All I can do is cry

I’ll be crying to God, because I have no pvc.

I was listening to a song by Etta James today while braiding my hair, it’s called All I Could Do Was Cry. It’s a love song about a woman who felt so helpless and hopeless as she watched the love of her life marry another woman. I listened to Beyoncé’s rendition in Cadillac Records; she played Etta James in the movie. The wordings of the song and the emotion in Beyoncé’s voice make you feel Etta’s heart break piece by piece, it kind of submerges you in the pain that Etta felt at that moment. As I listened to the song, I shed a tear (a little tear though, because I’m a hard babe), and thought wow, this is how I feel most times when I think of Nigerian politics.

Unlike a lot of people, I love being Nigerian. I love it so much, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of. A lot of my friends have asked me why the country’s issues bother me so much, and that’s why, because of how much I love the country. Imagine being so happy to be a citizen of a country and bragging about it on that vicious app (twitter), only to wake to a headline the next day saying that a snake swallowed 70 billion naira from the national treasury. How does that now make me look? Really foolish.

A lot of things are wrong with the government and most of the things that our generation have a problem with are the same things our parents and their parents complained about. It’s really sad growing up to see your country geometrically depreciating because of people’s selfishness. What’s even more sad is how complacent people have become to actual issues in this country. Praising governors for building roads, constructing schools and hospitals, giving pensions, it shouldn’t be so. You can’t praise a fish to swim. You can be happy it’s swimming, but it’s not something to congratulate it for.

A lot of people are very unwilling to unlearn terrible mindsets. Although I really want Peter Obi to win, I can’t but notice how far people have deviated from the point. When things become as serious as they are right now, we have to push tribe and religion far far to the back and ask ourselves necessary questions;

• Is this person a person who listens?

• Does this person have an arrogant attitude to leadership? Or does this person think of leadership as service?

• Does this person seem to know what life is like for ordinary people? Does this person *talk* to ordinary people?

• Does this person seem sincere?

• Is this person intellectually curious? Are they willing to learn and unlearn? Do they go out to gather knowledge?

• Does this person have that mark of wisdom? Is he okay with not knowing? And not just that, does he not know and is willing to know and make a move with the newly gained information?

• Does this person have a cohesive sense of what Nigeria should and can be?

• Is this person comfortable going to all parts of Nigeria?

• Is this person desperate to be president or does this person want to be president based on their own love and care for the country and her citizens?

These are the questions that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie advised that we, as citizens who want better for our country, ourselves and our children, ask ourselves when considering who to vote.

Tribe and religion have never mattered to me, and genuinely shouldn’t matter to anyone. A person’s tribe has nothing to do with their ability to get a job done. Read that sentence twice. A person’s religion has nothing to do with how empathic they are. Read that sentence eight times, ten if you can. Evil people are evil, regardless of their tribe or religion.

Voting for a person because they’re your “brother” or “sister” knowing fully well that they’re incapable is doing you a disadvantage in the future and the future may unfortunately not be far.

When you make the decision to vote, you’ve also given yourself the power the determine the future of your country. The worst way to do this is to wait for election period to see the candidates and make a decision.

Nigeria has been on a downward spiral since the civil war and a lot of people lost hope. They believed that politicians will still end up doing what they want regardless or their vote and democracy was more of a formality than a system that was actually practiced. However, for the first time in a very long time, Nigerians have hope and most of these hopeful Nigerians are youth, you and I (that sounded so cheesy but you get sha).

Unfortunately, though we’re hopeful and are speaking up and against the vices, a lot of us don’t have PVCs. We either didn’t register, or registered and didn’t collect, or were victims of one of those PVC schemes. This is a very great disadvantage because hope can’t win the election, only action can. It’s too late now to try and make amends in that regard so we have to pray and plan for the future.

The average Nigeria youth isn’t wired to be politically aware. A lot of us simply just weren’t raised to care. We were bred to see the political scene as something very far away, something comical. Most of us weren’t taught the little things like history and civic education in school. The only time we had such opportunity was in secondary school, and it was not an even distribution of knowledge because only art students were taught history or government. At 13 years old, many of us couldn’t mention 3 governors other that the governors of the state we were from or the state we live in, or any member of the National Assembly. What art students were learning in senior school should have been taught in bits in primary school. Even in secondary school, we weren’t taught anything more than the composition of the National Assembly.

Now, as many of us are approaching the period of our lives when we start voting, we need to make a conscious decision to do research. Research doesn’t have to mean library and newspapers. It starts from knowing who is in power. Know the governors of the state your from and the state you live in. Know the senatorial district your from and the one you live in, school in and work in, and the people who represent them. Know the people representing you in the state and national house of assembly. Know your councilors as well.

Research can also be being aware of the political trends in your area. Are they constructing roads? Are they building drainage systems? How’s the prison like? Are they making political participation easier? How are the treating defendants (the old, the young and the incapacitated)? Talk to older people about their views on little things like construction of public amenities in your vicinity. Talk to the staff in your home or at your school or at your office and ask how things are for them in the country. Subtly though, because political conversations can get very emotional for us. Just start with things around you.

Make this research a habit. Don’t wait a year to election period, just try and make it a subconscious habit.

You might read this and think that I know all these things and all these people. Or that I’m one incredibly politically aware babe. I could only dream of that honestly. I’m writing this to encourage myself to do what’s necessary, even though I don’t have a Permanent Voter’s Card. I’m also writing to encourage you, you who may or may not have a pvc, you who may or may not be in Nigeria, you who may or may not have an interest in the political activities in this country, to get aware and please vote. Encourage your friends in Nigeria to vote, and vote wisely.

I have no pvc, so I’ll talk to as many people as I can and have as many night vigils as possible for the right leader to be voted in.

This piece was inspired by Etta James’ expression of her pain and Beyoncé’s wonderful rendition of that expression in Cadillac Records the movie . It is equally inspired by Chimamanda’s short video that she shared on instagram on the 16th of February 2022. Most of all it is inspired by and dedicated to Gen Z’s, and millennials as well, for they fervent desire for change and a better Nigeria.