|
“Our disabled are abandoned
and unacted for, our women-fold are excluded from the
mainstream of our development. Our environment is
unsanitary. All around, there is the stench of degeneration
without growth. Our electricity, water supply, telephone,
postal services would appear to be purely decorative. Our
legislations are more or less cosmetic, their injunctions
more famous because of the ease with which they are
circumvented and disobeyed. Everywhere at every level,
there is riot of excesses. We model our lifestyle in the
Wild West of early Americanism. Our society lacks structure
and wealth excuses all. We glory in mediocrity and surpass
ourselves by worshiping nonentities. We prefer posturing in
action. We prefer palliatives rather than cures; as a
people, we have installed parasitism and elevated it into a
way of life. We are corrupt; we entertain vaunting and
limitless ambitions. We are totally insensitive to our
fellow citizens, to their discomfort and to their
sufferings”.
Ø
Odumegu Ojukwu
“There is a frightful danger
for those who care and patriotic enough to look beyond their
self-interest. Our ship of state is fast approaching a huge
rock; and unless you as the chief helms-men, quickly rise to
the occasion and courageously steer the ship away from its
present course, it shall hit the rock.”
Ø
Obafemi
Awolowo.
For posterity and
the solemn sake of our time’s material information, I
announce that the eccentrically allodoxaphobic leaders of my
native Nigeria, despite their unbalancing hibernation and
fake clinch to being democratic, are today--the first
October 2010--executing their unexciting plans for our
nations Fiftieth Independence Anniversary. Obviously as I
write, the Nigerian President, with capable incapability to
progressively preside on our affairs to the taste of
universal truth and beauty, sincerity and decency, along
with a coterie of his conscious plunderers in unconscientous
godfathers, lawmakers, governors, ministers and ethically
unglittering councilors, commissioners and local government
chairmen, and other uninformed government officials, is
addressing the nation.
Goodluck
Jonathan’s beauty-devoid, slavery-informed independence
speech, hired dancers from all of our cultural and invented
spheres will paint our nation with the euphoria of their
flaming performances. Today, the impacts of the far over
sixteen Billion Naira mouth-marked for our nation’s Golden
Jubilee will place rice and chicken on our salivating tables
and memorarious gift in our various archives – as it had
always been? And given the odd dexterity with which the
brave amateurs of the Nigerian political spirituality had
plundered our past and marooned our hope, with which
statemen of empty moral slates have shortened our joy and
elaborated our doom, with which Pastors and Imams (with due
exception to the likes of Tunde Bakare, etc.) had enslaved
our chances of growth and greatness, all we boast today as
individual citizens of Nigeria is worse than the gathering
relics of a nation willed for perdition and ravaged by war.
As if haunted by
Obafemi Owolowo’s “If we carry on this way as we have been
carrying on since independence, and even before
independence, we will never have a strong nation; we will
never have peace”, Nigeria at fifty is unenviable and
questionable on every basis and scale. Pardon me, fellow
Nigerians, why do we celebrate this day? Why am I, and the
one hundred and fifty something million-members of the
viscious poverty circle irreversibly Nigerians? What are we
to do with the Nigerian Fiftieth Independence Anniversary?
Are the noble statements of our founding spirits – which
filled the hours of the first three official independence
jubilations through true freedom and justice, survival and
fulfillment available to every Nigerian? And are we being
forced into this because our votes do not count and general
will historically subverted? Are we not being forced to
accept hunger, diseases, ignorance and shame of being
Nigerians as tenable reasons for our Fiftieth Independence
Anniversary?
All that counts in
other sane parts of the globe counts us out of existence as
Nigerians. Through a long chain of ignoble precedence from
Awolowo and Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa,
tribalism, sectionalism, regionalism and materialism
threaten to ruin our hope. We cannot live in other parts of
the country with peace of mind for the fear of being
disadvantaged or killed by the order of tribalism and
fanaticism. I grew up in the North and know the inferior
mentality of some Northerners as regard other Nigerians. I
am constantly told of how hard it is for non-Ibos to trade
and own property in the Eastern part of Nigeria; and as a
Yoruba person, I am baffled that some Yorubas feel fulfilled
discriminating against others on the basis of culture. We
relate with a detached sense of Nigerianism; we are
united in our disunity; the national coherence is a
jewel-belle our beastly behaviour cannot woo. Why then do we
celebrate?
The Nigerian
hospitals have been justifiably described as death centres
by incorruptible critics; the health workers feature in
bribery and scandals, the doctors and nurses, caringly
doctor our patients into worse aliments! Our schools cannot
be envied by any American, English, Scotish, German,
Russian, Chinese, Canadian, French, Australian, etc, the way
our brilliant heads who detest the wish to be marred by our
official ignorance system envy their consistently standard
schools. Ninety percent of our teachers are excellently
substandard, teaching our children the destructive act of
backwardness; our graduates, with the minute exceptions of
brains favoured by basic factors of academic eminence by
virtue of their births and orientations and personal
development, are filthy proofs of our harmony with ignorance
that ruins; more than even children from war-torn areas,
Nigerian children top the list of humans that have fallen
out of the grace quality education can give; in spite of our
wealthy wealth, we wallow in the affluence of pauperism, we
feed our citizens with hunger, propelling them to crime; we
can supply power for social joy and industrial growth, but
we prefer the darkness that darkens our hope. Why then do we
celebrate?
We impoverish our
citizens spiritually, everytime we decrease their confidence
in the possibilities of beauty. We lie that we believe in
Jesus and Mohammed whose teachings and ways of life we do
remember to regularly neglect in policies of the state as
politicians and pastors, as professionals and imams. We
invite them to heaven by owning every booty on earth; we
have done several evils to prove our fear of national good,
by building universities that universalize nothing in our
students’ souls if at all they manage to pay the forbidden
fees we charge their dehumanizing poverty. Why then do we
celebrate?
Morally, Nigeria
is not an envy to its citizenry; never a point of reliable
reference to heavenly commendations. Leaders lie, making
citizens believe that lie is a reliable compliment to
leadership. Leaders steal, distilling the satanic
convictions in our heads that governance is all about
looting, and they have imprisoned and murdered our heroes.
In keeping these imprisonments and murders undiscovered,
they daily kidnap, incarcerate, kill, and scheme more
heinous ways of worse species of torments and tortures –
physical and psychological. The Nigerian youths do learn
from their immoralities. Our children find no indignity in
lying and looting. In their presence, IBB, Abacha, Bode
George, Buhari, Saraki, Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan, Ibori,
Okadigbo, Bankole, Na’haba, Iwu, Nwosu, Kalu, Diko, Akala,
Oyinlola, Ribadu, Gussan, Duke, etc, filled (and still
filling!) the gulf of their greed with vast state funds
voted for the well-being of their peoples’ future. They were
not young when their representatives bought magnificent
palaces over, and sent their children abroad for broader,
more qualitative opportunities. They see that patriotism
means opportunism; that loyalty is infidelity; that
diligence is stupidity, all from the activities of their
lying, stealing and acrimoniously manipulative leaders! Why
then do we celebrate?
We are
courage-negative and unwise. In our whole history, not up to
twenty Nigerians qualify as global moral figures. In sports,
we are a failure; in culture, our richness mars our
impoverishment; in politics, no great theory or ideology
promises us a way out, because of our entrenched belief in
the temporary succour evil can give; our lawyers love money
than justice; but they must survive! Our bank workers
prefer fraud to decency; but they must survive! Our teachers
invent the best systems of examination malpractices; but
they must survive! Our policemen are waste-baskets of
corruption; but they must survive! Some of our soldiers and
anti-crime combatants loot banks; but they must survive! Our
patriots zoned looting, making for personal greed at the
detriment of national needs; but they must survive! Our best
minds migrate to England and America; but they must survive!
Nothing in the Nigerian system generates hope in the hoping
heart of an average Nigerian. The results are evident proofs
of our joint failure as a nation; so why do we prefer empty
speeches, dances, cake-cutting and victuals to
soul-awakening national sorrows that ought to motivate a
will to change our nation’s status for good? Why do we
celebrate?
What, to the Nigerian
pauper, is there in your First October? Your Independence
Day is a day that proves to him, beyond the exhibitions of
proofs other days of the year can ever reveal the wholesale
injustice and oppression in which he is the decided victim.
To the Nigerian pauper, your annual anniversary is grey
hypocrisy; your vaunted independence, a licensed tyranny;
your national eminence, prominent insignificance; your
fancies of liberty are vacuous of discipline, are freed of
conscience; your oaths at swearing-in ceremonies after
election riggings, are ponderable pledges to mighty
misanthropy; your quota system and zoning presidency are
official arrangements aimed at fostering peace and
comradeship among Nigerian oppressors and common looters;
your cries of marginalization
– far from being borne out
of love for Ibos or Yorubas, Ijaws or Hausas, Fulanis or
Kanuris, Edos or Itshekiris, Jukuuns or Ogojas, for the
Niger Deltans or the silent, unsung cross-bearers in Nigeria
– are, shocking enough, a crystallized gut at embellishing
your more deserving souls with the filths and guilts of
materialistic vanities; your zeals and patriotisms are
eerily wearied, uncharged by truism and altruism, unguarded
by vision’s bearing; your speeches or sermons, are stinking
stench from your sinking spiritual trenches; your active
values are the devils virtues, are Mr. Lucifer’s
perspectives, and Mephostopheles’ maiming morphemes; your
claims to piety in Nigerianistic Samaformism, are to the
Nigerian child, a tired tirade and a babblatively befuddling
bombast, wholesome hollowness, hallowed shallowness,
ambitious deception and distinguished fraud – a consolidated
fallacy to veil-up your gratuitous inhumanity. Given the
Nigerian resources and realistic chances of extra-ordinarily
attaining the inviting attributes of true republicanism, the
Nigeria of today is a nation of sovereign savages; the most
insensitive and inhuman, with the three most terrible D’s in
misery’s hidden script – disappointment, disease and death!
Every good goal
calculated to yield Nigeria with benefits always mess us up
through riots, protests and war. For religions and
elections, we have killed one another. For Population Census
and tribalism, our countrymen had died; each time we deposit
their remains into mass graves, our next actions suggest our
unrepentance. This is a golden jubilee of empty substance in
inferior gold. Nigeria at fifty is a chattered chamberlain
of hideous villainy. Nigeria at fifty is a meaningless
concept implying nothing to the magnetism of universal
beauty and global depth. Nigeria at fifty vitiates, demeans
and fertilizes Nigerians’ longings of hope with
hoplessness. Nigeria at fifty is an unworthy assessment of
an adult tagged to gruesome guts, goals and terror of
mediocre-childhood; it is a free façade of moral fouls
farcically overlooked in our journey to awaited paradise. It
is a jocular fancy written large. It is the tiny but deeply
spiritual cries of spilled blood, of stomach punished, of
hope stabbed, and of mutilated spirits in senselessly cruel
policies and government deeds. It is the remembrance of
millions’ faith fatigued by official betrayals, and of hope
perpetually kept as paper-idea, our nation’s fiftieth
anniversary of independent is a magnificent ruin!
I conclude with an
instructively prominent portion in Odumegwu Ojukwu’s
Because I Am Involved, a masterpiece the University
of Oxford-trained historian authored to offer history his
own account of the Nigerian Civil war: “The history of the
human race has been characterized by continuous struggles:
struggle for survival, struggle for social justice, freedom
and equality...An ideal Nigeria will be one in which we all
believe in the sanctity of human life and the dignity of
human persons; a Nigeria where the willful and wanton
destruction of human life is not only an abominable sin, but
also a grave crime; a Nigeria where every individual counts,
and no one is taken for granted; a Nigeria that upholds the
dignity of man. We seek a Nigeria which places a high
premium on patriotism and Nigerians who have faith and
devotion to the fatherland; a Nigeria where every citizen is
prepared to work for the nation and to stand up for her. A
Nigeria where every citizen knows and demands his civil
rights, recognizes the rights of his fellow citizens, and is
prepared to defend them when necessary; A Nigeria where we
all stand up for our right and assist others to secure their
rights. We require a Nigeria where sovereignty and power
belong to the people; a Nigeria where rulers strive to
satisfy the people at all times; a Nigeria where those who
exercise power are accountable to the people; a Nigeria
where public servants accept responsibility for inefficiency
and bad advice; a Nigeria where abuse of office is severely
punished and ill-gotten gains confiscated. We vote for a
clean and peaceful Nigeria, where children are well
taken-care of; where pedestrians have footpaths to walk on,
and the level of noise reduced, a Nigeria where citizens can
have fun; a Nigeria that has rediscovered her gaiety.”
NB: Mankind Olawale Oyewumi
is a teacher of language and literature.
He is the acclaimed writer
of SONGS OF THE LAW, a poetry anthology and IMMORTAL
INSTRUCTIONS, his philosophical reflections on life’s
different spheres. He is also the compiler and editor of A
GIFT TO NIGERIA AT FIFTY, the compilation of prominent
opinions on the state of the Nigerian nation. The father of
SAMAFORMISM and HUMANITY DAY, his passion for a better
Nigeria and humanity is deep, inspiring and invaluable.
|
Published
October 1st 2010
