That thing about Nigeria’s leadership problem crops up every once in a while, when there is occasion to whine and wail about how sad this land is.
Over the last few days, the Nigerian media space was lit by many songs of lamentation and sappy monologues about how terrible we have it as a country, about how hopeless the situation is. It is the same experience offline too. It is almost like you cannot escape the annoying symphony of defeatist logic. Whether you believe it or not, we are indeed getting somewhere.
I want Nigerians to listen to the timeless words of the late Pan-Africanist, Tajuddeen Abdul-Raheem, that we ought to stop agonising and start organising. It is about time every Nigerian takes responsibility for being a Nigerian. For being a dignified human being.
I remember that in my islamiyya classes I was taught that everyone is a shepherd and will be probed for how they tended their flock. I suspect there is a similar stipulation in the Christian canon. The thing is that how well every last one of those flocks does has direct and indirect bearings on what this land becomes.
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I do not want to invoke that pseudo-fascist mantra about never asking what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country… but if we are going to agonise and whine and weep and sob and sob about Nigeria… ad infinitum, ad nauseum, perhaps it is fair for Nigeria too, to ask what you have ever done for her!
Make no mistake, it is what you and I and the other person walking the streets of Orile or Gwammaja bring to the table that sustains this country. Including what you eat and drink. If no one brought anything, if you brought nothing… come on, fisabilillah, what right have you then to agonise over going hungry? And bringing something doesn’t necessarily mean bringing bread and butter, or anything material. You can bring whatever might be useful and constructive on our collective journey.
Yes, we also agonise because the bulk of what little is on the table is being fed exclusively to those with privileged seats at the national dining table. What have you ever done to make sure that stops? If you do not have a seat there and have been hungry on the margins all your life, what have you ever done to fix that? You fix it not by breaking it further like the Turjis, Abubakar Shekaus, the Sunday Igbohos and Nnamdi Kanus of this world, you fix it by being a Nigerian with something productive to offer, a helpful idea perhaps together with the will and discipline to see it to fruition. If you take up arms, it must be against your own self.
The embattled former EFCC chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, who is from Jega like myself, is the patron saint of Jega these days. He has built and upgraded many roads in the township, complete with solar powered street lights. He has also uplifted so many people. When I visited a few weeks back and saw it all for myself, I found cause to ask how he was able to afford all that. I warned point blank not to make such a mistake somewhere away from home in Jega.
It is easy for one to conclude that Abdulrasheed Bawa, like many if not all Nigerian public servants with such access might have helped himself to something that wasn’t his due. Should Abdulrasheed Bawa ever come up in a conversation, you will be regaled with the amazing acts of financial kindness he has to his name and you’re supposed to be duly amazed and humbled–not address the elephant in the room they are AMAZINGLY blind to. You are supposed to thank him and praise him and bless him.
Bawa was a person entrusted to lead the war against what he appears to be in trouble for today. All those are allegations of course and he is innocent until a trial says otherwise. But this is a common Nigerian mindset–a curse I also share. No matter how much I want to dispute the very thought, someone could argue that the only reason Bawa is in detention and I or my friends from Orile and Gwammaja are free is because we never had “access”. Bawa comes from a very respected clerical family and even that was not enough to cure that curse.
From the accounts I heard, the townspeople have circled the Qur’an back countless times in prayer that he not only be released “yesterday”, but also restored to his office. They see nothing wrong with any malfeasance he may be guilty of as long as they are the direct beneficiaries thereof.
That right there is our problem. We are not willing to work for anything, we are ready to worship even the devil as long as he would provide us the barest of sustenance. If you cry, if you weep, if you accuse the high heavens for your sad lot, then turn your gaze to the culprit and hold your peace. YOU, are the culprit. I am most certainly a culprit too!
The “heavens” we like to point to in comparison to our “hell” were built by ordinary men, NOT BY THEIR GOVERNMENTS! Certain researchers in fact credit just four men with building the most powerful country on earth today. It was men like Thomas Edison who midwifed America’s electric energy industry. Cornelius Vanderbilt spearheaded the development of the rail networks, and Andrew Carnegie was responsible for the steel sector while John D. Rockefeller revolutionised energy. None of these men was ever a Local Government Councillor, or a County Alderman in American parlance.
That is the problem–not knowing that we are supposed to get off our butts and not wait for the government, or anyone really, to supply our daily doses of fura da nono. If Nigeria has failed, it is not because of military adventurism or terrible leaders they and their friends in agbadas brought. All those are mere symptoms of a very serious and scary sociological cankerworm: counter-intelligent inertia. It doesn’t matter if Tafawa Balewa or Sardauna and Akintola were never murdered. It doesn’t matter if whatever event you think was the wrong turn that led us to this hell never happened. The Nigeria of October 2023 could have been very clearly and firmly foreseen on October 1st 1960 as long as this is how we think or choose to think. YOU, are the leader of your Nigeria, not Tinubu or Buhari or Tafawa Balewa are responsible for how well it does.
So don’t agonise. Get off your butt instead. Organise instead. After 63 years in the desert, it is time we not only consider but commit to taking up arms. The only thing is that the enemy is our own selves.
