That Nigeria has collapsed!

In the said lecture, I am sure eloquently delivered, the usual praise singing of government which would have been the thing to do by most Nigerian intellectuals if they were invited to speak before the president and his vice as well as several top government functionaries was completely absent and what the president and his […]

In the said lecture, I am sure eloquently delivered, the usual praise singing of government which would have been the thing to do by most Nigerian intellectuals if they were invited to speak before the president and his vice as well as several top government functionaries was completely absent and what the president and his team faced was the gruesome reality about what someone who has studied Nigeria from outside understands about this giant in the sun.

From the lecturer’s definition and exegesis of even the government most touted word ‘transformation’ it was clear that all those at the venue were left in doubt as to the critical content of what was to be expected. I think the lecturer, a person I never knew or heard of before the lecture captured the Nigerian question very succinctly and gave it to those who invited him in black and white.

Listen to a lecturer telling the president that Nigeria’s greatness or its potentials for growth are not in the fact that it has so much oil, but the abundant human resources which has not been tapped and exploited! There can be no further truth from this and I am glad it was somebody else form outside who faced the president head on and told him that stark truth.

This piece is not about what the lecturer said but the response of our president to the gruesome facts that were told to him head on even if he previously knew much or even more than he was told. The response the truth elicited is what has generated so much national concern from Tuesday this week to the time of writing this article.

We have said this time and time again that Nigeria is in deep crisis and it will require very effective political brinkmanship to put it back to work. When the campaigns were on, and even before the campaigns, the concerns that many of us had was that Nigerians needed to go above board to ensure that they elected competent hands that would drive it out of this state of hopelessness.

When we spoke about the magnitude of the crises, those who thought the other way condemned us and claimed that Nigeria was working to the extent that during the campaigns and elections, the nation became a religious enterprise with most of its citizens pitching camps on the basis of religion except in the South West and parts of the North Central.

Nigerians didn’t care what would happen but the only item on the agenda was that ‘ours’ must be foisted at no matter what cost and the future will take care of itself. That was the logic behind those unchristian South East and South South votes. I don’t know what the clergies in those zones would tell God when they are asked in the hereafter about their breach to a central item on the 10 commandments.

In any case, the elections are now over and we are faced with the realities of the Nigerian failures which seem to be bothering everyone around including the number one. The problem however is not that the president expressed these feelings before the global community but the seeming hopelessness and helplessness with which he raised the issues. It will appear as if the president said what he said out of the inability to do anything to get the rot right.

Agreed that Nigeria has collapsed, a reality which no one can dispute, the most disturbing scenario is that the president and his government seem more determined to ravage what little is left, if anything at all is left. Many reasons are readily available to corroborate this point of view. They range from the very uncoordinated manner Mr. President speaks on very critical national issues to the way the government is run by a very tiny cabal, tinier than the one Yar’adua used and grossly inadequate in intelligence.

Take a look at an SMS going round during week about the president’s principal contingent to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. A Southern Nigerian affair in toto. Was that deliberate or accidental? In any case, it was a manifestation of the gross incapacity in governance and in politics to have done that.

The Chief of Army Staff in the week told the world that intelligence information had shown that the Boko Haram sect members are getting military training abroad. The question I asked when I read the statement was what was the COAS’s definition of abroad? He could be right if his information points to areas around Cameroon and Chad or Niger Republic.

I don’t know, I hear so many people say many of the members of the sect are foreigners, but that is the average view of most Southern elites about a large population of Northern Nigeria. Remember after the infamous post-election violence in the North? It took time fruitlessly to make the point that Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Borno, Sokoto, Kebbi or any other state in the fringes of the North does not require any mercenary from any other country to express discontentment with an unjust political, economic or social policy.

There is nothing anybody can do about that at the moment but to continue to insist that those who will take decisions on our behalf as leaders in this country must have a minimum knowledge of the complexities that the nation is made of. I have no doubt in my mind that the major problem among others that President Jonathan is going to face while he reigns is largely a tribute of his weak knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of the Nigerian entity. This General Obasanjo had in sufficient quantity even if deployed mischievously.

If the president sincerely believes that Nigeria is not working, is he prepared to sincerely deploy the necessary brinkmanship to make it work again? It is certainly not going to be easy or sudden but the bottom line is that something serious has to begin and in earnest. I am not sure if this understanding is popular in the corridors of power yet, but there is no easy way to freedom.

The picture all over the place is chaos and disorder. The fact however is Nigerians themselves appreciate the magnitude of the problems but I am certain that they are not ready to support any meaningful change. The reason behind this deduction is simple. We don’t seem to have learnt any serious lessons from our mass poverty and the avalanche of difficulties we are facing.

Indeed the nation has collapsed. The president is right. We await measures that he desires to take to put it back to work.