An early morning fog drifted through the trees, turning the Abuja landscape cool and heavy with its dampness. Here and there, light rays splintered through its filmy web to sparkle on the
dew-wet grass. It was only a matter of time before the rising sun burned off the thin layers of mist, even, as eddies of dust swirled in the road, sweeping along the streets of Lugbe with shops selling junk or overpriced imported secondhand goods.
I pondered at the State of the nation, its general election and a third force in a nation wallowing in unease and nostalgia, an anticlimax indeed, after all the excitement of planning the election process and the subsequent, stimulating electioneering campaigns. The polls had revealed a good number of anti-heroes, and one could not but laugh at the antics of this democracy
anti-heroes – characters that do not possess the qualities of courage, honesty and strength typically expected.
This ‘heroes’ in the nation’s elegiac settings of the last two decades have placed the nation in the doghouse and pointedly, refused to agree with the notion that all politics is local, and that, the APC (2015 and 2019) had not done anything other political parties (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and even 2015) doesn’t do as a matter of course, and that only a properly constituted election Tribunal could see through the charade, if it was one. Justice, afterall is an important element of good government. The opposition in 2019 have further compounded the nation’s unease, looking helpless and teetering in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation, and it appeared they don’t like the short end of the stick now that it is in their hands.
Well, that was a digression from my theme for a moment.
Thinking of or about the nation exposed the elemental fury of the storm, unease, the peoples anti-heroes, the nation’s feelings, its peace, and all, in the light of the monotonous runs of the nation’s democracy this last two decades, and climaxed with the 2019 elections, where the nation’s politicians displayed that the force that drove ambitions could easily suppress their humanity.
The politicians without exception, showcased that ambitions and hunger for power had made them invulnerable to human concerns about peace, progress, well being and tranquility. A confirmation of Freud’s view of man as a grasping creation dominated by base instincts, seeing Man simply as an animal responding mechanistically to environmental stimuli.
Yes, the quest and urge for power and life ambitions are made of dreams. Dreams! Shakespeare said was made of “sterner stuff”. In the nation’s politics, there had to be more than dreams. The politicians of course live in a dream world and a state in which they imagine everything is the way they would like it to be. But, even, in their dreams, there had to be more you can do with the people than sponsoring hate, suspicion and resentment, to achieve your goals and dreams, the elements that had got the people busy venting their spleen on one another, establishments and institutions to show their discontent and displeasure.
The people in whom love is inborn and who find self-realization in contributing to the good of society are been gradually reduced to live in a divisive environment of the land owners and the land keepers, and have been left marinating in the gall of bitterness, as the politicians bred suspicions and feelings of
deep-seated resentment at, of and over the way they had been collectively and individually treated by the powers-that-be and Politicians generally; and like a beach ball the nation try to submerged. It pops up, splashing everyone in speeches and language that evoked echoes of the nation’s past. In other instances, they were speechless with fury and no shelter from the fury of the storm and making a brave fist of appearing friendly.
The politicians spoilt the people with their dollars and naira, even as they polarized them along ethnic lines. I remembered an old line I saw somewhere, I can’t remember where now, ‘Money can do everything.’ In the last election, one could say, it, to some extent did, and it didn’t. Of course, quite a large number of the people deified some aspirants and their money. It showed that in the nation’s politics money was the end, it was the means. Majority of the other people were afraid of the politicians reputation, of the things people whispered that they did. Whether they did them or didn’t do them was not important. The fact remains that the people believed they did them and wanted a share of the booty.
In the throes of the electioneering campaigns, the politicians at the marketplace of ideas displayed the innate sense of hunger for power but not much common sense. Their carriage was that of most entrepreneurs who reaching a point where they are ready for harvesting from their investment.
Hence, the election was war. War, power, money. The politics of the last two decades and particularly at the 2019 elections and its aftermath showed clearly that there were wide differences between the people that they were less willing to admit; but rather wish away while always skirting the border of propriety. Who cares about propriety and outward appearances when you are dying of hunger and marginalisation, and the danger of anarchy and chaos.
A situation thus ensued where the nation and its people and its political class have all developed an incurable knack for power and pretensions that were making them less human, and in fact, phony sometimes. How do one explain,
i. the blatant disregard and disrespect for human life and dignity.
ii. the knowledge that the politicians and their ‘friends’ cornered the commonwealth while the rest of the people were sitting on nothing but red clay. Yet, that, little trick of fate would not deter the people from,
a. falling head over heels for the politicians, and b. in spite of their brains and guile, from noise making or making noise over nothing.
The PHCN struck and the room suddenly went dark, the nation glum, its politicians unsure, there was uncertainty about, everything was a white Cameo in the darkness. Abuja was bathed in a layer of light rain of the early afternoon, in a nation where the people could hardly lapse into the patois of their origins. The last elections was like war. War between brothers. All kind of a pair, actually with lots of polish on the surface – but there was dust from the chicken yard between their toes. Some hummed, if we don’t like the rules we’ll take our ball to another playground, an attitude that had made the nation a ‘disposable society’; whatever ‘we’ couldn’t get we’ll look for somewhere else.
With no ideals, no principles, tragically the mentality is transferred to the people; with each generation becoming less likely to be tolerant, selfless, patient, flexible and creative, and more likely to trade in what they were unwilling to work on. The myth of the merry-go-round tells that the nation was due to have to grapple with its political issues. Just replace it!
The people with a blend of irritation and contrition tried to be as bold as their politicians, though shaking impecably at their money and everyone having their turn at the trough, knowing full well that it was an understatement that the politicians motives and appearances were deceiving.
In retrospect, the nation’s politics was bizzare politics, and bizzare for all the wrong reasons. The usual jealousies, suspicion and resentment, those symbiotic things that make sense only at some deep level that nobody understands, not even the politicians. All of which drove a wedge between the people.
There evidently was perverseness in the nation’s relationships across the Niger, with its politicians – as though they managed to bring out the worst in the people and in themselves, instead of everyone’s best. They goad the nation on the path of life as consisting of either eating or shitting. At the thought, though the room was warm, I felt a chill run over my skin, and every hair on my body seemed on end.
The 2019 polls brought to the fore in no small measure the political and ethnoreligious configuration of the nation as an obstacle that was literally an ocean away at the moment, one that could be dealt with later without sacrificing the peace of the nation; a nation whose beauty and radiance captivated the heart of all. My mind went to Leveticus, in the Bible, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all Inhabitants thereof.”
The 2019 polls had been a stimulating adventure for politicians looking for something that made some physical demands and often less confinement, and those on the losing sides were pretending to be scandalised to cover envy and wounded egos, and were threatening brimstones with a lightness in their voices that didn’t match the heady tension that throbbed in the land.
Some lips curled up in amused scorn and ‘erin ìyàngí’-scornful laughter. With their weak disposition and combativeness looking every inch far away from integrity, honesty and charming men who couldn’t conduct themselves as proper gentlemen. Those smiles that creased and twisted their mouths weren’t kind. Something other than the outcome of the polls must be at the core of it. Something related to the patent dishonesty all around, and trust issues. How? Why? Ah, well! One has to keep the analysis in check, realizing that it was quite obviously something the politicians don’t want to discuss either in private or public, but they are there, and there they are.
I sat back and picked up the hand fan, the motion of the fan quickened to a rapid tempo and I even waved the fan with more vigour. Gracious, it has turned hot and sticky. Whatever became of that breeze one enjoyed earlier. I peered out as if expecting to find it, then paused, stilling the fan motion. With the heat of the afternoon, I dabbed my forehead with my shirt sleeve. High on the branch of a Moringa tree, a mockingbird trilled its repertoire of songs. It brought a picture of the nation’s politicians lacking in compelling honesty and crooked in both their feelings and manners, facing a corrupt system. How very naive, the refrain that corruption will always exist. It can never be stamped out completely and entirely. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fought wherever it was found.
Pacing back and forth, the nation was on edge and pushed by the rawness of anger and pain at the politicians, none of who care anything about the distress the nation was in via their divisive tendencies at a time most of the politicians had their heads resting in their hands in a pose of weariness and defeat. You can’t buy pride and integrity. The person commands them, not the price.
The people know what would happen to a country when gangsters take over. Since the politicians had been recognized for what they were, the people are poised to stop them with bridges made of their bodies, of their determination. When the man in the street decides you are not good for him, he’ll stop you. No matter what you do, to prevent him from doing it, he will find a way. You can’t be strong enough or smart enough to beat the man in the street – hungry and poor and miserable most of whom were living on some job that barely gave them an existence and which the fear of losing hung continually over their heads like a sword on a thread.
I snatched, not a ballot box, but a throw pillow from the sofa and crushed it in both of my hands, my fingers curling into its plumpness, the way the politicians were clutching to the nation’s resources. While surreptitiously sponsoring and preaching hate. The portrayal of the nation’s harsher realities of life , as may be, hatred was an ugly thing.
The politicians may say of a companion one day that he hates so and so, and the next: He is my friend. This was one of the ways of friendship, and just as real as amiability or being alike. That is how a relationship is, shifting and changing and are kept by the fabric of social life, devoid of principle. Which was bad for the nation, for its evolution and deepening of its democracy. And now it was affective of the permanent feature of the nation’s ethos and character.
It had started out small, as a little seed of resentment that is held close and fed with bitter thoughts. It puts down roots and grew. The more years it’s nourished by the politicians, the bigger it grew the fiercest it became; until brothers are blinded by it – until all they can see, hear and feel was nothing but hatred. Whether this strategy worked for them was a matter for another day.
The strategam had been fueled by the politicians unnecessary duplicity of pendantory in the face of guilt and compounded by society’s inability to move them along the the path and direction that questions the nation’s politicians moral rectitude and fibre; this had cast stains and brazen disregard for the societal etiquette and sense of goodness, right and justice and well being.
In that mood of mutual exclusivity and mutually obstinate disaffection, and without allowing the people’s anger to dictate the politicians actions, both the scandalous recklessness and obstinate disaffection know that crises and decisions faced them, as the nation was slowly beginning to separate into opposing camps, but were bonding together along old lines of feud and misunderstanding. A contradiction in terms.
The lines that had divided the philosophy and psyche of the peoples loyalty to the course, intentions and purposes of the nation’s founding fathers, who had struggled for the nation’s Independence. One sensed however, that there was more than a degree of truth in loyalty having nothing to do with being marginalized or subjugated. It’s something you give freely because it’s been earned.
A dark cloud threatening to darkened the sky. A storm was forming, in spite of the baiting gleam in the peoples eyes as always, when confronted by the undeniable sentiments, jealousies, suspicion and inherent hatred in the nation’s makeup. It painted a vivid picture. Running away isn’t being free. It’s just running, trading one life of fear for another.
Ask any lady, if you tuck the back of the skirt behind the knees when you crouch down, your dress won’t touch the dirt. If all the three in the tripod arranged the front of their skirts over the knees around the collection of marble statuary on the ground, there’ll be some sense of peace, if even, that would not guarantee its unity and peace.
War. North. South. That was all anyone talked about lately. The war is now openly one of old grudges and new sentiments. Here, one vividly remembered all too well all the threats and attempts at secession and the terrible turmoil of that time fifty-two years ago, everyone suffered dreadfully during a war.
Today, all were in any political discussion, thinly disguised venoms in the voices that are quick with opinions and combative in the defense of their beliefs, which somewhat the nation still found stimulating. The voices vibrated with the effort to keep it low – and the intensity of feelings. Though one battle does not make a war, but one battle can win a war. So, in spite of the reflecting needs and wants, some tormenting, it serves everyone’s best interest that when you have been badly burned, you’re careful about getting too close to the fire again.
The memories of the long trail, and those years of battle, bloodshed and struggle in the march towards true
nationhood – and the nation it had become, was too fresh. The pain and suffering, the deprivation and poverty, the illness and death that resulted from war, whether it was fought with rifle and sword or with lawyers and writs, cowardly or not, the devastation to a people was the same.
With the 2019 polls and the laughter and congratulations connected by the undercurrents of tension and the stilled memory of harsh words said long ago in anger in the name of politics. Even the outbreak of verbal hostilities had been granted a furlough. The nation had to find a way, even as it made overtures to the ‘Big Three’ with the hope of persuading them to make an alliance across the Niger.
The nights of restlessness and frustrations at each election always had the nation on edge, teetering on the brink. One moment it stood apart, in the next it was wrapped together. Rough against smooth, hard against soft, flame against flame. Whatever doubts there were, never doubted the want. The intensity of it. Such mindless passion was pulling at it now. Powerful emotions that lived within it. One could see how brazen it had become.
Shocking to the core was the bland prospects of 2023. The mere mention of 2023 presidency had sobered and forced the nation to look ahead at the choices each of the ‘Big Three’ would have to make. Choices that could tear them apart. Neutrality is impossible. If in the process of the nation’s future concerns there’s a major conflict, it would be waged to preserve the nation. Rhetorics no longer impresses. Only proactive action does; the admission was a grudging one, and the people continually snapped at one another, their composure breaking to reveal the anger beneath. What the nation should seek was peace, it should have no wish to be drawn into a war – by all side. But, is that the wind currently blowing!
However, loving a person, if it was ever a true love, means that the time will invariably come when you strongly disagree with him, especially where your ‘fathers’ have ‘three wives’ but that’s when you have to hold on to your love for the ‘fatherland’ even more tightly. This politics must not be turned to war. The nation must be more than willing to compromise, more than willing to meet halfway in concession. The old feuds, the growing hostility between the North and the South and the Southwest to some extent, had created an atmosphere of distrust again and has subsequently stirred awake the old hatred, suspicions and jealousies and ‘agents’, political agents on all sides exploit that for their own ends.
I leaned over the back of the chair struggling to relax. A full moon hung low above the Abuja sky, s large and lustrous pearl against the velvet blackness of night which had been strewn a scattering of diamond-bright stars. But I found no solace in the sight or the evening silence. All my senses were turned to the sounds of hostilities coming forth from the nation’s political landscape and at the imaginary blue smoke entrails of a burning bush dissolve into wisps. The wind was blowing strongly from the south.
As the faint tension that had been present became a charged current the political leaders must be determined to preserve the nation, they must be equally determined that the nation should remain united as well, not a weathercock that changes before the wind. Nature gave our fathers this land; the people therefore are not at it’s sufferance only; and living outside the door of shock, dread, fear and confusion – a door greed opened. Its passion intense, but with no love lost, “To your tents” became the favourite nocturnes and from the deep cavern of emptiness.
The nation and its politics was in a situation of a man standing alone upon a low naked spot of ground; with the water rising rapidly all around him. He sees the danger but does not know what to do. If he remains where he is, his only alternative is to be swept away and perish. The tide carries by him, in its mad course, a drifting log. It perchance comes within reach of him. By refusing it, he is a doomed man. By seizing hold of it, he has a chance for his life. He can but perish in the effort, and may be able to keep his head above water until rescued or drift off to where he can help himself. Something interesting while searching for something positive in all this, however twisted it might be, the nation must begin to treat its subjects as some people who have a mind and feelings and dreams.
The mind was crowded with the hundred things that had to be done to “keep the nation one”. Couldn’t understand why people, brothers, couldn’t stop hating and killing each other and tearing the nation apart with whips of emotion, which should have dimmed long ago – along with the hurts and old feuds of the past. The important issues of how the multiethnic and multicultural nation want to live and coexist, resource control, the Independence of the federating States and devolution of power should be taking seriously.
It was so bad, the threats, counter-threats and the despair that has taken over the inner linings of the nation’s oneness and camaraderie, subjugation, marginalisation and inequality that had soiled a once warm, hospitable and gregarious people. Such vivacious understanding and relationships have been reduced atrociously, and hate speech, and outrageous and demeaning utterances have taken centrestage.
It mirrors a disconnect between humanity and way of life in the pursuit of the truth, the truth in the dastard consequences of inequality, and ethnoreligious jingoisms. The question for all, is, in the years of being together, when we have spent time together, should anyone walk away feeling better or should anyone be allowed to walk away feeling better or worse.
Patient, therefore, have become a necessity, as much as the ‘nation’ might wish otherwise, with the unhealed wounds whose stench has refused to go away. But every physician quickly learns the healing process can’t be hurried, it’s step by step. Contrary to one’s ordered expectations, life does not permit us to arrange and order it as one would, but one must not surrender the dreams.
The healing process must include antiseptics that assuages the wounds of the pervasive inequalities are disinfected and healed whilst also in the same breath assuaging the ‘Igbo constituents’ who hitherto were assailed by worries, doubts, fears, panic, longings and feelings of whether or not they also can be number one. An issue that had become a bargaining issue and in the main become highly politicised.
The Southeast, particularly, were in the throes of the danger – excitement of a people dropped in the Creek, left alone to hold the baby, to whom the nation’s politics, have suddenly became like flying spit, first time, it frightens you, but at the same time doesn’t and during and after you feel sort of light-headed; and that in fact was the simple prognosis of the nation’s politics.
What with the perplexed looks all over the place. I guess they were simple or something. I had to laugh. When the nation look back on today, it’ll regret the things it didn’t do more than the ones it did. Therefore, the nation have to make a call to strengthen its position by patronizing the initiative in the pursuit of lasting peace, let’s get to brass tacts. The nation do not have to leave them to rue and grapple with this expectations that has turned to an intermittent heartbreak forever.
The world is become too advanced into the age of
reason – time when thinking men tried to free mankind from the kinds of fanaticisms that had enslaved the nation for years. The truth be told, wrong is wrong. Afterall, the thing called a nation is really a collection of people who have been sharing similar experiences for a long time. If like the nation was trying to emphasize that the experiences vary, then the search for national identify will be a long one, even as it was unsettling.
The nation kept oversimplifying the metaphor it has become, but, must earnestly stop its political allegory of a two-up game – Ridiculous game. Where two pennies are placed on a stick and throw the coins up into the air and bet on whether the coins come down both heads, or both tails, on one head and one tail – simply put, gambling with the people’s fate has become like breathing air to the nation. The nation with its enforced unity, failed itself, because the people do not relate well with one another the way they are supposed to.
Without unduly rationalising the pros and cons of why we are where we were, the nation’s proper response is not to suppress but deal with the issues. The source of disaffection and ensuing conflicts in the land was because we have often forgotten that we have different histories and backgrounds. In this matter, everyone has an opinion. The major error committed by all was arguing over opinions, personal intuitions and getting nowhere; meanwhile, there are, many issues festering under the surface that needs to be dealt with before the nation can effectively move forward. One of such was the subscribing to fuzz notions about federalism, and its getting it nowhere. There is the need to further understand the nation’s diversity and the believe that it’s not the absence of conflicts that made nation’s great, but the ability to manage conflict when it happens, as it will surely do.
Nigeria require greater motivation beyond the sphere and scope of rhetorics and politicking, and can no longer accept the Burkean idea of change and preservations as a credo of political life. Hence, must be inspired by the highest of motives, and by such higher ideals as patriotism, even as it stands up and addresses all atom and iota of repressive injustices, with a certain degree of eagerness but not desperation.
The nation’s vision of change should be a picture of what ‘can be’ rather than ‘what is’, and be followed with a mission and strong commitment to act. As the nation shunts and inch towards the realisation of the goals of true unity and real fiscal federalism, it cannot resolve such moral and ego problems by the use of clever but false reasoning and precedents that has placed the nation wherefore, it found itself – on the back-heel of history and at the mercy of circumstances, unable to solve the myriad of problems confronting it and have found itself facing the same obstacles over and over, habitually in reaction mode. Unable to navigate the deep knee bends of life and nationhood.
By and large, the nation must begin to deal with the substantive matters that haven’t yet be resolved from the standpoint of probity, morality, equity and uncommon common sense, before they can foster and further erode relationships from within. The harsh draw-line between the North or South must be removed by social re-engineering and true integration.
The North or South should no longer be the basis of the clamours for restructuring or fiscal and true federalism, but a new national consensus beyond political gain of North, South, East or West in a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious Nigeria.
There is the need for the nation to take the sail away from the ethnic overlords threatening its peace and well being, as mathematicians trained to calculate the probabilities of events, and even those originating by an unguarded process.
The nation must be on the qui vive and act against the efforts to propagate the perpetual and prolonged stay in misery. But necessity has no law. Any fight that is worth fighting today, will be those, that do not:
a). Recognize that democracy will forever remain the solution to all the problems facing the nation.
b). Disenfranchised or limit the people’s choice.
c). Fight for electoral freedom and ensuring that the electorate is not given fully the rights to elect by the ballot papers who should rule and from what region.
As the nation designs new ways of sorting and settling the national questions, questions of nationality, liberty, free enterprise and free access to the great potentials the nation could offer, it should not be an opening in the Earth’s crust out of which steam and gases are hurled with force. The issues, active, or dormant must be unearthed without allowing it to give way to an avalanche of hate, propaganda and war, but be discussed in a roburst atmosphere, flexible, prolific, ongoing; not strict but permanently yielding to change as new synthesis, analysis and orientation comes into play.
The nation must see beyond treating the matters arising from the national questions as an academic exercise philosophy and plain ideas of the Republic, but, instead, see it in the line of strengthening a nation, reshaped and reconditioning its people. Just as you own the house you live in, and when you do own a house you arrange it the way you want it.
That tiny growth you don’t want to deal with now, would make things worse in the future#
