Our country is dying, many don’t know and that is why everything on the surface looks normal. The nation is going, societies have spirit and when the people begin to misbehave, the spirit departs, leaving the people with an empty shell. It is a consensus agreement that our country has not been well governed since independence in 1960. The expectation has been that with the deterioration of the situation and the pains it imposes on the human element, activities and desires would begin to gravitate to gradual change for good, but unfortunately that is not what we see. Instead things seem to be moving from worse to worst. Politics is the foundation for moving the other sectors of national life. Economy is important because people will have to work and feed, but economy will not be in place if poor governance is in vogue. Our case has been that of ineffective leadership and governance. We all agree it is not a recent development, yet, as observed earlier, the expectation has been that by now we ought to have learnt from our mistakes and resolved to do things differently.
The expectation has been in the air and it was the wind in which the current ruling party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), rode to power in 2015. The party understood the time and cashed in on it. Nigerians wanted a change and that was exactly what the ruling party promised the people. They were very clear that they would depart from the old ways things were done and create a new paradigm shift that would meet the expectations of the citizens. The party has had its first tenure of four years, contested and “won” election for a second tenure. One year of that tenure is almost gone and citizens’ assessment of our political progress has not returned good verdict. Rather, there is the belief that things are going very bad. The command and obey system once associated with the military is gradually coming back. Everywhere there seems to be fear, citizens are increasingly becoming afraid of their leaders and this should be of concern to any genuine lover of the country, for the simple reason that in a true democracy the leaders should be afraid of the people, but now it is the people that are afraid of their leaders, this is a signal of some trouble.
Every day the citizens are assailed with threats to close the space of free speech. There is the law to regulate the social media and the bill on hate speech with prescription of death penalty for those who will run afoul of the law. As would be expected, these misdirected steps are raising tensions and forcing citizens to beat a retreat from participating in governance. Democracy minus participation, can that be truly said to be a democracy? The bane of the Nigerian system is that the leadership has been forced to subscribe to a system they lack capacity to see through. Our leaders like to talk about democracy and how much they love the system but when it comes to actual practice they show they are feudalists and anarchists not ready at all to change. True democrats love dialogue, they are never afraid of engagement; they know the importance of disagreeing to agree, of compromise, give and take and consensus. They know these constitute the beauty of democracy and that adhering to them, gives the citizens something to live for, so leaders go for it.
Emphasis usually should be on those matters that have direct consequences on the daily existence of the human element, there is hardly time left for frivolities or beating about the bush. That is good example we ought to follow and if we are to be followers of what is good, our leaders will naturally know that wasting all the time talking and producing a law on hate speech is not the right issue for now given that hate speeches do not just flow from nothing but have their roots in low quality leadership and poor economic management, which have resulted in closed economic opportunities. Create wealth and only few citizens would care if a government exists or not; so emphasis should be placed on that and not on compounding an already bad situation by hunting already displaced citizens. It is confounding to see government propose death sentence for hate speech and nothing of such for corruption and unhealthy alliance with imperialism. No group has done so much damage to Nigeria than those of them called “comprador bourgeois”, this is the group that requires death sentence and not ordinary Nigerians for talking.
Our polls are becoming something else but elections. They are not even sham elections; war would be the appropriate tag to give our elections, which have become more terrible than they used to be in the past. This phenomenon of inconclusive elections has added a comic side to an already bad show. The last polls in Kogi and Bayelsa dented our image; it portrayed us as very unserious people. The security agencies mobilized thousands of their personnel to the two states and yet thugs and terrorists had a field day. In civilized countries the Inspector General of Police would have been asked to resign immediately, when without discretion and shame he came publicly to tell Nigerians that fake security personnel overwhelmed the legal ones. What a talk and what an answer? It is more evil to say because a wrong happened before then it should continue. This is demonic and this kind of thinking shouldn’t come from human beings, especially those entrusted with the task of offering leadership.
Nations have spirit and they could depart when our actions become wicked, stupid and unbearable. Nigeria is in that circle now. The way we are going, the possibility of a genocidal war is very high. Some Nigerians want to take us there but the majority has a responsibility to rise and say no. James Madison has already enlightened us that oppression and tyranny often come in the guise of fighting for good. This is why we must be vigilant. Eternal vigilance, it has been said, is the price for freedom. Martin Luther was also right when he taught us that our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter; hate bill or no hate bill, our country is not being well managed; every noble inheritance we got is being diminished and eroded, Nigerians in thousands are suffering and dying. We cannot allow this to continue, we have a right to shout and point out the wrongs and to insist on an immediate change, that is the greatest challenge. Next after this will be on panacea on electoral brigandage; electronic voting is not the solution as most Nigerians think.