Thread by @DrJoeAbah

THE STORY OF IBRAHIM AND BLESSING. At today's webinar on 'Rebuilding our National Values System story of Ibrahim and Blessing, two young Nigerians. In a way, they are both victims of Nigeria. In another way, they help to perpetuate the problems with our value system. Thread...

Did you know that Ibrahim is the most common name in Nigeria? Ibrahim’s father is a career politician who has never done any real work in his life. When it was time for Ibrahim to write his WAEC and JAMB exams, his father paid someone to write them for him.

At university, Ibrahim quickly joined a cult and by the time he was at 200 level was already an accomplished rapist. Ibrahim never read for one day. He relied on paying lecturers for marks (a practice known as “sorting”) and intimidating those that initially refused to be sorted.

Lecturers would often go on strike to complain about poor pay & poor facilities they have to work with. Every strike provides lecturers an opportunity to make money doing other things and still get paid by government, instead of just relying on sorting and selling stale handouts.

When the strike goes on for too long, parents and students start to agitate. Government would make the lecturers promises that it knew it couldn’t keep just to get them to call off the strike. Ministers of Labour traditionally have no training in conducting negotiations.

As far as each Minister is concerned, “I just need to tell them any lie they want to hear to get them to call off the strike. The next Minister can deal with the problem in 5 years’ time.”

At university, Ibrahim fell in love with Blessing, a student from another university. Blessing lost her mother when she was two, shot by a policeman from SARS whom she refused to give a N20 bribe. The hospital wasn’t compassionate when she was brought in injured.

While they insisted on payment and a police report, she bled to death. At the beginning of each semester, her father (a poorly paid civil servant) would say he has no money to give her and that he expects her to do what other girls her age do to survive.

She soon became an ‘Abuja big girl’, dating several men old enough to be her father. The Dean of her faculty had a reputation for sexually harassing young girls but was particularly obsessed with Blessing. Blessing never needed to study and wasn’t even in school most of the time.

Still, Blessing she had to beg the Dean not to give her a First-Class degree, as she was worried about having to defend it later in life. When Ibrahim graduated, his dad made sure that he was posted to a juicy parastatal for NYSC and that they retained him afterwards.

Things were going well for Ibrahim but his relationship with Blessing broke up after a very bitter quarrel. You see, Blessing didn’t realise that her newest Sugar Daddy was Ibrahim’s dad! When Ibrahim found out, he developed a deep hatred for people from her part of the country.

He threatened to kill her, and she had to emigrate to Canada through one of her “helpers.” Her dad died from medical negligence two years after retiring, without a house to his name anywhere. Blessing blames Nigeria for everything.

Blessing now hates the country with a passion and vows never to return.

Although Ibrahim was not terribly smart, he had a very caustic tongue and a fearsome reputation on social media for his ability to rain abuse and curses on anybody, no matter their age.

Very soon, he was made a Special Assistant on New Media to a Minister and after a few years was appointed the head of a government agency, with a clear target for making cash returns to those that facilitated his appointment.

So, the question is: What kind of Nigerian do we expect Ibrahim to be? Can we do anything with his younger brother, Musa? What about Blessing? Can we do anything with her younger sister, Jennifer?

What can we do differently as individuals, parents (especially as the problems of Ibrahim and Blessing started from home), teachers, religious leaders and government? Your thoughts would be most welcome.

END!