October- First

I wonder if I'll be celebrating with the rest today..
I've lived one score and three so one can argue that I don't get the full picture.
I come from a land flowing with milk and honey..
A Canaan pregnant with God's promises..
But what do my people do..?
We all want the finest things and we want them NOW..
We ship away the raw materials for almost nothing and import the finished products for prices that make my heart bleed..
Our men our strong, smart, proud..the best in the land..
But I think it's time to stop selling our birthrights for a lousy mess of porridge.
Europe has nothing.No Gold,hardly any Oil..No Diamonds..
Africa has it ALL..
It's time to PUT a stop to this curse..
It's time to learn from the past and look to the future.
I want my kids to be proud of their land,their culture, their heritage..
I want to turn on CNN, and see the West coming to Africa to suck up and beg..
Look at China,oh, look at China..
They've crept up on the world and taken us all by surprise..
The biggest organisations are queuing up to mop up their feet.
The Giants of the World begged for years just to have them revalue their currency..even marginally..

Nigeria can argue that it is young..but I say accepting that "age" is subjective in itself..Oh wow.We "gained" our independence in 1960..
We still have not gained jack..Our leaders still have to go and grovel at the feet of the G7 every now and again..

Yes, and why we might all have grand plans for change and revolution..Lets all plant mustard seeds..If you've ever seen them, they are small and almost insignificant, but when they grow..You should see the mighty trees they become.

If we all planted mustard seeds..In our children, in our friends, in our communities, in our enemies..

Lets root out greed, jealousy, and all the things that divide a nation..We all need a VISION.."The African Dream"..I don't subscribe to tribalism..why be just from Delta, when I can be Nigerian.and why be just Nigerian when I can be American..

It's easy to go for talks and have fancy ideas, etc, etc..but our homes are still full of cobwebs..Don't marry this, don't marry that..WHAT?? Marriage is one of the strongest tools that we have..Maybe if more of the Hutus had intermarried the Tootsies, we could have stoppped a major African disaster..which the world never really cared about..I guess they don't have diamonds or oil in Rwanda..

I'm a sucker for a "well-spoken brother"..I can't even lie...Fine boys can only go so far with me..And that's cos we all need a voice..How can you expect to get listened to when you can't string words together intelligently? Come on?

Even in London, we don't have a voice.The 419..ners, and the "Odu" boys have managed to steal the spotlight..All the eloquent, well-educated boys are happily chilling in the background..content with their "local" achievements..RUBBISH..Even worse, some of them are no longer "Afrcan".. They think they're now British..LOL..Some people are just ignorant..Yes,I was born here, and yes I have a "BRITICO" passport..and my mum and her mum were born here..but the blood flowing through our veins have come from some "cute" village in Nigeria :-)

And that's why to some extent, I repsect African Americans..they recognise that there's a problem..and that's a good place to start..

It's time to stop thinking that having a couple of mansions in VGC, a cook, and a dog
is enough to see us through..The world is shrinking,and we need a VOICE...before we pale into total insignificance..

But we have hope..I mean we're invading the Investment Banks, the Law firms, the Oil Companies..Mustard seeds, all of these are..after all, a "VOICE" needs some sort of authenticity..Trevor Macdonald came to GS the other day..and my, what a voice..An over-suscribed event where people even had to stand silently as his voice infiltrated the auditorium..Imgaine what that kind of "POWER" can do

As we all toast to Nigeria's "independence"..lets not forget that we haven't really achieved that much..So please don't get intoxicated..there's still TOO much work to be done.