As ordinary Nigerians we are all day labourers.
Every Nigerian whose head is for more than carrying loads ensures their wards, if their heads too are more than for carrying loads, are NOT trapped in Nigeria. Trapped as in condemned to school here, live here, work here, be at the mercy of our healthcare system and so on. They ensure their wards have a foothold in Europe, America, Canada, Malaysia.
From Buhari to Saraki, your state governor to his deputy, the Director or Perm sec in government MDAs, top players in the private sector, etc, they make sure their wards find a way out this country. You know why? Because nobody lives in the farm. People go to farm to plant, harvest and take the produce home for consumption.
Nigeria is a farm. Save those who have made it to the top through sheer hard work or the easy ways of politics or knowing someone at the top, every Nigerian is a labourer toiling away on the farm for the real owners of Nigeria.
These farm owners occasionally hand down the pittance due the labourers. Many of the labourers, either oblivious of their true state or being fools dance away when they are handed these tokens. They sing of roads being constructed, hospitals being built, railways and comparing same to what they said wasn’t there before, tell themselves they are making progress. If the government declares that the new minimum wage is 28K many of these unfortunate labourers will roll out the drums dancing songs of praise to the masters and calling those who wouldn’t dance ingrates and haters of their slavemasters.
Everyone knows Nigeria will NOT work because it is a fraud built for the benefit of a few. The hustle is to become among the few.
While at it everyone pretends they are speaking for the benefit of all. They howl and shout and write and talk until they are called into the inner chambers and given a plate, and then they sing differently.
As the campaigns approach, many will take pictures with governorship aspirants, Presidential candidates, all dabbed in crested face caps and t-shirts and blowing intellectual grammar about how the man they support is a youth, an intellectual of sorts, some progressive. The guilibles will join in singing behind the soon to be slavemaster. They will win.
Then appointments will be shared. That person behind whom you queued to cheer her candidate to victory will be given a portfolio, then she will start saying the exact opposite of all she said before her appointment. She will make new friends who would coo and marvel at her pictures and wonder why people hate her -for just saying she isn’t right. They too are hoping to get called into the inner chambers, this time through her.
There are very very few sincere persons out there. those who truly want this space to become like a real country where justice and equity will be provided to all independent of their tribe or religion, the school admission or jobs they qualify for, the business space they can pay for. These ones can be detected too as you read and watch and listen as the campaigns start. They are the true humans.
Buhari knows, VP Osinbajo knows, Amaechi knows, Danguje knows that Nigeria will NOT work -as it is. They don’t intend to make it work -because, think about it, who changes a thing that work in their favour?
It is their time to chop. They will build the roads and hospitals they know they themselves and theirs will never use, then they will depart to enjoy their loot in peace -even as Nigeria continues to subsidize their luxury I retirement until they die.
Take for instance, even the Nigerian labourer does not know that while Buhari was acting all frugal and austere, purportedly making statements against foreign medical trips for government officials and claiming he had only two houses and 150cows and was living this legendary ascetic life, as a former head of state,the federal government of Nigeria was paying for his medical trips overseas, replacing his vehicles, fueling them, in fact subsidizing every aspect of his private life such that he was living like a king, far away from the very pictures he created about his personal life.
But he succeeded in conning Nigerians because of two factors;
- He worked hard at building a fraudulent image of himself over the years and he succeeded with that because,
- He is from a section of the country were information isn’t liberalised nor the sharing of opinions welcomed openly such that the moment any leader of sorts makes a pronouncement on an issue, illiterates, professors, clergy start a kumbaya right away and it becomes the newest truth since Fleming’s penicillin.
No matter how powerful and sincere he is, Goodluck Jonathan will not become a god among the Ijaws. Dammit! even Ken Saro-Wiwa who laid down his life for his people isn’t a god among his people. Because in these places, no man’s words is taken for the utterances of gods. Unfortunately for Nigeria, the sophisticated cunning of Tinubu met with the cultish aura around Buhari and the result, like that of every reaction between such baseness is the prurience we see today.
Now they are driving the narrative deeper, illiterates, badly educated persons, talakawas are the ones currently driving the national discussion on restructure and who is or is not fit to rule Nigeria. Leading the charge is Nasir el Rufai, a pretender to intellection whose first salvo as to be expected from such vacuity as his is to tag Mr. Peter Obi, a bigot. But he has set the pace. That’s how they ran it the other year. The real issues to drag the country out of its mess will be buried in empty aspersions cast at their opponents by men who because they earned First class in shit carrying and an MSC in toilet washing,are to many Nigerians true intellectuals.
If you are a Nigerian trapped in Nigeria, stop deceiving yourself about patriotism, much less nationalism. Those are for people with countries. A country is not just a geographical space with coat of arms and a national anthem. Your police belongs to Buhari, your courts have no say against his will, your institutions, these things that make a country are personal extensions of his estate. The EFCC goes after only those the president approves and its head openly campaigns for him. The Customs head works in his campaign team.
That Buhari himself has not commanded the CBN governor to print him currencies yet is because that will work against his interest in the long run. You don’t have a country if you are Nigerian. You’re a labourer working for the real owners of this space who only regard it as a farm to harvest produce from and take home to their families in Canada, America, Europe.
If the money suddenly dries up today, if the farm gets burnt by harmattan wild fire, like ungrateful birds fleeing a breaking branch, they will all flee; Buhari will not contest anymore, Amaechi will flee, Tinubu will relocate to Malaysia, VP Osinbajo to London to teach law, Keyamo to South Africa to run provision stores.
If you are young, think! When Achebe talked and talked and talked and almost got crippled in a road traffic accident, he fled, knowing Nigeria is hopeless. His grandchildren are not even here. He knows the place has no hope -as it is.
All the persons who know this have their kids and families overseas, from where they stay, unable to bear the rape and indignity of their country men, send occasional interventions on national issues.
They are generous humans. Many in their shoes will play Pontius Pilate and wash their hands off this irredeemable space. A few among them, dimwits that they are, even when enjoying the dividends of responsible leadership overseas still urge on the charade going on here. Some clown stays in America and writes, “I just love the man Buhari. I like his stance against corruption.” Another hangs in London where he has not experienced power failure for 20years and writes, “On Power, we know it’s not easy, but we must give Buhari and Fashola credit.
How much did your Jonathan generate? Sai Baba!”
If you are young, think. Grow some sense. You can’t survive here. There are more medical doctors willing to leave here were USMLE and similar exams cheap to pay for, write and pass. They got the memo. Even the minister of health suggested they take to farming -after spending more than 15years of their lives trying to practice medicine in a dignified way, a professor is suggesting they take to farm. No. They are writing PLAB, etc and fleeing the hell in droves. Try any group of medical class graduates, 90% tell you they are leaving the moment they pass the requisite exams.
Grow some sense if you are young. Nigeria is for those who behold a man like Buhari and declare him for to rule this place for another 4years. These are humans who hide behind their ability to write to cover their qualification for no better jobs than your gardener or cleaner. Their IQ qualified them for no higher callings. Don’t stew in this mess with them.
If you are young, grow sense! Don’t bring kids into this space to be trapped like you. Don’t. Unless you enjoy your status as a labourer or you are like the proverbial goat roasting and smiling at the flames thinking it’s making oil.
You might think because you live in that gated estate and no longer cook with kerosene you have escaped it all, wait until you or yours get kidney or liver issues and you will realize what Oscar Wilde meant when he said, “We are all in the gutter. Only a few of us are looking at the stars.”
We should all look long and hard,time is running out.
Dr Uwuma Precious
AFRICA THISDAY 