INDEPENDENCE WATCH WORDS FOR NIGERIANS By Emecho Ted

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

You will agree with me that “We are all dissatisfied with Nigeria. Nigeria has betrayed us. Our hopes are dashed. Our dreams are unrealizable within the Nigerian structure. Those who work hard are in penury. Those whose lands are producing the resources are in
poverty. Nigeria deprives those who value education. Nigeria constricts those who want to be international businessmen. Nigeria is holding us back from jumping into the age of technology.  Nigeria is depriving us a secularity that has been part of our cultural heritage...... Nigeria is impeding those who want merit. Nigeria is humiliating those who value integrity. Nigeria is disgracing those who want self-respect and dignity.”

But you will also agree that we can build up or we can tear down with our words. Every time we speak we have that power. It is our choice how we are going to use it - for life or for death. We are all guilty of saying hurtful things in a moment of anger or retaliation.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

Written below was how I described Nigeria when I was 13 years because of ignorance on the power of words.

 “Nigeria is a shameful scam, precious offspring of fatal failure. Nigeria is a disaster. Nigeria is a sham. A repulsive synergy of wasted energy. Nigeria is a ruse, ruinous republic of rancor-importing rulers. Nigeria is a farce, an unserious socio-political alliance evacuated of work. Nigeria is a crap, unfitting republic in the amorphous uniforms of insincerity Booming in corruption, having no defined plan and worthy structural arrangements that ensures the cohabitation and coherence of her component units and characters, this country does not worth a worthwhile sort in all that she claims to be in the larger pitch of the world” 

Oh!  After so many years seeing how I described my home, my world, my country, all I do is weep, because I have failed. I have used my words against my country. While I thought I was doing something good by stating the problems I never knew I was destroying with my words.

My fellow Nigerians and friends all over the world, I write to tell you today that “Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream”. Don’t ever say words you would regret, because for if we must change our lives and our destiny here in Nigeria and other parts of the world, there is need to consciously choose the words we use to describe our own.

Tomorrow marks another year since independence, making us 53. We should not because the government hasn’t done well enough to provide us with quality education or employment lead a vendetta against the government but on the contrary, imbibe the philosophy and ideology of john. Fitzgerald Kennedy, a onetime president of the United States when he said “ask not what your country has done for you but what you have done for your country”. Instead of sitting idly at home doing almost nothing in the name of unemployment, we should tow in the words of Ola Rotimi in his book: the gods are not to blame to the effect that “life is wicked but to resign oneself to fate is to be crippled fast”. It is said that life begins where fear and procrastination ends. Let us imbibe this virtue and make it our watch word in our daily dealings.  Let us not See the labour of our heroes thus past, Let us Feel the ‘call and obey’ that is asked; Let us stand as once planned; Give Nigeria a peace that will last!  Let us think and proffer solutions to our problems because no matter where you go, what you do or what you say, Nigeria still remains your home.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE, GOD BLESS YOU

GOD BLESS NIGERIA!!!