Category: Olatunji Ololade

If we should go our separate ways, we shan’t stop being the brutes we are nor shall we stop pretending to have answers to everything, except our duplicity and greed. We shan’t stop exulting by sick dialectics like treacherous revolutionaries in a dusk of compromise.

A simple lust remains our woe; it invalidates the elite class and its infinite abstractions. It amplifies the tragedy of the working class and the Nigerian youth. It is the lust for luxury and unearned greatness.

Like pond scum over moss, the Nigerian elite ingratiate himself to the predatory ruling class in every circumstance and clime even as he makes a big show of speaking all manner of truths, except “truth” to power. Now that his duplicity drags, like a rickety wheel caught in quicksand, the Nigerian elite will forswear youth. He has chosen to play the daunting-Thomas where resolute will and burning heart commands the infinite perspective and possibility of the Nigerian youth.

Not a few people, self-acclaimed elite and progressives, have written to fault my call for the Nigerian youth to save Nigeria. They claim the Nigerian youth is incapable of such human qualities like wisdom, altruism, maturity and tolerance. One particular “progressive elite” wrote to say that “Nigeria can never thrive in the hands of the Nigerian youth.” He said leadership and nation-building are serious matters that shouldn’t be left in the hands of youth whose idea of citizenship revolves around the acquisition of the trendiest luxury ride and whims of every political predator and criminal mastermind.

I am tempted to believe him given the brutal reality of his assertion. But then this”progressive elite” goes on to recommend bloody revolution to wipe out the incumbent ruling class and a secessionist palliative by which “every ethnic group would go its separate way “peacefully or violently” to forge its destiny away from the madness of the Nigerian dream.” This secessionist agenda, he claims, “should be driven by the Nigerian youth whose fire and spark is variously misapplied in the current political enterprise.”

In a nutshell, our “progressive elite” and lest I forget, an Associate Professor of Political Science, believes the Nigerian youth is incapable of leadership and positive steps at nation-building but this same youth would serve well in a bloody massacre of the ruling class and secessionist agenda of every ethnic group.

If you are in your youth and you are reading this, then you have known what the almighty elite and articulate hero of practicable politics thinks of you. Maitama Sule, Anthony Enahoro, Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa to mention a few, united to build the heritage we destroy, in their youth. But you and I are never considered as worthy of such dignified human endeavours as conscientious leadership and statesmanship, like our late leaders (although Maitama Sule is very much alive). Of course, they had their faults, they made mistakes, but every unforgivable blunder of theirs is acceptable to our next best attribute.

Today, the Nigerian youth becomes the butt of damaging critiques and interminable cynicism. Are we going to do anything about it? Or shall we continue to wallow in self-pity and hate even as we continually pursue an agenda to self-destruct, according to the whims of the incumbent ruling class?

We should never serve as cannon fodder by which familiar shady politicians and activists will achieve their secessionist agenda. If every Nigerian soldier, police officer, student, banker, journalist, doctor, accountant – to mention a few – in his youth could endeavour to scorn the call for bloody revolution or secession and rather advise its propagators to recruit their sons and daughters, mothers and wives, fathers and other blood relatives to propagate their agenda, the end result will spell infinite good for you and me. Trust me.

But many Nigerian youth and self-acclaimed “progressive elite” will continue to pound the drums of violence and bloodshed from their safe havens abroad while they stay far away from the scenes of genocide they incite. Many more have their escape strategies activated and their escape routes marked, in preparation for the hour when Nigerian drowns in the bloodbath they excite.

Such elite class represents the purely physical evil whose limit we can never be sure of. Our ultimate goal should be to neuter them, everlastingly to be precise. The abolishment of the infinite evil they epitomize should be perpetuated by ample use of the ballot box. We cannot totally abolish the inhumanity of such contemptible characters but like pestilence, we can diminish their influence by securing a fair and healthy socio-political system for all.

It’s about time we accepted the racism and infinite prejudices of this class of Nigerians as a grievous fact, unpardonable in its intensity, unfortunate in results, and dangerous for the future, but nevertheless a hard fact which only time and conscientious efforts can efface. The Nigerian youth owes it to themselves and subsequent generations to assume that selfless citizenship and leadership that the Nigerian situation so eloquently demands.

Let us dispel notions of our incapacities to produce such leadership and citizenship by exorcising ourselves of the damaging culture and common insensibilities of modern political civilization. Let us rise to the imperative demand for trained youth leaders of character and intelligence; men and women of ability and missionaries of culture, thoroughly adept at harmonizing traditional and modern civilization in the establishment of precepts of self-sacrifice and the inspiration of common identity and ideals.

But if such men are to be effective they must have political power; they must be backed by the best public opinion and be able to wield for the attainment of our aims, such weaponry as the experience of the world has taught, are indispensable to human progress.

Of such weaponry, the greatest perhaps, in the modern world is the power of the ballot. The only effective means to deny the patent weaknesses and shortcomings of the Nigerian youth is to dissociate from such weaknesses and shortcomings. This could be achieved by positive citizenship and incursions into political activity.

It would never serve us to remain armchair Trotskys like a reader satirically noted penultimate week. It is time for the Nigerian youth to champion the cause of that prosperous future of our dreams by effecting a change of guardianship of the Nigerian State. Let us do away with the predators we have allowed too much leverage on our power plinths. Let us deny their wives and children continued access to our seats of power.

It is no longer acceptable for us to bemoan our luck and curse the times while we serve as pawns in the designs of every politician and lobbyist with deep pocket. The Nigerian youth should establish a veritable platform to prosecute its pursuit of freedom and self-determination. To achieve this, we need to establish political leverage, like a youthful and citizenry-centred political party and interest group.

It is not enough for us to declare that the incumbent ruling class is the cause of our social condition and for us to aver that our social condition would spell the doom of any promising political enterprise. We must change in order to effect the change in leadership and governance that we seek.

To be continued…

I will not dare to think that this grave we dig today shall bloom tomorrow. But it could. Nigeria could become that mass grave we dream to bury the shoots of nationhood and bliss nurtured by men we may never measure up to. But this is hardly about the founding fathers in whose hands Nigeria pirouetted and prospered.

This is about you and me. This is about our knack for turning logic on its head to complement our innate greed and perversions. If we could help it, Nigeria would die on our watch, today. This minute, every civil dream and seed of State shall evaporate, if we could incite our will to humour our wile.

We think Nigeria is a mistake. But Nigeria was never a mistake. It is never the mistake. You and I are the mistake. You and I are the emblems of hope serving as crops of wrath where covetousness and deceit whets inhuman appetites.

As you read, the myth of war and secession holds fast. Despite the bitterness that trails the Nigerian civil war, characters that ought to know better acidly pronounce the necessity of war and violent secession like the next best thing that could ever happen to you and me.

This myth holds particularly among the youths because it is all they could manage today. War and separation remains appealing to the Nigerian youth not just because politicians, activists and journalists of vulpine intent and intellect claim it’s our next best alternative, our youth lust for war and secession because the idea offers fleeting moments of sentimentality that reinforces their dreams of acceptance and self-worth. Even those who know it to be a farce are loath to jettison that infectious romanticism that gets them giddy as overfed cattle gorging on barn supplies.

The youth are told that the only times in their lives that they would be worth something and enjoy a hopeful reality is when they agree to serve as cannon fodder for the total balkanization of the Nigerian State.

They do not know the import of the politics they perpetuate. It’s not about defending the interests of a minority tribe nor is it about paving the way for a more responsible and humane government. It’s about working for some tyrant activist who works for some rich and privileged cabal with all manners of interests.

Many have made a case for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). They argue that if Nigeria is to move forward or attain progress of any kind, we must sit down to reconsider and decide if really it would serve everyone’s interest to preserve the Nigerian dream.

I agree that the nation needs to sit down to deliberate over the most dependable and progressive path forward. However, it would be the greatest fraud and disservice to you, me and posterity if we claim that splitting Nigeria remains the most practicable solution to our grief.

The very voices that cry for a referendum will get to the SNC to pound drumbeats of dissolution and rancor. Suddenly they will become strange to relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the preservation of the Nigerian State. It is alright for a people to determine what course of action would best serve their interests but it would be suicidal for us all to believe that our travails shall end in a new Biafra, Federal Republic of Oodua or United States of Arewa.

In every new, independent nation we build, there shall be no secure civilization or the usual securities by which a nation thrives. That is because whatever new States we create shall comprise of ignorant, turbulent proletariat stymied by crushing poverty and interminable penchant to play dumb. Such manner of working class or grassroots would as usual be dominated by the same ruling class whose insensitivity and wile informs our desire to separate.

Were the nation’s legislature at its best not a coven of rats and perfidious bums, there would be no wisdom in the convention of a sovereign national conference. But the Nigerian legislature is what it is and you and I are to blame for it.

There is a better life to be had by the Nigerian dream if our youth could endeavour to look inwards and channel that latent reserve we’ve scorned for ages. It is about time we understood that in any new nation we get to create, the current youth shall never become part of the ruling class.

As it is now in contemporary Nigeria, every new leadership we have in every new nation we create shall effortlessly dominate us and impose upon us their children, relatives and political associates while they make labourers and thugs of the youth by whose blood, bestiality and sweat whatever new nation was achieved.

The choice is ours to make; we either choose to remain a bunch of fools and clueless agitators or we could choose to leave the current leadership to the madness it perpetuates while we chart fresh paths to the future of our dreams.

Some of our greatest problems in this country, besides corruption, are racism and greed. However, the Nigerian youth need not be handicapped by these but we seem not to know that. The future of Nigeria lies in our hands. Sovereign National Conference or not, no solution or highfaluting socio-political or economic policy would work under the leadership and citizenship of unrepentant racists and self-aggrandizing characters like you and me.

It is time to heal. It is time for the Nigerian youth to take its rightful place in the scheme of things. I will never tire from saying that it’s about time we sought and identify our own candidate – the untiringly just and humane candidate. And let it be known that we shall never find such candidate amidst the coven of predators to whom we have learnt to serve as prey.

In order to heal, the Nigerian youth need to create and unite under a socio-political platform immune to and jealously guarded against the madness of materialism, racism and intractable wile.

We need to identify the demons that drive the ruling class and dispossess our minds of every vanity that makes us habitable to similar fiends. The tragedy of our generation subsists in our seemingly uncontainable prospects and our desperation to be lorded over and contained, at a price. We are more endowed in intellect and humanity than the current ruling class. Thus let us not continue to serve as disposable pawns in its politics of bitterness and plunder. Rather let us seek to foster such political base as I advocate in the interest of you and me.

It is time to heal and while the healing of our seemingly vast sores is progressing, the Nigerian youth, irrespective of personal politics and tribe, should learn to live and strive, united in common effort, in pursuit of a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in matters of politics and individuality.

If this unusual and unpredictable development is to flourish amid peace and order, reciprocal respect and budding intelligence, it will call for that truest and most dependable social surgery I advocate: revolution by the ballot system.

To be continued…

There is no perfect nation to be born yet Nigeria is the worst nation to be born, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report. No thanks to the Economist magazine’s sister publication, the Nigerian newborn may arrive knowing he has come where the sun dies everlastingly for the bliss of the fig.

The EIU report ranks Nigeria 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its Where-to-be-born index. Predictably, the report has inspired and incited all manners of conspiracy theories and affirmation of doom; foremost newspapers and columnists have written editorials affirming the report and the poor fate of the Nigerian child; child advocacy groups have regrouped to re-strategize in order to fleece international children foundations off grants that would never get to its touted recipient, the Nigerian child.

Within the din of socio-politically correct and self-righteous vituperation, a crucial voice dies slowly, painfully but certainly; it is the voice that goes to bat for the Nigerian child. Foremost newspapers may have affirmed the EIU’s claims but very few newspapers would publish as their cover stories, the plight of teenage sex workers or child urchins across the country, unless there is a mass death involving the minors. Such media fare is never strong enough to upstage news of political party intrigues and permutations. And if you examine closely the child rights campaigns, you will find that they have always been meal tickets to duplicitous and luxury-lusting advocacy groups.

Nobody actually speaks for the newborn. Nobody speaks for the Nigerian child. And nobody truly speaks to the only human force capable of exciting the future in which the Nigerian newborn may arrive assured of a prosperous fate and a better life; the Nigerian youth.

There is a tragedy inherent in our customary lamentation every time our conscience is roused with a damning report and as it has become customary of us, more racist politicians and activists have suggested that we split and go our separate ways touting it as the only solution to our league of extraordinary problems.

Secession is the anthem that we should shun. It is the fruit of ‘reason’ that we need to be wary of and I will continue to say this hoping every prospective muscle –the youth – by which the separatists hope to achieve their dreams of dissolution, would listen and learn to let the secessionists risk their skins to prove their platitudes.

The biggest misconception about secession, insurgence, self-determination or whatever the separatists choose to call it is that it could be peaceful and that the end result would be a conscientious and citizenry-centred dispensation.

It’s all dirty, greedy politics; the separatists want the youth to fly the flags of their dream nations, they want everybody to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows,”Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” They call anyone that’s anti-war and anti-secession, “pacifist,” “traitor” or whatever colourful adjective suits their rage. Then they promise the youth a prosperous future and better fate under their dream nation. Consequently, youth that ought to know better buy into such farce and they all begin to dream and talk of the great uprising that would set them free from the living hell Nigeria has become.

Truly, it is a sad thing for us as a nation to be afflicted by such youth whose eyes cannot see and intellect cannot detect the hideous manifestations of the vulpine intellect characteristic of the Nigerian separatists. Thus the Nigerian youth wastes his passion recycling hackneyed criticisms and fomenting trouble in the name of all manners of political godfathers, minority group leaders, human rights activists, tribal rights activists, youth leaders to mention a few.

He engages in bootless pursuits at the end of which he accomplishes too little or nothing. For himself he probably accomplishes some individualized goal – satisfaction of a sentiment or material gain – which to him is everything but for Nigeria, he accomplishes comparatively nothing.

Eventually, he grows into the prototypical average, disgruntled man on the street, who suddenly realizes in his twilight that he had squandered God’s greatest gifts to him, his intellect and talent – then the smokescreen of youth and hastily prized platitudes begin to peter out and he realizes that his miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a contemptible kobo.

The attempt to conceive imaginatively, a better ordering of Nigerian society than the destructive, pitiless chaos in which the nation has sunk is by no means modern; it is at least as old as Plato, whose “Republic” set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers and self-styled revolutionaries.

The secessionists contemplate a new world in the light of an ideal: they claim to feel a great sorrow by the evils that characterize Nigeria, and they claim to be driven by an urgent desire to lead their race to the realization of the collective good. It is this desire which has been the primary force moving the pioneers of Anarchism and horrid tyrannies, as it moved the creators of ideal commonwealths in the past.

In contemporary Nigeria, it is incense for suspicious revolutionaries claiming to fight for the interests of Nigeria’s ethnic divides. In this there is nothing new; what is new and unpardonably offensive is the pretension of such characters to heartfelt sorrow, shared grief and relation in identity and ideal to the present sufferings of the Nigerian youth and breadlines.

This has enabled cynical and anarchist political movements to grow out of the frustrations and hopes of Nigeria’s youth and predominantly impressionable thinkers whose thought processes are anything but politically conscious. And this makes the agitation of the Nigerian separatists worrisome and markedly dangerous to the survival of the Nigerian State.

The process of re-sensitizing the youth away from the establishment of chaos and genocide advocated by the secessionists will be greatly accelerated by the abolition of the current political order; however, this can only be achieved by the nation’s youth – who are unfortunately taken by the platitudes and poetics of Nigeria’s band of self-serving ruling class and racist emancipators.

It is no doubt the stock in trade of the latter to refer to violent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, India-Pakistan, Mali and parts of Asia among others, as worthy indicators of Nigeria’s need to follow suit. Whenever they dazzle with such informed commentary, tell them to lead the secession they advocate with their wives, children and closest relatives.

Many activists, youth leaders and self-acclaimed political heroes today have their wives and children safely tucked away in secure schools and sociopolitical climes overseas even as they goad impoverished and clueless youth at home to their doom.

If it is true that there is appreciable number of Nigerian youth capable of powering revolts for ethnic self-determination, the end of which is dissolution of Nigeria, why can’t the same youth power the social regeneration and reclamation of the Nigerian State from the clutches of the predatory ruling class, ethnic bigots and dissolution activists?

The current political separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of education and culture, if the youth could endeavour to be truly civilized. But such transformation calls for remarkable wisdom and tolerance.

To be continued…

There is no odor as vile as that which arises from despoiled citizenship. It is insidious, human and outright malevolent. And it is all that we represent as Nigerians. Let us not make a mockery of citizenship; we are not the model citizens we profess to be.

We whose idea of citizenship gravitates from arrant skepticism to dilettantism, gruesome criticism to cynicism and utter insincerity will never court hope even when we see it. And the consequence abounds all around us.

Yesterday, our grief was of marginalization, unemployment, religious and ethnic bigotry, corruption in high places and enfant terrible godfathers. Today, we grieve because our youths are unemployed, our mothers are impoverished and our daughters litter dimly lit brothels and recesses of the sidewalk within and outside the country.

Today, we talk of going to war and sing to ourselves, blood-spattered choruses of youthful rebellion. We love to sing such ballads that beguile our will and caress our eardrums; that is why we court and fete such leadership as we have now. It is that time of the year when they promise us stable electricity, gallantry in governance, dependable economy and security. It is that time of the year when they recite the same old platitudes to the same old electorate.

They promise us honor, status, glory, and a prosperous future as usual and as usual, we fail to hold these promises up against their culture of leadership; that flagrant norm of theirs that blesses us with dead-end jobs of small-town life, religious and financial terrorism, bankruptcy, ethnic bigotry, substandard healthcare, inferior education and unemployment.

But we believe them anyway. We who are conditioned by poverty and lust for unearned riches perpetually seek all manners of benefits and self-actualization, like greater State autonomy, more States and secession. We, who have learnt to enjoy dwellings like hell, are promised nations like Eden, by men who couldn’t enrich their households had they all the riches in the world.

The dream of secession is the call of the Sirens, the enticement that has for generations seduced old and young Nigerians struggling to keep inadequate jobs in fast food restaurants, construction sites and bus parks, and behind the counters at city malls.

We desperately crave and embrace the secession alternative because every other cul-de-sac in our lives breaks our spirit and dignity. Pick up advocacy group manifestos or human rights reports of genocide and marginalization. Listen to self-acclaimed youth leaders, weepy politicians and activists, the allure of greater autonomy, self-determination or whatever they choose to call it is touted as our next best alternative.

They will not tell you it’s a trap, a ploy, an old, dirty game of deceit in which the powerful and informed who will not go to war, promises a mirage to youth who will. We have seen this in the tragedy of suicide bombers, political thugs and ethno-religious death squads holding the nation by the jugular.

We have seen and felt this in our tragic obsequiousness to the ruling class on the political, economic and socio-cultural turfs that condition you and me to serve the privileged class, even as we are perpetually consigned by them to the backwaters of the breadlines.

Some of us, the somewhat privileged to be precise, get to travel between two universes: one where everybody gets a chance and a second chance to break out of our socio-political and economic jailhouse, where education, connections, money and influence almost guarantee that you would not fail if you strive. In the other universe, no one ever gets to enjoy a first or second chance. In this universe, when the poor fails and falls, no one picks them up even as the rich stumble and trip their way to the top.

It is not my wish to attack or castigate the rich; they didn’t get to enslave us simply by ordering us to be poor, did they? You and I are willing participants in the impoverishment and eternal enslavement of the Nigerian citizenry.

We are in such dire state because like ones habitually programmed to self-destruct, we love to identify and propound practical solutions to our tragedies but when puts gets to shove, and we are faced with the chance to change our stars, we begin to speak in discordant voices.

Thus this year as all others, we have begun to criticize and speak the thoughts of a growing number of natives seeking relief. What is so sad however is that despite our pretentious protestations and insight, we go about our daily lives perpetuating the same old oddities, self-interests and absurdities.

Thus this year, President Goodluck Jonathan and our league of extraordinary looters have promised to improve our lot even as they get set to further pauperize us. And while we curse our luck and cry, many of us continue to foster the status quo by abhorrent citizenship and conduct. We who lament corruption in high places wholeheartedly nurture duplicity and corruption in low places.

Bloody revolution is never the answer. Neither shall greater autonomy or secession improve our lot; if eventually, every agitating part of Nigeria gets to secede, every new nation we establish shall parade the same old brutes with the same old lusts and self-interests in high and low places.

Any story of secession is a story of elites preying on the weak, the gullible, the marginal, and the poor. The pageantry ends the day we pronounce we secede, particularly for those of us that will occupy the low places. The pageantry will wear off and there will be fewer patriots, and fewer patriots, until there is not a single cheer but tireless shrieks in the street. Whatever contraption we manage to create shall evolve into the monstrosity we have made Nigeria to be.

People who are singing the secession song are the real traitors – like the average Nigerian who scorned merit and conscience to elect President Goodluck Jonathan and company. Such characters would sell out Nigeria for an offshore account, picturesque mansion, soothing sentimentality and membership of high society.

To achieve their plot, they would sentimentalize and hoodwink everyone else to buy into their fount of deceptive freedom. To escape such grotesqueness, we need to raise our voices in dissent, and rally in protest in our communities, on the streets and our square gardens. We need to produce the candidates that will fight our fight and take our risks. We need to unseat the men making our fatherland more toxic and hateful to the rest of the world.

If you don’t think that the policies and actions of the incumbent ruling class is costing us immeasurable damages, then do nothing. But if you can see through the smoke and mirrors, and you realize that you’ll be paying more state and local taxes, while your assets continue to depreciate and the cost of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) and staple food continues to soar out of reach, then you’ll understand the need to invest in producing and supporting the candidates who will successfully defeat and tame the army of predators and executioners occupying our seats of power. Be ready to contribute the most you’ve ever given for a political cause. Be ready to sacrifice.

• To be continued…