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Does Nigeria ‘Belong To Us’?

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“(1) To appreciate the profound danger of claiming that our country belongs to us rather than we belong to her, we need to understand the decisive difference between the two. The first is that the former carries enormous reward and profit but little or no responsibility, while the latter entails duties, service, sacrifice and a whole range of demanding responsibilities. It is the difference between owning and being owned; between the social contract that binds a nation and its citizen, and the master-servant protocol that comes with ownership and possession. (2) Ownership brings reward and profit while being owned carries hard work, often at the behest of the owner. You only need to examine this bogus claim in the context of John F. Kennedy’s famous “ask not…” inaugural exhortation to realise the absurdity of “Nigeria belongs to all of us”. Against the backdrop of the Capitol Building on January 20, 1961, the youthful 35th president of the United States called on his fellow Americans t