Some mischievous mind will read this and conclude that it is paid for. It is. The readers skimming through and those taking their time to read, have paid for this. The subject of this piece, Gen. Tukur Buratai, paid for this. He paid in kind. His towering humility, patience and grace, are creditable imbursement for this piece. By leading the Nigerian military to reclaim 23 local government councils from dreaded terrorist sect, Boko Haram’s stranglehold in Borno, he has earned this compliment. But naysayers may stew in scorn – it could be therapeutic.
Prior to his appointment as Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), just four of Borno’s 27 local councils were under government control. Thus Borno’s political elite as its citizenry, dwelt in a clime of extreme fear and despair.
But in a manner reminiscent of the shrewd and excellent Army General and military administrator he once was, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Buratai as the country’s COAS. And that was undoubtedly one of the very few insightful and excellent decisions he took since he assumed office as Nigeria’s number one citizen.
Buratai is indeed a charming man. In a clime where public officers: governors, council chairmen, legislators and their errand boys or aides if you like, parade their bulk like tin gods, Buratai displays unusual humility and tact.
For instance, the manner in which he granted this writer an interview few weeks ago – courtesy an introduction by Gen. Lucky Irabor, Nigeria Army Theatre Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole – contrasted sharply with the haughtiness and stench of the random politician or public officer’s ignoble character. Several Nigerian governors, legislators and the glorified errand boys and girls that they love to call aides, could learn a thing or two from Buratai, the army general.
To this end, I present once again, excerpts from the narrative of my encounter with Buratai. In the course of the interview, Buratai recollected the brutal happenstance that nearly cost him his life, while visiting soldiers fighting on the nation’s frontiers against Boko Haram.
“I was with them and my convoy was ambushed by Boko Haram. Instead of withdrawing back to Maiduguri, I said, ‘No! We are in this together. I can’t go back. We must all go together to clear the ambush,” revealed Buratai.
“No! We must advance to clear them!’ I said. So I advanced with them and that was how we cleared the ambush. If the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) does not turn back, who would turn and run from such an ambush. I advanced with the troops and it paid off.
“Unfortunately, we lost two soldiers; one of them was an officer. One other soldier, a Brigadier-General, got wounded in the attack,” he said.
How many Nigerian public officers would endanger their lives, in a show of moral courage and support to the nation’s troops? The incident, according to the COAS, was one of the major turning points in the country’s war against Boko Haram; that the Chief of Army Staff was advancing to visit the troops at the war front and Boko Haram attacked him in an ambush made good read. But that he refused to retreat to the safety of his guest house in Maiduguri and instead, advanced with the troops to ‘clear the ambush’ resonates even as you read, as the best of military legend.
The legend is true. Buratai did direct an assault against Boko Haram, under hostility and intense gunfire. Boko Haram militants struck at his convoy about 45 kilometers or 28 miles east of Borno’s capital, Maiduguri. General Buratai had been visiting troops to encourage them and boost their morale in their fight against the terrorists.
But between the villages of Mafa and Dikwa, remnants of Boko Haram laid an ambush on the entourage of the chief of army staff. The army killed 10 of the terrorists and captured five. Two soldiers got killed and five were wounded in the ambush.
Buratai chooses to lead by example. Unlike the average Nigerian governor, legislator, council chairman flaunting hideous airs and entitlement to ‘rule’ like power drunk despots where they should ‘serve’ and ‘lead,’ Buratai descends into the trenches to inspire the nation’s troops.
From his perch at the Nigeria Army Headquarters, it could be hard to make out the regular people: the infantry soldiers and officers serving as buffer and hauling themselves as human shields against the hail of enemy bullets, that Nigeria might live.
But Buratai would not be the over-indulgent general with tired girth sitting in his oversized Abuja office, to command the troops. He knows other ways to exert a commanding presence, like actually making contact with the men and woman he is leading. He’s careful and pragmatic, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as an infantry soldier and officer.
He’s almost reticent yet confident which could be confusing. But therein subsists the peculiar riddle of his persona. Buratai doesn’t unravel to middling eye and mind. He doesn’t do the high society party circuit, because he is not a social butterfly. He prefers to eat at home with his wife when he’s not breaking bread and maasa (rice cake) in the trenches with the troops. Then he gets back to work – because Tukur Buratai is Type-A-workaholic.
I can hardly say the same of several Nigerian governors, legislators among others, in the country. Most of them display unforgivable lack of tact, brilliance and skill. The Ogun State governor for instance is frantically building bridges over cratered roads even as the peasants who braved the sun and rain to elect him die in ghastly road accidents, as you read. And this minute, his counterparts in the nation’s Niger Delta region are busy squandering precious time and resources perpetuating depravity and filth, celebrating the victor in Big Brother Nigeria (BBN)’s perverse reality.
This writer is definitely not interested in whatever ‘heresies,’ ‘alternative truths,’ ‘rumours’ or ‘outright truths or lies’ are bandied about Buratai; this summation is inferred from established facts and personal experience.
Buratai’s milestones and manhood are vastly simpler yet more enigmatic than the random politician’s. He believes that “leadership is all about the people you lead.” Thus he takes “…the soldiers, the troops in general, as the most important aspect of soldiering.”
Buratai descends into the trenches with his men to achieve success. He broke bread with them and transformed the Borno theatre of war into an unusual victors’ space founded on purely patriotic needs. The Nigerian Army chief divorced the military from previous afflictions of public apathy and scorn and thus inspired a military culture characteristic of the quintessential patriot soldier, all in bid to recreate a Nigerian military with a different story; a gripping yarn founded on patriotism and culture indigenous to the people they are meant to protect. It’s the stuff gallant soldiers are made of.
There is a trending video on social media. In the video, some disillusioned youth suggested: “Let us give our leaders a mass burial.” Beneath his disillusionment and perceptible scorn, he probably speaks the mind of a greater section of the Nigerian youth – boondocks youth to be precise.
Time will come when the Nigerian ruling class will pay with blood and despair. From six-feet under and grisly jail cells, they will lust for life and desperately seek a second chance with a kind of humble defeatism. Likewise, the Nigerian electorate will pay with greater bloodshed and tragedy, while craving the peace they gobble up as ‘stomach infrastructure’ even as you read.
Every Nigerian yearns for a better tomorrow but we have “today” and fail to make the best of it. Now more than ever, we enumerate that pitiful lack of wisdom and aversion to freedom. Like the ruling class, a greater section of the Nigerian citizenry despise intellect and knowledge – useful knowledge to be precise. Little wonder, the Nigerian family chooses to stand with #Efenation, #Bisolanation, #TBossnation, on Big Brother Nigeria’s perverse reality even as they wish death and interminable bloodshed on our fatherland.
Even if spurred by inexorable courage to topple the elite and change our stars, the Nigerian tragedy will persist in frequency and extent. This is because it is a human tragedy and not a quirk interred in some mythical ‘system.’ After the bones of the last of the ruling class are interred, we shall raise our heads to seek our next best hero only to find none because the survivors will be worse than the interred ruling class.
The average Nigerian is a beast in the closet. Left to his devices, he displays unforgivable inhumaneness and lack of character. Simply put, were our dreams of change realisable, we shall always remain the next awful alternative. Sophistry and deceit are the springboards from which much of our civilization evolve. Add mediocrity, mindlessness and greed, and you have a perfect representation of the Nigerian state.
We were wrong to think it a matter of years and decades that we would improve in citizenship and insight. We pride ourselves on our education but yet remain unaware – like our base and iniquitous elite – that true knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of truth, hope, superior culture and progress to both the literate and unschooled.
We forget too that the true essence of learning, that is, both intellectual and vocational learning, is never simply to teach breadwinning, furnish teachers for the public schools or be an epitome of polite society. It should above all be the appendage of that fine adjustment between reality and the growing knowledge of life. An adjustment which discovers the secret of civilization and the solution to its seemingly intractable problems, according to WEB Dubois.
Insanely, to this end, we apply religion and milk it. Thus by every manner of faith, we commit gross inhuman transgressions – like playing God, terrorism, mass murder, inordinate lust for flesh and money.
Today, we lack that broad knowledge of what the world knows and strives to know of progress – which besides food, shelter and clothing is knowledge. Without it, we become basically unequipped and sorely handicapped to satisfy our need for food, shelter and clothing.
Thus the need to evolve and painstakingly propagate practicable knowledge and culture in unexploited and infinite capacity.Until we attain a broad, busy abundance of such understanding, not all the finest flavours of the proverbial national cake – be they oven-baked or sand-baked – can save us from our lusts and the affliction by the Nigerian ruling class.
The knowledge we flaunt is basically a ghost of human education. Sadly, it despises the enlightenment and empowerment of the masses. Thus under its foul stench, we fight a lost battle for survival within the tainted air of politicised corruption, social strife and entrepreneurial selfishness. More significantly, the progress we seek is impeded by our lust for cynicism and delusions of grandeur. We starve and die for lack of honest and broadly cultured men.
Patience, humility, good breeding and taste. Comprehensive high schools and kindergartens, universities and polytechnics, industrial and technical colleges, teacher training colleges, literature, tolerance and tact – all these spring from proper learning and culture.
It’s time we engaged in pursuit and dissemination of knowledge devoid of loose and careless logic, like the type that produced and still produce a good number of the Nigerian electorate and ruling class. And Du Bois intones, the final product of our training must be neither a medical doctor nor journalist but a man. A full man to be precise.
To make such men, our learning process must be replete with ideals as well as broad, pure, practicable and inspiring ends of living. Not desperate, sordid, money-grabbing sound bites. The end product of our educational process must have learnt to work for the glory of his calling, not simply for pecuniary gains. The intellectual must think for truth and progress, not for fame or the applause of the gallery.
All these are attainable via human endeavour and a conscious quest for truth and beneficial knowledge. To bring about such bliss requires the presence of substantially gifted men of courage and culture – a principal prerequisite we seem infinitely handicapped to fulfill. Thus we have shadows of men constituting the Nigerian ruling elite and youth. Consequently, we have learnt to live off the attainments of men of stature accessible now in history and diminishing daguerreotypes.
The ruling class couldn’t be bothered if our educational system is wrecked beyond redemption; the philosophy of its intransigence is discernible in its greed and brazen disregard for the future. The politics of greed and incompetence of the incumbent administration, like its predecessors, demands that it neglects the core issues militating against the success of the Nigerian education enterprise. Such issues include inadequate funding, poor research facilities, inadequate infrastructure, outdated lecturers and teaching methods, obsolete libraries and laboratories and the degenerate politics of discrimination between Nigeria’s polytechnic and university enterprise.
Hence the fraudulence and apparent cowardliness of the incumbent administration in addressing Nigeria’s unending educational crisis – simply because the final products end up to be you and me and every minion unfortunate to belong to the Nigerian working class.
It is therefore, the duty of every constituent of the Nigerian youth to see that in the future competition for our mandate, the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the humane, unpopular and true.
Muhammadu Buhari is responsible for his travails via the Nigerian Senate. But this is a discussion for another day. There are more important things to worry about than the domestication of the Nigerian President by a juvenile senate.
Shame…
Shame. It’s an embarrassment that no one can see it or ably do something about it: I speak of that keen, thin scent of decay that scorches our psyche and everything; that afflicts with a terrible streak, the superficial inertia, abiding laziness and fraudulence that fills our hearts.
We have been corrupted by money and sentiment; and sentiment even more dangerous because we still can’t name its price. A man open to bribe is to be relied upon below a certain figure, gratification or artifact, but sentiment may uncoil in the heart at a name, a platitude…even a smell remembered.
Bet you can feel it now, even as you read; that flagrant, scented stench of putrefaction that announces our innate nature. Feel it now; that you may remember this stench when everybody and everything are shed of trait, in that dreaded epoch when Nigeria gives to rancidness and collapse.
Until then, we shall continue to have “today” everyday. And every day, “today” will continue to be unfortunate – because we are simply programmed to self-destruct. How unfortunate! Nigeria’s unfortunate situation besides it’s benefaction of a class of desperate, uncultured, emasculated and hopeless breadline, has also foisted upon the nation, an inferior working class who, in spite of daunting socio-economic realities, are accumulating property and obviously indefensible academic honours.
This class is not nearly as powerful as a fairer socioeconomic system might make it, hence those who survive in spite of the daunting economic realities are handicapped in intellect and character and thus accomplish much less than they deserve to. The fraction of the successful within this class is usually left to chance and accident, and not to any intelligent culling or rational method of selection.
We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the Nigerian working class can be excited to assume that humane and altruistic leadership of the underprivileged which our current reality so desperately demands. Such leadership culture must be fostered by the underprivileged working class itself.
For a long while, the Nigerian ruling class have doubted, albeit justifiably, as to whether the country’s working class could develop that humane leadership we profess to want; today no one can seriously dispute the incapability of this class of Nigerians to nurture, incorporate and ably exploit such culture and uncommon aptitude of modern civilization for the benefit of present and future generations.
In pursuit of a remedy for this evident deterioration in citizenship and thought, we must accept the inferiority and degeneracy of the Nigerian working class as a reality, unpardonable in its intensity, regrettable in consequence, and perilous for the future.
Thus the imperativeness of crucial and practicable steps by the working class to forge its way out of the thorny thickets and tangles of our current situation – the survival of Nigeria depends on the survival of this class. This imposes the essential demand for trained, dependable Nigerian leaders sired from the working class.
These individuals of aptitude and character are inherently men of ability, sophistication, and industry. They are men who thoroughly understand and treasure modern civilization; men capable of assuming leadership of Nigerian communities and improving them by force of precept and example, unfathomable compassion, and the inspiration of common blood and ideals.
But if such men are to be effectual, they must have access to power – they must be bolstered by the best public opinion and be able to wield for their objects and aims such weaponry as the experience of the world has taught are indispensable to human cum national progress.
Of such weapons the greatest, perhaps, in the modern world used to be the power of the ballot; but ever since the Nigerian populace forsook their right and power to choose the best among our kind to lead us to the future of our dreams; the need for a pervasive and ultimately progressive culture of citizenship cum patriotism became more pronounced.
The attitude of the Nigerian mind toward democracy and other political measures of self-determination can be traced with unusual accuracy to our prevalent conceptions of government. In pursuit of freedom from our British colonialists, we argued that no social class or race was so good, so true and disinterested to be trusted wholly with the political destiny of its neighbors; that in every state the best arbiters of their own welfare are the persons directly affected; and that it is only by arming every hand with a ballot, with the right to have a voice in the policy and politics of the state, that the greatest good to the greatest number could be attained.
Expectedly, there were objections to these arguments, but we thought we had answered them quite convincingly; if someone complained of the ignorance of voters, we recommended that we educate them. If another complained of their venality, we suggested that we disenfranchise them or cast them in jail. And in response to fears of demagogues and the natural perversity of certain Nigerians, we insisted that time and bitter experience would teach even the most hideous among them.
It’s over five decades since we won our right to self-rule and Nigeria disappointedly remains a deterrence in the human propensity to self-destruct. Having won back our freedom, we have become wholly incapable to protect Nigeria from us who do not believe in our freedom and have not yet charted a blueprint for believing in our right to have it.
This explains why we are yet to use the ballot intelligently and quite effectively. We do not understand how to channel that proverbial power we are believed to possess nor have we been able to discern the possession of a power so great that it could compel the more privileged and politically conscious elements amongst us to educate, enlighten and thus emancipate the less privileged and ignorant to its clever use.
It is no minor impediment that trammels the economic and intellectual development of the Nigerian citizenry. Can we establish a mass of students, laborers, artisans and technocrats who, by law and collective opinion, constitute a great, reckonable voice in shaping the political and economic clime in which they live and toil?
Nigeria is not the greatest country in Africa. ‘It’ will not be the greatest country in the world. ‘It’ is a creature borne of incest. But it is hardly the ‘contraption’ frequently alluded to by generations of revolutionary poseurs and armchair Trotskys – it is piteous and ideologically shallow of them to wish our problems away by simply calling for an end to the ‘forced marriage’ of cultures and ethnicities, an enterprise which blame they lay solely at the feet of the country’s colonial predators.
Nigeria fails as a nation because we fail as a people and progenitors of African civilisation. Rather than project a superior culture of nationhood and society, we choose to curate the worst that our forebears dared espouse, coating it as the ‘Nigerian factor,’ and our flamboyant code of conduct.
Thus we covet an incestuous relationship with self – the dark, chthonian parts of our innate nature. We mould our clan where racial foolery fraternizes with vile. Senior citizenry molest our young in a never-ending cycle of sleaze and ‘moral’ pedophilia. But the young are hardly the prey we think they are. Every second, they morph from starry-eyed victims to eager participants in our dehumanising ritual of violence, mental and biological aberration.
Ours is a classic tale of Darwinian waste and mayhem, the squalor and rot of Nigerianness; a distortion of African civilisation. But we block the true import and consequences of this hideous cycle on our psyches and our future as a nation; that we might retain our integrity as brutes and eternal wildlings.
Western science and cultural aesthetics predictably become apparatus in our frantic attempt to revise the Nigerian horror into imaginatively palatable form. Notwithstanding our frantic lunge for substance and acclaim on frontiers where the world’s more advanced civilisations project their race and oneness, Nigeria remains hideous in name and status. While we make exaggerated gestures in fields of space science, information technology, industry, sports, and so on, Nigerian children die at birth and thousands of mothers die in painful labour. The youth are unemployed. Public officers loot public coffers with impunity and disregard for Rule of Law. Law enforcement officers turn violent affliction on the citizenry and society they are meant to protect. The executive, legislative and judicial arms of government mesh in a fetid whirl of strife and plunder. Anarchy rules our hinterlands and metropolitan Nigeria.
Within such stew and stink, Nigeria ranked 152nd of 188 countries in the 2016 African Human Development Index (HDI) according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Thus we are back at the crossroads of vile and extinction. There has been no improvement in our plight.
While this piece too, resounds as hackneyed howl and lamentation; a regurgitation of grotesqueness we inflict on our fatherland and the towering monstrosities we have become.
Our ultimate nemesis is the Nigerian youth. The youth epitomise the nub of discord and deathly rally ripping the tide and march to progress of our fatherland. But why do promising youth evolve like brutes and loathsome trolls? How did our once incandescent spokes of dawn erupt in moonshine?
Many have attributed the afflictions of the Nigerian youth to bad leadership, nonstop dominance of the predatory ruling class and tiring recalcitrance of the younger generation to engage in communal and national politics in a beneficial manner. Many more would readily diagnose the maladies of the nation’s youth to structural banes and the perverse culture of citizenship by which they are weaned and ushered into adulthood.
In the wake of plausible and often farfetched analyses, too many ‘patriots’ conveniently excuse themselves from the nexus of blame and severally propound the sad realization that Nigerians are innately incapable of self-determination and self-governance. Many have recommended the American example, the British palliative, the Chinese abracadabra and Malaysian ingenuity to mention a few, as the ultimate measures to resolve the nation’s ills. How?
These arguments have overtime, attained a language of their own and thus evolved as a dialect of dissent and exaggerated renunciation. Thus the nation’s academic and political elite frequently marshal clashing precepts as solutions and justifiable putdown of the ruling class and the lower working class, as their politics dictate.
A more damning view identifies the breadlines’ persistent ‘claims to victimhood and sense of entitlement’ as whiny and symptomatic of a dense and irresponsible citizenship. Between the conflict of hyperboles and corny reproach, Nigeria suffers the affliction of intellectual miscreants, promising youth-turned-foetal-adults.
As youths, the coordinated tragedies afflicting our consciousness daily append the only real structure to our lives as oppressed Nigerians. The burdensome reality of fast slipping youth, the recurrent rites of bigotry and ethical quandary of coping with the strict moral code of adulthood and ideal society, obscures our understanding of life’s ultimate purpose and meaning.
It spurs millions of misguided Nigerian youth to engage in mad, desperate dash for fast and fleeting riches even as ripples of their actions keep hundreds of millions more in the doldrums and binds of despair.
Consequently, the revolutionary dissent that sprouts from oppression is pitiless and unbending. It radically splits our world into ‘insensitive ruling class’ and ‘clueless lower class,’ ‘elite’ and ‘downtrodden,’ ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ It fosters even more fragmented discord that continually pits Nigerian Christians against Muslims, Hausa against Igbo, Igbo against Yoruba, Yoruba against Ijaw.
It fosters spurious segmentation of our society into moral and amoral, good against evil, and apostates versus believers. Within this poisonous clime, the Nigerian child is born. If he survives birth hour, he is violently thrust into adolescence and misshapen adulthood.
From Boko Haram and Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) terrorism, internet fraud, cyber-terrorism, financial/bankers’ terrorism and political terrorism emblematic of the ruling class, recent developments in the country present a sad prologue to a heinous and wider conflict between the nation’s rich ruling class and the impoverished majority of the breadlines and disappearing middle-class.
A bloody and protracted war thus ensues: this war, caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment, substandard health facilities, rising food prices, big business and government conspiracies against the Nigerian state, manifest at alarming proportions daily and by the second.
Thus our society is flung rudderless on a seething sea of sleaze. Now that our world as we have made it, begins to collapse, we withdraw from the possibility of rebirth, and choose to exploit ‘infinite possibilities’ in our fragility and doomsday predictions.
The youth predictably become prominent actors in the theatre of ruin and discord. They become the muscle to actualise the ruling class’ blueprint of collapse. But if we consider our plight deeply enough, we would find that no child of the ruling class is co-opted in the drama of violence and death. They are tucked away, safe abroad.
Picture the NDA, Boko Haram, MASSOB, IPOB, OPC, and so on without youth drawn from the breadlines and society’s boondocks. Will our governors, legislators, the presidency and aristocratic divide people these groups with their sons, daughters and wives?
It’s about time we shunned the politics of retrogression, spurious militancy, bloodshed and devastation to embrace growth and immense possibilities achievable in progressive endeavour, like a political platform mooted by the youth, for all, and Nigeria’s future.
May these words resonate as timeless truth. Let them resound like the crickets’ chirp at dawn. I hope you lean above this page and find it true like the fabled Al Jannah, where every second tarries and every day passes as the finest moment of celestial life.
Tell me, is heaven truly the perfection of a higher thought? Have you felt hurt, pain and the trepidation of not knowing if you would live till the next second?
On earth, our lives are fouled by stress and discord. This life you covet is in fact, distraught. And the scenes you find colourful from heaven above are actually tainted by coffee-tan blots of human blood.
We stir to strife, live in chaos and sleep one–eye open to endless threats of volatile nights. We have left the simple paths with no complications. Today, we coast broadening highways to early graves. It’s a miracle child, our people die young.
Every year, we survive the mad fires of the ember months to die while January unfolds it finery.
And having failed at making our own happiness, we seek solace in others’ joy. Guess you snickered at our madding din because a black man emerged the president of America. Our people believed that Obama would change the fate of black Africa. You see, we could be quite silly.
We are in the era of Muhammadu Buhari thus stealing is now corruption. Yet our people pine for the epoch of former president Goodluck Jonathan, when stealing was never corruption and deified goats were allowed limitless access to ravage our yams.
Having failed at most things, we smack our lips shamelessly to criticize the status quo forgetting that our lives are what we make of it. Bet you are mortified by Dasuki-gate, Oduah-gate, among other scandals.
We should rise in virulent protest but all we do is rant on the pages of newspapers. And those of us too poor to afford a newspaper are content to vent every morning, at every available news stand. It’s like the terror of a drunken crew before a virulent storm. Every invective enrages the tempest some more, until it swallows cantankerous crew and ship in a rummy sip.
We have cursed the times so much that the good times are wary to come by us. I think the good old days may never come our way again lest we turn them as bad as the present.
I hear those of you in heaven are privy to everything. So tell me, how did Moshood Abiola really die? They said he was killed with the white man’s poison, now they say he was strangled to death. Who killed Dele Giwa, Bola Ige and the Igwe couple? Tell me, who broke into my locker when I was in high school? They stole my N55, kulikuli and a bag of garri. Pardon me for the detail but I suffered too much that very school year.
I wonder if you have decided your occupation. What role will you play as a citizen of humanity? Will you be teacher, doctor, banker, journalist, policeman, singer or actor?
I hope you are aware that, these days, it’s hard to come by nobility in every chosen profession. Trust me, as a Nigerian, you have to come prepared.
If you will be a doctor, better come with no conscience and a modest degree of perseverance. The better you are at ignoring dying compatriots and demanding police reports from accident victims the better for you. Perhaps you will come with a knack for embarking on strike actions and forgetting surgical instruments in helpless patients, sedated to death in hospital abattoirs or Operating Theatre, if you like.
If you will come as a teacher, please ask heaven for an enormous amount of fortitude. You will need it in seasons of bad spell, when your account is empty and your expenses are mounting; when your kids are crying ‘hunger!’ and your wife is going gaga; when your colleagues in other callings are erecting mansions and you have to sneak into your one–room apartment to avoid your landlord. You will need perseverance when students you taught drive by you in posh cars, while you hop on rickety Danfo and LT trucks. You will need it when students taught by you mature into administrators and yet deny you your salary at the end of every month, and your gratuity at retirement. I hope you understand that unlike the doctors, you will hardly enjoy the benefits of industrial action.
If you join the police, you will have to decide if you would be good cop or bad cop. Life as a bad cop is quite rewarding. Come with no conscience, no compassion, and no respect for your uniform. Be prepared to raid commercial transporters at illegal check – points. Be prepared to turn a blind eye while compatriots by whose taxes you are clothed and fed are robbed, murdered and molested.
As a good cop, you will suffer undue humiliation and victimization from your colleagues, superiors and compatriots whose safety shall be your utmost priority.
You will be forced to arrest AK-47 and Uzi wielding robbers and assassins with faulty pistols and assault rifles. Your guns will be less sophisticated and devoid of bullets.
You would live in squalor, in barracks fit to house wild hogs and weevils. At retirement, you will watch colleagues slump to death as you fight for your gratuity. You will age dreading that your kids may have to appear with your corpse to claim your benefits.
If you will tread my path as a journalist, you’d have to decide on being conscientious or vice versa. Whatever divide you inhabit, you will be scorned by the masses whose interests you seek to protect. Oftentimes, you will flounder at the crossroads of truth and prejudice. You may choose the latter path goaded by convenient justifications for choosing the dark side.
As a banker, you will be paid like an armed robber. You will earn too much for doing too little in the interest of your compatriots. You will steal customers’ savings via hidden and unfair charges, and other frauds you will commit in connivance with or at the behest of your superiors.
Whatever your chosen path, I hope you will think of the collective good. At times, it doesn’t hurt to tread the lighted path. I should know better. I have been around enough.
Our people are a curious breed. In the wake of our misdemeanours, we desperately seek absolution from pretentious Pastors and Alfas. Although some of us embrace being totally hideous, too many among us purchase a little forgetfulness at the mall. Today, we live for fresh obsessions; it is the era of the Palms Shopping Mall, Shoprite, Just Rite to mention a few.
Even the poor go there to feast their eyes and titillate their vanities, touching and feeling; staring at luxury beyond their means, in show glasses. I guess this too, is some form of therapy.
Tell me, what should I name you? I would love to name you after Malcolm X but he was murdered in his prime. How about Ajantala? Perhaps you would come bearing the full essence and nature of the mystic being; it is the only way to survive on earth.
There is no gainsaying that DSTV/Multichoice, fulfills its role as pervert moulder and merchant of dark delight – alongside its contributions to employment generation, teeny philanthropy. Like reprobate social agents, Nigerian managers of the satellite medium, adorn the tragedian cloak to watch society inflame and burn in the scorching blaze of the Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) ‘reality show.’
Like a clever architect of sexual spectacle, the satellite broadcaster constructs the BBN house in the image of a brothel. The philosophy and theatrics that constitutes the house’s essence, reignites memories of Emperor Nero’s riverside brothels.
Nero installed patrician women in the brothels to solicit him from doorways, DSTV/Multichoice installs degenerate males and females in the BBN house to patronise and feed it’s voyeuristic appetite. Nero tied his young male and female victims to stakes, draped himself in animal skin and leapt out from a den to attack their genitals.
In similar fashion, makers of BBN perverse reality tie young male and female housemates to a monetary stake, adorn the cape of the voyeuristic Big Brother but lets the BBN inmates, led by inordinate lust for money and flesh, to attack their own genitals – to the pleasure of Big Brother.
Nero scandalised his army with his silk, jewelry, wild cavorting, degenerate pageants and parlor plays. The BBN masterminds ply the inmates with degenerate pageants, studio plays, wild frolic and rewards.
Absolute power was the crutch by which Nero’s fantasies were actualised. The BBN masterminds wield absolute power over the show’s participants. Wielding the power, they stake the inmates to a leash of greed and make living theatre of their turbulent fantasies – that is, Big Brother and the ‘inmates’ reciprocal lust.
In the BBN house, there is no void between wish and realisation; the moral and amoral. Fantasy morphs into instant visibility as DSTV/Multichoice markets sexual filth as ethical masque in its perverse reality. Thus DSTV/Multichoice, acting to provoke, scorn and arouse, removed the poetry and philosophy from theatre; it disrobes the media of the didactic cloak of ethics and high civilisation.
At the backdrop of this violation and cultural rape of Nigerian society, the country’s social institutions and agencies of censure play dumb. The National Assembly, presidency, Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and other social and moral agents conveniently lose voice.
The status quo presages and appropriates the degeneracy that led to the fall of medieval Rome. Sexual irresponsibility, deceitful illusion and idealisation of mores, led to lassitude and inertness of Rome’s social institutions and ethical custodians. In time, individual Romans and groups mutated into a mindless mass and participant in an orgy of filth and cultural devastation. The Roman society simply mirrored the emancipated realities of the time, argued emancipated and sexually-uninhibited liberals of the time. The argument held until culture died, morals died, good became pariah and evil became the norm.
As Spencer Kimball would say: “Had Roman parents assembled their children in their homes instead of the circuses and public baths; had they taught them chastity and honor and integrity and cleanness; would Rome still be a world power? Certainly it was not the barbarians from the north but the insidious moral termites within that destroyed the Roman world empire.”
The story of the Nigerian society and its fascination with perverse civilisation thus projects the same weaknesses that left Rome disrobed of mores, helpless, disintegrated and dead. Our successes inspires extravagances and our lust for base amusement. In this osmosis of filth and rot, the Nigerian media abdicates its role as a social and moral agent.
Journalists are supposed to be aristocrats of the spirit, projectors of the just, decent and humane. Not promoters, hustlers and salesmen for the high jinks and infamy of the debauched. Yet many a Nigerian journalist opts to fulfill roles characteristic of the latter.
The contemporary media landscape has changed significantly thus affecting the nature of the press’ involvement in the construction of citizenship and cultural identities. There is no gainsaying that the Nigerian media is wholly perverted by this wave of change. Consequently, BBN show masterminds appropriate the functions of the media as societal watchdog and moral agent – particularly the reconstruction of citizenship and cultural identity.
The agenda of the show’s producers isn’t quite difficult to detect. Its mission is to desensitize its teeming audience, particularly the youth, to base urges and primal instincts that renders brutes like the stray bitch and guinea fowl, the lower beasts that they are. Little wonder the BBN show thrives on its x-rated scenes: the shower hour and the party nights.
The sexual antics of incumbent participants in the show repudiate moral and romantic notions of love, loyalty, decency and responsibility. The BBN reality show thus project flawed and debauched characters as worthy role models for the Nigerian youth to emulate.
It’s all part of a grand plot: very soon, producers of the BBN show will introduce two homosexual males and two lesbians into the show. Sex between the gay couples will be used to legitimize African homosexuality and desensitize Africans towards it. Of course, folk will scream, “Are they not part of our reality?” Of course they are.
But while we all live with one secret perversion or the other, being human and humane requires sparing the society the horror of our base inclinations. The Nigerian society is already too permissive to a fault, we do not need DSTV/Multichoice, an unquestioning media and society to aggravate our situation.
As Okwuanya Pius rightly notes, Mary Cover Jones’ desensitization theory as adapted by Joseph Wolpe, a South African psychologist, infers that when an individual or a group is desensitized towards an activity, they quickly move to another activity that will best hold their interest. He termed it “systematic desensitization.” Now that Africans, Nigerians in particular have been desensitized to voyeurism and random sex, the next stop is homosexuality and bestiality perhaps.
Whoever wins the Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) sloth-fest will become another living proof that decadence and idleness are preferable to decency and industry. Ordinary folk’s decadent fantasies of fame, success and fulfillment will be perpetuated and substantiated by the winner. Yet in the losers, the wildest fantasies of consequence-free infamy, sexual impropriety will be irreverently stoked by the media. The Nigerian media, perceived moral censors and social agents will amplify BBN and DSTV/Multichoice’s culture of filth and illusion. They will persuade us that the shadows are real.
There were corn rows on the head of the girl that exploded in Muna Dalti. There was a colourful bead on her wrist too. She probably loved to play dress-up and look good. Everybody forgets these bits of her. Folk remember her as the ‘vixen’ who flicked a switch and blew up, into a puddle of flesh and bone fragments. No one cares if she was ever innocent or raised in virtue. The village is thankful that she took no innocent life, save her teenage accomplices. Their carcass lay strewn about the rustic community in Maiduguri, Borno State. Their innards and blood spatter sully the village even as you read.
Lying in the dust few metres from her shredded mate, the girl with the cornrows evoked the dread that wild weeds induce at the base of shoots. Two hours after her ‘sister’ and agent of a terrorist group, Boko Haram, detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Muna vehicle park, injuring eight people and burning 13 freight trucks, the girl with the cornrows sauntered into Muna Dalti with another ‘sister.’
Time was 2:00 a.m. and they looked suspicious to the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) patrolling the area. When the latter accosted them, they said they were waiting for their husbands. Of course, their responses were unsatisfactory; having seen eight of their comrades incapacitated by a girl strapped to an IED few hours earlier, around 11.30 pm to be precise, the CJTF suspected foul play.
Hence the vigilante group ordered the girls to come with them. But rather than comply, one of the girls fiddled desperately with a device under her dress. Instantly, the CJTF scurried for cover, shooting sporadically in the air.
‘How I became a suicide bomber’
In the ensuing melee, the girl with the cornrows reached under her dress and did what her mate couldn’t. She flicked the switch on an IED strapped to her body.
In a second, she blew herself to bits and decapitated her mate, who was standing close by.
Ka’ana Hawaye, a CJTF officer in Muna Dalti, said the girls were on a mission to kill. “The bomb blast at 11.30 pm put us on red alert. So, when we saw them, we suspected trouble. But we made sure they didn’t achieve their aim. They couldn’t kill anyone here,” he said.
Corroborating him, CJTF officer, Muhammadu Idris, stated that after the first bomb was detonated by the girl at Muna park, CJTF officers in the area became more vigilant.
However, Ba’ani Aliko, a lieutenant in the group, disclosed that there would have been more casualties had his team not stepped back from the girls in the nick of time.
Further findings by The Nation revealed that officers of the Nigerian Army killed about six members of Boko Haram at the Mafa military checkpoint few kilometres away, barely one hour before the first bomber struck in Muna motor park. They were killed about nine kilometres from the state capital while they tried to storm into town.
Video: ‘Those who come and throw bombs’
However, as Muna town heaved a sigh of relief, tragedy struck again as the three teenage girls, who had successfully snuck into town, detonated their explosives. The first girl struck around 11:30 pm, Thursday, February 17, at Muna motor park while the other attack occurred in Muna Dalti around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 18.
The Muna bombers apparently succeeded where insurgent mates, Zainab and Amina Yusuf, failed. Amina, 17, was intercepted while her co-bomber, 15-year-old Zainab, was killed as she tried to ram into motorists queuing to buy fuel and detonate a bomb at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) mega station along Damboa road in Maiduguri, on Tuesday, February 7.
The girls were intercepted by men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), soon after they arrived in Maiduguri on orders from Boko Haram.
My story, by bomber
As she recounted her experience, Amina’s eyes glistened with hope and gratification. She spoke in a crisp, clear tenor, caressing the strands of a severed ribbon from her veil. She fingered the thread and slipped it through her lips with gratifying immersion, all the piteous miseries of her life seemingly summoned in her wiry hands.
Her face, hard and weary from strife, provided a soiled, pale background to her gaunt eyes. Her eyes, twitching open and close in rhythm with the groove where her lips met with the frayed strands seemed in search of something; comfort perhaps.
Occasionally, she removed the threads from her mouth to answer questions, the words leaping from her lips as if she meant to exhale in one breath, the agony interred in her buried narratives. With submissive firmness, she revealed that she and Zainab were on a mission from Gobarawa, a Boko Haram enclave along Borno’s Alagarno axis, to kill people. She said she was abducted by the terrorists in 2015 in Madagali, Adamawa. From there, she was taken to Sambisa where she was held hostage for a while before being transferred to Gobarawa.
Life in Gobarawa
“My younger brother and sisters Umar, Fatima, fauziya, Abbas, Maryam and Faiza, were all held hostage and married off to Boko Haram men in Gambarawa. But my father and mother were all killed when they tried to escape with us from the camp where we were held hostage in Gobarawa.
“All the people in Gobarawa are Boko Haram. They are many and they all had sophisticated weapons, motorcycles and vehicles which they use to operate,” said Amina. The teenager revealed that when life became too hard in Gobarawa, her captors resorted to drastic measures.
“They usually go out to snatch food from locals and bring us food. We don’t have grinders but we relied on stone to grind sorghum. We pounded sorghum with stone to make food,” she said.
In Gobarawa, Amina, like several child hostages, was married off to a member of the sect. “I am also married to a Boko Haram Commander, an Amir, who has killed more than 100 people, including his mother and father,” she said.
I am also married to a Boko Haram Commander, an Amir, who has killed more than 100 people, including his mother and father
Suicide mission to Maiduguri
It took Amina and Zainab three days to get to Maiduguri, travelling on a motorcycle. She said: “We were directed by the sect members to detonate our explosives anywhere we saw any form of gathering…They said if we press the button, the bomb would explode and we will automatically go to heaven. I was scared, so, I told them that I could not detonate any explosive. But Zainab said she would do it. So, they said if Zainab detonated her own, it would serve the purpose.”
However, things didn’t go according to plan in Maiduguri. At 6.45 a.m., Amina and Zainab were accosted in the city, after a bean-cake seller alerted NSCDC operatives about their suspicious moves. But while Amina balked from the mission, Zainab decided to go ahead with it. She ignored Amina’s counsel that they flee into the city and seek help.
Amina tossed her explosive away at the point of arrest
“I demobilised my own explosive right from when we were about to sleep in a nearby town en route Maiduguri. I had only N200 with me. I told Zainab to come along with me to town instead of blowing the explosive and killing herself for the sake of nothing. I told her that with the N200 they gave us, we can go to town to meet somebody I know.”
But Zainab rejected Amina’s counsel and proceeded with the mission. Initially, she attempted to detonate it at the bean-cake seller’s roadside stall but she later decided to attack the NNPC mega station in the area because it contained a greater crowd and the promise of greater casualties.
Fortunately, the bean-cake seller noticed their suspicious moves and male accomplices and she alerted NSCDC officers in the vicinity. Promptly, the latter marched up to the girls to interrogate them. But no sooner did they accost them than their male handlers disappear. Instantly, Amina revealed that she was strapped to a bomb. The security operatives scurried backwards and cocked their rifles to shoot. In the scuffle, Amina unstrapped her bomb and tossed it away.
“I already told them that I will not detonate my bomb; that was why I threw it away and handed myself over to the security. Zainab insisted on detonating her explosive. I don’t know why. I couldn’t say whether she was in her right senses,” said Amina.
Zainab ignored the NSCDC’s sharp orders that she stood down and proceeded to detonate the bomb. This attracted a warning shot from the NSCDC to her limbs. The shot was meant to demobilise her. But even while she writhed in a blood pool from her bleeding leg, the teenager stubbornly sought to detonate the bomb. This earned her a ‘kill-shot,’ this time around, from a soldier’s rifle. It was either Zainab’s life or the lives of several innocent folk citizens.
A disturbing trend
There is no gainsaying that Boko Haram radically changed the landscape of internal security in Nigeria when it launched the first suicide bombing in Nigeria, at the Police Headquarters in Abuja the Federal Capital territory on June 16, 2011. It’s 35-year-old male bomber, Mohammed Manga, detonated his explosive-laden car, killing more than five persons and destroying several cars. The group subsequently executed several attacks, involving the fitting of IEDs on its members, widely known as ‘suicide bombers’ and common means of transportation, including vehicles, motorcycles and tricycles.
However, on June 8, 2014, Boko Haram dispatched its first female operative, a teenage girl strapped to a bomb. She attacked the 301 Battalion Barracks of the Nigerian Army in Gombe State. The girl detonated the explosive concealed under her hijab, thus killing herself and a soldier.
By January 20, 2015, there have been a total of 17 attempted suicide bombings by underage and teenage girls in Nigeria; 15 of the attacks were successful. By January 2016, the documented attacks increased to 89. With this new experimentation, Boko Haram joined the ranks of terrorist groups that have incorporated women into their organisational profiles. Since the first attack, women and young girls between the ages of seven and 17, have been coerced into targeting civilians at markets, bus depots, fuel stations and mosques. The 89 attacks documented between June 2014 and January 2016, mostly of civilian soft targets, have been responsible for more than 1,200 deaths and an even greater number of injuries.
A disturbing trend, however, ensues with the terrorist sect’s increasing deployment of teenage girls to execute suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Borno State. Rescued girls experience stigmatisation from family and friends when they return home. One such survivor returned to Maiduguri after being freed by soldiers. But on arrival at home, her mother turned her over to the military after finding out that she had been trained as a suicide bomber.
The adoption of female suicide bombers is not especially surprising as an operational adaptation to increased state surveillance of the group’s activities; it has been a tactic adopted by secular and religious terrorist groups from Sri Lanka to Syria.
However, Boko Haram depends on female operatives disproportionately, relative to similar insurgencies; for example, the Tamil Tigers used 46 women over the course of 10 years, whereas Boko Haram has deployed over 151 females including underage girls in a little over a year.
Data from Beyond Chibok, a United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) study, show that 44 children were used in suicide attacks in north-east Nigeria and neighbouring countries in 2015 alone.
The figures, released to mark the second anniversary of the abduction of over 270 girls from Chibok, show that children now account for nearly a fifth of all suicide bombers in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. Thus between late 2014 and the end of 2016, the number of such attacks escalated to 151. In 2015, 89 of the attacks were carried out in Nigeria, 39 in Cameroon, 16 in Chad and seven in Niger.
Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, said children used in suicide bombings should not be seen as willing combatants. “Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators. Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and neighbouring countries,” he said.
There is more to the use of girl-bombers—Theatre Commander Gen. Leo Irabor
Leo Irabor
MAJOR-GENERAL Leo Irabor is the Theatre Commander (TC) of the anti-terrorism war, code name: “Operation Lafiya Dole (Peace by force).” He was appointed as the TC on March 18, 2016. In this exclusive interview with The Nation, he bares his mind on Boko Haram’s use of minors for suicide bombing and other issues related to the anti-terrorism war.
Operation Lafiya Dole
In respect of Operation Lafiya Dole, I was appointed here as the Theatre Commander on March 18, 2016. Before then, I resumed here on the 5th of January, 2016 as the then Theatre Commander. Two months later, I was appointed the Theatre Commander. So, I have been heading this operation for one year.
The military operation here is asymmetric. It is asymmetric because you really can’t tell who the enemy is. In a conventional setting, the belligerents are well defined. It is easy to identify them. You don’t need to do much to understand who the enemy is. More importantly, the belligerents have respect for the rules governing warfare. They respect the laws of war and the international human rights. But asymmetric wars like we have here in Borno, it becomes difficult to determine who the enemy is.
That the war has lasted this long is largely in part, because it is asymmetric in nature. The Nigerian military was not attuned to threats of this nature; a situation whereby the secret police should normally look into, you now get yourself involved in it.
But time has passed and we have been able to learn our lessons. And that is why you have been able to see the reversals that are occurring.
So far, our findings show that they are told that if they blow themselves up, they will go to heaven, and so on and so forth. I know that there is more to it. We are carrying out certain investigations and by the time we are done with them, you will know what our findings are.
Making sense of the girl-child bombers
Anybody can be a suicide bomber. It all depends on what you assimilate. So, someone that calls himself or herself a suicide bomber, it all depends on what the fellow assimilates. Part of the transformation that we also found in this war is that, it became a war of ideology. So for me, I would say it’s a war of ideology rather than a religious war. It is a situation whereby a group of people are made to believe a certain falsehood. And that falsehood is repeated to them over and over until they begin to see it as the truth.
And that is precisely what Boko Haram leadership is trying to do with those in their fold. So, that’s why I said anybody can be a suicide bomber depending on what you assimilate.
So, who are those that they have engaged as suicide bombers? Those that are illiterate, those that are in their youth. I will not even call them youths. They engage children who cannot tell what life is; children who cannot tell right from wrong. Because they’ve been so wrongly indoctrinated, whatever their captors tell them is what they believe. They do their captors’ bidding. So far, our findings show that they are told that if they blow themselves up, they will go to heaven, and so on and so forth. I know that there is more to it. We are carrying out certain investigations and by the time we are done with them, you will know what our findings are.
Politics and War
Many have also tried to politicise the problem which, of course, is unfortunate. They are of the erroneous notion that the military must be involved in issues of politics. Yes, there is some school of thought that believe that war is politics by other means. But certainly not a war of this nature whereby all the contending forces are all nationals of Nigeria. For me, I believe that issues of war, issues of national security must not be relegated to politics. It is wrong to read meanings into military operations. It is wrong to think soldiers have ulterior motives for engaging in battle.
There is no military around the world that will say they are sufficient in all things, no. Rather you build, you learn, you re-align, you re-assess.
At some stage, people have also tried to make the war look like some religious crisis, which of course, has now been dispelled. They once attacked structures of a particular religious faith in order to make it seem like a religious crisis. That failed. Then it became an all-faith affair, where any structure that belonged to any faith and every creed were attacked by them. Then it dawned on the populace that, these are madmen. These are people that are deranged. Until it got to that level, the cooperation between the civil society and the military was very poor. So, as the threat transformed and the war transformed, the gaps between the understanding of the civil society and the military began to narrow. And so the narrowing of the gap means that minds at both ends came together.
That closing of gap also contributed immeasurably in seeing the establishment of what we now call the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). It is because they now understand that they’ve got a part to play, it’s not just a military affair. That of course, also accounts for the successes we have recorded.
Threats and discipline
What we call ‘Table of equipment,’ ‘Table of organisation‘ takes into cognizance, the various factors, one of which is threat. What is the threat perception? Because of that setting, every military officer has at the back of his mind, a desire to honour the oath that he has pledged to. As a result of that, he cannot go against that oath. For those who may have reason to, that is why we have procedures to manage such situations. We have court-martial and so on to address such situations.
Beyond Operation Lafiya Dole
The minds of the troops are focused. We’ve been able to provide them the necessary tools. This is responsible for the success stories. And the military is being more proactive. Right now, I am looking beyond “Operation Lafiya Dole.” The military leadership is thinking of its aftermath. We are making assessments of what we need to do to prevent things from returning to how they used to be. We must do everything to educate people and sensitise them to their civic responsibilities. Governance is not for a small group of people in public offices. Every citizen is part of the government. And when citizens perform their civic responsibilities, they exercise their power as intrinsic part of government. Going to school to learn to read and write is only a part of education. It is not education in totality. Societies are regulated. Every society is regulated and that regulation is brought about by laws. Societies have laws that should be respected. People must understand that.
The media challenge
When those who know go to misinform others, then there is a problem. This is where the press comes in. The press shouldn’t misinform simply because they believe they have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech comes with great responsibility and the press should always understand and respect that. You cannot infringe on my rights simply because you wish to exercise your freedom of speech. I am an agent of government and that state is working to guarantee the territorial security and integrity of the state but some people are of the wrong impression that they could be an impediment to me.
It will be wrong for anyone to think that if he becomes an obstacle in my way, I will be forced to placate him or settle him in order to become more effective. If that happens, then he becomes an obstacle even to his own security.
And there are others who are also being used to disrupt activities and our peace-keeping efforts. There is no friend in the world. In reality, there is no friend. What exists around the world is interest. What scholars call ‘enlightened self-interest.’
To tame a suicide culture…
The suicide bombers are usually brainwashed. There is nobody who was born hardened. No child is born as a suicide bomber. Situations cause them to harden. There must be a total reorientation of our youths and reestablishment of our good values. Our education system should be overhauled and broadened to produce more progressively literate and responsible citizens. You don’t go to school simply because you wish to get a certificate and get a job. That is not what education does for you.
Education should help you to think logically and to be able to identify alternatives when you see them. It should empower you to understand issues and perspectives to an issue. It should enable you to discern between good and evil, right and wrong.
A well-educated youth will be empowered to shun evil and embrace progress. Education helps you to develop your conscience and become a better patriot. A national reorientation of our children, youth and people will conscientize our nation towards a more positive and progressive direction.
When we as a people have a commonality of values that are well defined, we won’t argue or bicker about it. As the Americans have the American dream, we should also have the Nigerian dream. It’s about time we decided on and evolved a sustainable Nigerian dream.
Shared values will always unite us. A national reorientation geared towards truly positive objectives will make us better citizens and people.
Why girl-bombers?
The value underage girls add to terrorism is very clear, according to Mia Bloom, a Professor of Communication at Georgia University and Hilary Matfess, a research analyst at the National Defence University’s Center for Complex Operations and a member of the Nigeria Social Violence Project (NSVP) at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
While Bloom addresses the lure of suicide terrorism in her books, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror and Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, she and Matfess recently took a holistic look at the trend in Northern Nigeria.
“The incorporation of women into Boko Haram’s activities,” they opine, “builds upon a history of tactical experimentation, undertaken in response to cyclical government responses and opportunities posed by regional trends in arms availability. The symbolism of female-led attacks has been a means by which
‘My Boko Haram husband killed his father and mother’
Boko Haram has distinguished itself from similar movements and local rivals. Understanding Boko Haram’s use of women is particularly critical, as it is the most lethal insurgency on the continent, having claimed an estimated 29,000 lives since 2002, and shows no signs of abating.”
“The very fact of being female is proven to enjoy several tactical advantages. First, women suicide terrorists capitalise and thrive on the ‘element of surprise.’ They can take advantage of cultural reluctance toward physical searches to evade detection. Given their seemingly feminine facade, they are categorically perceived as gentle and non-threatening. Further, they constitute a potentially large pool of recruits, a resource that terrorist organisations can draw from and cash in on. Symbolically, the death of women bombers is more likely to evoke a feeling of desperation and sympathy,” noted Bloom.
Investigations revealed that children and child-widows of slain Boko Haram fighters are also conscripted as suicide bombers. During their conscription, they are allegedly brainwashed and psychologically programmed to die for martyrdom, often as revenge against ‘infidels’ whom they are made to believe caused the death of their loved ones.
The girl bombers are also recruited through female scouts. In June 2014, for instance, troops arrested three suspected female Boko Haram members Hafsat, Zainab and Aisha, have been secretly recruiting girls for Boko Haram.
Boko Haram corrupts theology, victims’ psychology
Boko Haram’s girl bombers are psychologically and physically coerced into carrying out the attacks, according to Milda Okoro-Essiet. The child psychologist argued that the remote detonation of explosives strapped to the sect’s child victims also suggests that the girls may be unaware of the gravity of their mission or the masterminds did not trust the girls would have sufficient courage to carry out the attacks.
While it is possible that the Boko Haram may be selecting those that are too uneducated or naive to recognise that they are actually carrying explosives, the confession of a suspected female suicide bomber, Zaharau Babangida, indicates that the girls are also being coerced. The 13-year-old girl was arrested strapped to a bomb in December 2014 in Kano State.
She narrated how she was conscripted by her biological father and transferred to one of Boko Haram’s radicalisation camps in Bauchi forest. She revealed that an ideologue in the camp tried to brainwash and intimidate them into undertaking a suicide mission.
“I was not moved by the soul searching preaching of bounties in the heaven and it was at this point, their leader resorted to threat and intimidation to obtain my consent. We were shown a deep hole where the leader of the group threatened to bury us alive at a point if any of us refused to play along, and at another time, he picked a big gun and threatened to shoot anyone who fails to obey his command,” she said.
Subsequently, Zaharau was taken to a market in Kantin Kwari, Kano, along with two other girls, who detonated their bombs – killing six people, including the bombers. The 13-year-old, who was injured in the blasts, said she was too scared to go through with the attack after she saw her mates’ cadavers barely a second after they detonated their bombs. She made her way to a nearby hospital in Dawanau, where she was arrested.
At the backdrop of the dangerous trend, Islamic clerics reiterate that Boko Haram interprets religious texts out of context. “They paint the texts in shades of violence and force-feed it to impressionable girls and boys in their captivity. What they teach these kids is at extreme variance with the tenets of Islam,” stated Borno-based cleric, Muhammadu Arif.
Idowu Bisi-Akinrolatan, a social psychologist, argued that, “most of these girls have experienced untold miseries since the insurgency began. Many have seen their parents, siblings, friends and other loved ones shot to death or decapitated by Boko Haram. The impact of such horror on their psyche is often immeasurable. The future looks bleak to them. Having been forcefully conscripted as suicide bombers, they resign to fate and consider their imminent death a shortcut to escape the hard life that they live. It doesn’t hurt them too, to believe the propaganda that they will gain an early access to paradise, she explained.
Thus poor, vulnerable girls, are brainwashed into believing that if they succeed in detonating bombs in crowded places, they would be killing infidels who are intent on corrupting the lifestyle that God wants humanity to follow.
Theological luminaries consider this thought process, “altruistic evil” which thrives on the flawed belief that convenient evil is ordained by God. But Sheikh Idris Alogba, an Islamic scholar, argued that evil is never ordained by God. “The God that we serve, Allah (S.W.T), has no blood thirst. He does not approve of mindless killing or murder under any guise. Boko Haram, suicide bombing or terrorism by any premise are unapproved in the sight of God. Islam is a religion of peace. Allah is a God of peace. The terrorists are misguided, likewise the suicide bombers,” he said.
Defeating terror
Yahaya Imam, Borno State Director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), described the spread of terrorism in Nigeria’s northeast zone as unfortunate but he commended the Nigerian military and leadership for prosecuting a decisive and successful routing of Boko Haram from its strongholds. Yahaya believes a cultural and value reorientation of Nigerian youths will sensitise them to progressive civic responsibility and prevent more youths from falling prey to terrorist sects like Boko Haram. However, the NOA boss lamented the unavailability of funds required by his agency to execute positive youth orientation projects in war-ravaged Borno.
According to him, “The NOA is taking steps to involve traditional authorities and youth organisations in its reorientation and peace-building drive across Borno. And our efforts are yielding fruits.
Abdullahi Ibrahim, the Commander of the Borno State Command of the NSCDC, stated that his command has taken far-reaching measures to prevent attacks by suicide bombers. “We have our officers embedded in various parts of the community across the state. Our intelligence network is ever active and primed to nip any dangerous development in the bud,” he said.
Ibrahim stated that his command’s collaboration with the Nigerian Army in Borno has yielded very positive and encouraging results in the war against terrorism. For instance, Amina and her late mate, Zainab, were intercepted by a combined team of NSCDC and the army before they could wreak havoc in Maiduguri few weeks ago.
Fiona Lovatt, a New Zealand teacher, poet and humanitarian volunteer based in Kano, advocated a departure from the dominant narrative about girl-child agents cum victims of Boko Haram’s suicide bombing attacks. According to her, the issue of child radicalisation by Boko Haram constitutes a red herring. She lamented that Borno’s girl-child bombers are endangered children bearing the brunt of society’s inadequacies.
She urged the government to protect children of the war-ravaged region. “And if they are abducted and taken into savannah grasslands, find them and bring them home. Treat them well when they get back,” she said.
But who will treat them well when they get back? Adijatu, for instance, was forced to relocate from her native Borno to Sabo, Ogun State, following her one-year ordeal as a captive sex slave and child bride of Boko Haram. The 17-year-old believed her travails were over immediately she was rescued and returned to Bama, her hometown, by the military Joint Task Force (JTF). Unknown to her, her nightmare was just beginning. The teenager fled her home when her best friend’s aunt and guardian tried to bash in the skull of her infant son, Habibi, because she conceived of him by a Boko Haram fighter. And she was not even a ‘suicide bomber.’
A worse fate awaits intercepted bombers like Amina and Zaharau. Popular cultural beliefs about ‘bad blood’ and ‘witchcraft’ are exacerbated by stories of girls returning from captivity to murder their parents. This explains why a mother invited soldiers to arrest her returnee daughter after the latter confided in her that she was trained as a suicide bomber. Women and girls who spent time in captivity are often referred to by communities as “Boko Haram wives,” “Sambisa women,” “Boko Haram blood” and “Annoba” (epidemics).
Survivors’ legitimate concerns about being shunned by their communities are compounded by their fear that the militants will return and track them down. One such survivor said in an interview that she feared that her Boko Haram militant husband would “kill her for running away;” at the same time, in her community, she is considered “an outcast…they remind me that I have Boko Haram inside me,” she said.
Thus rescuing the women from the insurgents is only one part of the solution, according to expert psychological opinion. Providing emotional support, health services, and community reintegration is critical to the success of Nigeria’s counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategy.
In June 2015, Dr. Fatima Akilu, head of the Countering Violent Extremism Department of the Office of the National Security Advisor, announced that 20 women and girls who had been recruited by Boko Haram had been “saved” and were “undergoing rehabilitation and de-radicalisation,” although the details were never released.
The support efforts, noted Dr. Abubakar Monguno, should be survivor based. Monguno, working with a team including Dr. Yagana Imam, Yagana Bukar and Bilkisu Lawan Gana from UNIMAID, and in collaboration with the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), the Borno State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, International Alert and UNICEF, authored a report revealing that hostile perceptions place children conceived of rape and violence on Boko Haram terror camps are “at risk of rejection, abandonment, discrimination and potential violence.”
They advocate that support efforts should also integrate social workers into affected communities to identify families at risk of breakdown. The social workers should follow up with home visits together with religious officials, to provide mediation and guidance to husbands and family members.
But that is in the long run. In the short run, urgent steps should be taken to assist victims and survivors like Amina and Zaharau to pick the broken pieces of their lives. Every day, the teenagers struggle to forget the act that was meant to end their lives: the righteous murder of innocent folks who committed no wrong against them and their instigators.
At the time of their arrest, they were both frightened and sad. But their fear was borne of valour; the courage to say “No” to mindless carnage of their own people. Zaharau, 13, could not envision paradise by killing herself and innocent people. Amina, 17, couldn’t either. They probably dread the scorn of friends and strangers by whose deaths they could become ‘evil.’
Nonetheless, their fate resonates a tragedy so overpowering that it incites a torrent of feelings. Beyond that, there is guilt – that our desire for them is so strong that it sets the society, like a bird of prey, to stalk them, stigmatise them and reignite their buried narratives. In their sad, sorry world, every muted spasm and tragic elocution of pain pricks their hide and sink like claws. There is no clear significance. There is only loss.
Digital medium, DSTV/Multichoice, spreads perversion like a plague. It vengefully debases and liquidates society’s arrogant hierarchs by broadcasting filth like the Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) show. Thus the media broadcaster flaunts its supreme theme of filth as fun and debris as new civilization. Culture and morality are challenged and redefined within the bounds of the BBN house and the show’s producers and its apologists cheekily attack critics of the show.
“But you are free to change the channel,” BBN groupies will earnestly tell you. They will say: “No one is forcing you to watch the show;” “Na grammar you dey speak;” “Must you watch it and whine afterwards?” “You are a bloody hypocrite!” “Nigerians and hypocrisy sha…What is wrong with you Nigerians?”
If you tell them, “The kids are watching,” they will scornfully tell you: “The show is rated 18;” “If you can’t control what your kids watch in your home, it’s your problem.” When you bemoan the import of such media fare on societal mores, they will scream at you: “Mr/Mrs. holier-than-thou, you can’t control what channel I watch in my home!”
Of course, no one can control what anyone else does with his or her time or what channel different folk watch in their homes but it need be said, that when morality and mores segues from good and evil, black and white to the gray region, the end of sanity is nigh. Civilization as we know it suffers avoidable, gruesome death. From its ashes, decadence and grime will rise like the proverbial phoenix, to corrupt our present and fill our lives with ill bliss, until every more and value that makes us human and humane falls apart. Just like it happened in medieval Rome.
Yes, this writer too reserves the right to ‘Change the channel’ and he gladly does that. But the snippets and scenes of the filthy show are prevalent on the social media. For how long can the BBN be ignored? The BBN house could be likened to a perverts’ paradise; a debauched utopia and form-dissolving fountain of filth and chthonian force, erupting from primeval chaos.
Every BBN scene prefigures the transition in Nigerian mores from high morality to perverse hedonism. In the antics of every ‘housemate’ or inmate to be precise, the conservative boundaries of decency and civilisation are burst through. Hence it is easy for a married inmate to deny his wife and kids while he fondles and performs oral sex with a fellow inmate on live TV. In the BBN’s perverse reality, a married woman denies her husband to cuddle, kiss and orgasm by the fingers of a fellow inmate. Lest we forget the single mother of one who threw decency to the dogs to give fellatio to a fellow inmate, a married man, till he orgasmed, on lived TV.
The BBN’s decadence and emotional attraction no doubt mutates from the society’s smirking vanity and the sudden melting of her features beyond recognition. Little wonder most of the show’s participants, or inmates if you like, ditch wisdom, decency and morality to embrace filth in the wink of an eye.
Like victims of a modern cultural holocaust and moral apocalypse, BBN inmates flounder at ground zero, unbounded from responsibility even as their socialised mores and self-imposed inhibitions incinerate in the electric moments of indolence and orgasmic lust that they spend in the house.
The intelligible momentarily loses to the irrational, caution yields to recklessness and the inmates, swamped by adrenaline, ego and depravity, exult in DSTV/Multichoice’s fiery lava of grime. In time, their names will resound as the crusted corpse’s muffled groans in a garden of dirt.
They should probably ask ex-BBN inmates how bleak and frustrating life becomes after they lose their pass to the red carpets. They should ask them how frustrating it is to lust for sustained coverage by perverted journalists and their equally permissive media. It’s an ugly reality for ex-BBN inmates – that is, the losers.
A skinny inmate from a past edition of the show, constantly forced her way on to the red carpets, after she lost out of the BBN show. She persistently slept with ‘media managers’ and movie producers in desperate bid to remain in the news. She did all manner of crazy things, most of it sexually demeaning and unbecoming of a child/lady raised in virtue. Eventually she burnt out. The list is endless. I would love to give names but even that will be a boon for the fame junkies that I speak of.
Back to the ongoing BBN reality show, there is no gainsaying that DSTV/Multichoice savours the sexually grotesque; in doing so, they argue that they are only pandering to the wishes of millions of viewers whose love of decadence promotes degenerate media fare. Indeed.
Despite the widespread condemnations trailing the conduct of BBN inmates, they help perpetuate the myth that accidental celebrity or fame junkies like them, are glaring indicators that there are always acceptable shortcuts to riches and the fulfillment of our wildest fantasies. And this relative reality is propelled by the public’s morbid fascination with celebrity worship. Where the object of interest excites inadequate controversies and passion for adulation, the public has learnt to recreate the object of their fascination into the ideal celebrity icon or superstar of their dreams.
This no doubt substantiates Dostoevsky’ s wisdom: “So long as man remains free,” Dostoyevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov, “he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship.”
But are characters in the BBN reality worthy of “worship?” Are they deserving of acclaim? Will winning the prize money justify the antics and sexual irresponsibility they exhibit on live TV? Yet they made it as subjects of discourse on this page, for sexual reasons. This is bad news.
•Making sense of DSTV/Multichoice’s perverse reality
God is a taboo to DSTV/Multichoice, Nigeria. The Omnipotent Creator is cast in the same category of the dirtiest swear words by DSTV/Multichoice Nigeria. Thus any mention of ‘God’ in any movie or documentary is blurred, cancelled out, by the Nigerian managers of the digital satellite medium. But while it treats God as profanity, the satellite broadcaster celebrates random sex, consequence-free promiscuity, gender war, chaos, wild and subtle homosexuality, lesbianism, among others, as the finest of contemporary civilisation, courtesy its media fare.
There is something about DSTV/Multichoice, Nigeria that rankles, like an ominous note. The satellite media broadcaster seem resolute in its quest to establish itself as a merchant of decadence and ill-bliss. And the Nigerian state fosters its debauchery by enabling it with lax laws and dormant regulations. Ever wonder why the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) remains a paper bull-dog? It has been domesticated and placed on a leash by social agents, like DSTV/Multichoice perhaps. Tragic.
There is no gainsaying DSTV/Multichoice, Nigeria manifests as a harbinger of amorality and cultural decline. It celebrates the kind of debauchery that led to the ruin of medieval Rome. Consider for instance, its ongoing Big Brother Nigeria (BBN) reality show. There is nothing to distinguish the BBN house from a henhouse except that the inmates seem human and yet endowed with the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the guinea fowl – if I may insult the poor animal by comparing it with them.
However, despite the guinea fowl’s predilection to brutishness, it is not so completely unintelligent, mindless and brazen like the BBN house ‘inmate.’ Big brother, while showing them up as disposable lab rats, calls BBN contestants as ‘housemates’ but reality instructs that every participant in the Big Brother ‘experiment’ is captive to inordinate greed, poverty of the intellect and soul, lust for unearned riches and acclaim, and the ever domineering, voyeuristic, faceless “Big Brother.”
Participants in the BBN show, like their counterparts world over, elevate narcissism and absurdity to unimaginable degrees. Inmates take their bath naked, knowing videos and images of their bath sessions are being broadcast to the world via digital satellite television. They indulge in reverse-intellectual chatter, unprotected and presumably consequence-free sex, disgraceful bickering, cutthroat rivalry and frittering away of precious time, just for the kicks of doing so.
This further emphasizes the kindred spirit they share with the guinea fowl although the latter seem startlingly more sophisticated and elevated in character than the average BBN inmate. Guinea fowls hardly bicker because they are known to evolve and adhere religiously to a pecking order. The guinea fowl is a proud creature. Unlike the BBN inmate, it rarely mates in the open. You will seldom, if ever, see it breed. When it does, it’s super-quick and can be easily mistaken for a swift little scuffle.
Wonder what the guinea fowl would think of BBN inmates like Bisola Aiyeola. Bisola effortlessly overwhelms defunct Big Brother reality show Nigerian inmates in notoriety without doubt. Perhaps at the end of the show, whether she wins the prize money or not, Bisola would claim she did her ancestors proud. Just like her predecessors claimed they did Nigeria proud at the show’s previous sloth-fests.
Bisola generates a buzz by her actions in the BBN house. She has given a lap dance to a married man, engaged in smooching sessions with him and given her sexually rabid mate a blow-job meaning: Bisola Aiyeola has sucked on his penis till he orgasmed on live TV. Bravo.
Wonder what Bisola’s mother would tell Bisola’s daughter. It would be priceless to hear her explain to her grand-daughter, why her mother had to frequently perform oral sex on a married man, on live TV. How will Bisola’s daughter explain to her classmates, class teacher and neighbourhood friends her mother’s wild sexual proclivities on TV?
Bisola and crew sully the image of the contemporary Nigerian youth. They represent an abnegation of Dante Alighieri’s caution: “Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
True, only brutes (animals) enjoy the exclusive preserve of ignorance and shamelessness in matters pertaining to sexual instincts, violence and other base impulses that relegate the brute to the bottom of nature and creation’s pecking order. However, current realities reveal an increasing permissiveness and blurring of lines between the human and the animal, the virtuous and debauched.
While it’s disconcerting that the inmates’ parents and family see nothing wrong with their conduct, it would be amusing to know how they would justify the morality and benefits of going nude and engaging in a sexual acts before the camera and millions of viewers across the world, to their children and grand-children, when eventually their actions haunt them in their sober hours.
Notoriety is the tool that Bisola and company seek to exploit in a desperate bid to win the much coveted N25 million BBN winner-takes-all prize. Notoriety is the resource by which they seek to attain wealth and acclaim. And even though many of them will fail in their bid except the only lucky inmate, they will all emerge from the show as celebrities. They will get movie deals, corporate endorsements, breakfast and dinners with Nigerian governors and senators, among other perks.
Soon after booted she was booted out of the BB show, Nigerian newspapers swooped on a previous housemate, splashing syndicated interviews of the BB evictee across one or two pages, each story struggling to garner for her, unquestionable acclaim and soft-landing. She reportedly hoped to exploit the situation to her advantage: “If you guys watched Big Brother, you would be very sure that I can act,” she was quoted in an interview.
Her statement, particularly her reference to her acting ability, no doubt revealed that the Big Brother show, contrary to its claims of being a social experiment that thrives on truth and reality, is actually a scripted TV show in which every participant puts up an act before the camera, as conditioned by the contest provisions and their frenzied lust for the outrageous prize money.
Bisola and her fellow inmates seek to float upon “hype,” which is really the ubiquitous journalist turned publicist’s gas – and which is maniacally deployed oftentimes, to set afloat an image and personality that doesn’t quite exist. Hype, like Epstein aptly notes, is what gives us a new class or hierarchical categorisation of celebrities.
To be continued…
N.B:
My attention has been drawn to a complaint by one of my readers, Tony Ademiluyi, over my piece, “Kayode Fayemi…The devil’s in his details (2).” He complained that that I used some of the things he said to me in a personal chat about the column without due attribution. This is unfortunate. I deliberately left out his name and used his statement in quote, because I felt he might not like the negative publicity it may generate.
“Agreed, many youths here have entitlement mentality but is it entirely their fault? Does the system give them room to turn their nightmares into dreams? I read Fayemi’s ‘Out of the Shadows.’ He left the country in frustration in 1989 because he was owed salaries in two places he worked – the defunct City Tempo magazine and another publication.
“How many Nigerian youths would be privileged to have a wife with a British passport like he did? Many go there illegally or worse still by road. You need to read the chilling story of Uche Nworah, a former academic at the University of Greenwich who went to Germany by road. He (Fayemi) displayed crass insensitivity but such is life!”
Some folk, Fayemi inclusive, would find several things wrong with this argument. But a lot of youth would agree with the reader/writer who penned the argument.
That was exactly the way I used it. And the reader/writer who penned the argument to me in a chat on Facebook was “Tony Ademiluyi.” It was never a sad case of plagiarism. The omission, deliberate or not, is highly regretted.
Kayode Fayemi spoke truth to silly. It would seem. Very few people understood his tough love for the graduating youth of his alma mater, University of Lagos (UNILAG). In his speech, the Minister of Solid Minerals hazarded a theory of industry, altruism and progress, apparently to sensitize the graduands to proper character and approach to whatever challenges lie ahead. Any misinterpretation of his outwardly heartfelt admonition to the youth may be understood as a swerve from objectivity, a scorning of truth – in the estimation of Fayemi.
But Fayemi’s truth excites the primacy of uglier truth(s). He urged the replacement of lethargy with enthusiasm, selfish-entitlement with altruism, resignation with unflagging passion and industry; all in an environment riddled with violence – the violence of tangible and intangible odds to be precise.
Fayemi like several politicians of his class, was peremptory in his judgment. He decided and still decides perhaps, what realities and odds to acknowledge, in the never-ending pillorying of the contemporary ‘me-generation.’ His seemingly informed analysis is bogged by as much exclusion as inclusion of bias. His advice to the youth despite its political correctness, is besmirched by haughtiness that cannot impartially alleviate his audience’s apprehension about the uncertainties of breaking even and making ends meet, in a world made hostile by Fayemi’s ruling class. Thus Kayode Fayemi’s speech for all its outward profundity, resounds with upper crust arrogance and ignorance.
This is the juncture at which the Minister of Solid Minerals probably snorts and recalls his ‘innumerable’ lifeboats to indigent youth and the ‘priceless support’ and ‘wisdom’ he offers to the needy as his ‘progressive’ spirit dictates. But how progressive is Fayemi? Does his PhD in War Studies, ‘cryptic’ literature and ‘practical’ wisdom project him as heroic shiner of light and truth to generations of Nigerian youth?
In response to the first part of this piece, several youths home and abroad, argued that Fayemi had no right to mount the soapbox to admonish any segment of the country’s youth. Their responses ranged from caustic vituperation, incoherent bile to well-articulated angst and rebuke of the Minister of Solid Minerals. Some even went as far as hoping that this writer was simply ‘fooling around with satire’ by applauding Fayemi’s ‘insensitivity’ to the youth.
Most of the country’s youth believe Fayemi had no moral right to counsel the youth on the benefits of being industrious and patriotic simply because he belongs to the ruling class. Of course, the latter argument is untenable and wanting in substance; it is wrong for anyone to deny Fayemi his right to free speech.
“Agreed, many youths here have entitlement mentality but is it entirely their fault? Does the system give them room to turn their nightmares into dreams? I read Fayemi’s ‘Out of the Shadows.’ He left the country in frustration in 1989 because he was owed salaries in two places he worked – the defunct City Tempo magazine and another publication.
“How many Nigerian youths would be privileged to have a wife with a British passport like he did? Many go there illegally or worse still by road. You need to read the chilling story of Uche Nworah, a former academic at the University of Greenwich who went to Germany by road. He (Fayemi) displayed crass insensitivity but such is life!”
Some folk, Fayemi inclusive, would find several things wrong with this argument. But a lot of youth would agree with the reader/writer who penned the argument. Many more youth however, berate the former Governor of Ekiti state for what they consider his misappropriated self-righteousness. They wonder why he is unable to distinguish himself as a ‘progressive’ of real depth and class.
Those who have read his books argue that his literature has accomplished no miracles, save its affirmation of his intellect and scholarly inclinations, which is a characteristic of every other academic. You could be forgiven for thinking Fayemi’s admonition a treacherous theorem of truth, uttered to rile the Nigerian youth and sully their thought-process in his frantic bid to fulfill his lust for applause and political correctness.
Whatever the shades of public opinion about Fayemi’s speech, nobody can deny him his right to free speech. The Minister of Solid Minerals was unrepentantly sincere in his propagation of tough love and his version of the clarion call. In saner clime however, his admonition would be weaponised by the minds and will of youths driven by a progressive lust for ‘change.’
Fayemi’s words will become the incendiary prod that would spur generations of the country’s youth to seize their destinies from the grasp of his ruling class.
The youth addressed by Fayemi thus owe themselves and Nigeria a relentless quest for freedom from the incumbent ruling class. Although Fayemi would argue that he is not cut of the breed responsible for Nigeria’s current situation, many of the country’s youth are of a different opinion. Indeed, there is little the younger generation can learn from Fayemi’s ruling class in terms of honesty, altruism, duty, rationality, perception and courage. The grotesqueness of his ruling class, makes it impossible to distinguish him as a humane politician and leader different from peer.
Being a former state governor, his acceptance of the role of Minister of Solid Minerals smacked of the random politician’s lust to remain perpetually in power. It seemed like a demotion for a man who once served as Executive Governor of Ekiti State. Could he have rejected the appointment with humility and firmness? Or was it truly part of his manouvering to serve the country in more valuable and esteemed capacities? Did Fayemi hanker for ministerial role driven by the average politician’s inordinate craving to remain in power? Is Kayode Fayemi just another average politician? If he isn’t, what distinguishes him from every other politician?
This writer once dreamed of an epoch in which a man like Kayode Fayemi would emerge as Nigeria’s President, Senate President or Vice President? At his foray into politics, he seemed a rare shiner of light and hope in the country’s political wilderness.
It is saddening to see a man like Fayemi play politics the tragic way of the incumbent ruling class. It negates everything he purportedly stood for. But what do we know? Fayemi understands himself and his politics better than anyone. Beyond sound bites and political correctness, only Fayemi knows what he truly stands for.
But does he know what his ruling class stand for? Does he know that his ruling class is fatal to Nigeria’s future? Is he aware that his ruling class, like the mythical Medusa, castrates lives, dreams and ambitions of the country’s youth via corrupt and poor governance?
Sadly, Fayemi has been unable to distinguish himself from his peer in governance. His culture of politics founders at extreme variance with his oft romanticised ideals as a true ‘progressive.’ And his controversial admonition to the youth resonates as yet another gothic ritual of political grandstanding.
Like the petulant Aiyekooto, Fayemi confidently twittered truths the Nigerian youth are wary to admit. Could he likewise, confront truths his ruling class has never been able to bury or explain away, despite its desperation to do so?
Fayemi became popular courtesy his native land’s disavowal of him. Ekiti chose Ayodele Fayose over him thus inciting a flurry of gaudy stereotypes and the tragic theory of the people’s abjuration of brilliance for the love of ‘stomach infrastructure.’ Why would the people of Ekiti do that?
If Fayemi can correctly answer this rhetoric, he just might experience the sublime rapture that purges national icons of the gothic slop of impious wiles.
