PATRIOTISM

patriotism is the love for one's country and the willingness to sacrifice for it. The word is gotten from the root word "patriot", meaning to defend something you love dearly, and to uphold its integrity. A patriot is a person whose love for motherland is second to nothing, and thus, they defend its integrity and honour with servitude, diligence and loyalty.
The word patriotism is almost foreign to Nigerians, because of our lack of concern and negligence of responsibility, our lack of attitude and gratitude for fatherland, our show of ignorance with respect to Nigeria's history and the sacrifice and principles of our founding father's. Our lack of discipline and respect for law and order, and most interesting of all, our show of disregard for leaders. Now, it is no doubt that a country where it's citizens display all these characteristics as mentioned above is nothing more than a mere formality of a sovereign state, existing under the onus of weak leaders and irresponsible followership. A fraternity of witches and wizards haunting each other with no clear purpose, other than to out do one another, and laying waste her God given natural resources.
We need to ask ourselves; what was the goal of our founding fathers?, from our own perspective, is that goal within reach or a distant dream?, where did we got it all wrong?, how long are we willing to go on like this? etc...
The truth is that there are self acclaimed patriots everywhere, in the military, in the civil service and so on, but what distinguish a true patriot from a self acclaimed one is in the pudding. You and I may claim to be patriots, but what do you do in ordinary situations when you're left with conscience alone to judge you?, that's the pudding! no man is perfect or completely free from mistakes, but the patriotism in you should be maintaining the integrity of that ideals that makes us a unit, one indivisible sovereign state, respect for law and order, diligence in your own little sphere of service, owning up to responsibilities as it affects national pride etc... civic responsibility has been incorporated into our curriculum, but the reality is that children don't learn what you say to them, but what you show them in practice. so parents should be exemplary, because children are watching and they pick up as a habit anything they see, which makes it a responsibility on every grown up to behave well in front of children, because parents alone are not supposed to bear the responsibility of their children, but the society at large is responsible for molding children.
As we celebrate our 58th independence anniversary today, "I pledge to Nigeria my country, to be faithful loyal and honest, to serve Nigeria with all my strength, to defend her unity, and uphold her honour and glory, so help me God", this pledge should be renewed in our mind every first of October, to remind us of our responsibility to fatherland. I challenge myself and you today!

el'tahir...