Beyond the numbness
The canvass for our soporific artistic expression is the social media. When there is a flood you suddenly see pictures of Area Boys carrying women in purdah across the pool; paddled boats show up hawking hot meals to those trapped in their homes. During the occupy movement, one ingenious person set up his home on […]
The canvass for our soporific artistic expression is the social media. When there is a flood you suddenly see pictures of Area Boys carrying women in purdah across the pool; paddled boats show up hawking hot meals to those trapped in their homes. During the occupy movement, one ingenious person set up his home on the street, complete with television, sitting arrangement, a generating set and they had a blast. How we love to laugh; and there is nothing wrong with laughing in a tension-soaked nation.
However are we laughing too much at our own calamity? Has laughter forced us into zombies of complacency creating a field day for our ruiners to up the looting ante? Is laughter our escape route; approximately like alcoholics or addicts looking for a fix. Nigeria burns on one hand and is submerged in another, but its citizens are laughing. There is something wrong with that, something akin to incurable dementia, a boon to the political leadership. Because under this atmosphere of schizophrenia, looting is at its peak.
The moral compass of public office holders has wilted. Conscience is seared and the nation drools. This is not what we fought for at independence nor was it on the minds of those who laid their lives on the line during the civil war. Our mosaic of nationalities and diversities has become the object of division; our source of strength has been turned into weakness. What Othman dan Fodiyo called an open wound is now a gangrenous sore but this patient is anesthetized and appeared to have slipped into coma.
How does one describe the ingenuity of a corrupt legislator who turned his body into a bullion van to ferry nearly $700,000 at dawn; or the complicity of the law enforcement agents who were supposed to sweep on him but kept quiet? Well, we create nouns, verbs and adjectives out of the dramatis personae – you could have statements like – can you help me Lawan that cash until the tension cools? What about the subsidy that became the best thing since we decided to stop extracting our own oil or refining them because there are people who take them at a penny and others who import the refined product at quadruple the rate and smile to the banks?
How much have we spent to perpetuate darkness? International flights hover around the horizon because the president, who may still be in his bathroom is billed to travel and the road is closed. We attend ecological summits in planes described as unfit to fly some foreign air. Money budgeted for the fixing roads disappear into the pouches of human kangaroos. Armed robbery make headlines elsewhere in the world, and they count them on the fingers of one hand annually, but here robbers do a door-to-door raid; graduating to street to street and sometimes even write in advance asking for voluntary donations. Yet, our chiefs of police and other agencies fly off the traffic on the wrong lane surrounded by armed subordinates ready to kill. Occasional bursts result in promotions and Naira rain. This makes journalists envious of course – they break stories, win awards but hardly get a pay raise. Doctors save lives but hardly get a quarter of their dues.
With a whole army of soldiers supposedly guarding an area declared as being under the state of emergency, terrorists go from one village to another mauling down the citizens. It only makes the social media because the dead are seen as ‘Christian brothers and sisters’, not because they are citizens of Nigeria. When it happened in Kano, few southerners bothered to tweet it or talk about it on Facebook. Even our dour president has a sense of humour – he told his citizens to braze up for it as they did with armed robbery. Yes, when the marauders take trophies (government officials), the president is quick enough to issue his verbal order – find the killers. But when its the wretched of the earth, he is on top of the situation.
As I write, a tanker has upturned in Port Harcourt, killing nearly a hundred people. As you are trying to comprehend that, the bar council announced its conferment of senior advocates on eminent lawyers. Expect the news of the human barbecue to die quickly as adverts are placed congratulating the new silks. A large part of northern Nigeria is now safely in the hands of terrorists, the governors of the areas pay huge ransom for their own security. The hand of terror advances from the north as other man-made casualties ravage other parts.
President Jonathan and his friends are jetting in and out of conferences and seminars; pocketing their estacodes and raising the level of insouciance to unprecedented levels. Like Siad Barre, he is on top of the situation; like Toumani Toure he is busy scheming his next term – the terrorists are strengthening their foothold but the people cannot see beyond their ethno-religious veil. Every minute, Nigeria slips beyond our reach – 120 million people may one day spill over the sub-region like a swarm of locusts but the junkets will continue as long as it is safe to fly from Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport. And if that fails (and it will), Labaran Maku has prepared us for the next best thing – ruling from anywhere, thank God for GSM.
The state, or what looks like it will continue to run, after all, hasn’t Bayelsa appointed the President’s wife as a permanent secretary plenipotentiary? Our house is on fire and our farm is inundated, but heh, let’s have our national fix – a night of a thousand laughs. Excuse me, is anyone still awake?