Friday 8 June 2012

'We' no dey carry last!

Has anyone noticed how easily we Nigerians follow the trend of about anything that happens to be in vogue? Not just that, but the tendency to easily abuse things isn't out of place.... Pardon me if you don't share my view but I happened to grow up in the 80's when the world had some sanity in it.
A quick look at these and you just might share my view ;)

Religion 
The two major religions in Nigeria are Christianity and Islam.
If you were to take a drive around Nigeria, the number of churches and mosques is alarming. The churches, can be found within every few kilometres, and have all sorts of names, one would think it were a competition. Loud speakers calling for prayers from mosques, prayers and singing from churches, talk about noise as an environmental hazard?!
Do not get me wrong, I do not condemn religion but I am sure that even God follows order :-)
I found this survey that was done sometime back (2004), I wonder what the results would be today if it were to be repeated.


 
In graphics:What the world thinks of God What The World Thinks Of God




In this same country where people claim to love God to death, the people who practise these religions cannot even stand themselves...what religion preaches that? Would we say this is belief in what these religions preach and stand for or just sheer ignorance?
We don come overdo the religion pass the people wey bring am to us sef. Haba!
With all the fanaticism, the chaos gets worse every year, the crisis deepen...with all the prayers, Nigeria has dropped in ranking steadily on almost every list, isn't religion supposed to be a good thing? Something that makes what is bad good over time? I haven't seen that happen.
Last time I asked someone some of these questions, the response I got was; 'we simply need something to put our hope and belief in'.


Culture
I fear for the children of this generation and beyond that there is little left of what used to be in this respect.
If a poll were to be taken of about 10 people to know if they could speak their native languages, the likely responses would be no.
We have a heritage and culture that is so rich and diverse. That in itself should be one of Nigeria's greatest strengths but nay, it is slowly becoming our curse. Or, are we there yet?
Monuments to preserve our culture are stored for us in museums in England, one reason that was given to the Nigerian government when they tried recovering them was that they will be safer in the British museums. What a shame! Our stories are told to us by complete strangers, people who appreciate history better than we do.
There are few Nigerian children who even know at least seven past presidents meanwhile a child from any European country could tell you the entire history of Europe (a slight exaggeration). Many Nigerians prefer to be Western than Nigerian, some of us are outrightly ashamed to be associated with our culture.


Dress Sense
Our dressing reflects what we think is modernization I dare say, but sadly some of us pick up the worst fashion trends and since we tend to go overboard with things, we can't help but show how we know more than the ones we try to copy. There was a picture that was circulated recently of a lady who had a pair of leggings on and a tank top, she was at the silverbird cinema in Abuja. The leggings she had on were transparent, her undies were clearly visible. She was on an escalator and someone took a picture from her behind. It hurt my eyes just to look at that picture. I had to look the trend up to see if it was just me or others shared my view and guess what I found. Between the lady at the cinema and this one, she takes the pie so I had to use hers here instead. This fashion faux pas has been replicated all around but its clearly a NO NO!
fashion fail - Disneyland is No Longer the Happiest Place On Earth after seeing this...

And they always have to wear bright coloured underwear?!


Language
I also noticed the abbreviation/text language syndrome. I call it a syndrome because way too many people are suffering from it. Some do not know when to draw the line between formal and informal. It isn't uncommon to see abbreviated words in official e-mails, how bad can it get?! I literally have to spend time thinking of what some abbreviations mean....LLNP, HWA, LWKM, NBST, HML and I saw this for the first time today MGBUH....huh! When giving best wishes to anyone, is the intention to make the person smile or make the person think? I'd prefer not to have to crack my brain if it can't be written out in full. I think some of these are peculiar to Nigeria though, I could be wrong.
Some that beat my imagination is 's' at the end of words when they shouldn't be found there, slangs you may say but errmmm....Anyway's', Nope's', lol's', sturvs/stuff's' and so many more which I cannot for the life of me remember now.
Not many of us speak our native languages neither can we speak the one language we all claim to know so well. I hear sentences like 'how did it went', 'what did you came for' quite often and I wonder...where were they in primary school when the lessons on tenses were taking place?

Do you need to do a self evaluation of where you stand? Hahahahahaha, bite me *wink wink*



8 comments:

  1. We lost the art of THINKING and REFLECTION. With that went our ability to LEARN, our values got hazy as we forgot our PRINCIPLES and the result? ... from unappologetically bad grammar to disgusting dressing in the name of 'cool' to corruption.

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  2. Dis is a case of student knwing more dan d teacher. But I must admit ssm slangs r kool n really catchy, yet we never hv a limit we must go over.see d lady on d escaalator for instance didn't she hv a mirro in d house or pas by neighbors who cld hv stopped her? Mayb she didn't want to b told ssha.but ma dear we sure no de carry last bcoz we no nid to participate.lol

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    1. Well, you be the judge! There should be limits.

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  3. Nigerians and their tendency to go overboard with everything. It gets so annoying. Makes you literally want to slap someone across the face sometimes.

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    1. Hahahahahaha, at least someone shares my sentiments.

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  4. I noticed my younger sister's face was curiously light and when I asked her she said she was tired of being d only dark skinned girl in her class. My lecture on black is beautiful and being unique obviously fell on deaf ears. Then I heard the vogue is these days is natural hair. Bleached skin, natural hair. The irony!!!LOLZ!LWKM!!BRB!CRM!CRC! Nice one as usual, Tammy.

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    1. Oh wow, thanks for sharing this. I hope she stops soon enough as all them bleaching creams have horrible side effects. As for natural hair...I have no problem with that as so many ladies hardly have hair these days :-)

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