Nigeria! My mother

My father,

With heart as black as coal

And hard as rock.

A thief with claws for fingers.

Slaying the delicate dreams of his children.

A hen that drinks it's eggs,

Crushes it's chicks rather than guide.

My father,

Often I wonder how blind art thou

My brother's corpses drowning in their blood.

My sister's slowly ripped of their dignity

My mother clouded with depression watching with folded arms

My father,

My hero, now an enemy

Slowly crushing the labor of my ancestors.

A hypocrite stimulating instability.

An advocate of death you are!

You murder my siblings

You murder the light in my mother

You murder the dreams of my sisters

You murder the heart of my brothers

You murder the joy in my family 

Shame!

I refuse to die

The love of my mother lives on

My prayers lives on 

By chimamanda Ngozi adichie

Some of my relatives lived for decades in the North, in Kano and Bornu. They spoke fluent Hausa. (One relative taught me, at the age of eight, to count in Hausa.) They made planned visits to Anambra only a few times a year, at Christmas and to attend weddings and funerals. But sometimes, in the wake of violence, they made unplanned visits. I remember the word ‘Maitatsine’ – to my young ears, it had a striking lyricism – and I remember the influx of relatives who had packed a few bags and fled the killings. What struck me about those hasty returns to the East was that my relatives always went back to the North. Until two years ago when my uncle packed up his life of thirty years in Maiduguri and moved to Awka. He was not going back. This time, he felt, was different.

My uncle’s return illustrates a feeling shared by many Nigerians about Boko Haram: a lack of hope, a lack of confidence in our leadership. We are experiencing what is, apart from the Biafran war, the most violent period in our nation’s existence. Like many Nigerians, I am distressed about the students murdered in their school, about the people whose bodies were spattered in Nyanya, about the girls abducted in Chibok. I am furious that politicians are politicizing what should be a collective Nigerian mourning, a shared Nigerian sadness.

And I find our president’s actions and non-actions unbelievably surreal.

I do not want a president who, weeks after girls are abducted from a school and days after brave Nigerians have taken to the streets to protest the abductions, merely announces a fact-finding committee to find the girls.

I want President Jonathan to be consumed, utterly consumed, by the state of insecurity in Nigeria. I want him to make security a priority, and make it seem like a priority. I want a president consumed by the urgency of now, who rejects the false idea of keeping up appearances while the country is mired in terror and uncertainty. I want President Jonathan to know – and let Nigerians know that he knows – that we are not made safer by soldiers checking the boots of cars, that to shut down Abuja in order to hold a World Economic Forum is proof of just how deeply insecure the country is. We have a big problem, and I want the president to act as if we do. I want the president to slice through the muddle of bureaucracy, the morass of ‘how things are done,’ because Boko Haram is unusual and the response to it cannot be business as usual.

I want President Jonathan to communicate with the Nigerian people, to realize that leadership has a strong psychological component: in the face of silence or incoherence, people lose faith. I want him to humanize the lost and the missing, to insist that their individual stories be told, to show that every Nigerian life is precious in the eyes of the Nigerian state.

I want the president to seek new ideas, to act, make decisions, publish the security budget spending, offer incentives, sack people. I want the president to be angrily heartbroken about the murder of so many, to lie sleepless in bed thinking of yet what else can be done, to support and equip the armed forces and the police, but also to insist on humaneness in the midst of terror. I want the president to be equally enraged by soldiers who commit murder, by policemen who beat bomb survivors and mourners. I want the president to stop issuing limp, belated announcements through public officials, to insist on a televised apology from whoever is responsible for lying to Nigerians about the girls having been rescued.

I want President Jonathan to ignore his opponents, to remember that it is the nature of politics, to refuse to respond with defensiveness or guardedness, and to remember that Nigerians are understandably cynical about their government.

I want President Jonathan to seek glory and a place in history, instead of longevity in office. I want him to put aside the forthcoming 2015 elections, and focus today on being the kind of leader Nigeria has never had.

I do not care where the president of Nigeria comes from. Even those Nigerians who focus on ‘where the president is from’ will be won over if they are confronted with good leadership that makes all Nigerians feel included. I have always wanted, as my president, a man or a woman who is intelligent and honest and bold, who is surrounded by truth-telling, competent advisers, whose policies are people-centered, and who wants to lead, who wants to be president, but does not need to – or have to- be president at all costs.

President Jonathan may not fit that bill, but he can approximate it: by being the leader Nigerians desperately need now.

- Chimamanda Adichie is the award winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus, The Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah

Stand up for peace!

       Here is the truth, the blame game is a very terrible idea at this point in time. I mean, even if the fingers point at the actual person or people at fault, it wouldn't change the past; it certainly will not correct the present and will most certainly ruine the future.

       You find things like 'the north refused to debate for independence', 'the civil war must be revenged', 'the various coups that led to the murder of dignitaries is the problem', 'no, goodluck caused instability in Nigeria', 'it can be traced to obasanjo', 'or IBB'... Seriously what solutions do all of these offer?

       It is good to know your history, know where things went wrong and try to correct them. The blame game will only result it chaos. People are hungry, suffering and dying. Do you really want the separation at this point? If you were one of the Chibok girls, their parents, a victim in Jos, Abuja, Kano, yobe, etc. how would you feel if your fellow country men not only don't show sympathy but don't care an atom about you?

       There are so many people that are greedy, careless, selfish, heartless, worthless, it just goes on and on. But would you just take your actions based on these people? What about those who sleep under the bridge in Lagos; the widowed mother of 5 in Enugu; the crippled almajiri in Kano, the father whose only source of income(taxi) got destroyed in Abuja; the orphan with cancer in Asaba; the girls in Sambisa forest? These are people worth fighting for. People whose voices are not heard.

       So i say if you must argue, argue for unity in diversity, speak for your poor countrymen who have been oppressed for decades. If you must speak, speak for peace.