If you need a country, you’ve got to earn one!

I should have titled this piece ‘Too Low For Zero’.  For each time we think Nigeria has hit the rock bottom of infamy and stupidity, it disappoints by sinking even further.  As if it wasn’t bad enough for a country to be bombed on its 50th anniversary, this year’s Christmas celebration was tarred with the […]

I should have titled this piece ‘Too Low For Zero’.  For each time we think Nigeria has hit the rock bottom of infamy and stupidity, it disappoints by sinking even further.  As if it wasn’t bad enough for a country to be bombed on its 50th anniversary, this year’s Christmas celebration was tarred with the blood of the innocent!  38 innocent people, and counting!  Before you could say ‘Goodluck’, another went off at Mogadishu barracks, Abuja.  Four dead and still counting.  I think Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia ko?  We now know no peace whatsoever as a people.  Public places in Abuja are now guarded with police/army personnel armed to the teeth.

The handling of the incidences have left a lot to be desired.  While Egyptian president claimed the bombing that happened on new year’s eve in his country was the work of ‘a foreign country’ bent on destabilising Egypt, our government apportioned the blame squarely on Boko Haram.  That we are moving towards a certain perdition with this line of reasoning is not obvious to most Nigerians.  As a columnist and as a mere citizen of this country, I have cautioned us severally against this one-track mind line of reasoning.  I have urged that we take a deep breath each time these cataclysmic events occur and not jump to conclusions.  Indeed, I am tired of preaching.  I will only say now, that if we want a country, we have to work to earn it.  We are presently pulling this country down, almost everyone of us.  Even the president and his spokesmen.

Still I will offer some perspectives on the Jos bombings.  Curiously, this seems to be the first time that bombs will be used in Nigeria by suspected ‘Islamists’.  Do Islamic groups normally ‘claim’ responsibility in Nigeria?   Will Boko Haram open a website when it claims that ‘Boko’ is ‘Haram’?  Is website not ‘Boko’?  If these were Islamic fundamentalists, is their modus operandi not suicide bombing?  How come there is no indication that any of the terrorists killed him/herself in this instance?  Does the statement from those who claimed responsibility not look too neat, too articulate, too directed, than to be from a ragtag team of militants?

Well, I cannot speak on behalf of well-meaning Muslims.  But I can, as a columnist, question the logic (or is it illogic), of what is happening in our country today?  We have again turned on ourselves in the most predictable manner.  Once again, our people are calling for war.  Once again, every analysis drips of hate and disdain.  Once again it’s the call of ‘to your tents, o Nigerians’ that have rent the air.  Old daggers have been brought out of their sheaths.  It’s got so bad that I personally don’t care anymore.  Let Nigerians go their ways if they want.  But I assure that our beliefs will still hold us down under whatever contraptions we create.  Oodua, or Biafra, or Arewa will still have their own problems, proportionate to their inability to cooperate and the amount of disdain and disregard that they show against their constituent parts.  I wager though, that the north, being fairly, only fairly, more homogenous and with the influence of the much-disparaged Islam, will likely be more peaceful and therefore, more progressive in the medium to long term.  The south of Nigeria is seeing a mirage.  Their cultures there are not compatible with their developmental aspirations and most people there are ready to self-introspect.

I had cause to respond to a posting on a forum called naijapolitics.com in the course of the week.  Some US-based, self-described Biafran guys posted the picture of about 200 people who were roasted to death in a pipeline inferno, and were deceiving people that the picture was taken in Jos after the December 24, bombings.  Most people accepted that falsehood for truth and of course, many went on and on about why the country should split and how the Muslims were devils.  I had to type over 5,000 words of email to people, trying to focus them on the larger challenges that face us in Africa and why we need to cooperate, and convince them that the picture was false.

But what can a mere columnist like me do, when the people whom we have charged with the running of Nigeria make incendiary, parochial statements, devoid of any iota of intelligence?  Why have we not seen that you cannot run a country by alienating any part thereof?  The president himself went to ECWA church a day after new year and linked the Mogadishu bombings to the same ‘demons’ who bombed Jos.  What did he hope to achieve given that ECWA’s HQ is in Jos?  Bloody votes?  May God save us! I see daily that we do not appreciate the challenges facing us as an African country.  We think that if only we can prove the supremacy of our tribe or religion, then we would have achieved something.  How so wrong!  Economic development, which is every country’s ultimate goal, is the world’s deadliest contact sport.

Let me tell us how the USA pulled out of the Great Depression.  On January 6, 1942, President FD Roosevelt unveiled the USA’s arms production target for 1942.  He said the USA was going to produce 60,000 airplanes and 100,000 fighter jets.  The people thought he was joking.  How could that be possible?  The USA was deep into the Great Depression! So he called the CEOs of the automobile industry and briefed them that they were to work with the defence industry in terms of supplying components.  He also announced to the American people that he is banning the sale or purchase of personal cars for two years.  Everybody bought into that dream.  The USA exceeded the target by 100%, sold loads of fighter jets to warring countries, and became a major world power.

In Nigeria here, we are importing more luxury ‘jeeps’, and even extending the limit for jalopies, when we should be banning all of them outright in order to get out of this DEPRESSION that causes our people to be so angry and violent.  Back then, the people of USA had a choice to turn on themselves too, and be bickering about who was of German or Scottish or Irish or African origin.  But they cooperated.  Nigeria must unite, or die!

As all these goes on, the President has been playing good boy to the western countries over the matter of Cote d’Ivoire.  I reckon he believes they will support him in the event that the next election becomes contentious.  But the Ivorian matter is more complicated than we see.  Next week.