Nigeria is dying.
Let those words sink in. 180 million people are without regular and
steady power. No treated water. No roads. Hunger is prevalent. Food is
expensive. Salaries are not being paid as at due or not paid at all.
Ritual killings for money, unemployment, poverty, delayed and denied
justice, corruption, kidnapping, abduction, armed robbery, failed
education system, failed healthcare system, insecurity, hopelessness,
and fear of tomorrow, and many more are the trademarks of Nigeria at 57.
This is where I grew up. This is where my family lives. This is my
home.
And my home is dying. I have been struggling to come up with the
right words to express my feelings and my thoughts on the 57th
anniversary of Nigeria's independence. The social media has provided me
with a space to write my remarks, observations, and more often than not,
rants about the Nigerian situation. I shared my anxieties. I cried in
silent sobs at the pictures and the news from Nigeria that compete for
sympathy and sadness. Absolute silence from the plunderers, wreckers,
and the defiant rogue ruling class has become more and more unbearable
for our people. As expected, despair began to unite Nigerians as we
comforted each other.
Thinking of Nigeria at 57, nothing came except tears. I'm crying as I
write this. How can I put into words how it feels to be completely
helpless as the country as I have always loved slowly turns into Hell?
How can one fully express in words that could convey, in any way, the
overwhelming sense of constant pain, of horrible uncertainty, the fear
of tomorrow, and the fury of wasted lives through epidemic of
manufactured evils? How can I explain to people and to the world at
large that Nigeria, my home, my heart and soul, is dying? The fear of
death is an eternal companion in these evil times in the unlivable
nation. So, as my country celebrates its 57th birthday, would it be
appropriate for me to write a eulogy for its seemingly inevitable death?
Perhaps some choice words as a send-off to the erstwhile giant of
Africa.
As the Buhari administration struggles to figure out the way forward
out of the thicket of unfulfilled promises and dashed hopes, could I
dare hope for a stay in its execution? Or is this just another delay in
Nigeria's per-ordained death? Because of the morally bankrupt and
kleptomaniac legislators who continue to strangle Nigeria and choke its
citizens, the army of the poor are left to fend for themselves. Nigeria
is in a perpetual state of anomie that thrives on crises precisely
because the beneficiaries – the ruling class – are the ones who maintain
and profit from illusion and deception.
It's no secret that a nation can choose to either exalt itself to her
people, thereby becoming an object of national pride or hide itself by
dulling the citizen's senses and intelligence, thus negating the primary
purpose of a nation. So far, the body of evidence shows Nigeria pursued
the second path. The ruling native tyrants have always taken advantage
of our profoundly ignorant, naive, and unsuspecting people fueled by
their systemic blinding allegiance to the same people that impoverished
them.
It's sad to note that after 57 years, 180 million Nigerians have been
conditioned by their schools, churches, and political parties to accept
oppression as natural law. No wonder, Nigerians have become easy preys
to punishment and suffering for engineered transgressions of the ruling
elite. At 57, Nigeria's infrastructure and basic amenities taken for
granted have been crippled, social structure dismantled, and family
uprooted by decades of neglect and abandonment by the product of an
idled and corrupt political class that blindly rapes our people. These
quisling parasites coasted to power via election fraud – vote buying,
rigging, and other election malpractices.
Fifty-seven years of independence has laid bare the reality of a
rotten and corrupt ruling class that never puts our people first. This
paralysis and complete disregard for good governance pushed our
civilization back to the stone age. This crass stupidity permeates all
through the different levels of government. With ravaged infrastructure,
plundered and stunted economy, decimated citizens, hope against hope,
yet, cruelly some people still nurse hope for a lost nation. At 57,
Nigeria is a shining example of a government of feckless inaction, fetid
bureaucracy, and unfettered bullshit. Nigeria is dying, yes. It's a
victim of undeserved vindictiveness of a greed, corrupt, stupid,
foolish, and callous political class. As Nigeria begins her 58th year,
I'll encourage our battered citizens to turn their furious indignation
into action, their collective misery into unstoppable bond of vengeance,
and direct their anger, blessed anger, to the engine of political and
social change.
Nigerians are dying. But if they survive this and rise once again,
they may do so inoculated from the diseased inertia, subservience,
cowardice, fear, and sheepish loyalty that have crushed their collective
spirit for 57 years. That's a long shot though.
Happy Independence? Nah...
You can reach Bayo at bjoluwasanmi@gmail.com.
Punch Newspaper
Oct 04, 2017
