Beyonce sings Nigerian National Anthem

On Saturday, October 7, in a jam packed Arena, Beyonce Knowles, as part of her performance for the night, sang the Nigerian National Anthem.
You may ask, “what was she doing, singing that?”
Well, she was amongst foreign artistes (Snoop Doggy Dog, Missy Elliot, Busta Rhymes, Ciara, Jay-Z, En-Vogue) and other Nigerian artists (King Sunny Ade, Seun Anikulapo-Kuti, Dare Art-Alade, Weird MC, TuFace, Majek Fashek) who came to perform at the maiden edition of ThisDay Music Awards, which was organized to celebrate Nigeria’s 46th independence anniversary (on Oct 1, 1960).
Some school of thought have it that since such a group of prominent musicians have been able to make it to Nigeria (popularly called Naija for the uninitiated), then the country is not that bad. Or rather, it is definitely on the way back to the “top”.
There have been no reports so far (is it too early to tell?) of molestation of the musicians, neither have they reported hearing gunshots/seeing mayhem on the road. Of course there is the argument that they must have been under tight security so nothing “untoward” could have happened to them. But still, the way the country is reported in the foreign media, you would have wondered that such people would have ventured to have stepped foot in Nigeria. And they did not just come to Nigeria, they came to Lagos, which had at some point been categorized as one of the unsafest cities in the world, full of hoodlums who brazenly waylay innocent citizens in broad daylight.
Ahh…you say, that is an exaggeration. Nobody has ever reported Nigeria to be like that. I might just beg to disagree. Some few weeks back, some colleagues from the London offices of my firm visited. The norm in Nigeria is to pick expatriates (or Oybios as they are popularly called) from the airport with police escorts (without the sirens of course!). By the third day of their visit here, some of my visiting colleagues were saying “wow! didn’t know it was going to be like this; thought we would have to be going around all the time with armed personnel. This was what we heard in London but here we are, just driving around town with you folks, taking walks on the street without anybody harassing us.
Aha! How about the expatriates being kidnapped in Niger-Delta (for those who actually know where Niger-Delta is) I hear you ask?
Well, frankly I don’t have an answer to that. That is wrong I will scream boldly from a hilltop. But hey! Is that enough to say the whole country is a killing zone? Nigeria has problems no doubt but is that enough to demonize the country? I do not think so.
As we celebrate this 46th independence anniversary, as we recollect how great the country was (as told us by our forebears/parents), we need to remember that we have a role to play in moving Nigeria forward. It is not enough to scream that our leaders are corrupt. We have to at our individual levels, decide to be persons of integrity, develop a personal high standard (this has nothing to do with religion) and try to maintain it. If we can do this, then we can carry out more exploits, the same way Nigerians shouted a resounding “No!” to the third term agenda.