ON Friday, January 27, 2023, during the Vanguard Personality of the Year Award 2022, Mrs. Eunice Onuekwusi, a 60-year-old widow and petty trader from Amagu village, Ukwulu in Dunukofia Local Government Area of Anambra State, made history. Mrs. Onuekwusi was given a special recognition alongside state governors, captains of industry and other prominent Nigerians who received the highly-coveted Vanguard Awards.

Mrs. Onuekwusi came to the limelight for rejecting the sum of N5,000 cash offered to her by a political party agent to vote against her conscience during the November 6, 2021 governorship election in the state. The agent had approached the line of voters, handing each voter the N5,000. When it came to Mrs. Onuekwusi’s turn, she flatly rejected the money and insisted she will cast her vote according to the dictate of her conscience!

In a country of more than 200 million people, with 133 million citizens living below the poverty line, a country where corruption has become endemic, Mrs. Onuekwusi’s rejection of that cash overture to sell her conscience was like a shining star above the sky in a dismally dark night.

But Mrs. Onuekwusi is not alone in this conscientious act of doing the right thing in spite of her meagerly economic condition. Occasionally, we hear of a toilet cleaner who found bags containing wads of dollar currency running into millions, or a taxi driver who found a big sum of money forgotten inside his cab, and promptly returned the money to the owner. These occasional acts of humanity and moral rectitude show that there is still hope for us as a country.

In countries where government has inculcated a sense of pride for fatherland into the citizens, through the way it values and cares for the citizens, such acts displayed by Mrs. Onuekwusi, the taxi driver and the toilet cleaner, are also usually motivated by deep senses of patriotism.

Conversely, in a country like ours where successive governments have had no little or no regard for the life for its citizens, such country can easily be betrayed by the citizen at the slightest opportunity. Some of our security personnel who man our borders and other inland checkpoints are ready examples.

On the other hand, a country where citizens have a sense of patriotism, nothing would make a bank manager to be hoarding or selling to the highest bidder the new naira notes made available to the bank by the Central Bank of Nigeria, while crowds of ordinary people whom the money is meant for, are left outside to suffer excruciating pain.

The Nigerian government must therefore begin to care for the lives of its citizens in order to instill a sense of pride into people. It is only when people are proud of their country that the country can have patriotic citizens who have the moral capacity to reject bribes and refuse to betray the country, just as Mrs. Eunice Onuekwusi and others did.