That Muhammadu Buhari APC-led government has taken the country many years back into the wood with very little hope of recovery is not a pessimist view. The president without a doubt depicts a crusader of the supremacist hue in every material particular that does not broach equal measures to every subject. The tenuous and fragile bond of unity holding the country has been burnt under his watch and incapable of sustaining our diversities any longer. The country has become an entity of mere collections of religions and tribes with marked differences with mutual fear and suspicion. The government has unconsciously created fertile ground for the promotion of ethnic militias who are now contesting authority with the state.
The insecurity that nested on the wings of promotion of ethno-religious agenda is tearing the country apart. The widespread acrimony amongst different ethnic nationalities across the country has reached a breaking point. Even as we coast to the harbour of this government after eight gruesome years, it is unlikely that we can get the country back to normal whether or not the forthcoming 2023 general elections will be free or fair.
We are in a hostage situation of Catch-22 and there appears to be no reasonable means of escape for us. The concept of citizenship remains skin-deep and a mirage as ethnic and religious fault lines deepen. State institutions have virtually become impotent to serve any useful purpose because of the poison of incompetence hoisted by nepotism and clannish disposition of the leadership.
Citizens are groaning under the yokes of insecurity and economic hardship visited on us by graft, corruption and mismanagement. The frightening state of insecurity is made worse by the audacity of criminal elements that now negotiate with government and its agents from the position of strength. The government has unconsciously promoted these same criminal elements at parity with state actors just to appease them, holding parleys with them on their own terms. The activities of bandits, Boko Haram insurgents and other criminal elements have virtually reduced our security forces almost to jelly as security men have become victims of high casualty, being ambushed and killed in their numbers.
I was bemused and traumatized listening to the Chief of Army Staff during the Jumat prayers before the Nigerian Army Day celebration that recently held in Owerri in Imo State when speaking on the recent killings of some soldiers at Shiroro in Niger State. The army chief appeared visibly nonplussed before the camera when he said that the culprits responsible for the attack on his soldiers will be brought to book; which book?
One expected that at the heel of that reckless attack before the nation woke up to the news of that carnage, that the evil forest that plays host and abode of the bandits or insurgents from where they launched such audacious attacks had become a scorched earth, while those bandits and insurgents should have been guests in the hottest part of hell where they rightly belong. When soldiers are killed by criminal elements without consequences, it is a message that the country has lost the capacity to defend itself, period.
There was hardly any surprise therefore that the insurgents were able to launch that ferocious attack again on the Kuje Medium Correctional Centre at the Federal Capital Territory which came almost simultaneously after the dress rehearsal with the advance party of the presidential convoy to his village in Daura. Certainly the state spy agents have abandoned or failed in their duty of providing credible intelligence for policing the state just as there appears to be no rhythm and inter agency synergy and cooperation in the fight against insecurity. Like the NSO (Nigeria Security Organization) before it, it appears the present structure of the spy agency has outlived its usefulness due to political meddlesomeness. A spy agency must not operate like gangsters creating fear among citizens and displaying emblems to attract attention in such bravura like Nollywood actors. I am yet to see KGB or Mossad operatives in branded shirts wielding and brandishing weapons in hood and scaring citizens away in any operation like our spy agency do. They are not attack dogs, they are to gather intelligence. Fierce look and assault rifle is for the military not for secret police, let us stop militarizing the state without securing the citizens.
Nobody appears to have any genuine interest and solution to solving our myriad of problems. Nigeria has become like a behemoth and dying sea monster that everyone is coming to share with all manners and shapes of knives. Nobody is making any conscious efforts to change the way we do things. Nobody is taking the government to task to live up to its responsibility of securing the state. We are infused with fear that the state coercive power will be used to hunt and crushed any dissent view or opinion.
The organized labour has since lost its bite. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), human right groups etc are just there for survival. Everyone is only interested to the extent that he can get his bread and butter. The youths who are veritable agents and vanguard of revolutionary change have no organized platform as we had in the past under the aegis of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). Even when they do, they are also infected with the same malaise and bug of ethnicity and religion that they can hardly pursue a common goal and agenda. The nearest the youths had with speaking with one voice was the EndSars protest which was brutally crushed by the state with high casualty under this same APC government brought to power especially by the youths.
The university system has virtually collapsed and students have been home on forced holiday, no thanks to Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) prolonged strike due to government failure to honour simple agreement it freely entered into with the union. Dr Segun Osoba formerly of History Department Obafemi Awolowo University famously captured the rot in our universities while retiring from the system then that he was leaving the university system before the rickety structure of the universities came crashing on his head. Indeed, the public universities have collapsed and crashed under this government.
Today, our health sector is comatose and only government officials and their minions can afford to go on medical tourism abroad. Today, we can no longer buy petrol at official price yet government pay humungous subsidy for the product even though we are the sixth largest producers of crude. Today mass movement of people has been curtailed because of activities of bandits, kidnappers, unknown gunmen etc. Today in many parts of the country if you get power and electricity supply once in a week, you will go and give testimony in your place of worship. Things have become so terribly bad that to be alive the next day is a testimony.
We are blaming insecurity on poverty and unemployment. Good talk! What is the cause of poverty and unemployment if not poor governance and mismanagement by the political elite, the same politicians?
Today, we are in perilous strait trying to choose who should become the next president not on merit, integrity or performance but on religious and ethnic basis. We are so divided in our choice on ethnicity and religion and the noise is so loud that whoever wins at the end of the day will confront a more divided country.
In any case, we are now at a point that the plausible thing is for us to decide first the basis and conditions for true federalism. For the youths of the country, you are sleeping on the wheel if you do not wake up and realize that it is your future that is being mortgaged in all this. That Nigeria got this far was the sacrifice of the youths at every twist and turn of its history but for the present generation of youths, the pull is a huge appetite of sybarite.
We dream to migrate to America, Europe and Asia as economic refugees. Those countries of our dreams are built by their youths who made the sacrifice. Look at the mass movement in Sri Lanka, Argentina etc where the youths are leading the charge and making demand on government to sack incompetent leaders.
We should work for a Nigeria where the basis for aspiring to public office should be determined by merit and unquestionable credentials and not tribe or religion. We want a country where criminals should be treated as such and not given sweet names to cover his crime because we share the same faith and tribe. If Nigeria breaks up today we are not going to be better off in our different regions or tribes because the same problems are still there in our geographical regions; we can still make Nigeria work.
For the youths, this is moment of decision as history is on your side, rise up and take your country back.
- Kebonkwu Esq is an Abuja-based attorney.