THE DIARY OF A CREDO KID

CredoWritersBy: Wakdok,Samuel Stephen

My dad does not keep a diary but I am not my dad. I can only want to be like him in ways I can; yet I am myself, a different person even if just a baby and so in my less than three months on earth I keep a diary; my own diary.

I was surprised to be born in a private or call it catholic hospital when I came to find out that my uncle works in a teaching hospital. Since a teaching hospital is a tertiary health provider I expected to get the best but I was more surprised to hear that Uncle Besto as he is fondly called warned my dad against having me delivered in their teaching hospital. Why? I asked; my uncle does not trust the facilities in government hospitals where he works. They may have the best brains but the facilities and services may not be able to match his confidence level and he wants the best for me as his nephew.

Shortly after my mum was delivered of me, just less than fourteen hours later to be specific, Jos caught fire and the scene where it all started was just less than 2 kilometers from my hospital bed and my mum had not even fully recovered from the anesthesia. The tanks rolled beside my wall and though I was less than a day old, I was not expected to hear or make sounds, I heard the sounds of war and the war is taking a heavy toll on humanity. I will love to skip the horrors of March 7, 2010 where children and women were made to face the inhumanity of man to man at a genocidal proportion. Funny enough my mum took me on a flight as if to Egypt when Herod wanted to kill the baby Jesus. She has refused to go back to the city my dad loves most in the world because the world has become unsafe even for harmless and innocent children and women, perhaps I now know that the innocents are the most vulnerable.

I am a baby, but the power situation has taught me how to sweat like an iron smith. I stare at the bulbs so much when PHCN manage to supply electricity or when daddy puts on the generator. I hear noise but the light which illuminates from the noise making machine over shadows the noise, unfortunately my dad spends money buying fuel to just give us few hours light at night. For the very few times the power comes on, I skip my sleep to stare at that beautiful but evading brightness and the breeze from the fan can be so soothing, I only wish we can have power always.

Sadly, my maternal grand father died after a brief illness in a government hospital, they were proud to inform my mourning family as they must have been doing to others that the mortuary is not working. A doctor class mate of my uncle was bold to tell my dad that since she came to that hospital; the mortuary has never worked that she knows of. Alas; I now understand uncle Besto’s fear about my mum giving birth to me in their teaching hospital which is government owned. In Nigeria there is either no effective government or there is a government cartel run along family and business lines and the rest outside this alliance are left to fend for themselves in anyway and every way even if to the point of death. When we traveled for the interment I saw the state of roads and I will need to grow older to be able to describe the condition of these roads in my diary, for now I will keep the pictures of what I saw in the fatigue my small body and bones went through.

My aunties and mum told my dad how I watch TV with keen interest even at my tender age; my dad dismissed them as exaggerating the scenario. Last night when the generator powered TV was on, I saw the only ex-military President concurring to speculations that he would contest the 2011 presidential election on the platform of the PDP. My dad was furious because he believes Nigeria got its descent into abyss during the evil reign of IBB and he is so mad that people are even considering IBB for presidency in 2011. IBB was the man who looted the treasury like no one before him ever did and he opened the gateway to Nigeria’s hell. If IBB had used his executive military power, the abundant oil wealth and his 8 years of tenaciously holding to power to build roads, refineries and power plants, the level of infrastructural decay witnessed now will never have happened. IBB politicized the military by giving political appointments to junior officers who were called IBB boys at the expense of their superiors. These same junior officers would later return to the barracks with millions and exotic cars and were expected to take orders from their superiors? He stirred the hornet’s nest by sneaking a secular Nigeria into the organization of Islamic countries. So much time was wasted on debating the IMF conditionalities while the citizens vehemently rejected it, IBB went behind their back to introduce the structural adjustment programme. He undid the best election and called it annulment, my dad is really mad that IBB could even dare to think of coming back. But in Nigeria the evil minded have always held the country to ransom.

I was born at a time that Nigeria had no resident President, the hullabaloo of making the then Vice President to act was tearing the nation apart, eventually when the pressure became unbearable the National Assembly introduced the doctrine of necessity into the polity and proclaimed the VP as AP( Acting President). The controversial Attorney General was promptly relegated to the delight of most Nigerians. After the Executive council of the federation was dissolved hopes were high that a new council would comprise of dynamic visionaries and experts, hopes seemed dashed when most of the new members are either recycled or come from families with ties to those who have milked this nation dry.

I love my Spanish name even though I wonder why my dad gave me the name Salvador which reminds people of the Mexican soap opera titled Second Chance. However he argues that he had that name in mind years before he got married or even came across the soap opera. My name can be translated to mean saviour or rescuer. Apparently Nigeria needs a second chance and Nigerians need to become the saviours and rescuers of themselves. This can only be done when we all stand for the right cause and sacrifice our inordinate ambitions for the glory of truth and country. Babies like me must grow to know what is right and not just anything. Above all the country must be given a new lease of life by allowing the new breeds an opportunity to enter the arena. Enough of the same old names of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Let us take a cue from the Tony Blairs, Gordon Browns and David Camerons of the Britain, the Bill Clintons and Barrack Obamas of United States. Yesterday, the youths were the leaders of tomorrow. The youths of yesterday should be the leaders of today so that the youth of today may be the leaders tomorrow.

I am a credo kid and I believe that we will make it. But the nation will make it only when our elders set their priorities rights and leave the stage for the new breed to continue. Continuity does not have to remain with the individual; continuity is only guaranteed if the system has the capacity to regenerate irrespective of individuals. What is needed is for the institutional capacities to be strengthened and guaranteed and not for power to keep rotating among old hands and fagged brains .No individual should be too powerful to hold the system captive and no system should be so inefficient to make millions of people suffer in a nation blessed with abundant resources both natural and human.

The candle I am using to write is almost burning out and I am sweating profusely, I would have loved to have a cold bath but my mum says it must be with hot water since I am still a baby. The water is almost boiling she needs to fix it with some cold water but the tap is not running. I guess she has gone out to look for water vendors or mai-ruwa as they call them. Here I sit writing in my diary and my dad is held up in the traffic after a hard day at work. Things must change for the better before I grow up so that life may be more meaningful for us in this nation.