A Letter to My Countrymen

By Celestina Nwankwoala

A Letter to My Countrymen is a book that discusses the Nigerian situation and the institutional flaws that cripple the whole society by accepting negativity. These Nigerian factors become an acceptable way to look at issues that are fundamentally wrong and unethical, by giving it a local acceptability that is too embarrassing to a normal, honest person. These issues are traced to its basic foundations: poverty. The book also looks at the good part and still maintains that change is the only thing that is permanent in mankind. Nigerians all over the world can change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481787666

Celestina Nwankwoala

Dr Celestina Nwankwoala is an educational psychology major from the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. She has worked in the administration of the institution for many years. Her major interest has always been the socio-cultural issues in Nigeria. She uses every opportunity to advocate for the creation of awareness of domestic violence in the country and the adverse effect it has on children witnesses through her NGO (Nirvana Foundations). Her major concern on the Nigerian factor, a concept she perceives as highly negative for her country, drove her to publish this book, A Letter to My Countrymen. She lives in Port Harcourt with her children. She is the current administrative secretary of the Institute of Petroleum Studies University of Port Harcourt.

Book preview

Chapter One

The thoughts that brought quarrel were not conceived overnight.

My Dear Nigerians,

This letter is an account of my personal feelings of all we have been through together—as a country, as a state, and as people who find themselves in a system that is shaky, corrupt, poor, and underdeveloped. The Nigerian system makes it difficult for an average man to achieve his dreams. This letter is for men and women of this country who want to be better or to do it better and who are willing to sit down to reflect on all I am saying. This is not actually a solution to our problems, but it is an attempt to bring some of our weakness out for a chance at open discussion.

This letter is conceived out of many complaints heard across the nation: in the streets, in the workplace, at home, in the office, in the church, and everywhere. My countrymen, if you can remember, we feel bad each time we look at the great waste of our potential, the waste in human and material resources; we complain about everything around us and how Nigeria is where it is now. We blame our government, we blame our country, we blame the politicians, and we even blame the churches. The blaming is the major challenge we have. On paper we can do better, but in reality nothing is changing. This letter is trying to bring the blame on the streets of our country out for us to understand our greatest shortcomings. This will reach the weakest part of our way of life, and equally our strengths. I personally hope it will be seen, because it is a letter of a personal challenge seen through the eyes of an average Nigerian woman.

I love the story of Barrack Obama. Here was a man whose only advantage was a dream. He dreamt of being the president of the United States. I know how mates would have laughed at him, but today his dream has come true. Barrack was not voted president because of his colour. Barrack Obama was not the most intelligent man in politics, and neither was he the most influential. Barrack Obama became the president because he was a dreamer. His dreams were devoid of race, religion, sex, caste, and creed. It was a dream devoid of red stripes and blue stripes, as he termed it. It was a dream of fairness, love, and forgiveness. It was a dream devoid of hatred and vengeance; it was a Godly dream, a dream of hope. Americans all over the world, who understood the power of dreams, with one voice made him president of the United States, not minding his colour and ethnicity, not minding what the world would think, and they were rather proud to show the world.

The people know the miracle of dreams, and for that they gave the dreamer a chance to bring this good dream to reality. Dreams often become a reality if one puts forward his best. Though challenges may be encountered, success is all about possibilities and persistence, and hard work makes the dream a reality. Our country needs dreamers. We need good dreams; we cannot move forward without the dreams of social security for all Nigerians, the dreams of jobs and not guns for our youth, the dream devoid of our children hawking pure water on their heads on the roadside in order to eat. We need the dream that will remove our youth from motor parks as agberos. Our country needs dreamers that will build shelters for abused men and women in this country, give affordable education to our children, and protect our children from sexual exploitation from adults. The country needs to give needed care and dignity to our aged statesmen and women, in all states and at all levels of society. We need dreams that are devoid of Yoruba, Igbo, and the Hausas. Dreams of affordable housing for all is a good dream that ushers in a better Nigeria devoid of negative factors. We need a dream that builds hope, strength, and power. The dreamer’s planes are flying in the air, and their cars are plying the roads. It is the dreamers that globalised the world, and the dreamers that helped the Haitians. Dreamers are winners, builders, and lovers. Nigeria cannot move on in this state. We cannot succeed if we do not look at the best in the world and dream to be like them. We must dream. It is time to look at the right things and imitate them.

Constructive imitation is the only answer to our plight. We have failed in our war against corruption, and in revitalising our educational system; our churches have also failed us, and we lost our traditional belief system and are unable to understand and follow the foreign culture. We are left in the middle with a little of each and none of all. We are lost in the war of competition because we have not actually learnt well. We are basically good people with a wrong foundation; we are all coming from extreme poverty. We are children of the bush man of Africa, who adapted well in his environment. We are those who were believed to have had lower intelligence of the mind; we are humans who maybe never had any civilisation compared to the Orientals or Europeans. We never started before they came, and we never learnt well before they left. We have come to realise that, and the question is, what are we going to do about it? I believe that we are going to look around us and find the principles that made the Americans succeed the principles that made the Chinese and Japanese among the world’s fastest developing economies. We must ask them what they are doing right, we must acknowledge our failure and accept our short comings, we must be ready to work instead of to loot, and we must be ready to stay and compete instead of cheating. We have it in us to overcome our limitations; the likes of Barrack Obama proved that success is all about I can.

We must be awake for long hours in the night, in thought about our country and how to make it better. If we cannot lose sleep for this great country, then who will? We are intelligent, good natured and passionate people. We have it in us to succeed in our politics, and to support programmes that work for our children, youth, and elderly; the jobless, as well as the abused men and women. Nigerians, the question is what programmes do we have for these people? In our educational system, we can stop exam malpractice, cheating, bribing of lecturers for better grades, and selling admissions. We can train our teachers to have international standards, and we can pay them well so that they do not need to compromise their integrity to give our children better grades. We can help reorient them to have pride in their work and continuously improve for the sake of the children they are teaching.

We can build adequate facilities to take care of our children in any form or state. Ghana is now educating our children for us. What went wrong here, Nigerians? Are they richer than us? Are they better or more intelligent? Why did we give up on our integrity and standard? Why did we not fight a wrong orientation? It is our mindset that is the problem, and we all know how to change it. Please let us say, We can.

In our churches, we cannot understand why the most religious nation comes to be among the most corrupt. What are our spiritual leaders doing wrong? Why are Sunday and Monday different in our lives? What will our God say to us after hearing our proclamation, adoration, supplication, and worship on Sundays—and yet seeing us on Mondays as cheats, liars, abusers, kidnappers, murderers, thieves, and looters of national treasures? The issue here is that yes, these crimes

Reviews for A Letter to My Countrymen

[Varshitha Chinnu · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

♥️it's every nice book with osm pages feels good with it♥️