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Today, I want Nigerians to take a break from being Nigerians. I want us to take a break from wondering why all the drugs applied all these decades have hitherto cut no ice with our national migraine. I want us to take a break from rehashing old tricks as well as from thinking up new trademark disingenuous approaches. I want us to take a break from everything so we clearly see and understand that the Nigerian Strategy -if that is what it is- has not worked and may never work because it was and is designed to fail.
Let’s attempt to break down the strategy. We are too reactionary and almost criminally so. We know the right thing per time to do but we never do it. We wait until the nick of time, what we call medicine after death.
No need to contest these facts: I have got them all logged and available for free even here and now. Did we -all 200 million of us- not directly and indirectly rape and continue to rape the Niger Delta, the very, only layer of our national golden egg? When its young people could no more take the insulting injustice, they took up arms -maiming, destroying, killing. Characteristically, we reacted not by exterminating the injustice, but by editing it: we offered some blandishments namely overseas scholarships and a vow to compensate the region with development.
Flip the page, my dear. We shall only revisit it, I bet you, with desperate dosages of those same medicines when the so-called militants remobilise as I hear they have threatened to. As with the south south, so too with the northeast: we reacted to terrorists by bribing them with amnesty and the good life -or a semblance thereof. Recently, we also reacted to protesters and even hoodlums by hurriedly swearing to high heavens to release goodies and packages worth billions of money.
Yet, we continue to lie to ourselves that we don’t understand why the country makes too little movement in spite of and despite all this motion. Why on earth do we always come with mouthwatering reactions only after fiery actions by the people? And, when would we ever react to peaceable citizens too with rewards and gratitude, if only to encourage peace building? An alarming majority of our youth population have developed the tendency to war-war rather than jaw-jaw, because we have made the former lucrative!
Also, medicine is not working and Nigeria is sicker because injustice has become our national sobriquet. The current national government might say all it wants and defend itself all it can but, as sure as eggs is eggs, posterity shall asterisk President Muhammadu Buhari and Company as the most unfair administration in our 60-year history. In arriving at that unenviable record, posterity shall have searched to see who and who and from which and which parts of the country were appointed to what and what positions coupled with the prejudiced allocation of resources, programmes and projects to one section of the country over the eight-year period. Unfortunately, this injustice -whether in the form of nepotism or corruption- is not peculiar to just the federal government: it is also rampant albeit disguisedly across most of the other two tiers.
Alas, our people see through this all and discuss it openly among themselves. In many states and local governments, the sharing of resources, appointments, projects and sundry dividends of governance are consciously slanted to favour blood or cronies, instead of merit and justice. This angers the masses and forces them to drive against the traffic of nation building. The ensuing disconnect or bad blood between government and the citizenry does not allow for meaningful progress, no matter how much energy we seem to exert.
In all though, the worst part of the whole mess is that the masses ourselves fare no better. We are self-centric, wealth-conscious and disdainful of godly leaders. We disparage them at every turn, choosing instead to side with or go for those I call gifted devils. You need only to look around to see that most of those we made overseers of our commonwealth have no business playing the roles.
That explains why no injection, no capsule, no tablet, no caplet, no balm, no syrup, no inhalant prescribed and administered severally or combined can heal our chronic national condition. Let us bury our hypocritical nature today. Let us return to the way of truth, justice and love. It is the only way to achieve our national motto: unity and faith, peace and progress.
And, it is doable. Let our president, our governors, our local government chairmen complete with our legislators and our judges do everything within their powers to get rid of the annoying, barefaced inequality that is now the Nigerian rule rather than the exception. Let leaders learn to speak up for subordinates or quit. No leader is worthy of the office let alone loyalty who is not first loyal to the followers!
Furthermore, Nigeria has refused to heal because Nigerians play too much politics, allow too much religion, apply too much ethnocentricity and invent too much of such other internecine sentiments whenever all that is required is a combo of patriotism, honesty, and justice. With the country having become resistant to these evil medications, the twilight of a year like now is the opportune moment to change gears and tactics. Time is running out for us to build the country that future generations shall cherish. Enough of the hate, enough of this hypocrisy, enough of that satanism.
As I see it, the foregoing embodies the surest, quickest way to retrieve Nigeria from its looming fragmentation with a view to repositioning it for our dream future. For instance, rather than bicker over something as basic as which region should produce our next president when it is quite obvious that the southeast has been waiting for eternity and that the south south did not complete eight years, a simple sit-down meeting done with love for country can resolve both 2023 and subsequent elections well in advance. It is primitive the way Nigerians brawl over Nigeria as if we are not one people. Finally, let beneficiaries who think the current set-up is the most ideal remember that nothing -absolutely nothing- lasts forever.
God bless Nigeria!
