There Is Dignity in Waking Up Without Fear of Immigration Raids The Nation We Criticize, The Nation That Came for Its Own As a plane carrying 262 Nigerians touched down in Lagos from South Africa, it carried more than passengers. It carried stories. Stories of survival, disappointment, fear, resilience, and perhaps most importantly, a renewed understanding of what it means to belong. For years, many of these Nigerians left home in pursuit of opportunities. Like millions of Africans before them, they crossed borders believing that prosperity could be found elsewhere. Some built businesses. Some raised families. Some spent more than a decade trying to establish a life in a foreign land. Then reality arrived. The anti-immigration protests that swept across parts of South Africa reminded many foreigners of a painful truth: regardless of how long one stays abroad, there are moments when citizenship becomes more valuable than currency, more protective than wealth, and more important than amb...
By Abioye Tosin Lawrence — Publisher, OrionTimes
During the most turbulent hours of a nation’s life, one would expect her brightest sons and daughters to rise in her defence. Yet, in today’s Nigeria, the silence of the youth speaks louder than patriotic hymns ever could.
This silence is not born of indifference, it is born of betrayal.
For decades, Nigeria produced intelligent graduates only to leave them stranded at the gates of unemployment. A generation that burnt the night candles, that believed in merit and discipline, was told to “go and learn skills,” as though education itself had become a national liability. The system starved them of opportunity and then mocked them for seeking survival elsewhere.
And
so, a tragedy unfolded.
Those who should speak for the nation now speak for other nations. Those who should defend their homeland now find safety and hope under foreign flags. Those who should be Nigeria’s voice have become spectators, critics, sometimes even supporters of distant powers, because their country never spoke for them.
The ones at home? They cry not for glory but for rescue. Some cling to faith and resilience. Others have turned pain into comedy, calling it a survival strategy, humour as armour in a land where the weight of reality can crush a young spirit before thirty.
Still, there remains a stubborn remnant.
A minority who refuse to join the feast of destruction or the choir of silence.
We speak, not because Nigeria has rewarded us, but because giving up is too costly for the soul.
We speak, because loyalty is not to leaders, but to destiny.
We speak, because we still believe nations are not rebuilt by resentful laughter, but by courageous truth.
But let this moment warn us:
we have not been building on solid rock.
We have dignified the wrong examples.
We have celebrated the voices that stain our image instead of honouring those who build, who think, who serve.
Some who drag the nation’s dignity through mud are now decorated as ambassadors of influence. Their platforms fueled by noise, not merit. And the same society that once taught us moral instruction in primary school, warning that bad character leads to national decay, now rewards the very behaviours it once condemned.
Our teachers believed that if we grew with bad habits, we would be useless to the nation.
Today, their fears stand fulfilled.
Virtue is mocked.
Excellence begs for notice.
And in the new culture of “trending,” nonsense is currency, a fast ticket to fame and reward.
Let us measure the hours since global voices spoke about Nigeria’s crisis. Then measure the reaction of our youth. In the gap between those two lies the wound of a generation.
A generation the nation betrayed.
A generation that returned loyalty to foreign flags.
A generation still deciding whether to reclaim or abandon the motherland.
Nigeria must ask herself:
Will she continue losing her children, or finally earn them back?
Because no nation can demand loyalty from those it has forgotten to love.
And no society can rise when dignity is traded for applause and empty noise.
Abioye Tosin Lawrence is the publisher of Oriontimes Online Newspaper, and author of Voices From The Fire: My Journey Through a Hollow Empire
(Author’s Note: The term “Demometer” is my coinage, a measurement of how states demand loyalty to democracy, even when democracy has not delivered loyalty to its citizens.)
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