Nigeria, my beloved country. A land filled with milk and honey, suffering and smiling, yet accommodating the heart of everyone. To strangers, they do not understand us, and to us who are in this country, we are surviving each day and hoping for a better day.
If there is one thing that I know my people for, it is an unrelenting hustling spirit. Someone once said, if you go anywhere in the world and you do not find a Nigerian, that means something is wrong somewhere. That is to imply that the spirit of hustling is in us. We Nigerians have done the unimaginable by being very creative and smart. From a woman frying akara on the side of the road to a young boy hawking pure water to a young tech lady trying to write code at the corner of her little space even when the light is very bad, we keep going and no backing down. Even when things seem not to be in our favor, we find a way around it. From our sad stories we create a sweet experience. We keep moving even when all roads seem blocked; the resilient spirit in us is what is keeping us to outsmart and be outstanding everywhere we go. And that is what the rest of the world admires in us because they see that we have no limitations when we really set our minds to do something.
What I have said right there is the fact, and another truth right here is that our reputation seems to have been tarnished because the rest of the world sees us as corrupt individuals. Sometimes when I hear others speak or I read some news online, we have been tagged with fraudulent activities. This thing usually pains me because it is affecting the reputation of the rest of us who are honest and do things in a legal way. The bad action of 2% has spoiled and brought shame to the remaining 98%, even though we are doing our possible best to stand out.
When I look at it at the international level, a Nigerian name being mentioned can either command respect or bring shame, and like I have mentioned earlier, we stand out in everything we do because this same Nigeria of ours recently produced one of the best doctors this year who won all the Nobel Prizes. We should carry out our passport with pride and not shame.
As an architect, when I picture my country, I see a building with a strong foundation but with a lot of cracks on the wall because of the poor materials being used to build it. Our foundation is solid, but we need to work on our substructure to make our beauty complete.
Yes, the rest of the world may talk down on us, but we are adequate, we are sufficient, and we always stand out because God has created us in a very special and unique way, and he is still working on us because, like they do, great things take time. I know that Nigeria is more than a country because the rest of the world cannot just pack us aside. We are important.
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Thank you for reading.
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