Nigeria, our country for years, has been going round the hot crucible. We felt the heat but never really got burnt. The saving grace didn’t emanate from our calculations or definitive strategy.
Each time one or two of our reckless acts could have thrown things overboard and ensured we went into the burning crucible, divine force appeared on time to pull things back. It has happened several times and that has been the saving grace. It also accounts for why we take nation building as a fanfare resulting in our naked jump into the hot crucible where we are getting burnt up at a very rapid rate.
We are not a nation of statistics otherwise we would have been appalled at the ruins we have brought on ourselves. The country is closed up, things are difficult, materials for basic existence are difficult to come by and industries have shut down. Commerce can’t thrive because citizens must first earn incomes before they can have purchasing power.
When it was time to elect leaders the usual primordial desires took hold of all of us. Those in power desired an entrenchment of the failed stereotypes. They took advantage of religion and ethnicity, it wasn’t about merit and best ideas. Government forces led in the farce and we the citizens cheered on, as has always been the case.
From behind, retrogressive forces subverted the processes and entire system. As already observed everyone is complicit in this destruction of self and country. The law of what “you sow, you reap has caught up with us and the lamentation is loud and truly the heat is scorching. The irony is rather than stop and pause and show a disposition to make a U-turn and walk on the lane of change and genuine progress, we instead elect to remain on the pathway that has caused us retrogression and great pains that would also accompany it.
Authoritarianism is grabbing or engulfing the land. The leaders’ deficit in capacity are beginning to take a resort to tyranny. It is their way or nothing. There is no longer etiquette and sobriety in the management of government affairs anymore.
For about eight days last week (am not certain if he would be back to the country as you read this) our President was away on a state visit to Saint Lucia, a very small country in the Caribbean. His handlers told us it was a necessary and good visit designed to cement relations with our brothers and sisters over there. Cultural diplomacy.
Some things were very wrong with the visit. It is leadership ineffectiveness for any leader to hop into a plane and travel when his country is sitting on a keg of gun powder. At this point in our national life the country is on a crucible, insecurity is at all time high, hunger is making nonsense of human lives, inflation is very high, ill digested reforms have brought untold dislocations, pains and deaths .Citizens sit and with open eyes see red and no other color. Living has become nasty. This is not the time for gallivanting around the world.
It is time great leaders sit on their desks and try to fashion quick solutions that could stem biting suffering in the land. All they told us President Tinubu went to do in the Island country could be effectively handled by the appropriate Minister. A leader of a strategic country as Nigeria spending all of six days in one country tells a clear story of unseriousness.
It is a confirmation to the wider world that our leaders lack a sense of what to do. Moving from one country to another and adding medical tourism diminishes people and ruins their sovereignty. It is very ridiculous seeing our leaders, especially our Presidents, go on medical tourism and stay there for months. The Europeans and the other civilized parts of the world make a jest of the black people on this score. They can’t comprehend the whole madness for that is exactly what it is. Nelson Mandela, when he was sick, remained in South Africa. He was passing on a message we all ought to have learned by now.
The question of state capture is real. It is alive, thriving and leaving with us very negative consequences. Imposing state of emergency in Rivers State isn’t the issue what was and still is is the suspension of a Governor elected via democratic process. It happened and we swallowed it like everything evil when left unchallenged emboldened perpetrators to extend their frontiers of evil.
President Tinubu is said to have intervened on a matter that ought not be an issue if our political culture was right. Someone was bold enough to get up and tell us he sponsored and ensured the victory of the Governor and all members of the state house of Assembly. We had that and began to clap. The story didn’t bother the president of a supposed democratic country, well many knew he couldn’t be bothered, antecedent matters in what we do in life.
If Nigerians knew the import of the disclosure they ought to be up in arms. The Minister would have been made to resign and to face a panel of inquiry to explain how it became one man turned out to become a sovereignty. Democracy in Rivers State couldn’t work because by way of crooked process we have one somehow managed to emerge as symbol of the people. And this is root of the instability in Rivers State. The state via the instrumentality of the President gave the aberration life.
We can see what happens when seeds of contradictions are sown. If and when the Governor who got the endorsement of the sole sovereignty returns and we hope he returns, and assumes office, from the look of things the country would be saddled with the oddity of having one state with three Governors, one who is past Governor, incumbent federal Minister doubling as defacto Governor of Rivers State. We will have ceremonial “Governors”, in the man “elected”and in the Speaker of the state House of Assembly. It has been said by history that,”contradictions breed Monsters”. Evidence is live with us.
Rivers State would have a Governor but he won’t make nominations to local governments. Someone else would make that on his behalf. The “ceremonial Governor” would give out his right to contest election.
This is what one gets when subverters turn out by one way or another to become Lords. When a child becomes the king, the palace becomes a playground to court jesters.
The plain truth is we have never shown seriousness about building a great nation where things work and life would be abundant for citizens. We chose federalism, religious irredentists and tribal jingoists masquerading as soldiers of fortune truncated that but refused to return it when they shot their way into power.
They even bastardized it. They dealt terrible blows to political architecture still harping on unity. Former vice President Atiku Abubakar said a few days ago,”the North is more concerned about national unity”, he stopped there. He should have added that the northern vision of new Nigeria constitutes part of the challenge. Insecurity plaguing the country currently isn’t essentially because of economic dislocations,it is a deliberate ploy. The boys killing people across the country who gave them guns and what do they want?
Military messiahs told us they came to salvage but we have heard stories how one head of state from behind insisted Shari’a jurisprudence must be part of our constitution yet they gave us a constitution prescribing ours to be a Secular state, whatever this means.
Every time the South held the position of president there are always attempts to rattle them. We all know how they stopped Chief MKO Abiola from getting into the presidency. Obasanjo who stepped in was told it was for only “one term”. It was a sorry sight Governors abuse the President.
Nigerians went across the border to hire felons just to push president Goodluck Jonathan away from power. Today the whole country is facing the consequences of the devilish plans. President Tinubu today is the most hated for not doing anything President Muhammadu Buhari didn’t do. No nation has built successfully on low ideals. Our case won’t be different. It would amount to a wonder if it turned out otherwise.