Cry the beloved country, for the omen is bad.
Cry your eyes out, wail unceasingly for being
under the siege of trigger happy murderers
who daily pump life out of innocent citizens
without provocation of any sort! What is the
worth of life constantly lived in fear?
Who will save us from the high incidence of
armed banditry, incessant kidnappings and
allied crimes? Danger looms and lurks at the
corner perpetually. Cry because life in our
dear country has become hard and the margin
of safety has diminished to a point of
extinction.
Why has everyday life in our country once a
safe and peaceful place, become hazardous,
uncertain and brutish so much so that hapless
Nigerians no longer look up to another day
with excitement? The resultant situation
compels ordinary folks to live for the day.
How very unsettling!
It is lamentable that instead of abating, the
myriad of security problems we face on daily
basis, are almost cascading down into an abyss
and may soon spin out of control if nothing is
done about it.
Who will save us from the dangerous drift and
where are the people we have elected to
safeguard the safety of lives and properties?
The answer seems to be blowing in the wind.
While it may be true that our leaders are not
exactly exposed to the same danger ordinary
citizens face because they are lucky to be living
in the relative safety of personal guards, it
remains their duty to stop this imminent drift
into a state of nature.
They should be warned against the temptation
of over indulging in a false sense of security as
the sophisticated arsenal now available to the
insurgents, make all of us equally vulnerable.
Fellow citizens find it very difficult to
understand the rather cryptic inability of those
at the helm of affairs to deal decisively with
the menacing security problems we face in the
country. Those in charge of security seem to
have thrown in the towel!
Our leaders must accept the blame for
unwittingly turning our citizens into rebels
through benign neglect, insensitivity and self-
centred policies. They have forgotten that
those we now refer to variously as extremists,
suicide bombers, armed robbers and
kidnappers were born free citizens and most of
them are our children. They did not drop
down from an alien planet.
Most of the insurgents unarguably, are our
children who have been watching the way pen-
robbers, white-collar criminals are celebrated
for looting our treasury while the rest of them
languish in misery on the street without any
hope but despair. Conventional wisdom has it
that what is good for the goose is equally good
for the gander. So, before we knew it, we
were already neck-deep in crisis.
It is outrageous that our leaders prefer to
dissipate so much energy on mundane little
things over who gets the lion-share of the
booty, rather than concentrate on discharging
the responsibility conferred on them by the
people’s mandate.
Legitimacy is best achieved by government
through performance and selfless service to
the people and not by sponsored propaganda.
One serious defect of propaganda is its
enormous capacity to mislead the people to
play to the gallery.
What we read in the nation’s daily newspapers
make you feel sorry for what has become of
Nigeria, our beloved country. These events
and developments are so bizarre that they
generate a sense of foreboding that we have
embarked on a journey to an end! The
resultant situation is frightening to
contemplate.
One would wish these weird events took place
in an alien planet or better still, a bad dream.
The omen is really bad and there is cause for
alarm. What is even more agonizing is the fact
that there is no immediate prospect of a
messiah out there to lead us on a salvage
mission.
This feeling of hopelessness have its unpleasant
consequences. If the health report published
in the newspaper recently is anything to go by,
the mental state of health of Nigerians is even
more disturbing. The report states that 18
million Nigerians suffer from poverty induced
mental illness.
There is the danger and fear that this figure
may rise by the time you add mental illnesses
arising from other causes such as phobia,
paranoia and numerous other anti-social
behaviours facing us.
If this deplorable situation is not arrested fast
enough, and the chances are that it wont, our
dear country stands the risk of becoming one
huge asylum. Can you imagine a situation in
which about a third of the country is mad!
Now that the situation has not spiraled out of
control patriots in our midst should step out
boldly to grapple with the threat of widespread
insanity and other problems bedeviling the
country. This writer has several times called
for national introspection directed at solving
our socio-economic paralysis with analysis.
We don’t pretend that the problems don’t
exist.
Some of the problems are not only avoidable,
they are self-inflicted. How else do you
explain why Nigeria has been allowed to
become a dumping ground for things
destructive and evil? Why should we allow our
country to become a junk yard for
unserviceable cars and motor-cycles discarded
by other countries?
Why do we want to go to our graves with our
eyes open by condoning the massive smuggling
of guns and firearms now choking us out of
existence? Why are toxic wastes allowed in the
country knowing them to be excessively
poisonous! Something must have gone wrong.
Do we no longer have a sense of shame and
outrage? Countries of the world especially the
Western world are advising their citizens to
stop visiting Nigeria for insecurity reasons.
This is not good for our image. People in
authority should say something to reassure the
people.
The deplorable security situation in the country
connotes unpardonable laxity on the part of
our law enforcement agencies at all levels of
authority. In fact, the criminals look more
professional, daring and efficient than our
security personnel. The way the security men
are attacked with little or no resistance and
dispossessed of their arms leaves a sour taste
in the mouth.
These people are quite clearly aware about the
palpable weakness of our security operatives,
so they attack them with disdain and apparent
lack of respect knowing that their reaction
time is zero.
The effrontery of the assailants makes you
suspect an insiders connivance. A case in
point is the way and manner the Kwara State
Commissioner of Police with his retinue of
body guards was killed a few metres away
from his country home. One cannot comment
much on this dastardly event since it is a
subject of investigation. But suffice it to say
that it is a national shame and tragedy.
The general impression people have about
Nigerians is the lack of discipline and high
work ethics. Nigerians are said to care only
when an immediate financial reward is
involved; otherwise their attention span on
other things is short. The way our security
personnel are easily disposed of their guns and
weapons is outrageous.
Besides, people at the helm of affairs are
always trailing behind event rather than
keeping abreast of them. And when they
reluctantly decide to act, they always tinker
with the problem. Conspiratorially, they
believe the enemy is always in the background
plotting and planning evil whereas, they are
both the enemy and the problem.
May God Almighty/Allah have mercy on us. We
turn to God when social policies fail.
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