Nigeria and the three laws of motion
Anger and depression for breakfast, I lay on my bed asking myself a question, “how did we get here?” Technology to my rescue, I read through comments on Facebook and Blackberry groups. Thank God everyone seems to be asking the same question but no one seems to have an answer. But a senior colleague, Mr. […]
Anger and depression for breakfast, I lay on my bed asking myself a question, “how did we get here?” Technology to my rescue, I read through comments on Facebook and Blackberry groups. Thank God everyone seems to be asking the same question but no one seems to have an answer. But a senior colleague, Mr. Ike Nwankwo made a comment in one of our BB groups and it turned out to be apt and in line with my thought. According to Ike “As Nigerians, we pride and love ourselves dearly, so when or how we have changed or turned to suicide, it means a fundamental change to us as Nigerians. This is serious as it means that we have lost our identity”.
This I concur so much that I could only explain my thought using Newton’s laws of motion (considering my background as a physicist) to analyse the Nigerian situation. The first law of motion (otherwise known as law of inertia) states that: Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. As a young man, not too young to know what life was in those days; born in the 70s, growing up in the 80s, life was good. Everyone was everybody’s keeper. There were no armed robbery, but petty thieves. There was justice for the criminal. I remember parents would take their kid to watch the public execution of criminals like Anini and Osunbor that met their waterloo alongside the corrupt officer George Iyamu. But the 90s came with a lot of influences; there was massive import of cultures, hip hop music, violent movies, campus cultism, 419, bribery and corruption, arms proliferation etc.
The nation wasn’t ready for the overwhelming cultural and psychological changes and the military governments were too busy (sustaining themselves in power) to think about managing the societal changes. Here we are decades down the line and it is very obvious that the very essence of our being as Nigerians has been altered. We have allowed the importation of foreign ideas and ideologies to dis-orientate us and something fundamental has gone wrong.
The second law of physics states that: The acceleration of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass. The rate at which groups like OPC, Niger Delta Militants, Boko Haram, etc have descended on the nation is a reflection of the neglect of our values as a people in senseless pursuit of Money, Power and Respect (ego). Greed has taken over; we put personal interest above community and national interests. In the absence of commonwealth, everyone tries to amass enough wealth to provide himself with his own electricity – stand by generator, water – bore holes, security – prison like walls. Neglecting the poor who have now become menace to the society and a threat to all we greedily acquired. The question is “despite all the wealth acquired, are you and your family safe now”?
The third law which states that: Action and reaction are equal and opposite. This law is exemplified by what happens if we step off a boat onto the bank of a lake: as we move in the direction of the shore, the boat tends to move in the opposite direction (leaving us facedown in the water, if we aren’t careful). The rate of corruption and oppression in the system coupled with the obvious high level of impunity in the land can only breed one thing, ANARCHY! Hence the journey to “failed statehood”.
In as much as I condemn in its totality all the acts of terrorism, from the creeks to the far north and now the federal capital territory but we must accept one fact that beyond any religious or personal belief, for men to be ready to take their lives in the name of anything, then something must be terribly wrong somewhere. There is a distortion in our societal values and our moral fabric. Nigeria has a social problem that needs urgent study, analysis and systematic resolution. But above all Nigeria needs a leadership that will bring about the drastically change that we require not just by putting an end to all these extremisms but to chart a new cause for a true national re-orientation in order to come to terms with the true Nigerian identity, we need to determine what we stand for, because a people that stands for nothing will fall for anything. God bless Nigeria.
Babayeju, Chief Executive Officer – iCentra Programme Director – ProMaCon www.taopheek.com