NIGERIAN elites are responsible for the seemingly unending political and socio-economic challenges confronting the country, The Nation Newspapers’ Editorial Board Chairman Sam Omatseye has said.
Omatseye said the country’s military and political elites had realised early how to impoverish the masses and manipulate their reactions on national issues through religion.
Omatseye spoke in Abuja at the weekend while delivering the keynote address at the President’s nite of the Government College Ugheli Old Boy’s Association (GCUOBA), Abuja branch.
He said: “In the Northeast, the partisans of Boko Haram began as political foot soldiers. Just as the Niger Delta militants, after being wearied into irrelevance when the ljaw Itsekiri fight ended, became happy recruits of the political masters.
“A former governor of Borno State once boasted that the newspapers were wasting their time reporting his poor performances since most of his people could not read. We can understand why Boko Haram burgeoned.
“Poverty is a twin sister of illiteracy. So, many of the poor were recruited by the political brass for elections. When they enacted their victories, they abandoned them.
“We had a secular example of the trend recently in the bloody bank robbery episode in Offa in Kwara State, where the culprits allegedly were traced to government house.
“What happened in the Northeast was the story of an abandoned citizenry turning to self-help in the name of the Almighty.”
Omatseye said the greatest disservice the elites did to Nigeria was to mix religion and politics to the detriment of the country.
He queried: “How come religion cannot stay in its place and politics in its as well? After all, the concept of a secular state was borne out of this necessity.
“Nigeria seemed to enjoy this until Nigerians started to hear the acronym OIC, which stands for the Organisation of Islamic States, and Christians started to cry out against what they saw as the lslamisation of Nigeria. Before then, were we innocent of religious bias?
“We were not but it ran like an invisible, subterranean thread in the country… So, how did we descend from a nation with a pretension to secularity to an impunity of bigotry?
“One explanation is the advent of the military. Since the military coup that brought the Army to power, the military played a major role to sanctify one religion almost as an official epaulette of state. Those who espoused the faith of the generals in power rose in rank, and others were consigned to subordinate positions.
“The other reason is the gradual decline of the economy, and the immiseration of the Nigerian masses. When I was in Government College, Ughelli, we hardly spoke of the pound or dollar, because of the proud sovereignty of the Nigerian Naira. It was a currency that could hold its own against any in the world.
He added: “We thrived in oil, but also prided on the groundnut pyramid, the palm produce, the cocoa, and blooming middle class and an array of role models craved by the young. Industry dwarfed opportunism and no one loved to cut corners to the top. That was then. Now, it is a different kettle of fish.
“The military also bludgeoned the economy, and gradually the value of the currency, as the bellwether of the state of our finances, began to cascade. The nation witnessed a slow loss of its self-confidence.
“l was serving my youth service in 1985 in Kano when newspaper headlines fumed over the fall of the Naira to the dollar. It was four Naira to a dollar. We were shocked and worried for the economy. But as the Americans say, we ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Omatseye said as the Naira lost the primacy of value, “we started to lose not only self-confidence but our treasured population.”
According to him, “Brain drain crept like a serpent into the anxiety of common vocabulary. Some of the gems in the arts, culture, finance, sciences peered west for pastures: Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, et al. The middle class, now going to seed, was only so in name.”
On way forward, Omatseye, who was honoured alongside other old boys for their services to the school and the society, said Nigerians must fight ignorance and poverty, if an enduring and prosperous democratic society must be built as obtained in other climes.
“In a society like this, nervous breakdown is imminent. When violence ‘of herdsmen broke out, we were less interested in the facts than in lining up behind religious barricades. It is increasingly clear that much of the matter was not as religious as it was posted, but a canvas of criminals who held anchor with violence as many perceived their carnage as religious.
“All of this comes from ignorance, and ignorance from a poor education system that feeds us with poverty.
“We have had these in the United States and Europe. Their love of secularity does not mask their origin in faith. Missionaries played great roles in America, but the state was born as secular entity.”
