Category: Olatunji Ololade

The night has murder in the eye, and noon, murder in the heart; even daybreak drips with blood. One ill begets the other, and every madness a great deal more. The solstice of sanity has sagged, and we become indiscriminate pawns in the theatre of the absurd, in our drama of blood and bomb blasts.

There is “virtue” in the insanity of the rampaging horde, so claims the murderous horde, but if you look closely enough, you could discover the politics that incite the madness of Boko Haram and the death and destruction they incite. Perhaps you will get to understand why ordinary citizens become blood-thirsty brutes and the average human becomes subhuman.

There is no excuse for the murderousness of Boko Haram; there is no pretext for the existence of the group at all. But is there an excuse for the Nigerian state? Have we an excuse for our contemptible situation? Some frivolous boob would justify the terrorist sect’s campaign of cruelty, carnage and unjustifiable girl-child abductions; on the flipside, minstrels of disharmony and death gleefully adorn the cloak of human rights activists, to condemn in uncompromising terms, the inhumanness and bestiality of Boko Haram. Everybody pays lip service to our culture of chaos and slaughter.

In the wake of the reported abduction of over 250 school girls in war-ravaged Borno State in Nigeria’s northeast, the country has been awash in floods of vitriol and conspiracy theories; the latest being the likelihood that there had been no kidnap in the north-eastern State and that President Goodluck Jonathan’s detractors in the north are only seeking to foment trouble by the ‘purported abduction’ and thus accentuate the depth of his government’s inefficiency and insensitivity to the people’s plight.

Another school of thought, the one championed by self-appointed human rights activists, women’s rights groups, social media warriors, pub critics and other civil rights societies to mention a few, maintain that the presidency’s apparent cluelessness at redressing Boko Haram’s most recent atrocities – that is, the Nyanya bombings and school girls’ abductions – validate their claims of the incumbent government’s purposelessness and immaturity at occupying the seat of power. Every divide engages in a daily jostle to outclass the other in scoring cheap political points in the interest of the abducted school girls.

In a recent editorial authored by the American New York Times, the news medium’s editorial board fell short of calling Mr. President a bumbling oaf on the seat of power. According to the news medium, “Mr. Jonathan, who leads a corrupt government that has little credibility, initially played down the group’s threat and claimed security forces were in control. It wasn’t until Sunday, more than two weeks after the kidnappings, that he called a meeting of government officials, including the leader of the girls’ school, to discuss the incident. There is no doubt the intelligence and investigation help President Obama offered on Monday is needed.

“The kidnappings occurred just as President Jonathan is about to hold the World Economic Forum on Africa, with 6,000 troops deployed for security. That show of force may keep the delegates safe, but Nigeria’s deeply troubled government cannot protect its people, attract investment and lead the country to its full potential if it cannot contain a virulent insurgency.”

This is what Nigeria has been reduced to; today, the nation’s leadership, despite our claims of being Giant of Africa, is reduced to a contemptible minion on the pages of a struggling and highly partisan – but aren’t we all partisan – and unethical American news medium.

I do not blame the title for its disrespectful lampooning of the Nigerian leadership for it is a disgrace meritoriously earned, well deserved. I do not care about the persistent whining, disgraceful outbursts and divisive campaigns of self-appointed local and international “women’s rights,” “civil rights,” “social media” and “human rights” activists in the “interest of the abducted school girls.” If anything, I understand the “Bring back our girls” campaign as the next best fix of these bands of often self-serving narcissists and attention junkies.

What I find gross and unforgivable is these self-styled activists’ and Nigerian presidency’s shameless invitation to America to come invade Nigeria’s bowels and assist in rooting out the terrorist Boko Haram sect hiding within the Sambisa bushes. In a saner clime, what the Nigerian presidency and advocates of US invasion have requested for would be tantamount to treason but what the heck? This is contemporary Nigeria, land of the prodigal where the “illustrious” farmer shamelessly invites the predators abroad to drive off the lower brutes from our farmlands.

Lest you get the wrong impression, given the Nigerian leadership’s evident cluelessness and impotence in handling Boko Haram, if loved ones (God forbid) were among the abducted girls, depending on my disposition, I could shamelessly request that China, Russia, Iran, Germany and the USA to mention a few, jointly invade Nigeria, annihilate Boko Haram and their sponsors amongst the ruling class. I may not stop there, I may request that these allied forces of the world’s so-called super powers take over the nation’s governance – but this too, could be indistinguishable from treason hence let’s just consider it ‘wishful thinking’

Now that we have conducted our dance of shame beyond the bounds of reason and decency, we waltz naked on the global stage of politics and power. We are no longer the Giants of Africa. We have rather become the shame of Africa and the next horrid ignominy of the world. But this, predictably doesn’t matter, what matters is the next best temporary palliative we can find hence our shameless request for foreign assistance in neutering Boko Haram.

Having consistently kicked against our invitation of the world’s so-called super powers to help clean up our mess, I have come by different shades of condemnation and counter-arguments by self-styled patriots whose love for our fatherland presumably runs deeper than any other citizen’s.

One such ‘patriot’ Emmanuel Abagolu, argues that the foreign military force “…are the lesser of possible evils in this world” even as another, Adeola Oseni, corroborates that “Accepting western assistance does not necessarily mean bringing in NATO troops, UN troops or external force but with logistic supports and better coordinates from West, it would go a long way to assist in curbing this menace for good.”

There is wisdom in their argument; it resonates the impotence of a leadership six years old, the descent of a nation 54-years old and 170-million strong. That bloody epoch I warned us about five years ago in “Cowards Anthem (2)” has finally dawned on us.

“Those child soldiers whose stories offer amusement on the watch of international news media shall become the source of our greatest worries…they shall become little angels of death at the behest of enfant terrible godfathers and warmongers. Our mothers shall become comfort women, our daughters too. Our sisters shall become vessels of wanton delight to occupation forces and militia of various shades and ‘honour’…The chastity we love to protect shall become the staple by which we quell our dark, dark desires; the currency by which our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters purchase and repossess every day, their right to life, at the mercy of the elements of the order that be,” I wrote.

 

• To be continued

The alpha myth presents a sociological dysfunction; men and women in their youth are mentally programmed to live as brutes, on our watch. Eventually, they fully evolve into beasts, half-formed humans and different forms of fiendish creatures but this hardly poses cause for concern; their bestiality essentially codifies the essence of the contemporary ‘alpha’ culture. Like all things affiliated with social class and boundaries, the ‘alpha’ myth manifests as a premeditated horror in the Nigerian psyche.

The alpha civilization, like an infamous fad, has caught on amongst scions of Nigeria’s ‘high-society’ and in particular, the so-called ‘young, successful and upwardly mobile’ Nigerians.

This culture is perpetuated as justification for aggressive, cut-throat, self-seeking and often sexually dominant behaviour by presumed elite specie of both genders.

There was a time however, when such abnormality was identified as an exclusive perversion of the dominant male in a patriarchal culture but contemporary trends and happenstances reveal that the female gender is as culpable and romantically smitten to the bestial civilization as the male gender.

This argument breeds true at the backdrop of feverish bids by the contemporary female to match her male counterpart in every sphere of endeavour; while this can never be condemned as an aspiration of the female gender, the latter’s simultaneous pursuits of the vain and the perverse to the detriment of self and society cannot be made light of. Further argumentation along this path may throw this discourse off its tangent hence the need to stay on track.

There is no justification for the contemporary Nigerian youth’s obsession with the ‘alpha’ civilisation; but they are taken by it anyway and at every opportunity, they seek to justify it and their fascination with it.

This justification could be likened to what Benny Goodman identifies as quasi pseudo-scientific principles largely drawing from evolutionary biology’s “survival of the fittest” philosophy and antiquated political economic theory misapplied to social life. This myth is persistently used to justify the alpha breed’s lust for dominance, and in pursuit of this objective, propagators of the alpha culture deliberately blur the lines of reason and morality by hinging their lusts for status and power on a farfetched natural order and superior individual traits.

Truth is, the prevalent alpha culture afflicting the Nigerian youth and taking root in the society unmasks the depths of value erosion and unequal social relationships triggered by class, gender, ethnic and religious misrepresentations.

Alpha lust is a vanity exercised by “those who can” based on their privileged backgrounds and abilities – often rich spoilt kids, the educated and elite – over “those who can’t” and “who may never can;” the latter have to do battle with several odds to overcome class, ethnic and gender barriers. The alpha stereotype also erodes the human capacity for empathy, without which it truly manifests as an alpha dog eat dog world. This debilitating mindset causes the self-styled alpha breed to assume that selfishness and cruelty are the only acceptable crutches to attaining their dreams of sophisticated individualism and materialism.

There is great prestige attached to the ‘alpha’ club and daily, more segments of the Nigerian youth divide struggle against reason and humaneness to gain acceptance and belong to this presumed elite divide. Besides the usual rich, spoilt trash personified by children of perverse segments of the privileged and the ruling class, self-starters emerging from the backwaters and the comatose middle-class engage in mad, desperate pursuits to gain entrance into the contemporary alpha club.

The fastest and surest routes to achieving alpha membership span access to enviable Ivy League education, topnotch employment in high-end industrial sectors, politics, advance fee fraud and entertainment endeavours. Thus it has become the norm to see the Nigerian youth of varying pedigree fall over each other in a sordid hustle to become part of the alpha. The attainment of acclaim and material success in whatever field of endeavour they engage in signifies their arrival into the elite league of Nigeria’s alphas. And in keeping up with their class, they indulge in excessive consumption and acquisition of material goods including expensive sex, automobiles, wristwatches, the ubiquitous bling bling and choice apartments in highbrow areas, among others. The successful acquisition of these things signifies their arrival in the elite club of alphas.

Of these youth, the segment peopling the country’s economic and industrial divide provides a perfect illustration of Scambler’s ‘greedy bastards hypothesis.’ The hypothesis asserts that there are:  ”strategic behaviours at the core of the country’s capitalist-executive and power elite. The ‘capitalist-executive’ are a core ‘cabal’ of financiers, CEOs and Directors of large and largely transnational companies, and rentiers…This cabal have come to dominate the political class.”

The tragedy of this reality subsists in the consequence of having such youth evolve as the driving force or leadership of the Nigerian youth and future. It is very important that Nigeria does not fall into the hands of this breed for the following reasons: the alpha breed suffer a lack of sociological imagination. They are unable to link their personal experiences and narratives to the structures and realities of society they live in, at the time they live in it.

Goodman avers that to the alpha breed, persistent unemployment is simply a consequence of personal failures not a result of an insidious and unfairly tilted labour market structure to the advantage of the privileged; obesity is a personal and moral weakness unrelated to institutionalized laziness, availability of cheap calorie rich foods and entrapment in high carbon systems; poor people are basically poor because they lack a diligent work ethic not because of institutional and ethnic racism; countries are underdeveloped because they lack a capitalist ethic rather than as a result of past and current imperialism.

The alpha breed persistently blames the individual, emphasize personal responsibility and ignore power relationships and structures, which are rigged in the privileged’s favour. Empathy is a luxury for the weak in this context, for to empathise would mean examining the real reasons for success and failure in one’s ‘peers’ to gain an understanding of the hopes and ambitions and the barriers to fulfilling such in an unjust world.

The alpha however, behaves in this way because society enables them to do so; contemporary society thrives on a morbid and inordinate obsession with materialism – within this prevalent clime, money imbues its owner with power, and power and money are worshipped. This scary reality imbues the alpha with incontestable power amongst other facilities; and continual rationalization of it essentially sounds off as a self-aggrandizing myth of monstrosity, misappropriation of the society’s scarce resources and exploitation of the weak.

It has no moral basis and contrary to claims by science that we are enslaved and ruled by our hormones, genes or “reptilian brains,” we have culture and society to civilise ourselves.

Culture and society are human constructions that impacts upon us and leave us amenable to change thus even as the alpha breed wields the big stick and they determine the rules, they can be forced to lay down the sticks while we make conscious efforts to remould society to project more humanitarian ethics and behaviour.

It’s about time we rid our psyche of monstrosities that have learnt to tout as the Nigerian spirit. How?

Someday, death will become more than an unexplainable mystery to the incumbent ruling class. Every public officer will die; their family members too. Despite their inhumanity, they are human after all. They breathe and bleed just like we do. At their demise, they shall discover what manner of life they deserve in the afterlife. They shall find that money and rank they covet are useless after the last howl had fallen silent, at their funeral. They shall learn that currency-activated prayers their clerics hoist above them shall serve like raincoats under a blitz of cannon balls, at the end.

In the wake of their demise, how shall they be remembered? How do we remember men who summon our joys to harness it with a sable bind? Shall we remember them with rage and rant? Shall we wish they burn in the earth, like splinters of wood fed into the hearth to spite the fire? Shall we wish that they lie in plagued repose low down with the worm and ant?

How shall we be remembered? How shall posterity remember the ones who have perfected the art of letting their voices trail off in confusion at decision time? What will our children think of our desperation to keep the worst of our kind in power? What pantheons or dungeons shall we inhabit in the annals of Nigerian politics?

The troubles of our world are unwieldy like a storm. By our perversions, we impregnate and corrupt history and civilization 54-years old. Great evil lies in you and me, and by our perpetuation of it, we make history the way of the diabolic, who decapitates his newborn to satisfy his hunger pangs. Too many threads of heedlessness, woven of gluttony and lust, of racism and fear, inequality and blind hate of the stranger, form in our souls, a thick network.

Yesterday, we suffered violence and bloodshed by militants in our creeks, down in the Delta. Today, we suffer violence and bloodshed by Boko Haram. Every day, we suffer greater violence and bloodbath by murderous and incompetent ruling class. The most remarkable characteristic of the Nigerian ruling class, according to Prof. Itse Sagay, “is its complete and total insensitivity to the public outcry and outrage over the percentage of our resources that the members appropriate to themselves for their own consumption.”

Sagay, in his lecture on ‘Good Governance and Enforcement of Law and Order’ at the Nigerian Institute of Management’s 2013 Management Day, lamented that while Nigerian Senators and House of Representative members earn $1.7m and $1.4m respectively per annum, American Senators and British parliamentarians earn 174, 000 and £65,738 respectively per annum.

Yet income per capita for the US and UK is $46,350 and $35,468, respectively, while that of Nigeria is $2,248. Simply put, Nigerian legislators pay themselves the highest salaries of all legislators in the world, even though their country is amongst the least developed in the whole world.

More worrisome is the government’s inequitable distribution of benefits and punishments meted out to people from different classes and professions, along with the asymmetrical distribution of respect and dignity. Eventually, you get the feeling that some people don’t count and never expected to count in the Nigerian State.

In the wake of violence and bloodshed by successive terrorist groups, mostly constituted by youths, in the country, Mr. President, legislators and governors simmer in frustration and moral outrage. Jumping on to the bandwagon of these elected representatives’ deceitfulness and officialese, monarchs, clerics, newspaper columnists and other bastions of society pay lip service to the degeneration of the Nigerian youth and State.

It is hardly astonishing that the government and cohorts resort to explanations of criminality, a feral underclass, and dysfunctional parenting. These are easier explanations for which the government does not need to accept responsibility. However, a careful assessment of the situation reveals that a greater percentage of the culprits are motivated by poverty, illiteracy, dysfunctional parenting, unemployment and inequality induced by unfair government policies, insensitivity and oppression by the ruling class.

But such cruelties by the most insidious leadership as we currently have do not justify the descent of the Nigerian youth into barbarism or bloodthirstiness of any kind – but they do anyway. Insensitivity and bloodlust enjoy sweet repose in the psyche of the Nigerian youth thus habituating them to all manners of savagery and triviality.

Hence it wasn’t surprising to see the Nigerian youth, the media and the general public descend on Shema Obafaye, former Lagos State Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) as violently as a mugger, as frighteningly as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man, over his gaffe when he featured as a guest on a breakfast show on Lagos-based private television, Channels Television.

For Obafaye’s “My oga at the top” slip-up and his inability to accurately state his organization’s internet address, he became an object of nationwide ridicule. Footage of his blunder went viral on the social media making him an object of malicious jokes and caricature on Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry Messenger, T-shirts, and rascally musical medley by local disc jockeys (DJs).

It was one gaffe that Nigerian youths particularly, couldn’t forgive; consequently, branded mugs, face-caps and T-shirts with the inscription: “My oga at the top!” were produced and sold at a profit in merriment over Obafaye’s gaffe.

Several celebrities cashed in on the madness and donned the branded T-shirts to major public events in pitiful desperation to replenish their dwindling acclaim. A smart movie producer attempted to cash in too on the national ridicule of a man and public servant while it lasted by hastily putting together and releasing a film titled, “My oga at the top.”

Nobody cared what sorrow or misery burdened Obafaye’s heart nor did anyone pause to imagine what shame and disillusionment his wife and kids are forced to relive and suffer daily long after the mockery had quieted to a murmur.

If the Nigerian citizenry, the youth particularly, could be so coordinated and methodical in their perpetration of such “good-natured” ridicule and hate, would it not do Nigeria immense good to have us unite in more coordinated and disciplined revolt against the oppression and cruelties of the incumbent ruling class?

We are past the novelty of coordinated mockery and moral outrage. The most powerful indignation we could express exceeds the pages of acerbic columns and social media; it subsists in latent courage and will we haven’t yet summoned the courage to express.

Until we mature in grace and learn to apply ourselves to passionate pursuits for the love of the good, our pains shall run amok where we seek ease and bliss, always. It’s a matter of choice; to which system of thought should we commit our lives to? Is there anything in our norms worth saving? Shall we define the Nigerian dream in the language of humanity? Shall we begin to officiate for posterity’s sake? Shall we begin to affect the honesty and decency to which we pay lip service? Shall we choose the right candidates and vote them in at election time?

It’s about time we refined the subtleties that make the Nigerian dream the fantasy of thieves, looters and blinkered murderers.

(Travails of travel with Arik Air)

Arik Air is breathtaking for once and only once; just at the moment when its aircraft lifts off the runway to soar into air or while perching in the heart of its destination’s city centre. In that space and at that hour, you get to see what its founder, Sir Arumemi-Ikhide had dreamed years before the airline’s establishment: “To make Nigeria proud of its aviation industry” by offering “a superior level of customer service” while delivering “on all promises made” to the airline’s customers.

The airline’s purported bid to reinforce its corporate vision and mission statements has seen it weather a challenging timeline spanning its birth in 2002 till date. However, cruising with Arik Air, you get to see the perversion of that dream. Travelling with Arik Air today is like wishing on the false hope of an artful dodger. Disappointment is around the corner more often than not. Undoubtedly, every customer of Arik Air would have a different story to tell in testament of the airline’s efficiency or otherwise; some of such stories will be identical in praise of Arik Air and many more, I presume, will be identical sob stories of customers unfortunate enough to have been on the receiving end of the airline’s inefficiency.

Here is my sob story: following several upsets and disruption of plans occasioned in my life by Arik Air’s characteristic flight delays, two years ago, in the first quarter of 2012 to be precise, I rebelled against reason and purchased a flight ticket to Monrovia, Liberia for a two-week editorial assignment. Unfortunately, I arrived 10 minutes after passengers were checked in and thus had to pay a penalty of N15, 000 to join another flight to Liberia two days later.

On the day of the trip, I arrived at the airport within stipulated check-in time but to my chagrin, I, alongside several passengers, was granted first row ticket to Arik Air’s theatre of insensitivity to clients. We were made to wait five hours longer for a flight that should have taken off in the morning. Predictably, many of us (travelers) were angry but in the face of intimidating reality of our hopelessness, we resigned to fate and the devices of Arik Air.

By the time we were called onboard the aircraft, nobody offered apology; when we complained to an Arik Air staff, she pleaded that we understand. I seized the opportunity to remind her that Arik Air refused to be understanding when it imposed a penalty f N15, 000 on me for arriving 10 minutes late after check-in time two days earlier. She simply grinned and marched off in brisk steps.

And just recently, I purchased a return ticket to Gombe from Arik Air. As usual, the airline dropped me in Abuja to join a connecting flight to Gombe. I would not dwell on the delay suffered as it has become characteristic of the airline but what I find appalling was the airline’s inability to inform me about a change and delay in flight schedule of its Gombe-Abuja-Lagos bound flight.

On arrival at the airport, I was told by an Arik Air staff that the flight had been delayed till 7 pm although t was supposed to take off earlier. It was even more confusing to note that while my flight ticket bore 3.15pm departure time, I received a message even before leaving Lagos that the return flight had been postponed till 4.15pm.

While in Gombe, I placed a call to Arik Air’s help desk, and I was made to understand that the departure time from Gombe-Abuja-Lagos had not changed; I was informed that departure time was still 3.15pm.That had to be confusing. It was. Notwithstanding my complaints that I did not receive any text message, call or email notification that the flight had been delayed till 7pm, Arik Air operatives simply informed me that there was nothing they could do. Few minutes after I stormed out of the airline’s Gombe airport desk, the airline sent me a text message that the flight had been delayed till 7pm. That was hilarious.

Further calls to the establishment’s help desk yielded no positive result as four of Arik Air’s help desk officers craftily cut me off the line perhaps in realization that there was no structure or dependable measure in place to assist any traveler that’s left stranded due to the airline’s inefficiencies.

Exasperatedly, I tried getting a refund of money paid for the return flight but that proved abortive as Arik Air staff informed me that I won’t be given a refund until I produced the teller I was issued at Arik Air, Lagos airport desk, as evidence of payment. At this juncture, I asked the officer attending to me if Arik Air had details of my flight itinerary, and he said they do; three online help desk officers also confirmed that Arik Air had my flight itinerary yet they all stated that I would not be given a refund because I could not produce the teller which to them, was the only evidence that I truly paid for the Arik Air ticket with which I had completed the first leg of my contracted air travel with their establishment.

I could not understand what was going on; Arik Air made a good show – at the beginning of the year – and still makes a big deal of its elevated and technologically-driven operations; if the airline’s operation is truly as sophisticated and as it touts it to be, why was it difficult for Arik Air staff to confirm if I indeed paid for the ticket with which the airline issued me boarding pass throughout my first part of the trip? Why should such minor detail pose an accounting problem if the airline’s transactions and operations are truly driven by avant-garde technology?

Eventually, I found the teller and presented it to Arik Air but I decided against getting a refund. I opted to wait till 7pm to join the Arik aircraft out of Gombe. The plane landed in Abuja and from there I joined a flight to Kano from where I joined another connecting flight to Lagos. It was indeed a hellish experience that saw me hopping on three flights from Gombe to Lagos between 7pm and 10.30pm.

In retrospect, I cannot single out the happenstance that portended the grisliest horror to me; from the airline’s inability to communicate change in its flight schedule in advance to the gross unprofessionalism and insouciance of Arik Air’s online help desk staff, terror bloomed like a medieval troll at its prime.

Arik Air is not the first or the last Nigerian enterprise that inefficiency continually leads to defile the hallowed sanctums of trust. Several organizations spanning the aviation, telecoms and banking sector frequently maltreat their customers knowing they would always go scot-free.

Sadly there is no effective legal mechanism and consumer rights protection agency to defend the rights of their helpless customers every time they are cheated, oppressed or forced into compromising and vulnerable situations by the almighty Nigerian ‘big businesses.’

Arik Air’s case however, is particularly confounding given its penchant to evoke filial and nationalistic bonds with prospective Nigerian customers.

• To be continued…

I have seen courage flower in the face of the impossible. Such valour is frequently ascribed to an innate strength and unparalleled humanity of the courageous. It is no physical strength. And very few of the world’s bravest warriors possess such valour that defies brawn and accentuates moral vigour.

Victor John, 15, showed such courage in a damning moment; thanks to John, the entire clans constituting Ungwan Sankwai, Tyekum and Ungwan Gata villages of Bondon district, Kaura LGA of Kaduna State were saved from total extermination by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

Although many of the bereaved are wailing the brutal massacre of loved ones even as you read, the survivors owe their lives to the 15-year old who sighted the invaders marching on the community. John alerted his father and reportedly went from house to house to wake up their neighbours and warn them of imminent death. Eventually, his father evacuated some of his siblings but his mother and other siblings weren’t so lucky; they were hacked to death by the invaders.

Like the Kaduna teen, Hugh Thompson, an American army pilot could be said to have exhibited moral courage in the face of odds. Thompson landed his helicopter between a platoon of American soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. Then he ordered his gunner to fire his M60 machine gun on the advancing U.S. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. For this act of moral courage, Thompson, like John, suffered repercussion; he was hounded and reviled by the American establishment.

Such is the consequence of moral courage. It begets a price. In the case of Victor John, it cost him his mother and siblings. And for being morally courageous, Thompson was vilified by the American military – the establishment attempted to conceal the massacre and court-martial him.

Moral courage encompasses the nerve to do the right thing and speak the truth always. In involves defying the mob as a solitary individual; to spurn the invigorating embrace of comradeship; to be disobedient to authority, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle. And with moral courage come persecution and any other form of repercussion that more often than not, exposes the individual as defenseless mark to be preyed upon.

Gani Fawehinmi had moral courage, so did Martin Luther King. Malcolm X had it and Wole Soyinka epitomizes it. Predictably, perpetuators of such morality are either maligned by fate or ascribed rogue status by the State. Routinely they are accused and charged for treason. But in their touted notoriety subsists the irony of an incontrovertible metaphor; they usually represent the best of mankind and civilization in their time.

The contemporary youth however, personify a very sad contradiction of humanity and courage epitomized by John, Thompson, and the late Fawehinmi to mention a few. Essentially, they represent Nigeria’s sad decent into the gallows of inhumanity. Like a fugitive quirk you find no word for, the contemporary youth grows like a scar on his clan and the nation’s psyche. Much of what he symbolizes indicates decadence and rot thus the manifestation of a Nigerian youth divide incapacitated to the finer traits of citizenship and humanity.

This glaring lack manifests virtually in every aspect of our life as a nation; the Nigerian society evolves as a perfect reflection of the nation’s youth. Given the quality of the nation’s youth, the country suffers the preponderance of cowards and shadows of men populating its youth divide and the future of the Nigerian State.

From a tender age, the Nigerian youth is socialized to be corrupt and inhumane; the process starts very early in life, in the family unit. Many parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see their child cheat and oppress his peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see him evolve into a ‘lovable’ brute at a tender age; they claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.

Thus from adolescence through adulthood, many parents applaud dishonesty perpetrated by their wards, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that their children are “smart” and inured in the ways of the world. These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty; parents nurture them in their wards and the latter perpetuate them in attitude, till they start procreating and perpetuating within their lineage, grosser forms of shamefulness and bestiality.

It starts from the very little things; like grooming the child to be fraudulent through adolescence. Hence the multitude of “peaceful, hardworking and God-fearing” families engaged in desperate pursuits to enroll their wards and university hopefuls in “special coaching schools” while they purchase for them, seats at “special centres,” as they write the S.S.C.E and JAMB exams.

Such wards, dutifully trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually mature into foetal adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena. Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society and custom; and at the end, we have brutes and foetal adults running our lives and determining our future.

At this juncture, many may dispute, claiming such shameful lot constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 160 million-strong families or thereabouts. Really? If that be the case, why is it that their voices and deeds resonate and tower above the humanity of the ‘moral few’ if ever such divide exists in contemporary Nigeria?

As you read, Nigeria manifests as the tainted fantasy of a perverted mob, home and abroad. The virtues that builds character, fosters community and sustain a nation-state, from honesty, self-sacrifice to transparency, are ridiculed everyday in public sphere and every night on TV as rubes stupid enough to cling to unrealistic fantasies and bestiality are celebrated on network news, perverted sitcoms and the now ubiquitous reality TV charade.

It is due to a lack of moral courage and character that the Nigerian youth tirelessly obsess about the decadent and perpetrate the obscene just to be seen as hip and flowing with the times. Hence the attractiveness of the vulgar, such as the fast-circulating homosexuality and trans-sexuality bugs, internet scam, terrorism, bribery, official fraud, wild, rampant and uninhibited sex.

The Nigerian youth has been flipped upside-down and inside-out that it has become increasingly difficult to identify by them what constitutes acceptable values and culture of civilization representative of the Nigerian spirit and psyche. Today we praise the woman who tries to be the toughest career girl in the office and applaud the man who tries to be the prettiest drag queen in the bar.

Consequently, the country embraces depravity and perpetuates society on series of pathetic illusions thus amplifying the kind of twilight disconnect that accelerates the disappearance of dying empires. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is agitation for acceptance of homosexuality, acquittal of a corrupt public officer or glorification of an insidious civilization, Nigeria takes surefooted strides into infamy and extinction.

•To be continued

Neither proverbs nor verse; nor the most burdensome introspection could rewrite our tragedies into bliss. The grandest of rhymes would make no monstrosity sublime; it will not ignite the most gutless of hearts into an elegance of fire. But we continue to chant anyway; even as our freedom song becomes a funeral dirge. We continue to chant anyway; we who invite the tree maggot to beautify our funeral pyre.

It is not wisdom, humaneness or courage that drives us to do the things we do, rather it is an absence of these that dwarfs our hearts from the highest deeds. Thus we evolve from a nation enfeebled by fear and greed, to become the land besotted to lust and death’s every endeavour.

Hence our pursuit of self to the detriment of the Nigerian State. It is to the same evils that we are still beholden. Despite our tiresome rant and supposed displeasure with the status quo, we remain the perfection of a stagnant form of self-complacency.

The role of the Nigerian elite and the working class is today, perverted. No longer do they serve to provide a focal point to challenge the nation and ultimately advance its course. The Nigerian elite today, settle principally to perpetuate their parasitic existence. And so does the country’s impoverished working class.

Despite our protests in the interest of the working class or the proverbial “average Nigerian,” reality proves us mostly, to be just another band of opportunists and frauds. The Nigerian working class indeed, constitutes a fraud. Without doubt, this purportedly cheated class has evolved to become as much tormentors as the country’s ruling class.

Both the ruling class and the working class are indeed cut from the same stock. They possess no enviable culture or refinement save their proficiency in the decadent and perverse. That explains why the major preoccupation of the Nigerian people is to acquire – albeit obscenely – material wealth, fame and a limitless degree of influence and impropriety to make an obscene show of it.

This in no small measure impacts negatively on the country’s social institutions of which a great many evolve to become like those chestnut burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only for pricking the fingers. The downside of this abnormal situation manifests in the quality of citizenship available to the Nigerian nation.

Although the country’s pioneer elite class emerged to serve both patronizing and reactionary roles in response to the agenda of the country’s British colonialists, this small band constituting the country’s ruling class have since evolved along various shades of political culture that are at best rudderless and incoherent.

The Nigerian working class, on the other hand, evolved out of an economic necessity. The evolution of this class has over time betrayed series of conscious and desperate attempts by members of the class to align themselves with the ruling class against fellow underprivileged members of the working class.

Hence today, the country’s working class has evolved into a fundamentally crooked class, comprising struggling professionals, unemployed youth, self-styled activists and opportunists persistently milking every impasse and volatile situation to their advantage. With the inexorable expansion of the process of globalisation, they are bonding much faster and inching together towards a more definite destruction of the nation’s populist movement, and its yet untapped array of socio-political and economic resources.

The scale of the current crisis is no doubt immense and reflective of the contradictions that have been piling up in the last 54 years of the country’s independence. Not only has the Nigerian working class been severely depleted of men of potential and substance, its capacities to make new heroes of otherwise dormant youths has been ruthlessly sabotaged.

Far removed from its limitless potentials in the pre-independence era, the country’s working class has become too handicapped to face the country’s infinite challenges. Therefore, the citizenry’s total capitulation to the country’s extremely stringent living standards which persistently manifests in the country’s leadership malaise, dying industries, unemployment, substandard education, healthcare and insecurity to mention a few.

Caught in the vortex of these dehumanizing conditions, many social commentators have advocated a Soviet-styled or Middle-Eastern styled revolt against the country’s ruling class however, what most of such advocates have failed to note are the striking peculiarities that will hinder such a revolt in this part of the globe – basically, the absence of a cohesive and a fundamentally conscious working class.

The most remarkable detail replicated in the various revolutionary actions that have successfully taken place across the world, is the indisputability of Freidrich Engels’ assertion that the State is nothing more than armed bodies of men, organized in the interest of the private property.

As Ola Balogun identified recently, Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali like various characters constituting Nigeria’s conscienceless leadership are just individuals, who on their own are totally powerless, but they maintain their influence and might by imposing themselves on the citizenry via the apparatus of coercion and violence perpetrated through their nation’s armed forces.

But unfortunately for Mubarak and Ben Ali among others, the armed forces of men constituting their nation’s armed forces are themselves human beings with feelings and are also affected by the pervasive harsh realities and inhumane conditions of their societies. At a decisive point during the revolution, these armed bodies of men discovered in the citizenry’s revolt, a rousing fearlessness and fortitude to challenge and conquer, thus even the army got divided along class lines.

The middle and junior ranks began to reason and identify with the aspirations of the revolutionary movement. Eventually, they began to see themselves too as civil servants and the oppressed even as they unapologetically flouted age-old military codes.

What is deductible from these occurrences is that even the armed forces and various other apparatuses of State coercion and power will act decisively in the interest of the rebellion if the masses can give them enough reason to do so – via infinite tenacity, purpose, initiative and preparedness to sacrifice. These sterling qualities unfortunately, are lacking in the country’s citizenry.

Thus Nigeria remains an independent nation constituted by citizenry who do not know yet how to be free. We could not be totally free yet even if we tried. Even if it could be granted that the average Nigerian – working class to be precise – has freed himself from a colonial tyranny, he remains at present, slave to various classes of home-spawned political and economic tyranny.

The Nigerian working class today lacks a true culture of citizenship and manhood characteristic of the free. They are essentially shorn of initiative and slavish in character. Slavish, because they are unapologetically mindless, gullible and unable to evolve an acceptable standard of determining the truth and identifying with it.

However, it’s probably due to the persistent hardship and extreme realities they are forced to endure that the country’s working class have become pitiably vitiated in reason and exploits. The success of any revolution is never totally dependent on the presence of a bloodthirsty revolutionary front but as current realities instruct; the existence of a conscientious, cohesive, patriotic, peaceful and formidable working class.

The existence of such peace-loving and dependable class of citizenry becomes imperative in a country like Nigeria where the ruling class seems completely lost to reason and justice.

Today, the Nigerian youth becomes fleeting fracture of the towering immensity he ought to represent. More worrisomely, many of the nation’s youth seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis 40 years before they get the physical kind from chain smoking, binge drinking, gluttony and mental indolence. Who cares though? It’s every man for himself; the ruling class and Nigeria’s senior citizenry will not bat an eyelid even if our youth is wasted beyond redemption, as long as their children inherit their stash of the country’s looted wealth.

The ordinary youth however, continues to perpetuate that sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes as “wisdom” among the rich but arrant foolishness of the masses. Hence the successful doctor, banker, journalist, engineer, accountant to mention a few, amongst us, do not care about anything and anybody else.

Yet we pine for positive social change and environment in which we could thrive. The few that claim to be intellectually endowed and progressive in thought amongst us seek to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to actualize their dreams of bliss. But even this few have no taste at all for the vagaries of honest industry.

We live and thrive on a perversion hence when we cry for a historic revolution and youth-friendly society, our thoughts pander to a more permissive and corrupt society that will aid our mad, desperate dash for unearned wealth or what we deem our share of the Nigerian dream.

This is our Nigerian dream: a lush, breathtaking future that de-emphasizes honest toil and accords our vanities a caressing glance. We dream of strings of bank accounts at home and abroad; we hope to drive the best cars, live in palatial mansions in highbrow areas and enjoy the most lucrative contracts and job offers even when we do too little to deserve these.

Our lust for the fleeting banishes reality. And this depravity is pervasive. Decades ago, it manifested as worrisome and inordinate self-love; today, we re-establish it as the language of the socially inspired and politically correct. Hence the frenzy with which we seek out and worship industry titans, political messiahs, entertainment superstars and other celebrity icons. It’s all part of our desperate ploy to substantiate our vanities by seeking ourselves in those we worship and establishing a false intimacy with them.

If modern gospel of prosperity and motivational literature won’t make us celebrities, then celebrity idols, reality television and sheer violence will. We impatiently wait for our cue to walk on stage inside our theatre of the absurd to be admired, feared or envied. Our vanities cramp the growth of our human spirit: they restrict the resuscitation and positive engagement of our productive faculties. Thus we find it hard to subscribe to such faith, simple decencies, honesty and values that demand that we enthusiastically dedicate ourselves to progressive personal growth and realistic rejuvenation of the Nigerian enterprise.

That is why we have youth threatening to destroy Nigeria and perpetuate ethnic genocide if President Goodluck Jonathan retains his seat or is booted from office come 2015. It is unforgivable idiocy and utter insanity for any youth to lend himself to such pitiful causes despite glaring political and socio-economic constraints that the incumbent administration foist upon us. This is not to absolve preceding governments of culpability but it is simply too repulsive in thought and action for the contemporary Nigerian youth to root for leadership that has done too little to improve standard of living in the country even as it gorges on resources meant for the sustenance of the collective.

A societal madness has begun to occur: bigoted, unemployed youth and bigoted employed youth; lost souls wandering the streets of Nigeria’s major cities, day and night, like loose molecules in an unstable social fluid have begun to ignite. Thus our cities have become covens of immense cruelty where youth, fired by angst, a lingering sense of hurt and revolt, take alarming steps from threatening violence to perpetrating it. Traditional neglect of the youth as negligible integers of growth has evolved to dangerous generalizations and the demonization of peaceful majorities.

Today, economic forces create an overriding sense of disenchantment and futility among the youth. Additionally, the tyranny and insensitivity of the ruling class accentuates reactionary attitude and self-aggrandizing pursuits amongst the youth. The prominence of social justice and equality movements has dissipated as we become more concerned with identity politics than the greater good. Ironically, the ruling class, their close associates and scions are the only beneficiaries from this splintering of Nigeria into racist and more selfish associations.

A prevalent crisis of confidence has occurred in reaction to the social turmoil. More youths are feeling empty and without purpose yet we continue to moot revolution like the next best thing we could orchestrate after our last follies have fallen silent. We forget, still, that there is a time to speak and time to act; time to scream and silently orchestrate the inestimable violence of uprightness.

Our much vaunted “Occupy Nigeria” movement failed because the Nigerian youth is innately lacking in grit, honesty and ideal; that is why we remain perpetually exploitable – victims of what George Bernard Shaw, terms “the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry.”

Despite our romanticized wish to abolish the status quo as the protests dragged, the eventual result was as usual, an opportunistic contract between the exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin would call “the original sweetheart agreement.”

Eventually, the Nigerian youth is written off and our grievances dismissed as the crazed rant of a pathetic mass of revolutionary impostors. President Jonathan and company couldn’t be wrong for eventually dismissing us as essentially hopeless and misdirected, I reiterate.

Here, then, is the crucial temptation facing us; either we acquire at least a provisional and concrete ideology and the ability to commit ourselves to more progressive enterprise, or we expose ourselves to greater exploitation and disillusionment. More often than not, we are tempted to give up and retreat, in search of some comfortable, greener pasture where we can luxuriate and “survive” according to the idiosyncrasies and social conditioning our host nation deem worthy of us; this is always the resort of cowards and the feeble-minded.

The alternative is to drastically overhaul our values to become more progressively inclined and concerned with the political, the economic and social; to acquire the competencies and the skills necessary for the tasking work that must be done if the social structure of Nigeria is to be even slightly modified. Solutions can never be discovered without profound understanding of law, governance methods and the economics and social organization of humane statehood.

It’s about time we cultivated progressive interest in such realms and practicable goals and norms for their actualization; without these, we will continue to flounder in the sea of often ‘well-meaning’ but ineffective good intentions.

These are dark days for the Nigerian youth. We are going through a particularly unpleasant form of hell but it’s a hell that we have made for ourselves by our ghastly greed, laziness and inarticulateness. But we have still got youth on our side and thus the possibility of change.