Today, Nigeria’s 60th Independence Day, I am sad, spent, drained, despondent, crest-fallen. And I am angry. Everything.

It is Day 2 into the abduction of my bosom friend and his colleague, with a cold-blooded criminal telling me it’s N100million or they will be killed today.
1/4

This is the very painful reality of our nation, 60 years but so helplessly unable to protect its citizens, which, quite painfully, is the most basic demand anyone could make from a government.
2/4

The irony is that my friend is one of the most HARDWORKING and UPRIGHT Nigerians you’ll ever find.

On Nigeria’s Independence Day, his young family will be grappling with the trauma of the terror in his voice as he pleaded with us on the phone to help facilitate his freedom.
3/4

This is how Nigeria continues to fail not just its people, but some of its very brightest and well-intentioned.

Still, we must not give up on Nigeria. As long as we have no other country, we have to keep striving to make ours better.
4/4