A Nigerian filmmaker and popular writer Onyeka Nwelue has formed a new political party, Progress Party (PP). While announcing the new party, he called on Nigerian youths to join hands with him to dethrone President Muhammadu Buhari. Nwelue is also the Assistant Visiting Professor of African Studies & Literature at Manipur University.Below is what he wrote...
'ProgressParty
This is not to cajole anyone, but at the beginning of this year and end of last year, lots of my friends lost their parents - two of my good friends lost their mothers to renal failure. It was not because you can't treat any of these - the health system in Nigeria can't. I had to undergo my own kidney surgery in India. Far away from the hands of Nigerians who could not even successfully operate on me when I had appendicitis.
There is no electricity if you meet surgeons who know what they are doing. And if they have a blaring generator in Nigeria, there are other problems - they don't have the things needed. The hospitals in Nigeria are jokes! A few private hospitals still have to fly in foreign doctors. Even when the Nigerian public officers get sick, they jet off to India, Germany and the US. You can hear them proudly say these things. No iota of shame.
It was so heavy for me today that I said to my mother, 'I'm tired!' She only went to bed after midnight as she kept looking at me and thinking. She came to my room and said: "Nna, I understand!"
I took my aged father (oh yes, he was born in 1945), to the OphthalmologyIist today and I know how much I had to cough out, as I have no insurance, as this is a country, steeped in bureaucracy. After paying, I felt sweaty. This is because I am scared of losing my father right now. Or seeing him go blind. It will be disastrous. No shame in sharing this with you, but I am heading somewhere with my story.
People have laughed when I said I want to have an organized control over Nigeria. I know people who came to Nigeria to contribute and the system changed them. We can't keep running. I'm never going to acquire any other citizenship. I will not. I have had the opportunities too, but I will not. I will stick with Nigeria, but whether Nigerians love it or not, we have to find a solution to our problems.
Our parents have failed. My parents suddenly agreed that they failed and they want us to correct the mistake they made. We can't fail our children now. We can change Nigeria. We can get a metro system, we can have a shift in our mentality. We can restore the dignity of the Nigerian. We can see pride in our passports again. You can laugh all you want.
Not to sound mischievous, some of us still have the privilege to run away, but if you're surrounded by poverty-stricken people, all you will feel is rage and angst.
Let's join the #ProgressParty'
