Many times you hear “patriotic Nigerians” qualifying their country with such phrases as “giant of Africa,” “our great nation.” There is nothing wrong in being patriotic. In fact, patriotism, which means loyalty to ones country, is a virtue which defines every true citizenship because it is at the core of public spirit, the social conscience which drives a nation.
But patriotism is not the same thing as self-deceit. Being patriotic is not the same thing as living a lie, because that is what we do when we say our country is the giant of Africa.
Truth be told, our dear fatherland, Nigeria, is not a great nation. It may be tomorrow. What makes a nation great is not the quantum of natural resources it has or its landmass. It is not the size of its population. The greatness of a nation is measured by the quality of life of its citizens.
A country trapped in the Hobbesian state where life is short, brutish and nasty cannot by any stretch be deemed to be great.
How can a country that cannot feed its people be called great? How can a country that cannot give its young ones quality education be regarded as great? How can a country that cannot give its people good health care be called a great country?
I don’t know who else is noticing that in the past few years, at least 80 per cent of our “big men” died in foreign hospitals. It is now a status symbol to die abroad.
You hear people say, boastfully, that their father died in the United States or mother passed on in the United Kingdom or that their wives, uncles, aunts, et al, died in Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa. Any country except Nigeria.
Any rich man who dies in Nigeria either gives up the ghost before air ambulance can be hired or his condition is too critical to be flown abroad. No great country does that.
In all the years that former South African President, Nelson Mandela, was ill he never left the shores of his country until he died. Yet he got the best medical attention.
We don’t seem to realise that the health of the president of a country is a national security issue. Imagine a Russian president being taken to the West for medical treatment or an Iranian president being flown to any country in the world to be treated of cold the same way we handled the health problem of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
But if anything has exposed how impotent we are as a country, it is the tragedy that unfolded before us on April 14, when Boko Haram terrorists abducted over 200 teenage girls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.
As I wrote in this column last week, any other country in the world where over 200 innocent school girls are abducted by terrorists will come to a standstill until they are rescued dead or alive. But for two weeks we did absolutely nothing.
Instead, an issue that is a matter of life and death became politicised and President Goodluck Jonathan set up a committee to tell him what to do. A local campaign to nudge the government to take action was misconstrued as an attempt to blackmail the president.
Even when it was established that these girls were, indeed, abducted the government could not lift a finger. Nigeria, the giant of Africa, the great nation, made no attempt to confront the insurgents, children of the devil wreaking havoc on innocent citizens. The giant of Africa became impotent when it mattered most.
I imagine what those girls will be thinking of their “great nation” wherever they are now. If this crisis had not been internationalised, they would have gone unsung. If the international community had not come in, we would have moved on and nothing would have happened.
After all, this is not the first time a crime of such magnitude will be committed in Nigeria and nobody pays any price. When the same Boko Haram terrorists went to a Federal Government College in Yobe and slaughtered innocent students in their sleep, what happened? What did we do as a people? That crime is as heinous as the kidnap of these girls.
Jonathan is boasting once again that Boko Haram will be defeated just because the international community has waded into the matter. Didn’t we hear him sing the same song last year? Is it not the same Shekau, leader of Boko Haram, whom the military claimed died last year from gunshot wounds who is taunting the same country every day. We all seem to have forgotten that.
The tragedy of the Nigerian situation is that there is little governance. Everything is about politics. But you don’t play politics with the lives of the people you govern. You don’t play politics with lives. We have lost our humanity. We seem to have forgotten that the murder of one, particularly in such gruesome manner as Boko Haram does every day, diminishes all of us.
It is because we have lost our humanity that the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, could afford to be at her theatrical best, blaming the victims; parents whose children have been subjected to trauma for daring to tell their government to take action. For her, the whole saga may have been contrived to blackmail her husband and stampede his out of office.
But what use is it to continue occupying an office for the sake of it when you cannot discharge the primary responsibilities of that office. Even if the sacrifice the president has to make to ensure that these abducted girls return safely is to forfeit his office, is it not worth it?
So, while will the First Lady ridicule herself, and by extension the entire government, by that sordid and unnecessary drama?
It is difficult not to be angry as a Nigerian right now. We are neither a great nation nor aspiring to be one. And this is a country that has all it takes to be whatever it wants to be on the face of the earth.
What a tragedy.
