Our country, Nigeria, is a bundle of contradictions, complex, perplexing, and puzzling. As I prepared to write today’s article, I sat staring into space, in a state of bewilderment, trying to make sense of the tragedy the country had become. As I gazed for long minutes with blurry eyes at the blank screen of my computer, the thoughts just refused to flow, the words had dried up. My first reaction was to dismiss my sterile state of mind as writer’s block. But no, it was not the dreaded emptiness that gnaws at a writer’s subconscious. It’s the unfolding events in our country that had left me completely disoriented. Never before in recent years have I become this befuddled in trying to think through the dizzying drama of the absurd that is playing out right before our eyes. The grim picture of a complex multi-ethnic, religious country with docile citizens governed by confused leaders had left me in a state of disillusionment. As I sat on the same spot trying to decipher the situation before me, the more confused, the disheartened I became.
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But who wouldn’t? Is there any Nigerian
who can make sense of our present conundrum? Is there any sane
compatriot who can honestly analyse our present dilemma? Can any adult
born in the last 50 years point to any desirable future? Does our
country even have a future? It is hard to say. If anything, our
country’s future is as bleak as our present situation. Even our leaders
are confused. Do our leaders even believe in this country? Can they
confidently say we have a future? When they talk about the future of
this ‘’great county’’, do they say it with the patriotic fervour of a
Barack Obama?
Having examined our condition, I have
come to the conclusion that we don’t really have a country. We are a
“geographical expression”. Was the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo not
famously quoted to have said that ours is not a country? Has anything
changed since that famous statement? Are the gaps of our forced union
not widening every day? Are the cracks not visible even to the blind?
Now the chickens of this farce of a country are coming home to roost. It
has become a case of ‘’the more you look the less you see’’. Our
diversity rather than being a blessing in disguise is threatening to
tear us apart. Communal clashes, religious riots have proliferated in
recent times. It is ironical that while the National Conference is
ongoing Nigerians are being massacred in what is clearly a crime of
ethnic cleansing in hot beds like Jos, Benue and Southern Kaduna. But I
digress.
Our country is infamously known as a
resource-cursed nation. Our natural resources only serve the powerful
political elite and their cronies. The crumbs are left for ordinary
Nigerians who fight and kill themselves in senseless ethnic and
religious shows. They do not mind the poverty of their existence. They
are just too docile to fight for their rights. Having assessed our
history since independence, I have come to the conclusion that it is
either our leaders hate us so passionately or that Nigerians are just so
self-destructive that they now enjoy the pain being inflicted on them
by their wicked leaders at all levels. How can a people be as
chaotically and diametrically diverse in views as to be divisive to
their own detriment and development?
A people get the leaders they deserve.
But we do not even have leaders in the real sense of the word. Only a
few individuals have emerged to fit the description of true leadership.
But Nigerians seem to have come to accept bad leaders and incompetent
leadership as their “portion”. We have acquiesced to the ineptitude of
our leaders. Now we celebrate bad leaders. We even defend their
incompetence. We lay red carpet for their home-coming. We attend
thanksgiving services in their honour. We bestow chieftaincy titles on
them. They kneel down before religious leaders who bless them and
admonish them to go and sin no more. Now everything seems perfectly
normal. For example, it has been widely acknowledged that corruption is
the number one cause of our underdevelopment. It is the reason why our
public institutions are so run down. But yet we see the rot as normal,
we even find excuses to justify why things are the way they are. Our
leaders have said they did not create the problem. Why then do we expect
them to solve them? Even when Nigerians cannot afford exorbitant health
care cost at home, and their children attend run-down public schools,
they will converge at airports to welcome the leaders who had gone
abroad to receive treatment for a minor ailment. What a country? What a
people?
For example, the criticisms that followed the Oduahgate
scandal quickly assumed ethnic colourations. Never before have we gone
this low. Now if you steal public funds as a leader, you are sure to get
the support of “your people’’. For example, with the allegations of
corruption emerging from his government, the Jonathan Presidency is fast
becoming one of the most corrupt in history. Yet, some members of the
President’s ethnic group say it is their turn to “eat”. It does not
matter that proceeds from oil sale are only benefitting a few of the
elite from the region. It does not matter nothing has improved. What
manner of blind loyalty will make a people support bad leaders?
That is how low we have sunk as a
country. Our stance on corruption paints the picture of our complexity
as a nation. If we continue this way, how can we ever develop as a
nation? Our multi-ethnic composition appears to be our undoing and
albatross. We are just too divided as a nation. Nigerians do not trust
one another. There is always a hidden agenda somewhere. The ethnic
agenda defines us as a people and nation. In politics, economy and our
social life, we are living a cat-and-mouse life. It is the reason why
ethnic killings have increased in recent times.
The Hausa-Fulani do not trust their
Middle Belt neighbours. The Igbo harbour fears of their citizenship in a
country where injustice is ingrained in national life. The Yoruba are
wary of other ethnic groups. The smaller groups feel threatened by the
Big Three. How long can we continue in distrust of ourselves? This
complexity could ruin us as a nation if not addressed. Can the National
Conference address our complexity? The time will tell. Otherwise, we
will soon be doomed as a nation.
-Bayo Olupohunda [@bayoolupohunda]/Punch
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