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In every community in the country, two notable issues take the front row in discussions by all and sundry. These are the high rate of suffering in the land and its consequential effects on average Nigerians, added to the build-up anger all over the country.
By the side is the much-talked-about insecurity in the land.
A look at Webster’s Dictionary defines “anger” as “a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire.
Anger, simply put, is the outward expression of inbuilt frustration in a man. When people are not happy and are dissatisfied with the system, they build up anger. When anger is expressed, it could lead to many disastrous consequencies. Like bottled-up frustration, anger, which can also be referred to as pent-up rage, when the steam is let off, could be disastrous via an explosion.
This scenario is reminiscent of a woman with bottled-up anger who starts exhibiting traits of a bubbling volcano. She starts by first expressing her feelings by talking to whoever cares to listen. Then she upgrades to nagging, and later increasing its tempo to violent body language that would eventual culminate in physical combat.
Nigerians are a talking people. They express their frustrations through talk. They even talk in their sleep. They talk while working. Nigerians can talk up their frustration in the market, public places, inside buses, offices, homes and even in churches and mosques. Such discussions pervade every nook and cranny of the country. Yes, people talk and discuss their pains and sufferings. They pinch themselves to be sure that they are still alive. Watching people along the road, you find them soliloquizing. People initiate discussions at will without any prompting. Nigerians have resorted to either talking to themselves, to the next person or to their God. Most of them conclude their statements with either “It is well” or “E go better.”
The electronic age has further opened up more avenues for them to talk and express their opinions on various issues in the country. Listening to programmes on radio stations around the country, one is left with no other conclusion that there is anger in the land. Anger against insecurity, unemployment, Fulani herdsmen’s invasion, kidnapping, high cost of food products and anger against government insensitivity.
The people talk, believing that someone would give them a listening ear. They talk so that issues raised can be taken care of. They talk so that their leaders can help douse the heat of their anger.
It is anger that breeds the insecurity we are witnessing in the country. Take, for instance, when in 2009 the military arrested the Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, and handed him over to the state police commissioner, Christopher Dega, but, unfortunately, Yusuf was executed in police custody and this enraged his followers. The angry expression of his followers culminated in the decade-long terrorism war that has claimed hundreds of lives. Public anger should not be allowed to snowball into violence.
When a young man cannot get employment after graduation and his parents cannot feed the family, yet the government carries on as if nothing is wrong, anger is inevitable. It is the anger in the land that makes the people to meddle in every issue, and interpret every government policy from a myopic standpoint. In the eyes of an angry man, government achievements do not mean anything. Same with workers owed months of salary while the governor lives an extravagant life and his children school abroad.
The frustration in the land is rising like a thermometer and if not checked could accelarate to boiling point. It is anger that makes a security officer to be trigger-happy when he comes in contact with civilians.
It is the frustration in the land that propels people to think evil either against one another or against their leaders. People walk on the street boiling with anger. People drive on the roads expressing anger and frustration. Out of anger, people unleash their frustration on others. In fact, little issues can trigger mayhem.
The 2019 general election was an eye-opener on the repercautions of anger. We all witnessed the public display of anger by disenfranchised voters, angry politicians who resorted to other heinous ways to seek redress.
We have witnessed scenes where angry people stoned a Vice President’s convoy, we have also witnessed where a governor’s convoy was stoned and we have witnessed where top politicians were booed at political rallies and, only recently, Nigerians in diaspora vented their anger, though negatively, yet they wanted to pass a message. Indeed, there is anger in the land. It is visible and palpable for anyone to feel it. Even the social media is not left out, as it has become a service tool to disseminate both correct and false information about leaders. Disparaging information that is invented out of anger has filled the social media. Anger is demonic. It operates on the wings of eruption, or how else can one explain the fury that trails anger that could lead to the killing of another man. How else can one explain the fury of an angry mother who sets the house on fire or beats his child to stupor? That is the fury of an angry man. Very deadly. It oozes out of the bowels of frustration, but it is anger simplicita.
In all of these, leaders have no other tangible option than to listen to the cries of the people by finding lasting solutions to douse the anger in the land.
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QUOTE OF THE YEAR
“If Nigeria does not kill corruption, then, corruption will kill Nigeria”
– President Muhammadu Buhari
