Are
Nigerians hopeful of the day after? The collective answer to this rhetorical
question is a resounding NO. If Nigerians are no longer hopeful of tomorrow,
they deserve pardon. For, never in the history of mankind have a people been so
brutalized by the very group of people who are supposed to protect and take
care of them. They ought to be pardoned knowing full well that their manifest
state of hopelessness has extended beyond disillusionment to a desperate and
consuming nihilism. Which is why the only news one hears from Nigeria
It is sad to note that Nigeria is gradually and steadily
degenerating into the abyss. Even in a supposedly democratic dispensation, a
sense of freedom, a feeling of an unconditional escape, a readiness for real
and absolute change, is still the daydream of the whole citizenry. Everything
is in readiness for the unexpected, and the unexpected is not in sight. You
cannot possibly conceive what a rabble we look. We straggle along with far less
cohesion than a flock of sheep. We are, in fact, even forced to believe that
tomorrow will no longer come. Quite a handful of us are simply robots without
souls, as we are hopeless because we are conditioned to a state of collective
hopelessness.
Our record of civilization is ultimately a record of barbarity.
Consider: in 1979, Nigerians went to the polls to ward off the debilitating
effects of military rule in their country. This exercise ushered in a democratically
elected civilian government. Unknown to Nigerians, this gang of debt-ridden
politicians suddenly developed into a monster. The result was the
conspiratorial looting of the national treasury into their private pockets. And
Nigerians were worst hit for it. The government introduced a supposedly
punitive fiscal policy styled "Austerity Measure", through
which a people already denied the good things of life were asked to make
further sacrifices. Millions of Nigerians lost their jobs, and there was wailing
and gnashing of teeth all over the place as a result of grinding poverty among
the people, whereas the corrupt politicians were swimming in affluence and
under the best security system one could think of. But their tomorrow
eventually came. On December 31, 1983, the martial lords came calling with
their logic as traumatic as it was compelling and sacked their compatriots in 'agbada' with
a consummate pledge to sanitize the leprous political system.
For the first few months, there was a ray of hope in the system
due to the marvelous ingenuity of Tunde Idiagbon, their second-in-command. Yet
it was not without some avoidable ambiguities due to the bigotry inherent in
the character of Gen Muhammadu Buhari, the commander-in-chief who was also
passionately intolerant of dissent. Whereas some of the looters were hurled
into various detention camps, there existed some sacred cows here and there.
Certain blue-blooded aristocrats whose veins human blood does not flow were
made to look as though they were above the laws of the land. The men of command
and diktat who permitted this level of double standard also vented their spleen
on men of the Fourth Estate of the Realm. The import of their Decree 4 was to
the effect that all was well provided no voice was raised against their
draconian rule. Public outcry was to the effect that the sledge hammer employed
by the khaki boys was too heavy for the flies. The men of terror thought
otherwise. But their tomorrow finally came.
Even those who overran them with a superior commandist logic did
not fare better. Their regime was more beguiling than their predecessors'.
There were more pains, more anguish and more deaths that most Nigerians were
now yearning for the day after. The regime introduced a time-worn capitalist
economic policy which structurally sapped and decimated the good things of life
out of a majority of Nigerians. There was untold hunger in the land, just as
there is today as Naira, the local currency was devalued to an unacceptable
proportion and inflation rate rose above sea level.
Again, the people's popular verdict given on June 12, 1993, that a
drastic change be effected in the system, was vehemently resisted by the deans
of the martial clan. There was bloodshed, burning, looting and maiming. In the
end, the deans saw their tomorrow coming and quickly stepped aside due largely
to the cataclysm that came with the people's power. Their dark-goggled
colleague who was like second-in-command still forced himself on the nation as
a maximum, iron-fisted dictator. No Nigerian actually understood his hyperbole,
not even the acclaimed winner of the annulled mass decision for change.
The dark-goggled, stern-faced maximum ruler clamped his 'enemies'
including his erstwhile martial superiors into jail over a phantom coup plot.
Others were either shot, bombed or chased into exile in foreign lands. The
custodian of the people's mandate himself died in prison. Following the
dictates of the Law of Karma, the dictator himself saw his tomorrow coming. On
June 8, 1998, he died in the arms of some beautiful Indian girls inside the
biggest prison in the land called Aso Rock Villa. One of the jailbirds in his
gulag who was helped out unhurt was eventually crowned a king for the second
time.
Unfortunately, he saw himself as a messiah whose attitude to
governance was to gallivant the whole world in customized'agbada',
parroting like the dreaded 'Etulubor' masquerade while looting the
national patrimony into his private pockets but pretending he was fighting
corruption. After his eight years of dictatorship in mufti having been denied a
third term, he succeeded in foisting his sickly protégé on the nation thus
posting the country on the page of arrested development. But his successor, the
gentle but sickly teacher-turned politician gave amnesty to Niger Delta youths
and brought sanity to the much abused restive region. The demise of the much
adored and honest intellectual who acknowledged the depraved electoral system
which brought him to power ushered in another intellectual as president through
the Doctrine of Necessity.
He introduced economic and democratic reforms that moved the
country to the enviable status of the fastest growing economy inAfrica. He even
went as far as providing a platform on which Nigerians of all shades, tribes,
creed and occupation gathered to debate the future of their country. He did not
give credence to the politics of bitterness (do-or-die) as he insisted that his
ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. Even though there was so much
looting of public funds under his watch, he did not invent corruption and the
monster of official sleaze during his administration was not close to the
bazaar of massive looting that was the hallmark of military banditry for more
than 35 years. But he was a victim of elite conspiracy and was summarily rigged
out of office on March 28, 2015.
As a principled politician who would not feel pleased with the
killings of innocent Nigerians, he called his challenger and conceded defeat.
He congratulated his opponent, a feat never before recorded in our annals. His
exit brought to power a relentless virtuoso of the power game who would not
brook any nibbling to remain on the throne. At first, he made a proclamation on
the day of his inauguration that he belonged to everybody and he
belonged to nobody. As he began to consolidate his hold on power, it dawned
on Nigerians that the emperor with messianic impudence actually belongs to his
kinsmen and not all Nigerians. He lined up his tribesmen including retired and
tired ones as members of his kitchen cabinet. So brazenly lackluster was his
regime that his wife had to warn Nigerians that he is not in control but a
cabal.
Three years into his reign of trepidation, Nigerians are already
crying for relief. Aside from unprovoked killings of innocent Nigerians across
the length and breadth of the country, under him the people are weighed down by
extreme poverty. Prices of essential commodities and other food items are
skyrocketed while the value of the national currency has nosedived several
octaves below its counterparts. His plot to annex the legislature and the
judiciary into the executive arm of government is ongoing with the wanton
intimidation of the National Assembly with corrosive state power. Under his
watch the country is manifesting the highest index of human misery. In the
history of our nationhood, Nigerians have never been this bruised as there is no
one whistling a happy tune in the streets. The signs aren't too hard to see:
they are the signs of internal decay, the dry rot of apathy and indifference.
Also, Nigerians have never been as
divided as they are today. Yet, what we hear daily from them is that they have
delivered on their campaign promises to the people and that there is no
alternative to their regime. Driven by inordinate ambition to remain in power
and the need to win the support of the South West greatly wronged by the
annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, they have hurriedly
declared that date our newDemocracy Day. They have also honoured
the presumed winner of that election who was made to die in their gulag with
the highest national honour of the land and some targeted players in the June
12 crisis the second highest national honour of the land. Yes, it is good
gesture, but for the wrong motives. See what desperation can cause? Is this the
CHANGE Nigerians voted for? Our nation is detained in the past. But their
tomorrow will surely come.
*Amor is an Abuja-based public affairs
analyst
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