Olatunji Ololade

THE manic male cum female furor must be quelled for Nigeria to experience rebirth.

The country must be rid of her androgynous plague; until then, she will careen at the borderline of republic and apocalypse. Ultimately, she will expire as a colony. It is the saddest thing to note amid the country’s curious afflictions that she is a colony of the world and our toxic underside.

Colonies are made to be lost, wrote Henri de Montherlant, French novelist and playwright, but will Nigeria ever truly be free? Have we ever been free of domination by other countries and our innate demons?

The United States’ recent ‘warning’ that the $321m Gen. Sani Abacha loot soon to be repatriated to Nigeria must be placed in an account and must not be stolen knells a scandalous note. Spokesperson for the US State Department, Morgan Ortagus, said in a statement, that this was one of the agreements between the US, Nigeria and the Island of Jersey, where the funds are being kept.

The US said Nigeria would be made to replace the money if stolen, and trust the press to sensationalise this. For effect, the phrases ‘US warns’ and ‘US threatens’ gets hauled across the country’s mainstream and new media in mockery of President Muhammadu Buhari’s incumbent leadership.

Such a ‘warning’ should generate outrage but instead, it excites applause. Among other things, it resonates a sad commentary on the curious kinks of the ruling class. Call it an advance reproach on their unarticulated sinful lusts; the lust to steal and pervert. The recent put-down manifests in the wake of the United States’ issuance of Visa constraints on Nigeria due to her terrorism baggage, religious, and security challenges.

Nigeria constructs a complex psychology not yet fully understood. The pattern manifests as warring spiritual contraries through which political determination is pursued as reflected by her terrorism joust and frequent spats between religious groups.

Through the chaos, an ugly narrative develops; the country’s major problem is highlighted as a conflict between Christians and Muslims, metaphors for Nigeria’s toxic underbelly.

As Nigeria careens, a bloody combat evolves in carnage between the religious groups in obsessive rhythms of attack and withdrawal, pyrrhic victory and defeat. This is the narrative being pushed to the rest of the world.

In truth, Nigeria suffers a class war. The real battle is between the rich and the poor, the haves and have-nots, but the West patronises our duplicitous narratives all the same in order to feather its nest.

Serious class war, wrongly couched as religious war, has become an issue. It prefigures the theme of tyrannical power relations that has seen the poor masses perpetually at the receiving end of a dysfunctional system foisted upon them by a predatory ruling class in connivance with hieratic enablers.

Across the country, poverty cripples youthful energy and religion presides as a villainous Herod, massacring the innocents while ravishing them with scythe and mind.

Rising insecurity shoves the citizenry to seek escape within the temples and manacles of religion, the fabled opium of the people. Mounting desperation has equally created across the country, a pool of broken people willing to believe anything that would dull the pangs of working for low wages, and without the shield of effective without unions – as it is the sad fate of youths jostling to join ethnoreligious militia and state-sponsored Ponzi schemes.

Consequently, society operates by vicious hierarchies in which elected representatives subject the citizenry to interminable hardship via anti-people policies; although many of them benefited from free education, they have failed to extend similar provision to the electorate whose interests they were elected to protect.

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians, the Romans, the Mayans, and Hapsburgs all perished by their inability to tame and control the appetites of their ruling class. The latter exploited ecosystems and human beings until these civilizations self-destructed. The quest by a bankrupt elite in a civilization’s final days to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism.

As there is less and less to exploit, writes Hedges, this quest leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, infrastructure collapse, and, finally, death.

Class struggle defines most of human history and Marx, got this right. The dandle-board of Nigeria’s history has thrust the oligarchs upward; rendered insensate to citizenry travails, they render millions destitute, humiliated and bereft of hope. The only route left to us, as Aristotle averred, is either submission or revolt.

Nigeria will be saved by flawed heroes. True, beneficial change can only be driven by ordinary people experiencing extraordinary problems; ordinary people with a track record of extraordinary achievements and exploits in the interest of the collective. But this is discussion for another day.

Terror so politically-correct!

A DAMNING portrait of the Nigerian malady was recently painted by Nathaniel Samuel, the suspected bomber, whose calamity fruit was neutered at the verge of its blooming.

Samuel reportedly tried to blow up a church in the Sabon Tasha area of Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State by dumping a bag of explosives in the toilet. He was eventually apprehended by church members and handed over to the police.

Even though he couldn’t detonate the explosives, Kaduna’s encounter with Nathaniel Samuel manifests as yet another tragic spell that commands twisted narratives.

In the wake of his arrest, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Kaduna chapter, argued through its scribe, Reverend Joseph Hayab, that while being interrogated at the church, he gave his name as Mohammed Sani, but when he was handed over to the police, the latter told everyone that his name is Nathaniel Samuel.

Predictably, the social media was agog calling out the police for being shady with the truth. Even the mainstream press and new media partook in the pageantry of shame; several prominent media, in flagrant violation of news writing ethics and template of the 5Ws and H, left out the name of the culprit till the final paragraphs in futile squabble with the truth.

It was painful to read the tangles of partisan reports until the father of the culprit, Samuel Ezekiel, confirmed to a newspaper reporter, that his son is a Christian, and not a Muslim as being speculated on social media.

The reporter, who visited the suspect’s house at Marabar Demishi village in Chikun, Kaduna State met his father, Samuel Ezekiel, a Jarawa by tribe from Bauchi state, alongside Kaduna CAN’s Reverend Hayab.

Mr. Ezekiel confirmed that his son had never been a Muslim and he was born in 1991 and schooled in the state.

Subsequently, it was heart-warming to see Reverend Hayab issue what could pass as a subtle recant while condemning the police for bungling the interrogation of the suspect. Hayab said, “I don’t care what his name is. All I know is that a criminal wanted to blow up a church and kill people. The police should find out who his sponsors are and not play politics with names…I know Muslims that bear Paul, I know Christians that bear Mohammed. Our CAN chairman in Borno State is Mohammed Laga. I have a cousin that bears Mohammed Paul. So, let us not focus on the name but on the act of terrorism.”

Reverend Hayab’s final statement, despite his organisation’s initial gaffe, is instructive.