By Tola Take
Hate us, love us, one thing is for sure; you can’t ignore us! Even if all you do is to stop and marvel at some of the more bizarre and absolutely mind boggling things we get up to as Nigerians.

There is no doubt in my mind that as a nation Nigeria is destined for greatness, like the people of Israel we just have to get through this wilderness experience and quickly too, so that we can come to the end of a ‘forty day’ journey that is taking us well over forty years.

Everywhere you turn there are instances or situations that capture the bundle of contradictions that this great nation is. I was at the Atan Cemetery in Yaba a couple weeks ago, and even there, the resting place for the long departed did not escape our peculiar ‘Nigerianness’.

For those who have never been, a short narrow road takes you in from the gate then you make a left and you are in smack in the middle of the cemetery. It doesn’t look terribly large; I didn’t exactly go exploring (if you know what I mean); but even in that place there was ‘us’, and there was ‘them’ and the difference was very clear.

The cemetery is divided into two major parts by a narrow path that couldn’t be more than ten paces across. On the left, you have the ‘Nigerian’ side, haphazard, unkempt, tombstones crumbling and broken, some graves left wide open with the slabs shifted to the side almost like they were vandalised, in short downright ugly. Then to your right you have the ‘Oyinbo’ (for want of a better description) side. It was that day that I discovered that Atan Cemetery holds the largest concentration of World War II era graves in Nigeria. On this side the tomb stones were precisely laid, the area spotlessly clean, even the grass was discriminatory! Now I know this last comment has no basis in logic because the grass did not on its own, decide to grow beautifully on one side, the same way I was shy to describe the lovely part of the cemetery as the ‘oyinbo’ side which is basically a cop out because the truth is no ‘oyinbo’ comes there to tend the place! Upon enquiry I was informed that the ‘oyinbo’ side pre-dates a lot of the graves on ‘our’ side so how is it that they have kept it so pristine? By choice; and deliberate and sustained action.

What is my point anyway! You could say we are a nation that has little regard and pays scant attention to the living so why am I talking about the dead abi? It just underscored for me the general disdain and disrespect that defines the ‘Nigerian way’ of doing things.

However, I did start out by saying that Nigeria is destined for greatness and this will be as a result of the efforts of a growing number of Nigerians who are creating pockets of excellence in whatever capacity they find themselves. And this was captured even there in the resting place for our dearly departed by the beautiful oasis created by Dehinde Harrison’s Ebony Undertakers.

A major part of the Nigerian paradox is that a lot of times, somewhere in the middle of the chaos you will find a strand of sanity. Which hopefully like yeast will gradually begin to permeate.