A Rejoinder to the piece I Give up on Nigeria By Abiola Olaifa.
My first instinct should have been
to commend your style of writing, but for fear that I might by so doing
trivialize the grave issues your writing raised, I shall steer clear of
praising your writing for the time being.
And now to the title, a few years ago I might have declared how
unnecessarily pessimistic your title was. Or I might have feigned cluelessness
and asked you for what you in your opinion thought the way out was. But now I believe we all are past such
attitude of anesthesia. We all know what
should be done; no one needs a doctoral degree to figure that out.
The ills of our society have never
at any time defied defining, which also means we have all along been aware of
what should be done ...for instance to make living a little less degrading and
a little more human. We simply are not doing it. As you rightly pointed out
each man does everything for himself and his family. He digs himself a well, he fills the 'hell'
connecting his homestead to the remaining slum of a society to make it more
motorable for his 4th-hand car, he is the vigilante of his street,... in short
he is the remainder of the semblance of government in his own experience. At the head in the Rocks (Aso) the lucky
opportunists run a different kind of family business.
But we all know what is right, what
is deserving of our humanity however vague that sense of our basic human and
national right is. But then our religions
teach us to accept the government we have as having divine support. We pray for them for wisdom and health and
they busy themselves digging private wells into the remainder of our resources.
Religions again tell us our prayers aren't enough, we should include a little
bit of fasting. So the poor man live his
life fasting (his national service) and the politician his feasting (his
national service???) with cries and mourning and deaths trailing the path of
his action and inaction. It's a way of life our fathers got used to. The way of
life we inherited. The way of living we consider normal.
But until the religious preachers
start preaching the right side of the holy books we as citizens of this raped
nation will keep believing the right way to be patriotic is by praising the
loot-fattened public officers/politicians and by granting them right of way to
the future of our children. And why do I keep mentioning religion? Anyone who
grew up in Nigeria will immediately understand how this foundation is the
spring of our national life. How our sense of rightness has been redefined
inside our religious palaces. How the
harbinger of our woes receive endorsement inside our religious palaces, and we
the congregation celebrate them as chosen of God to lead us into the promise
land. How the 'chosen of God' rise up from the altar of approval, climb the
Rock of Aso, loot and loot, and sleep and sleep, while the preachers children
and the congregation of the children of Nigeria get robbed, and raped, and
murdered first in their fatherland, then everywhere across the globe... And the
chosen of God continue unhindered. After
he has run down the economy he again returns to the altar of approval and again
we clap and raise him a prayer of approval. For he is chosen of God.
Oh Nigerians, who has bewitched us!
The foundation is falling in several
places. We have inherited a culture of
indolence that breeds corruption. The
students progress on the back of 'Orijo', the civil servants spend the working
hours sleeping, or making small talks, a doctor leaves a pack of gauze inside
mummy Akin's stomach, the policeman robs under the mid-day sun at gunpoint
collecting N20 from the driver who also volunteers a grin and a joke to
entertain the robber, the IG sits on his stomach pathologically extending.
"Up NEPA", adults rejoiced as kids, power has been restored for 7
hours in a week and at the end of the month the toiling Nigeria scavenges every
nook to pay for the electricity he never used.
At the end of 4 years, the ruler
that divides us is again brought out from behind our collective amnesia and
dusted... We must vote the man from my part of the country into office
regardless of the fact that he doesn't even qualify to run his own family. I wouldn't entrust my pet into his hands to
manage (had a pet) for he has no clue how to manage anything. But he's my man and that settles it. At the end of 4 years the Churches and Mosques
again sing their fast that God will send a savior (as long he's from my tribe,
he's a saviour, rigging or not)...
Who has bewitched us!
Until we make the matters of our
land our individual priority we are only joking. It is sad but true, that we
have exactly the leaders we deserve. Democracy was never meant to function
outside the active participation of the citizens. In our model of democracy,
the citizens sleep and pray that God we catch the thieves that we in the first
place invited to rob us.
I really wish more people will
respond like you have done, Abiola, to these problems and say it's
NOW enough.
Jide Olubiyi is
Guest Scientist (PHD) at Forschungszentrum, Julich
