At 63, Nigeria needs to be unbundled from political brigandage.
By Taju Tijani
Today, Nigeria is loudly celebrating her 63 years of flag independence. Yes, a once proud nation, now badly totemised to the very bottom of the world’s socio-economic pole has come of age. We have added another year to the silent pain of a broken nation, hijacked since independence by illiterate, stubborn, political hegemony that have succeeded in imposing graft-driven circus, called governance.
Welcome to Nigeria’s 63 circus years of bondage. Independence Remembrance Day is no longer the Thanksgiving Day of freedom from servitude and colonial imposition. It is no longer the day when we remember the birth of a new nation, a new destiny, and a new dream. Rather, Independence Day is today a day to remember the death of a nation. When you sampled all the verbalized and written jousts of opinions of our independence remembrance, the whole exercises crystallized into one enigma: mourning.
There is a mournful passing away of Nigeria, a belief shared even among the hardened optimists. Every man, woman, and child talks of our social rot; corruption, moral failure, official pilferage, blinkered leaders, stagnant progress, and spiritual castration. From the tribes of enlightened talking heads I spoke to, no one could deny the fact that the blighted contortions of the last 63 circus years have damaged our image globally. However, with mystifying silence, we merely watched our worsening condition with powerless complicity.
With our unintended broad support, we are witnessing the total wreckage of the economy as our politicians who are now the regents of our civic values, shapers of our public policy and the illiterate shepherds of our democratic deliberations have all succeeded in pillaging Nigeria for self-aggrandizement. As we celebrate 63 loony years, Nigeria is still obscured by shameless orgy of political vulgarity, impunity, burden bearing and oppression. Our political class continue to wave a banner of irredeemable insanity and cold indifference that make the mind sick.
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Daily, Nigerians are despised and treated as scums by a rapacious band of dimwit diviners called politicians who are madly energised by demonic promptings to preserve and protect selfish interests as against national interests. Who will puncture the bubble of ostentatious and profligate lifestyle of Nigerian politicians and align their expectations with the wishes of the Nigerian people? After 63 years of profligate national project, the question is who will be martyred for a New Nigeria? Who! Who!! Who!!!What really stabs the heart in the case of Nigeria is the enraging, apostatical insult of banding this nation among the poorest nations on earth.
Such classification of Nigeria borders on the wilder shores of unreason. What then happens to the colossal resources of our oil, the resourcefulness of our work force and the intellectual muscle of our educated elite? Where did we lose the dawning euphoric dream of greatness as seen in the 60’s?
Why did we allow the audacity of hope enshrined in the possible greatness of Nigeria atrophied through snobbish political non-accountability, pandemic corruption, thuggery, tribalism, dollarized politics of the elites for the elites?
Why is politics, as seen through the lens of Western democracies, seem to have lost their bearings in this realm? Why, at every yearly independence celebration, do we all come out with same sombre narrative? Why do we have to sip, annually, on the hemlock of defeat and stagnant destiny? When are we going to receive light in this darkening vision?
How do we stop this recurrent grin-and-bear-it stoicism which Abami Eda, the Chief Priest, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti immortalized uniquely as suffering and smiling? In 63 years of independence, where are the jobs? In February 2022, federal government said that it had created 750,000 phantom jobs. Today, there are 22 million unemployed Nigerians. 14 million Nigerian youths are unemployed. 34.9% of Nigerians aged between 15-34 are roaming the streets. Again, in 63 years of democratic journey, what has become of our hospitals, our roads, state of wellbeing and mental health? Today, to refill a 12kg gas cylinder, you need N11,500. This year, Nigeria is expected to spend N6.3 trillion ($5.3 billion) servicing its local and external debt more than N3.6 trillion it set aside for 2022.
Today Nigeria is castrated by the profligacy of its politicians. General opinions about Tinubu’s government have polarised Nigerians. Opinions have coalesced or crystalised into some form of disillusion and hopelessness for the manner he was inaugurated as president of Nigeria. Legitimacy of his victory is still being contested in the law courts both at home and abroad.
As I write, NLC, TUC and NUPENG have decided on nationwide strike from the 3rd of October 2023 to protest the daily hardships of Nigerians as a result of empty promise of palliatives by Federal Government. Threats of strikes have come to capture the pathological incompetency of Tinubu’s presidency. We now live under extreme ethnic polarization, shocking corruption, morale meltdown in the military, marginalization of other tribes, primitive thinking, foolish political hegemonism, ethical void, widespread banditry, pandemic kidnapping, economic depression, social anomie, brutal suppression of protest culture and morbid phenomena of paranoia.
Over a year ago, General Muhammadu Buhari re-imagined autocracy as opposed to democracy. He weaponised the democratic process and set himself up as a man fighting a civil war with Nigerians. The untethering of his once concealed fang against urban and suburban activists, agitators, rights advocates, and human rights campaigners have delegitimized our democracy under his watch. There was no pretence in his introduction of military absolutism into our liberal politics. Rather than engage, Buhari the ditherer, met every opposition with tyrannical instinct. He was the leopard that cannot change its skin. Liberal democracy did not offer Buhari the deliverance he desperately needed from the demons of Decrees 2 and 4 he once used as instruments of terror on helpless Nigerians during his jackboot reign as a military leader – an administration that was shaped by irrational brutality.
The insane and toxic model of Nigeria’s monetised democracy championed by the likes of the twin villains of Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar clearly shows that our democracy will continue to be weighed down by class hegemon that has no future for ordinary Nigerians.
The mass euphoria for a true change was marred by state capture by the APC through an active support from INEC. We televised the electoral shenanigans when it was unfolding. Western nation watched with horror how we desecrated democracy through clannish energy, thuggery, blackmail, intimidation of opponents and complete lawlessness of the whole election process. Nigeria needs a radical remodelling away from the mindless paucity of ideas that seems to have made APC a lawless party. A party that is oxygenated by nothing but corruption and shameless disregard for the tenets of democracy.
Until we pause to map that radical political alternative that will suit the social, spiritual, economic, tribal, and intellectual temper of all the competing but subdued and dominated nationalities, we shall remain indentured slaves to the medieval political banditry of APC for the long haul. Helpless Nigerians shall continue to be burden bearers for political thieves who have used the courts and corrupt judges to subvert the wishes of the people. At 63, the nationhood nightmare continues. At 63, Nigeria needs to be unbundled from political brigandage. Happy birthday with clenched teeth.
