By Dominic Kudzu
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed“.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Nigeria is not only the most populous black nation in the world, it is also the country with the highest number of cowards in the universe. If the country has 200,000,000 citizens, over 199,000,000 million of them are effeminate, grovelling, church and mosque-going cowards, who cannot stand up for themselves or even pursue an argument in pursuit of their own self-interest. They only complain, wring and throw their hands in the air and wait for the Almighty God to come down and save them, like Vladimir and Estragon in Bethold Bretch’s ‘Waiting For Godot’.
If Nigerians were only cowardly, they probably could have been excused, after all, not everyone is going to be a hero, but they are also very idiotic and damn right stupid. Adapting to unnecessary suffering like bedbugs to hot water. From the North to the South, and from the East to the West, the people are all willing slaves and beasts of burden, ready to adapt to every degree of inhumanity they are subjected to as long as they are going to be allowed to swallow a morsel of cheap food and to go to bed in the night, even without light or comfort.
The people can put up with any amount of shit. Cooked, fried, boiled, roasted, and dried in the sun. Shit poured over their heads or stuffed into their mouths and noses without a whimper. That is how quiescent and pliable they are, easily led to the slaughter without a bleat or a whimper. The people cannot stand up for themselves or ask questions of their leaders or say ‘no, this is enough’, because they are not a thinking people and certainly not an acting lot. Just donkeys in stress-stupour, accepting more loads on their backs, more burdens and trudging onward to their miserable graves.
And all these in a country that is blessed with oil and gas, gold, lead/zink, limestone, salt, tantalite, marble/dolomite, kaolin/magnesium, bentonite, gypsium, clay, uranium, abundance of water, large swaths of arable land and great numbers to till the soil and create happy livelihoods. Just that the leaders have stolen them all and left the people with only sorrow, tears, and blood. The Change mantra of the APC brought in a Buhari that was dead and ‘lifeless’ on arrival, who borrowed Nigeria into the future of their children, while the Renewed Hope shibboleth has ushered in a Tinubu that is arrogant and haughty from the first day. A Tinubu that has been one of the racketeers of Nigeria all along has now come to lead us safely to Golgotha and to quiet demise.
And every time government presses the donkeys down with more weight, they will complain in the buses or taxis, and in the offices, go to their worship places in the evening and go to bed at night. They don’t rise up, they don’t take action, they don’t block the roads, or burn down the gamblers. The unions are deceased, professional groups are mute as mules, even student groups have joined the choir and the once vibrant youths are only too happy to sing praises to the politicians and be allowed to eat the remains at the murderer’s table after dinner is over. “This country ehh, na only God go help us oooo. ” That’s a lie, brother-man, God will never come down and help you. It’s up to you to do that shift, only you are just too fucking scared to do it, too fucking weak to let your traducers know that you are dying.
We used to have refineries, you know, and petrol and kerosene were sold in Naira, all that seems so long ago now. Today the refineries have been sabotaged and petrol and kerosene are now imported and sold to us in dollars, after Tinubu crashed the Naira in his first week as president. But what do they care about the Naira when they no longer touch the damned paper. Tinubu tells us to sacrifice, yet he himself has been globetrotting and his National Assembly just got a 70 billion Naira boon, to sort themselves out while waiting for bulletproof SUVs to arrive.
There is no doubt that it is Tinubus turn to rule, according to his midnight agreement with Buhari, but isn’t it our turn too, to express what we are going through, what we feel, to come out to the streets and make a point? The price of everything has been quadrupled, but wages remain stagnant. Tinubu is tearing us up with a raw and unsterilized knife, yet he did not think of administering anaesthetia to reduce the pain we feel. What exactly are the great army of suffering Nigerians waiting for before they take action?
Mr Tinubu and his gang arrived at the presidency without a stitch of moral fibre, or a whiff of political philosophy and the elite deck is going to be re-stacked in the coming days by the conspiracy of party men. And being so conceited, they have no regrets or apologies for us, only bellicose and belligerent yelling from Mr Dele Alake to all who ask why. The Renewed Hope promises no hope at all, and all men of good conscience must stand up to be counted at this time. To do otherwise, by failing to speak and rise up is to commit suicide in advance
- Dominic Kidzu writes from Calabar.
