`MAKE WE MONEY WORK FOR WE'

I Had been away for some days now.I traveled out of town. I was on the road for almost every day for about 5days,and at the end of it I could not achieve everything I was set out to do. The story of that journey is for another post.

Now lets get back to my post. I am not writing in grammatical error. On the contrary I am quoting the title of a jingle that I heard on the radio a few days ago. It is in pidgin English, otherwise called broken English. It is widely spoken everywhere in Nigeria. Some are of the opinion that it could be called the real lingual franca of the Country.Ebuka of the Big Brother Nigeria fame actually wrote an article in his column in This Day on Sunday newspaper calling for it to be made the official lingual franca!

Back to my topic. It means, let our money work for us.It is the name of an NGO which seek to awake the government to her responsibility to her citizens.The theme of their celebration this year according to the jingle is SPEAK UP.They dedicated Oct 16th&17th to the celebration and called on all Nigerians to SPEAK UP and demand the dividends if democracy from the elected leaders.

Now,how does this fit into the theme of this blog?The jingle started by talking about a baby that just lost the mother during child birth from hemorrhage because there was no facilities for blood transfusion!It then went ahead to give t he poor health indices of the country as well as some social indices like the level of unemployment among qualified youths.It painted a very gloomy picture indeed.The picture portents a lifetime of stress and social deprivation as well as frustration for any child born in Nigeria today.

What does this potent for the mental health of our people.Let us go back to the hypothetical case of the baby born in the jingle.He is already subjected to maternal deprivation with all its negative effect on a young mind.If he happen to grow up in the midst of relatives,he may be subjected to child labour,sexual abuse and molestation,prostitution,gangsterism,as well as drug abuse with all their sequelae.

If by some stroke of luck and fortune smiles on him and he survives early life and all the above mentioned,he may discover that means of livelihood is almost non- existent because of unemployment!

How then does one avoid widespread alcohol and drug use leading to dependence, withdrawal state with or without delirium,harmful use and psychotic disorders associated with alcohol and drug use?How do we reduce the prevalence of depression,anxiety and even schizophrenia which develop because of stressful life events?How do we ensure good and sound mental health for our people?

We must SPEAK UP and demand the system to work.We must make our money i.e revenue from oil and gas and the tax payers money,to work for us instead of against us.We must channel the abundant resources and wealth generated from oil to other sectors of the economy so as to develop them and make life better for all Nigerians!

SPEAK UP!