Notes

When a country becomes torn apart by poverty, by disease, and by warfare, we can only hold on to the essence of its potential, we can only hope that its best will somehow shine through.

But from the ancient kingdoms of Oyo and Ife, kingdoms meaning love in Nigerian, to the Nok with its millions of beautiful terracotta sculptures, hope and potential blooms from the rooted, but perhaps slightly shaken bones of this land.

It’s a land full of variety, bled rich since the very beginning. It’s been home to the Fulani tribes of Islam to the SS Alburka trade ship. It’s witnessed the gold mine of petroleum oil, even if it meant the downfall into corruption soon after.

And now, 186 million call it home. And its easy to feel overwhelmed by that, standing before a country with diversity but also segregation, with peaceful villages but also ones run down by terrorists.

And so, to help us better understand the complexity of this land, what if we shrunk the population down to just our class? What if we let ourselves experience what if feels like to live in such a torn country?

I think that by doing so, any change that we’ll create will seem just a little bit closer to our hearts.

Firstly, I want all of you to sit on top of a desk.

From now on, I’ll say that remaining standing means you have had enough opportunities to live a good life or to function well in society, to have just the basic rights that we take for granted every day in a country like ours. Remaining standing throughout parts of my presentation will mean that you are privileged.

You are now the entire population of Nigeria.

We’ve seen articles all over the internet, things akin to the education crisis, to HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Sickle Cell, perhaps you’ve heard of the Biafran Civil War in the 1970’s, or more recently, the kidnappings of Boko Haram.

We all know that this land holds disaster. So here, I want to demonstrate a few of the main points. (List them off)

Education is what brings children to their feet, brings adults to their minds, and in this case, a country, to it’s leaders. But in Nigeria, prospects aren’t so bright.

12 percent of kids have never gone to school. Out of this class of 25 people, three of you, (points) can sit back down. Never at any point in your lives have you experienced education, and as much as we sometimes doubt the quality of it here, we are learning. And they are not.

Half of the entire Nigerian population is illiterate... To add on to the previous amount, 9 more people can sit down. Imagine, now, that to all of you (gestures towards sitting down kids) the words on this slide are nothing but symbols. That you can’t do most decent paying jobs, you are excluded from political matters, that everything you are missing out from could have been solved.

And, last of all, as a result of the rocky education system, where the average years of schooling is only 6 years, where conflict has destroyed 28% of schools, where there isn’t even any information about government’s GDP spending on education…

There’s a real impact to this.

70 below poverty line.

5 more people sit down.

As of now, 18 out of 25 of you have not had the opportunities to become well educated. But in the real world, this counts for 130.2 million people, not getting the education, careers, and adequate pay, later on, that they need.

This is a dire situation. And even though its not completely hopeless, a weak foundation for children and new families only creates more problems further down the road.

yall can sit back down lmao

Next up we have government and economy. If youve seen the news lately, you might have noticed how nigeria's economy has been very unstable and all the math stuff, but recently, as you can see here, it's lost a lot of money, mostly to government corruption. b/c here, this bad government creates a very bad economy, and the citizens in turn lose more oppportnities and such, making it a diffult country to raise a family in.

So, just how bad is this corruption?

Well, from the daily post review, In 2012, Nigeria lost over $400 billion to corruption. From a paper by African Sudies major Muhammed Ladan, $2.2 billion was illegally withdrawn from funds in 2015. A study about the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation showed that 60 million barrels of oil valued at $13.7 billion was stolen under watch.

But it isnt all about oil.

A study from the EuroNews gave these results. These are the top five least trusted services in Nigeria. It can be super difficult to understand, especially since we live in a country with almost the opposite, why no one seems to have faith in the police. But Here's another graph, that somehow correlates with the other. Notice how bribes are paid to basically ONLY jobs having to do with law. Add on the money lost from theft of oil, and you'll start to see a vicious cycle of corruption.

So why do the citizens pay these bribes?

a report from quartz africa says that For the most part, the government’s anti-corruption efforts have been focused on large-scale scams involving prominent government officials But with bribery seemingly institutionalized in public processes, as you've seen with the graph about police, it’s a problem that runs deep. Ironically, part of the cause for this stems from a lack of faith in the willingness of the authorities to crack down on bribery, therefore causing citizens to take part of it themselves in order to remain holding their weight in politics.

Withougt a strong government and trust from Nigerians, corruption and debt will only continue to grow. And like president buhari mentioned himself, If we dont kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.

k u guys can get back up on a desk

Let’s go through the life, or rather, the likeliness of life of someone living in nigeria. 1 in 6 children will not make it past their 5th birthday. That’s 4 people out of twentyfive. That’s four people that never got to celebrate a kindergarten graduation, never made it past first grade.

But let’s say you did. You’re part of the remaining 21 people. 8 of you, before the age of 7, will have moderate to severe stunting, whether it be from malnutrition or sanitation issues. 3 of you will be orphans, living a life of neglect and possibly abuse. One adult among this group has AIDS or HIV. And 8 more of you will die before becoming a senior.

Look around. How many people do you see standing? (Just one) But the worst part of this is, the rare 4% of the population not experiencing any of these life and health problems, will die at the average age of 53.1.

Why?

Because only 0.9 % of Nigeria’s GDP goes towards public health.

Because just one doctor has to attend to 6300 patients with critical illnesses.

Because a small part of this already tiny group of physicians is unqualified.

Because the corruption has gotten so bad, that it is now taking lives.



You’ve seen in the first section that education, or the lack therof, creates an unfair political environment.

In the middle, I hoped to show that this corruption created, is the centre, the core of all the issues that affect Nigeria.

And at the end, we’ve seen the impacts that this corruption leaves, a permanent mark on the country and it’s citizens.