Episode 35: Nigeria in Call of Duty Game

     Good day dear readers! It's already the month of May and I haven't blogged at all this year. I've been really busy with my final year in the university (between sports, socials and academics). I planned to make four blog posts this month to make up for it, but I may end up making five this month as this post wasn't planned. However, something happened today (May 2nd, 2014) that provoked me to write. Activision announced a new game, Call of Duty: Advanced War and the reveal trailer opened my eyes to how bad Nigeria's reputation has gotten.

A Screenshot of Lagos State from the trailer. Note: Game takes place in the near future

 The trailer begins with a character called Kevin Spacey, who is the head of a massive Private Military Corporation (PMC), giving a speech to his soldiers. Now he's supposed to be the villain of the game, so of course his philosophies would be warped. It's the fact that they clearly depicted Nigeria as the type of country he was referring to that got me thinking. Here's the trailer, and for those who can't be bothered to watch it, I'm quoting the speech in the next paragraph.



     "Democracy? Democracy? Democracy is not what these people need, hell, it's not even what they want. America has been trying to install democracies in nations for a century, and it hasn't worked one time! These countries don't have the most basic building blocks to support a democracy. Little things like 'we ought to be tolerant of those who disagree with us. We ought to be tolerant of those who worship a different God than us. That a journalist ought to be able to disagree with the president.' And you think you can just march into these countries based on some fundamentalist religious principles, drop a few bombs, topple a dictator and start a democracy? Ha! Give me a break. People don't want freedom. They want boundaries. Rules. Protection. From invaders and from themselves. People need a leader who can give them both the support and the constraints to keep chaos at bay. You give them that, and they'll follow. And that's where I come in"
      As at the time of this writing, the hash tag "#BringBackOurGirls" is trending on twitter, because of the failure of the Nigerian government to make any reasonable progress or even effort to find and rescue about two hundred young girls who were kidnapped in the northern part of the country recently.


They're even protesting in Greece

    I heard of a conversation between a Nigerian and a US soldier who had just returned from Iran. The Nigerian wanted to know how the soldier weathered the storm of violence in Iran but from the soldier's point of view, the question was "how do you yourself survive living in Nigeria?" In this day and age, news travels faster than ever and bad news, which has always caught on like a wild fire, gets blown out of proportion very easily. Things that happen much more frequently in certain parts of the country would be seen as ubiquitous nationwide to someone who hears the news from outside the country.
     While the world's view of the state of Nigeria may be worse than it actually is, it doesn't change the fact that the country has deteriorated far beyond what should have been possible after so many years of democracy. It is worsened by the cowardly and self-centered nature of many Nigerians. I mean, look at this chat between American rapper Wale (a Nigerian born and bred in the US) and a fan in Nigeria.

Misplaced Priorities

 I wish I knew what the honest, good people amongst us could do to change things, but I really don't know. Shy of divinely orchestrated events, the only way I see to actually change things for the better will require a lot of bloodshed, but whose blood?

I'm sure this is meant to be CMS

And maybe this is some descendant of Obasanjo?