Nigerians are Marshmallows: A Democracy Day special.

“My life has been a marshmallow; pretty sweet”.

I remember gisting with my brothers one warm and calm evening in Omole. The sun had gone into its hiding when I told them the opening lines of my biography should one ever come out. I probably need to call them to readjust that position.

Nigeria, my country, has entered a new administration. A new government eager to establish its legitimacy is gradually warming up to a challenge which it presumes itself to be largely competent enough to vanquish.

In the days preceding the elections, widespread propaganda anchored on divisive politics across ethnoreligious lines washed up mainstream and social media and slowly filtered into our living rooms.

Each candidate; a proven messiah with followers daring enough to believe. Some with fits of violence. Others by dialogue and meditation, and some by utter silence. The throne of Nigeria became Blackbeard’s chest, with greed, in flowing proportions, its rum.

The masses in crested vests heaved brooms and umbrellas in mosaic formations across various parts of the country. Those who could not walk used their pens as their swords. As the air of mud-slinging arrested the political atmosphere, loyalists and sycophants alike went the extra mile to predicate why the throne of Nigeria best fitted the seat of their candidates. Inconsequential to this, there were uncoverings of forgotten deals, establishments, transactions, legal verdicts, and countless others to establish the level of incompetency of any contestant that posed a threat.

These days as I read the news and scroll through the screens, my thoughts have become slightly clearer. I need no other prompting to assert within myself that?Nigerians are the biggest marshmallows.

True to my child-like discussions with my brothers, Nigeria, much like my life, has been a marshmallow; white, chewy, soft, and sometimes stretchy. We’ve been white (literally) or at least made to think we were white to the point that we are now grey, stretched in various ways, taken the shape of many containers, and our personality largely sweet.

Nigerians are chewy; we consistently seem to require deeper gears of hardship each time to realize we’re being swallowed. We pride ourselves on resilience and the ability to stomach hardship. Whereas, the dividends of good governance are a right and not a reward. The constant mastication of pain and poverty, guided by soft-spoken words, tribal representation, and blind loyalty to brown envelopes, constantly energizes our blind hope that tomorrow will be better. I myself am pretty chewy. I find myself constantly giving people more chances, and I am never shy to make an excuse for others, while oftentimes being oblivious to the reality that I’m being swallowed by a kind monster that appears in people, work, and pleasure.

Nigerians are gray.?We have a short-term memory that takes away the grey in grey matters. We lack the ability to hinge on logic to answer pertinent questions that define who we are. We deny black because it’s too dark for us and white because no one wants to be seen as weak. We display selective amnesia toward societal issues and will rather dance to the pied simply to get favored by the rare and swinging pendulum of a good life, forgetting that we could all wear the watches of decent living characterized by equal pay, a moderate cost of living, and a premium of a stable and secure Nigeria. I myself have realized that I am grey, not in my morality or a sense of doing good or bad, but in my realization that not everything is the way it appears at first glance, that every individual has unusual stories behind them, and that just because a book is white doesn’t mean its content is in English.

Nigerians are sweet: intricately, we are a sweet nation with enough kindness to go around. Every day there are new examples of the Nigerian spirit that defies societal norms: humans showing humanity, the strong carrying the weak, and the display of national togetherness towards each other. I have seen people pay for the fares of children in the face of rising transport prices, and I have seen Nigerians cheer their sports heroes. Nigerians have dedicated a century of hours to pushing one of their own for a world record(make that a couple of their own).

Nigerians are sweet intrinsically and deserve to share in the beauty of a functional and secure Nigeria.

There’s one part of this marshmallow that I never thought of.

It’s not that I am burnt; it’s that Nigerians are burnt. It’s that I’d grow up thinking life was ABC to discover it is alphanumeric. That humans can be innately selfish yet so kind. Bad things happen to good people, and even at times, good people walk into bad things.

I’m burned out being an adult in Nigeria at this time, and this is all I can write.

For Nigerians, it’s 14 days post-inauguration and coincidentally Democracy day.

The thrill of elections have begun to die down, and the political pandering and lobbying have changed gears. Individuals of all walks of life especially those itchy for seats or stools in the corridors of power have begun to lay claims to god-ordained mandates in some quarters and stolen mandates in many parts of the country, none of them in their mind with a bad intention.

For the masses, it’s a renewed test of our chewiness; policy implementation has played us a dirty one. New fuel prices have begun crippling local businesses, deepening our already damned?poverty rate.

Nigerians carry within them the aches of failed promises, the burden of mouths to feed, the grief of the loss of loved ones, and the punishment of failed or improper policies.

They say marshmallows are sweeter when they’re burned. We are a burnt people desirous of a stable, generally profitable, and secure Nigeria.

I do hope we realize marshmallows can also be eaten and enjoyed without being burnt.