By Rev Fr. Evans Offor
I have an obdurate camaraderie with the Endsars project in the country. One cannot imagine Nigeria which is the seventh-most populous country in the world, habitat to more than 200 million different ethno-religious citizens, be still waddling. Nigeria was brutally united by Lord Lugard regardless of diversity colours. Prior to its independence in 1960, all the ethnic communities were living separately in peace and progress, until the British colonialists came with lewdness and treachery. Nigerian tribes were emotively built-in into a crabby country in 1914. The country was then projected towards the North for the Fulani with a sullied task to rule Nigeria forever. Historically, the British created a hypnotized country without soul and future and the system has since been moldy that lacked sturdy institutions and good-willed politicians. This lack of genuine intentions for the country and crass deficiency of political and ethnic leaders have created a systematic and incredible country of convolutions for us. Ever since our so-called independence in 1960, we have been having it so boorish in all ramifications. We have had the pogrom of 1966, military revolution and counter coups and civil war as strategies to further the incursion and extension of northern religious cartel and tribal domination into our political pavilion. Northern Muslims have monopolized national political offices to the detriment of the country conveying meritocracy to situations of cell-in-hell inscrutability. Besides, our political leaders have created terrible socio-cultural and economic ogres and gobbledygook that are swinging our common existence into the cavernous. Our youths are without jobs, parents are dying of hunger due to owed salary areas. We are being killed daily by kidnappers, armed bandits, armed robbers, rituality of gangsters, and cultists. Our farmlands have become fearful and killing enclaves for Fulani herders with the federal government doing nothing. There is general insecurity that has brought palpable fear everywhere you go. We have been in the circles of ethnicity, tribalism, religious bigotry and nepotism. We are doomed living in the cell in a hell of oppression, marginalization, police brutality and rape, governmental insensitivity. We are under the shackles of woes and brigandage of public power, yet we are browbeaten to pay eccentric estimated bills. Almost all the essential services have gone to the blues.
These reasons have inspired our great youths to stake their lives to demand for restructuring and for a new country we can be proud to call our own globally. True Nigerians should follow these youths to demand the following: there must be an end to police brutality, rucksack of security chiefs, perk up of security and the chock-full deregulation of the oil and gas sector to allow more investments for job creation as well as reduce suffering of the masses. We are in support of a direct passage of PIB bill and chock-a-block deregulation of the power division to permit treaty resources surge to spawn, transmit and dole out more power. Besides, the federal government ought to hands-off petroleum pricing to allow free-market determination of pricing; and slam our northern borders to stop the free entry of Fulani herdsmen and bandits. Are we not all aware of such infiltration of foreign Muslims into the country, and the trails of death and doom? There must be an all-encompassing government for all tribes and regions of Nigeria with 50 percent youths in charge of governance. Have we not been suffering from marginalization, oppression and injustice rocking us down the deep as a country? Have we not been crying of lack of genuine educational system in the country? We join the youth to tell the government to apportion supplementary finances to the education sector to afford enhanced coaching paraphernalia and to improve salaries to stop ASUU smack. It is overdue to overhaul our scholastic national curriculum to echo contemporary veracity, while putting all politicians on minimum wage to magnetize authentic public service. Is there no need to voyage to 100 per cent electoral modification with electronic voting fixed to our BVN and GSM? We have gone wrong on the type of political system of the country, which has made us roar round like thunderous lion hungry searching for goodness and sanity. Today, are we not in dire need for a return to regional composition or restructuring of the country for a true federalism? Are we not crying for Local governments and States’ sovereignty, and for the adoption of a uni-cameral legislature? Are we not in need of a changed Nigeria Police Force and establishment of states or regional police services for effective security operations? It’s unfortunate to create budgets for the management of private affairs, for such brings about antediluvian philosophy of, “the rich gets richer and the poor descends poorer in the ocean of bleakness”. There is urgent need to instate university education as a minimum qualification for all public workers for utility. It is also irrational to create retirement packages for our retired civil or elected officials, while our active public servants go hungry. Public looters should always be indicted no matter whose-ok is gored. There is reason to stop foreign medical trips for public servants for desecrating our local hospitals. Let our Church, as a community of faith become an energetic witness to justice and peace in Nigeria. Pope St. John Paul 11 in his Post-Synodal Exhortation, ‘’Ecclesia in Africa’’, advises that youths are not only present in society but above all, the future of humanity. He adds, ‘’it is thus necessary to help young people to overcome the obstacles thwarting their development: illiteracy, idleness, hunger, drugs… Let the President end these callous killings now and resolve the demands of the youths and Nigerians, if he is truly human with conscience. Just as the blood of Jesus Christ was shed on the cross to save us, so shall the blood of our hapless youths crushed by these political ogres bring us a true nation (1 John 7). Let us all join this revolt now or never.
*REV FR OFFOR WRITES FROM ENUGU