeria I have always known.
My family, at some point before my birth and my father's subsequent retirement from the Federal Civil Service, may have been in the middle class of socio-economic placement. But, I grew up to use caustic soda soap to wash dishes and bathe. Paraffin, which leaves your skin shining, was my body cream. I attended schools with roofs blown off and not replaced, in Lagos. In my first year in secondary school, new students had to bring their desks and tables. There were days teachers made us break their melon, in the classroom, instead of being taught!
What about the school terms we were sent home for unpaid school and PTA fees?
At Christmas, the sight of slaughtering live chicken (apologies to animal rights activists) and rice and stew left greater feeling on us than anything else. After all, there was a time that wasn't affordable!
Yet, my father was a fairly high-ranking Federal civil servant. For several years, my mother would approach the food store operated by an Igbo man to buy quantities on an "I owe you till end of the month when salary is paid" basis in order to feed her family. For months on end, salaries were wickedly delayed for no reasons.
I once heard that canned milk cost one kobo during Shehu Shagari's regime. People would gulp cans of milk and throw by the roadside. But I didn't enjoy that largesse for I was still a toddler.
Between the infinitesimal economic gains of the Buhari/Idiagbon era and the one dollar to twenty-one naira exchange rate achievement of the Sani Abacha dictatorship, Ibrahim Babangida's Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) erased whatever positive experience my adolescent years held.
I have witnessed Nigerians eat, in Lagos of all places, from dustbins for lack of food. I have experienced more years of military rule than democratic dispensation. In fact, I can readily recollect the names of more military administrators than civilian governors.
I still easily remember that Colonels Raji Rasaki, Mark Inienger and Navy Captains Mike Akhigbe and Olabode George were the military administrators of Lagos, Bendel and Ogun States respectively long before Sir Michael Otedola, John Oyegun and Olusegun Osoba were voted in during that truncated republic.
As often as the military administrators were changed, we memorized their names.
And because of the neat and clean persona those "milads" (as they were called) projected, especially during Independence Day anniversary match pass exercises, many of us had wanted to join the military instead of continuing formal education!
That was our childhood. And that is what has defined the adult life of most, if not all, of us. Were we ever educated on the need to, some day, exercise our civic duty to vote during elections even to the point of protecting our votes? Did we even know what democracy meant? How could we advert our minds to its demerits when we knew no other system than military rule?
When deceitful Babangida decided to introduce democracy to Nigerians, during the SDP and NRC days, it was their campaign songs, and not their manifestos, that attracted us:
"Nigeria on the march again
On the March again
Looking for mister president
On the march again
M.K.O is our man o!"
Did You Know A Better Nigeria? (http://www.saharareporters.com/article/did-you-know-better-nigeria)