Lessons on National Core Values from Okro Soup

I had not even started my first daughter's duty of bossing everyone around when my mother, in a very beseeching voice, said, "Please, cook for us." I had just arrived from the airport when everyone started complaining that one of my mom's relatives living with us can't cook. I had been away from home for nearly a year.

Within a week of being at home, I realized the problem was not the kitchen environment or utensils. She got that right. Clean the stove and pot, whether you cook on the stove or on firewood, which we alternate if the cost of kerosene goes up; the year was 2006. My mother insists the only part of the pot allowed to be black is the bottom. So, when I cook on firewood, I make a paste with ashes, put it around the pot, and cook so that after I finish cooking, it is easier to clean.

The problem was her ingredient. So I had to teach her core things. When cooking Ila-alasepo (okro soup), use enough iru (locust bean) and slowly cook everything to make crayfish, ponmo, stockfish, and everything marinated before you add your okro and ugwu leaves for garnishing. Also, the core ingredient (core value) in our home is that all food must be spicy. I gave her the core ingredients of other dishes we eat, and as I remember, there was no complaint again.

I have been thinking for months now: what are our core ingredients, or core values, for the making of a great Nigeria so that the chef changes but the ingredients remain constant? We may not agree on every other thing, but what are key values that drive us as a nation? So that it can’t be okay to accept one ingredient for one chef but wrong for another chef. This way people don’t start to cobble strange things together like some of these "igbalode" chefs. Core values are not against creativity and innovation, so there must be some things that forever remain constant in our national life.

For basics

Our core value should be the sanctity of every life, regardless of religion, creed, gender, or sexuality.

Our core ingredient should be sanity for all. The security climate of Nigeria constitutes an “ontological terror. " Almost every day I am online, there is a video of a victim soliciting funds for ransom.

An unchanging recipe in our core arsenal should be safety for all. Not just physical safety but mental, emotional, and psychological.

A required seasoning in our core values should be security, including financial security that ensures nobody goes to bed hungry.

My PoP says that people who are married don't agree on everything, but they have core values.

Along the same lines, recently I have begun to turn my attention to anti-Blackness as expressed by our skinfolk on the continent. Nothing reveals this more than the state of our hospital and the number of citizens we are willing to "dispose" of in order to retain power.

What is the value of an African life to its leaders?

What is the value of a Nigerian life to politicians?