Kaduna is a town that has a huge part of my history. As a child, I thought the whole city comprised of Church area, Market area and then Home and school area.
As a 90s kid, my generation in Nigeria was born in an ongoing military junta and General Sani Abacha was Head-of-State. The name was common as a child because I grew up in a Military Base and attended the local primary school. We learnt about him in nursery school with the understanding that he was the ruler of the Nation. It was also common to know him on TV as he made frequent announcements that I couldn’t understand at that age, but knew he was just the power man around.
At that era, it was common to know State Governors and cabinet ministers by the name ‘uncle’ as it was common to have a handful of them in the neighbourhood as they were military officers who also lived on the base on weekend holidays from their respective stations. It was also a challenge keeping up to seeing them as they also tested what you learnt in school . That era in my life is mainly the big difference in Nigeria’s history today.
As the years went by and Nigeria accepted democracy, we had a president. A civilian who was a military general and past Head-of-State. The military didn’t have the power it had previously. I still wanted to be an Officer and I loved how my father always carried out his duties. I admired it as a child because I thought his duties was to carry us around and introduce us to his fellow officers.
On one occasion we were out with Daddy and he was fully dressed in his ceremonial dress for the annual military celebration. A Peugeot 406 pulled up in front of the Base and everybody went dead as a stick. This man came out as everybody looked on. Officers, Enlisted personnels and civilians. He walked as everybody stopped to salute. I asked “is that the president?”, and then my brother replied, “No, that is General TY Danjuma. He is in charge of Defending the Nation”. With My heart, I whispered “I want his job”.
As the day went by I watched Air shows, military parades, parachute jumps etc. wanted to be all of those at once. (I was a child) LOL.
Today Nigeria stands out a century, Old and 54 yeas in independence. As a Nigerian youth what are chances than our generations would have such opportunities to History. The history taught in primary schools have been the same all through, except they eliminate the ones who die out of the new history and just continue with the same names adding few titles to make them different people. As a result of relaxation of these the present youth who makes up 80% of the population is losing almost three decades worth of National history to their names.
Is it in remembrance when you stood in line to sing the anthem and pray? To pledge to your mother-land? The days when we sang songs of patriotism as we marched to learn irrespective of whether it was private, public, home, church, mosque etc. Where celebration to be a country was done faithfully and out of doubt of being killed or judged. Independence was more than just October the first. It was an everyday lifestyle.
Its sad to see that the labour of our heroes past is going in vain as the living the heroes are tarnishing our labour. The best we can do is pray because right now a huge percentage of Nigerians deep down have no idea on who to give that patriotism too. But as we have prayed as Children for God to help Our youths the truth to know, and today we are the youths. It is quite obvious that no prophet is required to tell us that we know the truth already. We need to do something. We are losing out of history. #NigeriaWouldStand
Parry
1st October, 2014.
