2014: Our Annus horribilis

Yes, we are dead without hope. The diet of hope is what has sustained us as a nation for so long. Now I know what UK’s Queen Elizabeth meant when she declared 1992 her own annus horribilis (horrible year) at a luncheon hosted by the Mayor of London in celebration of the 40th anniversary of […]

Yes, we are dead without hope. The diet of hope is what has sustained us as a nation for so long. Now I know what UK’s Queen Elizabeth meant when she declared 1992 her own annus horribilis (horrible year) at a luncheon hosted by the Mayor of London in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, the monarch had said: “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis’.”
In March that year, the separation of the Queen’s second son from his wife became public. In April, her daughter, the Princess Royal, divorced her husband. Some months later, the tabloids feasted on photographs of a topless Duchess of York being kissed by John Bryan. In June, to the embarrassment of the royal family, Princess Diana’s bestseller, Diana, Her True Story, was published. In November, Windsor Castle, one of the royal homes, was seriously damaged in a fire and several priceless artefacts were incinerated. It was the queen’s horrible year, no doubt.
In a few days, 2014 will be done; it would join its predecessors in the ancestral realm of history where years are categorised on the basis of how they affected humankind for good or for ill. On balance, 2014 has been a bad year for Nigeria. When a year is classified as bad, that is not to say that nothing positive happened within the period. Many roads may have been tarred by the local, state and federal governments, a couple of megawatts may have been added to the national grid as claimed by government, several Nigerians close to the corridors of power at various levels of government may have made their billions of Naira and stashed away more than enough for their next 10 generations … but on balance we did not have a good year as a nation.
Perhaps the ugliest blight was the abduction by the terrorist group, Boko Haram, of over 200 girls at Government Secondary School, Chibok, southern Borno State on April 15, and the scandalous mishandling of the tragedy by the federal government and its horde of spin doctors. For the crucial first 48 hours the federal government did nothing because it still doubted that the girls were missing. Later, it claimed that an attack on the terror merchants would endanger the lives of the girls.
We lost the initiative. It is now 259 days after the horror and the girls are still in captivity.
The government’s position was dealt a death blow by First Lady Patience Jonathan whose rather comic intervention in the Chibok girls’ abduction exposed the soft underbelly of government’s hypocrisy in the war against terror. It seemed the government was more interested in looking for scapegoats than in hunting down the terrorists. That intervention has now birthed so many hilarious clips on the worldwide web.
So many more abductions have since happened. Hundreds of people have been murdered in cold blood by the terrorists. While it is incontrovertible that the Nigerian armed forces are doing their level best to rout the terrorists, the political leadership is still stuck in the marsh of blame trading, instead of providing leadership in the anti-terror war. To date, President Jonathan has not visited Chibok.
The government was equally inept in its handling of arms purchase for the armed forces. The lapse came into limelight when the South African authorities seized a plane belonging to Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor carrying $9.3 million purportedly for the purpose of buying arms. Another tranche of $5.7 million in the banking system was also later quarantined by the South Africans. Those incidents gave Nigerians insight into how their government was being (mis)run.
History has also credited 2014 with the fake ceasefire agreement purportedly reached between the Nigerian government and the Boko Haram terrorists which led the  Nigerian government to order a cessation of fighting in honour of its own side of the agreement. As it turned out, it was all a hoax.
There were many other mishaps. To date, we don’t have a final word on the allegedly ‘missing’ billions of petrodollars or the billions spent by the oil minister to rent a standby plane.
But for Chibok, the tragic incident that would have easily ranked number one was what I called Moro Haram, the March 15 stampede at an Immigration recruitment exercise poorly organised by the Interior Ministry headed by Mr Abba Moro. Nineteen job seekers died while hundreds were injured. The erring minster still occupies his post.
2014 was also the year of Ebola. For once we achieved synergy between the federal and Lagos State authorities to curb and eventually defeat the disease. We lost a few gems in the medical profession, the most notable being the nationally mourned Dr. Stella Ameyo Adadevoh.
The siege on the National Assembly by the police in a bid to prevent the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tambuwal who recently defected from PDP to APC from presiding over the House, was a new low in the desecration of democracy in 2014. Last September, a guest house belonging to Prophet T.B. Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) collapsed, killing over 80 persons; mostly South Africans. While the South African government spat fire, the Nigerian president condoled with Prophet Joshua.
Corruption is still alive and well.  Last year, Transparency International ranked us 144th out of 177 countries in the Corruption Perception Index. Meaning: Nigeria was the 33rd most corrupt country in 2013. This year, Nigeria is ranked 136 out 174 countries. We are now perceived as the 38th most corrupt nation in the world.
If anyone tells you that 2014 hasn’t been an annus horribilis, check where his meals are coming from. I can’t wait to see its back.