Nigeria not dead, cannot be buried

In Nigeria, various efforts raging from civilian to military have been employed to save Nigeria from total death and burial. These efforts from Zik, Awolowo to the present day Politicians have failed to yield the desired results because of greed and selfishness. This is covered with deceit and empty promises. Some politicians are ready to […]

In Nigeria, various efforts raging from civilian to military have been employed to save Nigeria from total death and burial. These efforts from Zik, Awolowo to the present day Politicians have failed to yield the desired results because of greed and selfishness. This is covered with deceit and empty promises. Some politicians are ready to do anything including playing dirty games while in search for power. When they get the power, they transform from lambs to chameleons and dragons. During campaigns, some had visited the prisons to commiserate with the young men incarcerated for no just reason, promising to change the justice programme and speed up the process of releasing those who are not supposed to be there. They had reassured every citizen that the prison yards are not a place of punishment but centre of transformation.
What about the security officers? Are they left out in the political plan and campaign promises?  Not at all! They are often promised instant increment in their salaries. They are told that they would be taken good care of with enough capacity to maintain law and order. The teachers are promised good remuneration as at when due. The children are promised free education and allowances. They promise electricity, good road network and security for all!  Fellow Compatriots, let the obvious be emphasised with pungent clarity that the Politicians are clearly in politics for selfish reasons. They do not love the common good even when they profess it on oath. Because of this believable disguise, the poor and the deceived masses make wrong choices. Instead of an intelligent person who understands the best approach and methods for running a country in the best possible way, a moron and bigot takes the saddle of leadership.
The people seem drawn to persons who have demonstrated questionable abilities with the consequence of a dead nation that refused to be buried. What a shame that we find ourselves in a new era of indigenized Colonialism. This could have made Donald Trump to make this campaign statement: “To Make America great again, we need to get rid of the Muslims, Mexicans and the Africans, especially the Nigerians… We need to get the Africans out. Not the blacks, the Africans, especially the Nigerians. They’re everywhere. I went for a rally in Alaska and met just one African in the entire state. Where is he from? Nigeria! He’s in Alaska taking our jobs. They’re in Houston taking our jobs. Why can’t they stay in their own country? Why? I’ll tell you why. Because they are corrupt. Their Governments are so corrupt; they rob the people blind and bring it all here to spend. And their people run away and come down here and take our jobs! We can’t have that! If I become president, we’ll send them all home. We’ll build a wall at the Atlantic Shore. Then maybe we’ll re-colonize them because obviously they did not learn a damn thing from the British!”
This not withstanding, Nigerians in Diaspora are shocked by the evil acts that were perpetrated recently by the Fulani herdsmen in Nimbo community of Uzo-uwani local government Area of Enugu state Nigeria. While this serious issue was debated at the Senate, it was a television drama as some Senators were seen relaxed as if nothing happened. It is with heart full of pain that I join the Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, who on    Monday the 27th of April in his address to the National Conference on Culture and Tourism, slammed President Muhammadu Buhari, over what he described as his government’s seeming inability to contain the violent activities of herdsmen across the country as reported in the Vanguard.
Soyinka said: “I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated. The nation is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents… Let me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse, rigorous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram repudiate its founding clerics… It is not merely arbitrary violence that reigns across the nation but total, undisputed impunity. Impunity evolves and becomes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered”. Is Nigeria a Zoo? When shall we learn to take a stand and declare: “enough is enough”?
We Nigerians in Europe usually watch the arrival and visits of some of our leaders to Europe where they enjoy  every physical infrastructure put in place by their counterparts, electricity, water, road,  security… etc. These infrastructure that they enjoy here, which even their sons and daughters enjoy while studying abroad are desirable. Why can’t they with the rich resources of Nigeria make available in the country what they enjoy abroad? These visit of our leaders usually does not end without a town hall meeting, in which there would be appeals to Nigerian professionals abroad to “come back home and join hands to re-build our great Nation”. They end up as far as asking their counterparts to begin massive deportation of illegal immigrants back to Nigeria as the country has put everything in place to alleviate all sectors of the society. The former President Olusegun Obasanjo had tried to convince the world leaders that life in Nigeria had taken a good dimension and that every Nigerian residing outside the country is doing so by choice. Recently, president Buhari declared that “Nigerians’ reputation for crime has made them unwelcomed in Britain”. He went further to declare that “those who had joined the migrant exodus to Europe were doing so purely for economic reasons.
Could it be that the Nigerian Government is not capable of protecting and guaranteeing the  security of her citizens? Any country that does not value the life of her citizens and protect them to the last is not a safe place to live in.  No body wants to live in a country where there is no respect, no value for human life and where people live in fear. Was this the change that the people were clamouring for?  According to a Japanese proverb, “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”Nobody must be cowed to believe that with these declarations and expressions of sentiments, we hate our nation, no;we love Nigeria more than most of our corrupt leaders who carry around the national flag and yet work against her integrity. Consequently, it will be important at this juncture to remember the words of George Bernard Shaw: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”That’s what life is all about. I congratulate every well-meaning Nigerian who is working hard for peace, dialogue as a way to promote justice, fair play, mutual respect and respect for human lives and property. In God we trust, may he console those who mourn their loved ones and may he see us through.
Rev. Fr. Kenneth Iloabuchi, a Nigerian Catholic priest writes from Spain.