The Rose that grew from Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk without having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.

By Tupac Shakur
 

Sketches

The Famous Beetle

The title of this article was made popular by the poem above from the late Tupac Shakur, a rap artiste whose life was cut off early by violent death in the United States of America. Almost everyone knows what a rose is as a man will at some point try to give a woman some in a bouquet to indicate the emotions he feels, or feigns, towards the woman. A rose is a delicate, fragrant flower, a thing of beauty, but most important of all, grows in a well cultivated garden with good soil, but never on concrete. As a matter of fact, nothing grows on concrete, except through a crack in the concrete.

Much as the identity of a family is provided by the head of the family, the husband and father, so is the identity of a nation provided by the leadership of the nation. Lest we have forgotten, everyone in a family bears the name of the head of the house just as everyone in Nigeria bears the name of the head of Nigeria. An identity crisis comes into play when the owner or custodian of the name has destroyed the meaning of the name. How this happens or has happened in Nigeria is what this article is really about.

Allow me to reproduce a poem that I wrote last year on a visit to Singapore during which I could not help but compare that city-state with our own country. It is titled ‘I Come From a Country’.

I come from a country where any man can become a king, and hope is constantly alive
I come from a country where regardless of where you were born you are only limited by your personal vision
I come from a country where a single person can reshape his generation by the power of his ideas
I come from a country with some of the greatest natural resources in the world, its people
I come from a country whose potential is so vast that the world can only wonder if there are any limitations

And yet…