And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee—Nietzsche
In 2015, when Nigerians first voted Muhammadu Buhari as president, I think we imagined that the one-week, one-drama days of Jonathan were in our rear view mirror for good.
As Buhari promised, change happened. Nigeria has transitioned from those days of humble beginnings into a country of one-week, ten-dramas.
One only needs to look at the last week, to see what I mean. Several dramatic episodes have played out, often with the delicate lives of Nigerians— boys, girls, women, average Joe and big ogas—hanging in the balance.
From the resolution of the Kankara abductions to the quick-fire abductions and rescue of some 80 Islamiyyah students in Dandume, for which kudos must be given to their rescuers. The military’s response to the distress calls, alongside the police and the local vigilante, was impressive and commendable. If these have been the kind of responses we have in the past, perhaps the world would not have looked at us as a joke and most importantly, we wouldn’t have lost the Chibok girls, Leah Sharibu and the thousands presently in the hands of Boko Haram and bandits.
However, through the theatre of the absurd that has played out in the last week, we have had glimpses into the minds of those in charge of this country. What has become clearer, if it wasn’t clear enough already, is that mind set of these people is a wild and murky thing.
On Tuesday, Buhari, while hosting former Vice President Namadi Sambo, declared that the borders between Nigeria and the Niger Republic are so ungovernable that only God could secure them.
This statement in itself is not new. In fact, in May 2019, Nigeria’s much-maligned service chiefs, in their freshly pressed uniforms, sat in a meeting with Buhari, looked into their crystal balls and came to that conclusion. It was left to the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas, like a diviner in a cloud of smoke, to feed the line to the president that the 4, 047 km of our land borders and coastline are so vast only God, himself, could police them.
That Buhari did not ask them what is the use of having the fourth strongest military on the continent, and the 42nd in the world, (according to the GFP Global Power Index), if they can’t secure these borders, was astonishing. That he would regurgitate the same lines 18-months later is even more demonstrative of the kind of mindset the leadership has.
As a Muslim, it is possible the president has read or heard of the way his namesake, the prophet of Islam, dealt with a man who rode his camel to the Prophet’s mosque, disembarked to go pray before the Prophet (SAW) called him back.
“In whose care do you leave your camel?” he asked.
“In God’s hands,” the man declared.
The Prophet (SAW), a practical man, asked the man to secure his camel before committing it to the care of God. It echoes exactly the Greek notion that God must not do for man what man must do for himself.
Of course, Nigeria is a country of religious people and prayers cannot be excluded from the national psyche. Perhaps on the 2023 ballot paper, there should be a box for Nigerians to thumbprint for God since the president and his lieutenants are persistently advertising their ineffectiveness and asking us to throw everything to the Almighty.
The President and his service chiefs might be men full of faith, but perhaps there is a telling famine of ideas and a basic understanding of how things work in them.
For instance, last week when Buhari addressed the rescued Kankara boys, he made a ridiculous statement to the effect that the boys, abducted from a science school, are the future, because they are not going to be as useless as those studying “History or English” are.
Buhari’s disdain for the humanities is a manifestation of that malnourished perception and a chronic failure to grasp that a country’s development should be holistic in all sense and that history, languages and other humanities shape the greatness of a country.
Italy, for instance, has suffered economic misfortunes and mismanagement over the years but one of the biggest sources of revenue for the country is not down to its scientists or military but its unqualified investment in the humanities. Thousands of people visit Italy today to view and experience the Renaissance Arts in the country and drive up the country’s revenues.
As the legendary Marcus Garvey said, “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
What is even worse is that this misguided championing of the sciences over the humanities is only a rhetoric. If there is any sincerity in it, it should be backed with the needed policy and funding. But this coming from a president who has allowed universities to be shut for nine months is reminiscent of the proverbial diarrhoeal hyena hawking a cure for running stomach.
If this dearth stopped with Buhari’s feet, one could have invested hope in the people around him. But when the likes of presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, once considered an exemplary proxy, slipped in the slippery halls of power, and declared that only 10 boys were abducted from Kankara, one wonders. It is even more baffling that this declaration came right after Governor Bello Masari had briefed the president and informed him that over 300 students were abducted.
That Shehu waited until 344 out of the abducted 10 students, as he had claimed, were released to apologise for his mischievous comment is sad. His excuse is even more indicting. If he got his figures from the security brief the president received, then it implies that those in power have wilfully allowed themselves to be conned by people who blow smoke up their backside.
That or the alternative theory, which is buttressed by Defence Spokesman, Maj General John Enenche engineering a brilliant piece of fiction to the effect that the military, Delta Force-style, rescued the Kankara boys. His description of how the action played out, sketchy as it was, had enough meat to invoke a Tom Clancy kind of novel, only this one is set in the Rugu Forest.
What is of interest here is the inferences from all these serial gaffes from the people in government. It is not that they only lack the will to govern effectively; it is also that there is an obvious poverty of ideas and a significant level of condescension for Nigerians whom they think are too daft to catch on.
The next elections are a couple of years away. It would be prudent for Nigerians to vote for people who go beyond grandstanding, beyond claims of moral superiority and choose instead those with a comprehensive grasp of what it means to run a country and have ideas they could advance and defend.
That way, the tragedy of being badly governed spiced with our collective intelligence being insulted could be avoided.
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