THE GREEN AND WHITE EXPERIENCE - by Jefferson Nnadiekwe

What is it like living as a Nigerian in Nigeria? If I was seated in front of a mega advanced AI robot, that was curious about the Nigerian experience and reality, how would I accurately convey it? Over the course of my modest number years on earth and as a Nigerian, that thought has occasionally popped into my head. Maybe it's a shared phenomenon with my fellow country men - or maybe it's as a result of my over imaginative mind. In any case, the latest iteration of that nagging thought birthed a pretty strange but sadly accurate answer. Here it goes - If I am to describe what it is like to live in Nigeria, as a regular Nigerian citizen, I would liken it to living with an murder of crows constantly pecking away at you. These crows have only one goal - to slowly eat you up until you disappear into nothing.Each crow represents the plethora of social and economic challenges fashioned against the average Nigerian. And like you can guess, they are the exclusive burden to those outside the class of elites. Try as hard as you might, the best you can do is to learn to adapt and live with the situation. You can only struggle to replenish what has been eaten away while more crows are unleashed on you. You feel the pain as bits of your flesh are being ripped off by these merciless birds. You will search for respite, but the only thing you will find is survival. And when you think you have become numb from the pain, a new breed; well equipped with sharper beaks and claws are birthed - with the life mission to make you miserable. But as a true Nigerian that you are, you learn to smile amidst the pain. Physical numbness might not work, but mental numbness could do the trick. You learn to take pride in how much suffering you can endure, compared to the next man. You feel yourself being pushed to the brink of hopelessness, desperate to find a way to replenish what is gone to stop yourself from fading away. What happens to those who cannot replenish themselves? They are unfortunately consumed. Crushed under the weight of unforgiving feathers and wicked beaks, just to become tokens and trophies of a failed system. Trying to paint a mental image of this might be unnerving, but the reality is much worse. Because we do not see physical crows, we become more exposed to their malicious agenda. If I told an AI robot that this is what living as a Nigerian robot feels like, I wonder what might its reaction be - pity or contempt. Pity because we are stuck in the endless cycle. Or contempt, because we choose to be stuck in that cycle.

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