The political option that we thought would save us as a country is turning around to not only batter us but is threatening to drown us. Mmmn! Now where shall we run to, the hills?
To say that the nation is grieving is a large slice of understatement. The nation’s heart is broken. Actually, I am one of those who believe that its spine was broken right at birth. In other words, when the country was founded on the tripartite foundation of unsteady wobbliness, ungainly clumsiness and deceitful falsities in order to favour one group over another, the country had little or no fighting chance. You could say it came out fresh from the delivery room practically dead on arrival. The result of all that was planted in those early times is what we are all witnessing today – social exclusion of extremely large groups of people. In turn, this unfortunate but deliberate exclusion has bred varied levels of national malcontent, social fractures, senseless insurgencies, and one great, monumental chaos all of which have made this nation one giant mental institution floating in outer space. That’s right, folks, you and I have our abode in The Lost Country.
The sad thing is that the country is one huge success as far as those who planned this chaos are concerned. You see, this country was never meant to do well; so in the very fabrics of its failures resides its success. Yep, we are children of the doomed… nation. Indeed, that it is still standing, albeit rocking on its heels like one drunken ancient mariner tottering on the edge of his famous breakdown, is one of the miracles of the modern world. Science is a wonderfully astounding thing and it has been known to do things and reach places even you and I have no inkling of, but I do believe that the science that can save this nation is perhaps still on the drawing board. You see, it would have to include an antivirus that is capable of not only wiping out this strange strain of madness besetting us all but inoculate even the yet unborn in the country.
Just imagine, two hundred school girls were abducted all at once from a north-eastern town in Nigeria; presumably, where we have law enforcement agencies. Without any interference from any of these agencies, those children were being put into trucks and this did not take place in a few minutes! Worse, they passed through streets and roads filled with people. No one saw them, no one interrupted them. And there has been no inkling as to where they are, many days after! This is the extent to which we really have lost it in this country. It is not only the girls that are lost, the entire country is obviously lost! Now, who is going to find us?
For ages, right thinking elites and news commentators tried to articulate the impunities and ills bothering this nation, and it’s been no trifling act for them; for both the mild pens and the more ponderous ones have wrought and oozed weighty prose in the attempt or failed trying. In spite of these clanging of caution screaming horror, beware the horror, the ills kept piling up because the impunities kept growing. Now, we have come to the point where locations are no longer just bombed in daylight, people are not just killed in daylight, hundreds of school children are abducted in broad daylight! Ebino! That’s just the way we are! And the nation is helpless because, in truth, it has existed on series and litanies of impunities. Let us see now.
When a nation’s laws are perpetually set aside for selfish and self-serving reasons, it’s the beginning of the dance macabre manifesting as the death wriggle. Just look at every facet of national life: the military never had any respect for the nation’s laws; this is why it was and still is possible for every general to have his own outriders and siren and also dictate for the country. Now, the presidency has inherited that lack of respect for laid down laws and kicks them around anyhow. Blatant and outright disobedience of the law is perpetually displayed to the nation from the presidency daily: check out the case of governors’ forum election (illegal as it is), the Justice Salami case and so on. And have you seen the police drive around in traffic? I assure you, you will whistle through your teeth. Equally bad are drivers of vehicles bearing government plate numbers: they make everyone want to pick up their feet and run. The beginning of tragedy is when leaders lead the entire country down a rut, and the followers follow in the footsteps of the leaders. And well they should. So, when impunity greets impunity, there is nothing else to do but self-destruct. As we are doing now.
Nigerian leaders laid down the precedence for what happened last week many decades ago by their failure to show the people what to do, how to keep the law, build their houses, conduct their businesses, use the roads, have access to the public utilities, and how to have everybody equal before the state, etc. And by failing to have one law for all, the leaders tacitly gave everyone of us the go-ahead to evolve the law as we saw fit: mostly to act with impunity. This is what happened in the South-south when the president’s own relative was kidnapped; now it is happening in the North-east. Many other things happened to give rise to these but we cannot go into them here. What is the use crying foul when the referee is already peddling out of the pitch on his escape bicycle? Who knows if perhaps the culmination of all this is yet to come? I tell you, Chaos rules, ok? Ok!
Let us now scrape around for solutions because we really need to scratch the ground to find anything in this quagmire of gooey problems. Listen, this country needs to do some serious social engineering to give everyone a stake in the place. This socio-economic distancing of people within their own fatherland needs to be checked. The worst part is that this group, already excluded from the society, are now seeking to exclude even more of their own kin and generation and coming ones who are seeking to end their own exclusion through education. This wickedness needs to be put a stop to.
Everyone knows now that the political content of this insurgency is very high. This means that the political arrangement that we thought would save us as a country is turning around to not only batter us but is threatening to drown us. Mmmn! That is food for thought. Now where shall we run to, the hills? Those children were said to have been taken into the forests where the insurgents have their camps, presumably, to be wives to the outlaws. Now, is it possible for two neighbouring countries not to be on talking terms that they cannot cooperate to look at every blade of grass between their two countries in search of those girls?
In my opinion, I think the first thing that the government ought to do is take a good look at itself and stop declaring that it is fine. It is not fine. Indeed, something is very wrong if we all allow the insurgency to continue to grow because of the government’s reluctance to bring out the facts surrounding the problem. And, obviously, there are facts. It will be sad to continue to allow the nation to get more lost because of this reluctance. As it is now, each day, people are getting more confused because they have more questions than answers. I think the answers should begin to come about… now!
