"To serve our father Land with love and strength and faith.
The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain"

But on this fateful morning, as I performed my ritual, my tongue got heavy as I began to recite the lines above. My mind suddenly revolted in heretical thought: "who are these heroes?" I asked myself.

I know you will barrage me with praises of our founding fathers. Awolowo, Dr Zik, Balewa and many others. You read me the lists-unending as they seem (even Babaginda in all his crookedness got on this list in a prior experiment of such a kind). And I will be the first one to admit that education, especially of one's hisotry, has the peculiar habit of allowing one to know the most unflattering characterists of unblemished leaders. One tends to know and understand history in its ugly truths.

However, in Nigeria, if these were were just mere "faults" they would be excusable. Thus far, our "heroes" -even the best of them- have only recorded thw worst of sins.  But they were not alone in meting out these autrosoties, what they did to the state, the state did to them.

My observations have brought me to one conclusion: Two things do in our progress: our country and our leaders. Since it is common knowledge the gripping we have of our leaders I will pass making cheap shots at them and instead make the subject of this discussion my good country people.

Before I begin my tirade at everyone (or perhaps no one), let me state this important caveat's emptor: Good people do exist in our great nation. But better people may be what we really need.

The example of our country's collective fail abound. Our willingness to compromise especially on the issue on corruption is legendary. Our people--yes people-- are corrupt because I refuse to make a distinction between those whose set up the table with corruption and those who dine on it. Even worse, many lack a confrontational quality. As someone once very aptly put it, "push a Nigerian to the wall, and he'll just scale it". For a wily people tried and tested by the travails of civil war, humbled by poverty and disease and interested only in survival, it seems a reasonable road to take.

But grouse here is not what is reasonable, but what is best. Alas we listened to the proverb about the lion who must run so he can live to fight another day and we kept running-forgetting that the very point of running is the fight. We have subjected the collective survival that justifies our state (however skewered the colonialists may have made it) to individual and familial wimps. Too many of us await "our turn to chop", participating in the proceeds of "chopped funds" or keeping quiet while those we love and respect do.

Then we wonder why it evades us. I will tell you why; Corruption has become Nigerian, it scales the wall when we do.