When the opportunity to spend a half of my annual vacation came in the middle of last month, I did not think of Dubai, Florida or Paris; I chose to spend the entire vacation in my home village. I had not done so in decades and therefore did not realise what I had been losing. This time, I decided to flee from it all: no reading of, or listening to, the news; no meetings; no cracking of brains; no worrying about power failure, insecurity, dry taps or the colossal failure of government at all levels; no insult from politicians asking to win votes on the pretext that they would deliver the "dividends of democracy". Indeed, it pays to observe events from a quiet, natural environment.

Villagers are not even conscious of the existence of any government or how they (the people) are neglected or robbed. Copies of the critical newspapers get there only when they are used to wrap akara (bean cakes), groundnuts or crayfish and then delivered to buyers from the village. Nobody worries about television because there is no electric power (the transformer in my village got damaged some two years ago and has not been repaired or replaced). Young people own radio sets but they almost always tune to FM stations that dish out the latest music nonstop. One "old" fellow who used to tune to the BBC and VOA in the evening hours told me he had stopped listening to the stations. "All you hear is 300 killed here and 200 buried there," he said. "I wonder if the people reportedly killed are actual human beings who were carried nine months in the belly and born of women."

The old people that used to tell me stories have all gone now. There's no World War II veteran left. It's so bad that the oldest man in my village now is about 78. He is followed by mainly retired school teachers who have endless tales to tell about their maltreatment while in pursuit of their pensions and gratuities. Even many younger ones have since died, leaving behind six, seven, eight and nine children. There are too many widows, some of them in their 30s, who have no feasible means of existence. You need not be told that the people are suffering: almost everyone looks older than he is. Nevertheless, most of them are not perturbed and live happily. In the evenings, you could see a group of men gathered around a bottleful of kinkana or local gin, telling stories and laughing heartily.

Uneducated ones in their 60s and 70s do not know the name of the state governor or the president of Nigeria. Even among the semi-literate ones, a few still think Obasanjo (or "the Yoruba man") is the current president; probably none knows much about Goodluck Jonathan. Few remember the name of the local government chairman or their representative in the House of Assembly, House of Representatives or the Senate. Yet, these are the same people that allegedly elected them. These days, party members assemble at different places to receive aspirants to political offices: drinks are shared and each goes home with N500 cash or less. Though many have sworn to never vote for anyone who fails to give them money, yet they leave the venues without knowing the names of the aspirants.

I know the misgivings people have about their villages: They say they or their family members could be poisoned. They could become the subjects of gossips. Witches and wizards could harm them or block their source of income. But my guess is that such fears are unfounded. It's natural for deprived villagers to be envious or jealous of city people, but the city does not offer any protection from such either. Generally, villagers are poor and ignorant, and, under such situation, they are bound to be suspicious as well as superstitious. Hardly does any of them visit the hospital when he feels unwell; he is taken there only when he has become unconscious or terminally ill. Malaria still kills many. Typhoid fever, high blood pressure (which leads to stroke) and other preventable diseases have not spared them.

My village is like any other in Africa. (A village does not mean an autonomous community or a town led by an Igwe; a village's king is Onyishi or the eldest male.) Most of the inhabitants are subsistence farmers; a few are primary school teachers; others are petty traders and pensioners. The village is far from the maddening crowd of the city. I now understand why the great Zik once advised against opening up of the rural areas. We don't need the corruptive influences of the cities: armed robbery, car snatching, kidnapping, 419, prostitution and the like. I pity those who have lost their villages to urbanisation. Communal life, which was common in pre-colonial Africa, is disappearing even in villages, but I still think life could be more enjoyable there than in today's cities. Rather than worry about the next elections, for instance, residents of my village have been concerned about the annihilation of cocoyam for two consecutive seasons. The crop that serves as staple for many is facing extinction owing to poor harvests last year and this year. After several bouts of downpour, the farmers discovered that the seed cocoyams had become rotten. Some suspect "acidic rain" as the cause; others point at evil people.

As I once wrote, it is possible to round up all the armed robbers in Nigeria by getting information from the villages. All criminals - whether they live in Lagos, Aba or Abuja - are known by those they grew up with in the villages. And when I talk about villagers, I don't mean a small number of people in the country. They are in the majority. Were they to know and use their power, a nation like Nigeria would be a better place to live in. It's their ignorance that has enabled governments to neglect them. In the records of most local governments, most rural roads are tarred thrice each year. A 14km road that passes through my village, for instance, has appeared in the annual budgets of the state government in the past seven years. When government officials want to embezzle huge funds, they award fictitious contracts. Nobody raises eyebrows when a council treasurer or head of personnel management whose salary is known starts building estates. And that's why somebody who, as chairman, embezzled the funds of his local government would aspire to run for governor without borrowing from a bank.

Things would change if enlightened city dwellers started showing interest in the affairs of their villages, towns and local authorities. I'm not suggesting that we all should relocate to the villages. From the cities, we could alter the course of events in our communities of birth. There are many city dwellers who have brought trouble upon themselves by leading artificial life and worrying about vain things. It's better for the urban poor to consider relocating to the village where nobody disturbs them with bills of every description. At present, the cities do not have those amenities that used to draw people from the rural areas: no power, no water, no jobs, no security. When somebody has no job or does not earn a living wage, he is happier in the village.

The cities are overheated. Imagine spending weeks without hearing about a governor promising to build bridges where there are no rivers, or a senator who's seeking a third term telling you that the source of his wealth is hard work. The sycophancy industry thrives for dishonest people - but sickens decent ones. With the commercialisation of news on network radio, all you hear is one lie after another. It is to expose such lies and defend the defenceless that brought me into journalism. I won't give up anytime soon.