Post by Trade facilitator on Mar 19, 2018 20:50:12 GMT 1
A Call To Build Our Country Brand
Arise, O compatriots
Nigeria's call obey
To serve our fatherland
With love and strength and faith
The labour of our heroes past
Shall never be in vain
To serve with heart and might
One nation bound in freedom
Peace and unity...
I was born in the 80s and like I rightly know, things had already fallen apart prior to my growing up. Fortunately, I did meet the good old days, when civil servants were properly recruited, and dutifully worked from 7am till 4pm on week days, and half a day on Saturdays. I met the good old days, when private schools were not considered second rate. If you must know, I attended a private school because the government schools in my time did not lack or had funding problems. I met the Nigeria that produced graduates to be reckoned with all, over the world.
The vision and mission statements of any company takes a strategic pride of place on their wall, as a road map and reminder for staff, and the reason for their clients to continue to believe in them. It is a promise that the company continually and continuously stretch to live up to.
While the company pays advertising firms to make these glowing qualities of the company known to the public, they work their fingers to the bone to make sure that their words consistently align with their work.
With almost everything in place, every business grows in leaps and bounds. Every member of the staff, from the Gate keeper to the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors understand the vision, and they know their jobs and how to do it. Selflessly working towards a common goal. Well, same cannot be said of our dear country, Nigeria, where a school teacher cannot recite the National anthem without fault. If and when he can, he does not believe in it at all. He treats it as an academic subject other than the National sacrament that it is; tenets of our country. Why would he when he is being owed eight months' salary with no promise or hope to be paid? How well can one teach what one does not know? And how strongly can one inculcate what one has lost faith in?
We are today all missing the Nigeria, where "no man is oppressed. And so with peace and plenty, Nigeria may be blessed." Nigeria where "though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand." I cannot help but wonder if there is truly light at the end of the tunnel or if we are only seeing the torch light of a man returning from his frustrated adventure of equally searching for the same proverbial light at the end of the tunnel!
Our National anthem may still be hanging on walls, in headmasters' offices or on blackboards, in the handwriting of the form teacher's favourite student, but it has since lost it's pride of place in the hearts of greater number of the citizenry.
58 years later of sweat and blood, it does not look like this road map would bring us anywhere near the Promised Land in the national anthem. If anything, it looks like we are 58 years away from it and hurriedly running away at the speed of light and in the opposite direction. Far away from where "peace and justice shall reign."
The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain. Regrettably, our heroes are frail and old and are still labouring. Carrying placards for their pension! The criminal labour of one greedy person under the toga of a politician, who does not think about the country but himself, is sitting on their money. You tell me if their labour is financially "not in vain."
Considering that there is so much crises in the land (the bombings, the upsurge in militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, the kidnappings and agitations for the sovereign states of Biafra, the deadly Boko Haram insurgency and the Fulani herdsmen menace) it looks like all hope is lost on Nigeria, but I write, not to fan the embers of fear already sitted in your heart. No, I write but to state my belief that despite the corruption which is still the bane of our national development, despite our education system which is hobbled by poor funding and the health sector in comatose, despite our dilapidated roads and crisis in our aviation industry, we can still arise to the shame of many countries that have written us off.
Nigeria is our country. Nigeria is our brand. We are Nigeria and Nigeria is us. This is the only country we can call our own. The growing of this nation starts from within and is our collective responsibility to build it. Why should we be obsessed with all that separate and divide us? Why don't we focus on those things that unite us? Race, ethnicity, language, religion and political parties, should not put asunder "a nation bound in freedom, peace and unity."
Arise oh compatriots! Hearken to the call of branding and rebranding of our nation. Let us begin to believe again in our motherland. Let us begin to sell our country first, to ourselves and then to the world. The world must tell a good story of us, of our brand. For Nigeria is not just a geographical picture bounded by lines but a great nation, a great brand.
Arise, O compatriots
Nigeria's call obey
To serve our fatherland
With love and strength and faith
The labour of our heroes past
Shall never be in vain
To serve with heart and might
One nation bound in freedom
Peace and unity...
I was born in the 80s and like I rightly know, things had already fallen apart prior to my growing up. Fortunately, I did meet the good old days, when civil servants were properly recruited, and dutifully worked from 7am till 4pm on week days, and half a day on Saturdays. I met the good old days, when private schools were not considered second rate. If you must know, I attended a private school because the government schools in my time did not lack or had funding problems. I met the Nigeria that produced graduates to be reckoned with all, over the world.
The vision and mission statements of any company takes a strategic pride of place on their wall, as a road map and reminder for staff, and the reason for their clients to continue to believe in them. It is a promise that the company continually and continuously stretch to live up to.
While the company pays advertising firms to make these glowing qualities of the company known to the public, they work their fingers to the bone to make sure that their words consistently align with their work.
With almost everything in place, every business grows in leaps and bounds. Every member of the staff, from the Gate keeper to the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors understand the vision, and they know their jobs and how to do it. Selflessly working towards a common goal. Well, same cannot be said of our dear country, Nigeria, where a school teacher cannot recite the National anthem without fault. If and when he can, he does not believe in it at all. He treats it as an academic subject other than the National sacrament that it is; tenets of our country. Why would he when he is being owed eight months' salary with no promise or hope to be paid? How well can one teach what one does not know? And how strongly can one inculcate what one has lost faith in?
We are today all missing the Nigeria, where "no man is oppressed. And so with peace and plenty, Nigeria may be blessed." Nigeria where "though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand." I cannot help but wonder if there is truly light at the end of the tunnel or if we are only seeing the torch light of a man returning from his frustrated adventure of equally searching for the same proverbial light at the end of the tunnel!
Our National anthem may still be hanging on walls, in headmasters' offices or on blackboards, in the handwriting of the form teacher's favourite student, but it has since lost it's pride of place in the hearts of greater number of the citizenry.
58 years later of sweat and blood, it does not look like this road map would bring us anywhere near the Promised Land in the national anthem. If anything, it looks like we are 58 years away from it and hurriedly running away at the speed of light and in the opposite direction. Far away from where "peace and justice shall reign."
The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain. Regrettably, our heroes are frail and old and are still labouring. Carrying placards for their pension! The criminal labour of one greedy person under the toga of a politician, who does not think about the country but himself, is sitting on their money. You tell me if their labour is financially "not in vain."
Considering that there is so much crises in the land (the bombings, the upsurge in militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, the kidnappings and agitations for the sovereign states of Biafra, the deadly Boko Haram insurgency and the Fulani herdsmen menace) it looks like all hope is lost on Nigeria, but I write, not to fan the embers of fear already sitted in your heart. No, I write but to state my belief that despite the corruption which is still the bane of our national development, despite our education system which is hobbled by poor funding and the health sector in comatose, despite our dilapidated roads and crisis in our aviation industry, we can still arise to the shame of many countries that have written us off.
Nigeria is our country. Nigeria is our brand. We are Nigeria and Nigeria is us. This is the only country we can call our own. The growing of this nation starts from within and is our collective responsibility to build it. Why should we be obsessed with all that separate and divide us? Why don't we focus on those things that unite us? Race, ethnicity, language, religion and political parties, should not put asunder "a nation bound in freedom, peace and unity."
Arise oh compatriots! Hearken to the call of branding and rebranding of our nation. Let us begin to believe again in our motherland. Let us begin to sell our country first, to ourselves and then to the world. The world must tell a good story of us, of our brand. For Nigeria is not just a geographical picture bounded by lines but a great nation, a great brand.
