By Nduka Fred
Can Nigerians ever be pushed to the edge? In another way of expressing the same thing, can Nigerians ever get to the breaking point? This was the topic of a popular radio presenter in a foremost radio station in Lagos recently. No doubt similar themes might have been expressed in other traditional communication channels and social media in Nigeria. Repeatedly, the presenter asked whether Nigerians were being pushed to the edge by the present situation in the country. For the umpteenth time, he asked the same question to the general audience; Are Nigerians getting to the breaking points?
The reason for this intro is the difficulties being experienced by Nigerians at the various markets to buy what to eat, the cost of moving from one place to the other, the cost of medications for their increasing ailments, and the general air of insecurity and disillusionment all over our country in the face of response-and-think approach by the government to contain the furies it has set in motion since coming into office in 2023.
People called in from far and near with many saying yes that Nigerians have been pushed to the edge and others saying something in between. It was a potpourri of comments and viewpoints but the frustrations, helplessness, and hopelessness of the callers, nay, Nigerians, were unmistakable. A people raped beyond redemption.
However, one caller got me thinking in a way I have never thought about our dear country, and let me summarise him:
He said, rather ruefully, that Nigerians will never be pushed to the edge because we are not united to confront our common enemy. In his lamentation, he said that, as Nigerians, we are divided along ethnic and religious, and so deeply, to be able to ever think of uniting to confront the common enemy, the politicians, and their co-travelers, especially those benefitting from the current political miasma.
But the clincher was not what he said about us but the assuredness in restating the foolish consistency resulting from this characterization of our people. He continued by saying that the people suffering under the current situation will still defend the perpetrators of the current travails and even vote for them if there is an election today. I am not sure whether this is true but he said that politicians are aware of the divisions and are always using them to manipulate the people and get their way to power. I am not sure the latter part of the last sentence is anything to argue about because the politicians have been adept, over the years at using propaganda to manipulate and divide the people.
According to the caller, Nigerians will neither get pushed to the edge nor get to the breaking point. They would always find ways to endure whatever hardship is inflicted on them by the politicians. Like the mules, cows, and any other beasts of burden, Nigerians will find reasons to endure. He declared that Nigerians will never have the Kenyan experience where the Kenyan people confronted, in a massive show of people power, the government to change some of its policies hurting the people.
My apprehension about what the caller said is whether this is a perfect characterization of Nigerians. Is it correct to say that Nigerians can endure anything thrown at them by our leaders? Is it true that Nigerians have lost their sense of hurt and outrage; that Nigerians are no more reasonable but unfeeling bodies; that our emotions have been finally clipped; and that we are no longer able to distinguish between pain and pleasure?
The stark reality today is that Nigerians are not only divided along ethnic and religious lines but also along spiritual lines, and by spirit, I mean our sense of wrong and right. Shamefacedly, our so-called men of God have taken sides with filthy lucre and the houses of worship turned into whited tombs.
The truth has been blurred by our foolish consistency to the supremacy of our tribe to gain the upper hand in the struggle for the resources of Nigeria. What has happened to the collective soul of our country so badly battered and divided by the events of recent times where citizenship has become a scarce commodity in Nigeria?
Are we mules, donkeys, or cows whose reasoning has departed from us? Are we entirely beast of burden as the Afrobeat King Fela once described us? What could explain the graveyard peace enveloping the country in the face of current deprivations, penury, and anger? What examples are our leaders showing that they are with the people in the present difficulties in the land? Where are the sacrifices they are making for the general good of Nigerians? There is no disputing the fact today that the struggle to possess Nigeria has made men and women cowards and strangers to the eternal verities of life that we now believe that fair is foul and foul is fair.
As Nigerians, we should never lose hope in our country though our collective actions have brought us to where we are today. We got ourselves into where we are today and it is a duty on us to get us out of it. We would have to do the work required to take Nigeria out of the present predicament if only we could do away with those divisions created by the politicians whose interest in power is never to serve the people but to use and dump them.
The task to recover the soul of Nigeria is a huge one and the mind has to be the starting point. The programming of seeing Nigeria in a good light only if it benefits us and in a bad light if it does not require a total change of mindset. And we have not even started; rather the ugly divisions are being deepened daily.
No other investment is better than investing in our people by way of providing education that would reprogramme our people to become, again, humans imbued with a sense of outrage at the destruction of the moral basis by our leaders and many others.
Please don’t help us, Oh God. We brought this on ourselves.
*Anene, HR Professional (B.A, MPA, AMP (LBS), MSC (Mass comm)