Political sadism, economic brutality and financial exploitation pervades the nation. Exploitation, fashioned by sadist politicians having driven the down trodden into multidimensional poverty. Artificially induced prejudices that crippled the masses, kept them divided and hence isolated in tribal and religious cocoons. This Nigerian reality is steeped in fiction. It is such that even Nollywood will reject it as an “improbable fiction”.
300 years ago, our forebears were sold via Badagry and Calabar ports in cast iron chains. Today, we are being sold in cast electronic chains via ill thought out slave statutes from ports within proximity of the same Badagry and Calabar. A level of sadism that Achebe in Arrow of God must have referred to as “elemental cruelty in the psychological make-up of the native”.
A system now set up to develop a one party utopia is devouring the Nigerian people. Yet the story is being acted out as reality by our political appendages. A reality where: an individual steals more money than the budget of a state; Nigerian courts openly reverses established legal jurisprudence; and the electoral umpire refuses to comply with its own by-laws. It is where those who steal more than enough are crowned as Pharoah and those who steal less than little become pariahs. Corruption in Nigeria is unlike corruption anywhere in the world: it is like an open wound that is infested by maggots. It leaves the corpse of a dead nation fast decaying and irreversible. It cannot be regenerated or rehabilitated. The pedagogy that underpins Nigerian corruption must be destroyed and disposed of.
If today, Rwanda and Singapore are both possible, why must Nigeria be impossible? But Nigeria is chained. We had always known we were in chains. Yet we cling on to the rejection of reality. The political hangers on accept pittance from the strong men of politics to satisfy their appetite for unquenchable greed. Meanwhile, over 200 million Nigerians without a voice are dying of hunger, starvation and insecurity. It appears our audacious Maradona will end up dribbling himself. His strategic concept: any “god of men” and politician that money cannot buy must be bought with more borrowed money. This in itself is unsustainable. The philosophy that rewrites the meaning of crime: where your crimes are wiped out if stolen under the shadow or within the shelter of the ruling party. Meanwhile, if you reject this shelter of the “most high Pharaoh”: the creator of city boys, you will be hunted down for breathing.
The political class use the public purse as a welfare cash machine. They withdraw money they did not deposit, thereafter “BORROW” without repaying. As millions of Nigerians raise their voices louder in opposition to unsustainable borrowing and looting, politicians statutorily redesigned their looting. Streamlined as statutory provisions as Security votes for executives and constituency projects for legislators experience exponential growth.
This is Nigeria where commercially motivated religious papists vomit monetarily induced prophecies. The “god of Men” sell their prophetic gabs to the highest bidder. The Nigeria of desecration of religious places in the north and genocide in the middle belt. Nigeria were men of feeble integrity who succumbed so as to be included in the share of power and the booty that comes with it. However, as we avoid difficult conversations we trade short term discomfort for long term dysfunction.
Such is the dysfunction in most parts of Nigeria today whose leaders chose to deny their people the power of critical thinking and functional education in order to keep them in perpetual subjugation and servitude. Same was the dysfunction and now total failure of an Independent Southern Sudan whose leaders turned a blind eye from the elephant in the room, refusing to debate the functions and institutions of a free democratic Southern Sudan, instead they chose to each build individual kingdoms/chiefdoms where they will each hold supreme leadership. Such was the case with Nigerian independence that bequeathed an entrapment of servitude and slavery of the masses to their emotionally deprived leaders.
In fighting for freedom from the entrapment called Nigeria, the time has come to begin to discuss institutions that will sustain freedom and how that will work within the confines of regions, within an expanded geography, encompassing all regions. We must think out alternative strategies to extricate ourselves from this cacophonous entrapment. The strategy of selections through fake institutions in liu of free and fair elections creates monsters we can not hold to account.
“The Falcon cannot hear the Falconer, things have fallen apart and the centre cannot hold”, Achebe. It has been comprehensively demonstrated, showcased and presented that Law and Order had vacated the nation. Acting out the final scene that announced the demise of law and order was the 2023 IREV switch of the presidential election. Subsequently followed by a real life Nollywood showcase in Abuja of: “you are a fool, I am not a fool”. Here we showcased the ignorance of arrogance clashing with the arrogance of uniform. A “trade fair” exhibition of the extent of decline of the “Nigerian civilisation”. A lawless nation stained with multidimensional impunity. From the 2023 election until our societally accepted madness is exorcised, mere anarchy is loosened upon our nation.
Nigerians! Integrity is your only entrance door to freedom. Knowledge is your key. Citizen courage is your ultimate route to freedom. It is your courage that will set you free in-spite of the monstrous size of governmental shenanigans. Ultimately, it is the size of the fight in the dog that counts, not the size of the dog in the fight.
Chidi Okemadu M.Sc. (Arch); M.Sc. (Mangt. & Fin.); M.A. (Ed) CeFA, MCIM, MCIOB
This is a brilliant article by Chidi Okemadu. He really touched many areas in the socio, economic, security, religious, classism, corruption, mismanagement and other enabling areas that make Nigeria, a fictitious reality. The solution to these problems is staring us in the face.