I LOVE MY COUNTRY

A TALE OF LEAVING, LEADERS, LOSING, LEARNING AND LOVING YOUR COUNTRY

This has been quite a week for England. It has been a tough week for English leaders. Cameron, Hodgson, Rooney have all taken a bit of a beating. In fact the whole English identity has taken pummelling.

If you believed all you read about the UK you’ll think we were literally at each other throats with fights breaking out on the streets, while another bunch of people wait at the airport to deal most severely with the English team one they landed.

Brexit, Euro exit etc.… but when you live here you realise, yes we have real issues but actually “normal Life” continues.

Sound bites and one liners in the press doesn’t adequately define our norm in the same way “fantastically.. doesn’t define…. David Cameron says I Love My Country I think we can all say the same!

I oluwalomueleyiwa Adebayo Olarewaju ishola omoerin tin jogun ola was in the court of the king enjoying my drink….hmmm my drink.

That’s the opening line from the song,  I Love My Country, it was born out of a desire to offer a different perspective in a conversation where all I ever heard was how depraved and unrepairable the country of my parents that I also call home was.

The amount of times I heard “all Nigerians are crooks…but you’re not like a real Nigerian because you’re British init!…” It was always deeply offensive and always led to me quoting the UK statutory offence Handling Stolen Goods of the Theft Act 1968. You know someone is a thief and you keep taking the money they bring into your economy.

It’s always so easy to point to other people’s flaws. I remember after a while believing all the noise and concluding that Nigeria must be an absolute hell hole what with all the corruption, murders, robbery’s, unemployment. Then it was all capped off when my father Kayode Karimu Olarewaju was assassinated in the same country.

So here I was on my way to his funeral, I get on the plane and to my shock 90% of the passengers in the part of the plane I was flying were not Nigerians or black, they were Europeans.

My first question was if the place is as bad as I have seen on the press what on earth are you going there for. I soon realised from bloggers like Alan Boyle that there is profit for some keeping the perception alive. It’s all about the story and who is telling it. If you don’t believe me ask 3 people from your family to recount a landmark moment in the family’s history and you’ll hear 3 different stories!