One Day, One Day

I wanted to watch the BBC news at 6. My eldest daughter, a big fan of HiTV and other stations where Nigerian music is played pulled a face and played something she had recorded on the SkyHD the previous day. Just before I raised my voice to tell her off, I heard the words:

       

One day, one day
e go better for naija
money go circulate
light go dey
One day, one day
we no go need to ja
comot naija
omo e don tey,
I for like make e be today

This song, One Day by Eldee has touched me to my marrow for many reasons. In the last year or two, I have become an unwilling fan of the new generation of Nigerian music videos. No thanks to my daughters, though born and bred in UK, they know all the songs and are always skanking, dancing Alanta, etc. The quality of the videos is as good as any I have seen and the music industry in Nigeria must be commended for this. With Nollywood, HiTV, OHTV, HiNolly, AIT etc. my girls have become quite Nigerianised and that makes me quite proud. However, it's an uphill task as the battle for their young minds is skewed in favour of secular genre as biblical principles though appreciated appear drowned....

Back to my marrow, it is very easy, in fact natural to get disillusioned by news coming out of Nigeria especially in the last month.

But Eldee expertly analysed the problems of our nation and tells us:

we must say NO that’s the solution
new day, new way, due revolution

I have taken up his challenge which hits the nail on the head. The ONLY problem in Nigeria is the culture of corruption in the three tiers of governance and he proffers a solution:

We must say No No to all bad politicians
NO NO to bad government officials
NO NO to all man wey suppose dey work
wey dey thief money

The first step for every good government and corporate body is to provide 'BASIC AMENITY':

Clean water to drink
good house to sleep
electricity and security
my brother all these things
na basic amenity

I like taking my visitors to Thackeray Medical Museum in St James' Hospital, Leeds, UK. There is a graph in one of the rooms which shows that the great reduction in disease and death at the turn of the 19th Century in Britain was brought about primarily by public health changes - clean water, housing, sanitation, not hospitals or medical advances.

Despite the bomb blasts, the politicians stealing billions of naira, the oil mafia and all the problems we know about, I agree completely that one day e go better (in my lifetime)!

For today, all of us at GoodNews Nigeria will look for good news and write about it. More importantly, everyone of us must act strategically - influence our leaders today - share ideas with them, plead/beg/shout/scream/cry... lobby them to do the right thing. If that fails, we should use our vote to kick out the bad and vote in good people. At the individual and family level, we should give a scholarship here, support a micro-enterprise there and teach someone to fish. If every Nigerian lights one such candle in the dark, there will be floodlights shinning through Naija.
I've now listened to One Day no less than 20 times on headphone and it's time to dream dreams...

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

We are the change that we see

Barack Obama (2008)