Times that try the souls of men

For Nigeria, it has arrived.

‘It’ is what Thomas Paine, an American philosopher, characterized in 1776 as “the times that try men’s souls.”

In his “The Crisis” essay, he said: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

For Nigeria, it is a blinding crisis.  So fierce is it that we have no room to reflect on advancement as a people.  First, we must survive.

But that is not easy.  Inflation is rising.  Food is running out.  There is no electricity.  There is no security. Roads are either in ruins or are being controlled by criminals.  Hypocrisy is in charge.

Widespread killings and kidnappings and robberies are so pervasive we lose count: children are casually but persistently abducted from their schools, either never to be seen again or to be exchanged for ransoms that, once their parents somehow pay, throw their entire community into perpetual debt and slavery.  Citizens are murdered at will.

Think about it: A retired Provost Marshall of the Nigerian Army is assassinated in the federal capital, and his sister kidnapped.  In Abatete, Anambra State, the occupants of two SUVs are shot to death on an open street.  In Sokoto, hundreds of bandits ride into a town on motorcycles, massacring soldiers, and civilians.  In Kaduna, an emir is kidnapped along with 13 members of his family; as was a title holder of President Muhammadu Buhari’s own Daura two years ago.  Kaduna is also the scene of the abduction of over 140 high school students, just weeks after the abduction of 80 students and some teachers of another secondary school in Kebbi State.

In other words, you can walk down the street and never come back.  Your wife can go to the market and is kidnapped.  You can send your child to school and never see her again. You can drive to the nearest town but never get there.  You can ride a train which breaks down and armed robbers take over.

But this is not why these are the times that try the souls of Nigerians.  What tries our souls are in the questions we ask, or do not.

Where are the security agencies?  Where is the government?  Why is it that the interest of the people has fallen off the radar?

The truth is that Nigeria has no security agencies; there are only agencies protecting the selfish interests of government officials.  That includes being used to “pursue” anyone who objects to the narrow-minded and self-serving narrative of the Buhari administration.

This is why, as criminals run the day and rule the night; as so-called bandits kidnap before our very eyes and collect their ransoms in locations of their own choosing; and as terrorists set up alternative governments in towns and cities and collect taxes we lack the will to collect, what passes as governance has turned into blackmail.

Governance, which is supposed to advance the best interest of the people has turned into using their resources to muzzle and blackmail them to prevent Nigerians not only from being able to speak out, but from achieving anything on their own.

Before our eyes, the government launched its assault on “fake news,” a mechanism designed to prevent journalists from exposing the grave duplicity and incompetence of the Buhari government.  It is the best-known instance of a bogus government mistaking the fighting of its critics for governance.

Predictably, the government then moved into trying to “regulate,”—that is, subjugate and control—the work of civil society organizations, inflicting savage restrictions on their formation, operation and reporting that do not exist for the government itself.

The government then moved to amend the law which established the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to grant the Press Council unimaginable power over the news, as well as set up legal landmines to cripple journalists, publishers and distributors by means of jail terms and vast fines.

The government has also recently ordered television and radio broadcasters in Nigeria not to report “details” of the activities of bandits, terrorists and kidnappers in their reports.

“While bringing information on security to the doorsteps of Nigerians is a necessity,” NBC said, “there is a need for caution as too many details may have an adverse implication on the efforts of our security officials who are duty-bound to deal with the insurgency.”

It suggested that by reporting these crimes, the broadcasters glamourize “the nefarious activities of insurgents, terrorists, kidnappers, bandits etc.”

And in a supplementary budget only last week, the government allocated N4.8 billion to the National Intelligence Agency to monitor the digital communications of Nigerians: N1.93 billion provided for “WhatsApp Intercept Solution,” and N2.93 billion for “Thuraya Interception Solution.”

Were anyone to remember that this is the same government which claimed it would change Nigeria for the better, there is no better way to illustrate what decay, (aka corruption), really is.

How bad is it?  Well, last week the Senate, which has sadly become the legislative arm of the executive, ventured into the territory of the electoral commission, and against the wisdom of the framers of the constitution who granted the commission authority over elections, voted against—think about this—against the electronic transmission of votes in the Electoral reform bill.  Meaning: election results will be determined by the ruling party.

How bad is it?  Leena Hoffmann, a Chatham House expert on Nigeria who hails from Magamiya and Kagoro in southern Kaduna, expresses it well. “I have spent most of today trying to arrange to evacuate relatives [from the area]” she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

But some were refusing to leave. “If we die, we die,” they tell her.

How bad is it, really?

Well, on Thursday we learned that President Buhari has granted his home state of Katsina N6.5 billion for cattle ranching, with N5 billion already in the state’s account.

Perhaps Buhari got the sum from his babanriga; that item is not in the budget.

But this is where we are and how bad it is.  These are the times that try men’s souls, and as we arrive at the precipice, we must be careful how we respond.  Our nation ought to be talking about such things as the pandemic, which has turned its devastating attention to the unvaccinated.  We are only two or three percent vaccinated.  We ought to be talking about several other things that would take our country forward.

The response is not to kill yourself to get a slice of your father’s estate, but to work together to reclaim it from the invaders and detractors.

It is an evil season, patriots.  We must be honest with ourselves that we have reached the breaking point, figuratively but also literally.  We face hunger and deprivation and a night without sight.

But we must neither shrink nor shrivel and weakly or unwisely exchange the generous gift God gave us for a cheap thrill.  It is not a time for the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot, nor for talkers and weaklings.

This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials. 

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