‘Africans going Dutch’: Part Ten – Back home

Thank you, Henk and Ingrid [Joe and Jill Average], for allowing me to stay in your country for another three months, against the wishes of your creator, the right-wing fiery speaker. He thought I would plant a bomb and spread a dangerous ideology.
He claimed that my presence in your country would make you poorer and more insecure. I leave you to judge for yourselves whether this was true. I love your wonderful country and thought I would soon return, but now I have changed my mind. Why? Not so much because your creator fears and hates me, but because now, things are much better in my country than I thought possible.
I returned home yesterday, and learnt that electricity supply in Nigeria had improved. We now have power for even up to three hours every day. Sometimes, the three-hour period is during the night, when everyone is asleep. Another time, the distribution window is divided into in five-minute installments. So, you see, we have made progress.
Second, the security situation has greatly improved. In your country, I rode my bicycle at any time, day or night. Once, I left my apartment at 4 a.m. and headed for Leiden through the forest. Such is the sense of security in Holland. But these days, in Nigeria, we aren’t doing badly either. The number and impact of bomb explosions have reduced. The recent one killed only 15 ordinary people and it was just the third incident that week. Not many people believe that the government can tame those wild fanatics in only a few weeks time.
I did not see a single police roadblock in your country, but the night that I arrived in Nigeria, I counted 20 roadblocks between Lagos and Ibadan, a distance of about 150 km — a clear sign that our government greatly cares about its citizens’ safety and security. And the police at roadblocks are friendly these days: motorists know that once you crumple the right naira note in your left hand, and move that hand in their direction, you’ll have no problem. Sometimes I wonder how you survive in your country without police roadblocks.
One other area where we are better than you is internet services. In your country, I had only one internet service provider. Back home, I see that friends now have five to six ISPs, and some have pouches in which they carry numerous internet modems. But then they grumble that at times all the six providers fail them woefully. Nevertheless, we are ahead of you, at least when it comes to the number of ISPs per citizen.
I must not fail to mention our tower clocks. Life in Holland was quite monotonous for me, because all your tower clocks ‘say’ the same thing. In Nigeria, if there are three clocks on a tower, each of the clocks will tell you something different, as if they were in different time zones. The difference between two Nigerian tower clocks may be as much as six hours. Variety is the spice of life. If all tower clocks ‘say’ the same thing, why do we need more than one clock on a tower?
Many more improvements were made during the time I spent in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, there’s no space to elaborate.
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