Nigeria our beloved country is dangerously skidding towards the precipice. We are badly haemorrhaging and battling with so many afflictions from different directions and of different dimensions, all with the capacity to derail the country if left to fester unaddressed comprehensively and decisively.
Forget the pretenders and the men of straw who will say that what we are going through as a country is normal and the government of the day is on top of the situation. But just as a woman cannot hide a pregnancy she is carrying nor can one hope to hide behind a finger, it is crystal clear that our country is deeply wounded and what is more the wound is growing by the day.
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We have terrorism, banditry and kidnapping, all of which have become institutions by themselves, complete with complex structures and organisation. In some states of the country, they are even parallel institutions and their operations have compelled the legitimate institutions of state to recognise them as partners. Some of these states have more or less yielded part of their powers to these non-state actors and have chosen to be in liaison with them to ‘’secure’’ their domains.
All this happening under a federal government led by a former general; part of the reason for which he was elected was for him to use his experience to address decisively. Instead, he has watched almost askance and actionable indifference as these elements with a sense of impunity continue to dare the government in repeatedly inflicting pain and misery on the people he swore by the holy book and which is his constitutional duty to protect.
But bad as the dangers of insecurity, which have been left to become normal fare by the lethargy and incompetence of the governments at both federal and state levels is, the more significant danger that Nigeria now faces are the growing and persistent demands for a breakup of the country.
There is a temptation to consider these calls as media stunts by quixotic individuals merely seeking for attention. But on close examination, they are sponsored and encouraged behind the scenes by our political elites as part of their political calculations for the next round of elections in 2023. As a result of this, Nigerians are increasingly finding reasons not to want to continue staying together and would not all mind if we dissolve the union and go our separate ways today. It has come to that and it is being expressed in many ways and at different situations, especially where national issues are concerned.
The middle ground of nuanced perspectives on national issues is fast disappearing, even among those we often look up to intervene in that manner. They have probably become fatigued and despondent, seeing that the space for reasoned perspectives on national issues is now being occupied by the rabble-rousing, barely educated individuals, whose incendiary rhetoric and calls to primordial ethnic and regional solidarity now seems more appealing to the consciousness.
Our political leadership and the elite have to shoulder a substantial responsibility for where we found ourselves as a country now at the brink.
There is a sense of déjà vu in all of this and it is embedded in the trajectory of our politics. In the evolution of our politics predating our independence from Britain, it has always been that of ethnic and regional identity. Following our independence, this tenor of our politics was joined gradually by politics of faith, which became even more dangerous to the process. Whereas people of different faiths could form political solidarity on the basis of the same ethnicity and region, faith-based politics, which now become more prominent, can turn brothers and sisters into mortal enemies.
Nigerian political elites have found ethnic and religious politics as useful tools to negotiate and acquire power over the years. But it has proven injurious to them and the country, and we have all suffered for it. But like a drug habit, our political elite, having been addicted to its intoxicating influences, have found it difficult to kick the habit.
It is what led to the collapse of the First Republic and all the promises it held and the disastrous consequences that followed. It is also what led to the fall of the Second Republic and the subsequent instability we experienced in our body polity. It is the albatross in our politics currently, which after 20 years of democratic rule, is now threatening to choke us all to death.
When we voted Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, mindful of the existential dangers we faced as a country under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, we hoped and expected that as a ranked political outsider, but one of supposedly non-partisan disposition, he would pull us away from the brink. Against the current happenings under his watch, however, it has proven a forlorn and misplaced hope. Indeed, rather than pull us away from the brink, President Buhari is sleep-walking us to it by his acts of omission and commission.
It is no brainer that we are heading to a major political crisis in the country and that the political leadership and elite are leading us to it with their emphasis on political brigandage to acquire and retain power by all means necessary. In the process, they have made meaningless the democratic dawn we all toiled for; some of us dared to risk our lives for it to come to fruition.
Having been corrupted and blinded by the trappings of power, our political elites are so desperate to retain it that they would not mind destroying the country in the hope of winning the 2023 elections. From all indications, the 2023 elections will be a smash-and-grab affair.
Nigeria cannot afford a third round of political crisis by its desperate power-hungry, narrow-minded political elite. We fortuitously escaped the first and second major political crisis inflicted by our political elites in the previous democratic dispensations. The next one now being brewed furiously by the political elite in their calculations towards 2023 will most likely tip us over finally.
Having seen the machinations of our political elite, as Nigerians we must collectively resolve not to allow the country to be led to perdition. To the political elite, what they are currently cooking up is normal politics, but to the people of the country having to cope with their shenanigans, this must be viewed as a serious existential danger to the wellbeing of the country.
Those of us who have no foreign bank accounts bulging with humongous amounts of money and foreign passports to escape to bolt holes abroad must not allow ourselves to be led once more to another round of mindless slaughter. This is because if it happens again, as seems likely, it will be much more than what we have experienced. This we must do for our sake and the future of our children.
