49th Independence: A Season For Noise Making?

By

Khalid Imam

khalidimam2002@yahoo.co.uk

The season for noise marking is here again as Nigeria marks its 49th independence. As usual, President Umar Musa Yar’adua like those before him too, had insulted the sensibility of Nigerians with false promises of better days ahead in his annual early morning national broadcast. The media, as Mahmud Jega rightly predicted, for some weeks and so, will be awash with all kinds of full page adverts felicitating with our inept, highly corrupt political office holders for Nigeria’s so called landmark achievement of witnessing yet another round of wasteful and money-squandering birthday commemoration (as if aging alone without the ensuing maturity is enough). Expectedly, we would have gloomy, emotional, no less vacuous commentaries and editorials reminding us of our unfortunate, totally avoidable woes as a nation.

Oh yes! This is yet another season for us to make the loudest noise possible about our national catastrophe, like the remorseless primary pupils whose names persistently appeared on the black list of noise makers by repeatedly defying the corrective counsel and whip of their teachers. And like the naughty pupils referred to above: are we really better than them? Or, to put it differ- ently: Is our attitude towards Nigeria’s ludicrous performance, in any way, not the same as that of those disobedient school lads?

That the blaring of a horn may convoy some fundamental message as the chirping of a dove does is beyond dispute, but what may be in doubt is whether the irritating cry of chimpanzee has the same significance too?  Are we really frugal with our time and words at all considering the years this country wasted lamenting our disgraceful feat?

True, we have been treating Nigeria, in the past decades, like an impatient bride passing through the agonising pangs of first pregnancy whose careless, inhuman hubby pretends to publically love by humming tender lines to her before the ears of everyone who cares to listen, but wickedly won’t let her go to hospital in spite of the blood she badly lost, and still loses. One would be quite amazed if the same hypocritical and murderous husband feigns ignorance and innocence, while her family mourns her unfortunate demise. Who, in your view, is responsible for her death? Is it the widower who “killed” her or her family (for their criminal silence?)     

The picture I’m trying to paint here is: are we not meting Nigeria similar cruel treatment like the unfortunate wife who lost her precious life? Or to put it aptly: in what ways our collective actions or inactions towards Nigeria differ from those of the inhuman hubby or the care free attitude of the family of his slain wife?

Why Nigeria’s journey towards meaningful nationhood, after all these years, is proving to be tumultuous? If you ask me I would say: simply, it is because we lack the requisite faith about the country’s ability to forge ahead as a truly united indivisible nation which is ever alert and ready to develop its citizenry and vice versa. It was just yesterday our forefathers are calling Nigeria the “mistake of 1914”, or even dismissively as “a mere geographical expression”. Sadly today, poets like the Remi Rajis and others are applauded for labelling our motherland a “wasteland” and so on. I recall in one of our monthly poetry readings at the British Council, Kano office, my poet cum journalist good pal; Ahmed Abubakar presented a poem which many of us believed to be the most apt description of Nigeria’s hopeless situation: “Nothing works in my country/ the few that work head for the rock”. Of course, nothing works in this country, but whose fault is it if I may ask? Do we have another country we can call ours if not Nigeria? And whose responsibility is it to fix Nigeria? Is it not a grand self delusion and for any Nigerian to shamelessly call Nigeria a joke?   

If Nigeria turns out to be a crude joke today, are Nigerians not the ones to bury their faces in shame? Since independence, we woefully failed to build a true and lasting nationalistic feeling (what one may call national consensus across the varied spectrum that Nigeria is) due to our lack of cohesion, sense of direction and purpose. It is trite to say that the political class (both the ones in government and those in opposition) are all the more guilty of warped, bungled morality, political opportunism; promotion of ethnic chauvinism, regional dichotomy and religious intolerance. Today, we are in disarray shouting at one another by throwing stones of gibes; as if we are living in a baboons’ parliament. Instead of us to unite through sharing of useful ideas across whatever divide we may find ourselves in as Nigerians, we have been crowning silly pretenders among us as heroes based on their senseless loquaciousness or how tribal they sounded. Our inability to appreciate the dichotomy between making sense and making nonsense has been our albatross as a nation.       

In my humble opinion, we are in this mess of retrogression simply because our wretched country is yet to be blessed with serious, selfless and patriotic leaders like Nelson Mandela (or even his compatriot or comrade-in-arms, Walter Siselu). True nationalists who would mobilise us to the palace of freedom are what Nigeria direly needs. Like the South African foot soldiers of emancipation that courageously resisted the trigger-happy army of apartheid to break the prison of injustice, Nigerians too, if properly mobilised, could replicate that feat. But alas, insincerity and greed have been the cogs in the wheel of our current struggle.  Honestly, it is charitable to call our so called pretentious human right activists and democracy groups as well as political parties as collections of highly disillusioned, political opportunists or tribal champions masquerading as our liberators. Oh yes! Phantom messiahs they are if we must call a spade a spade!

 We must, as a matter of urgency, unravel the true identity of the Wole Soyinkas, Dangiwa Umars, Anthony Enahoros, Shehu Sanis, Olu Falaes, among others who, for decades, have been posing as “our heroes of democracy”.  Again, to fully understand my reason for passing a vote of no confidence on the present array of unserious political class and their equally culpable right activists and democracy groups, I refer the reader to late Abidina Coomassie’s revealing exposure in his book:  “Democracy and Political Opportunism in Nigeria: A Documentary Source Book”. I challenge our phoney democrats and right activists to look inward, retrace their steps, redefine their goals as well as adopt new approaches, if they are truly sincere and want to be seen as model of integrity, progress and national integration; not as desperate, attention-seeking and self appointed “conscience of the people” whose decisive conducts further polarised the nation and its citizens.         

 

Before Nigeria celebrates its golden jubilee next October, the questions to ask are: are we complacent with the torpid state of our nation? Or, is the torpidity of our situation beyond redemption? If not, what you and I (as Nigerians) are doing to rescue her from its present sorry state? Should we continue to helplessly watch the few rapists among us, posing as our leaders to completely mortgage our collective future? Would gnashing our teeth or pouring vitriol on our brutal tormentors the only answer to our national crisis? As we ponder of genuine answers to the aforementioned posers, let me end this piece with this parting bon mot: the future of Nigeria is ours to make or mar. So, the choice is ours. And as we approach the end of a cliff, as Reverent Father Hassan Kukah wants to believe, the sooner we wake up from our perniciously national somnolence, the better for all of us. Period!