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Quiet please! Now,
say the word ‘N-A-I-J-A’; say it again, SLOWLY! Doesn’t it just evoke
feelings of endearment? Try putting your right hand on your heart as
you say the words ‘NAIJA FOR LIFE’. See if you don’t feel a connection
to your ‘Naijaness’.

NAIJA is to
Nigerians what Yankee is to Americans and CHARLIE is to Ghanaians. If
you doubt it, clench your raised fist and say NAIJA-for-life where many
are gathered, and see what happens. The word is probably the nearest
we’ll get to evoking feelings of true patriotism.

There is nothing as
warm and comforting for instance, as hearing those three words when all
alone in some God-forsaken town in a country where you have not had the
privilege of running into a fellow Nigerian for months, and some
‘black’ person recognises your accent, and says ‘Naija for life’. I
dare you not to hug that person! So whether some adults like the word
or not is immaterial,; you cannot command people to ‘un-feel’ by fiat
and this, is where the challenge lies.

How do you coerce people into not feeling feelings that they have an inclination to feel?

One gets a distinct
feeling that people in government know just how angry we are about
things but they hope to blackmail us into seeing evil, hearing evil but
not speaking it. They hope to legislate good vibes into us by force,
whether we like it or not! If it were possible, they would make it an
offence to speak negative thoughts about anything to do with this
country, in a clampdown reminiscent of a dictatorship.

Jurisprudence
teaches that the law shall not act in vain, therefore, states shall not
make laws that will be impossible to obey or laws that will only be
breached in observance. Does a minister have the right to prevent a
word being used by anybody? In fact, is the use of the word NAIJA the
crux of our problems as a nation? That anyone is griping about NAIJA ab
initio shows the huge gulf between the old and young, and the governed
and government.

Ordering today’s
youth without justification or explanation won’t work. Today’s
generation has seen through that age-old deceit of parents all over the
world: do as I say, not as I do! So, if they truly do not see something
to emulate, they won’t and, they’ll tell you so too!

Through the years,
there have always been slangs; and slangs have always been the choice
of youths who wish to keep their gist sacrosanct. Slang is the code; it
is the job of the youth to continuously strive for codes that no adult
will decipher. Conversely, it is the job of adults to constantly try to
break the codes of the young.

The word NAIJA
always existed; maybe it was spelt differently back in the 80’s and
90’s. It was never said derogatively though; it was always an
acknowledgement of our uniqueness. The spelling changed from NIGER
because it confused things with a certain country up north in Africa.

But what was to be
achieved by starting this needless debate? In the midst of so many
problems, is it our use of the word NAIJA that should be bothering
anyone? Is it NAIJA that’s left us without real governance?
Universities have been on strike for the most part of this year; is it
because of NAIJA? When you even go further to consider that no Nigerian
university made it to the top 5500 list of universities in the world,
is it NAIJA that made it so? How does anyone propose to stop the word
from being used?

Does the Minister
have powers to prevent businesses operating legitimately from using the
word? Who will bear the cost of abandoned advertising campaigns for the
company that has already embarked on a full-blown NAIJA campaign?
Methinks this is another exercise in futility; and I’m in good company
too!

My two favourite
teenagers in the world, TE [with School Certificate results 4A’s, 4B’s,
1C] and TO [with 1A, 7B’s] think that no one should expend energy on
the matter. If we stop using NAIJA, will the roads get better? Will we
have at least 18 hours of electricity a day? Will doctors, teachers and
ancillary workers, get a better deal? Will it stop the padding of
contracts? Will it give us credible elections and leadership? Is
someone taking the piss here?

The things we
REALLY like, government will never give us; instead it is the
impossible they will be striving to do. Maybe it is a major achievement
perhaps, to be included in one’s resume, that as a Minister of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, and at great pain too, one stopped the
citizens from harming themselves irreparably, by banning the use of the
word NAIJA!