Saturday 20 April 2019

NIGERIANS UNITED BY FEAR: BECAUSE I AM INVOLVED. WHAT ABOUT YOU?

I do try to follow DANA MILBANK who writes in The Washington Post for an American audience. In the following article to mark the last 4th of July holiday, he summarizes the one thing that unites Americans across both the clear and nebulous ideological divides - FEAR! If we discount the half a million or so Nigerian citizens directly or remotely involved in the political processes, it would seem as if the vast majority are consumed by one palpable fear or the other. So as Milbank checks off the list for his fellow countrymen, we Nigerians would do well to recognize our own fears, come to terms with them, conquer them, failing which the amoral political class will continue to mislead the teeming masses hungry for proper leadership. Let's try our hands on this.
1) Fear of Impoverishment. It is amazing that even the rich have this fear, especially those who have no visible means of livelihood. Strangely enough some at the bottom rung of the economic ladder do not have this fear. They know for a fact that once they are healthy, they can always figure out a way to fit into whatever inequitable system that they meet on the ground. Check out Okrika Waterside, Oshodi Bus Stop, Onitsha Bridgehead, Daleko, ASPANDA, Molete, and all the various Kasuwa, Ogbete tinker workshops, Ikeja and environs. 
 2) Fear of Unmanageable Illhealth. As our people, who typically can't fly off to Mount Sinai Hospital or to London (like President Buhari), or to India, struggle to take care of their own welfare, there is this nagging fear that this will all come to nought with sickness. We all know about the failure to put in place a reliable and all encompassing National Health Scheme. A devastating or long-lasting illness is all that is needed to render any hardworking individual bankrupt. Meanwhile the sorry membership of the National Assembly is busy padding their pockets, with Sen Gemade and others explaining that without Constituency Projects, many communities will never experience the impact of governance. In that case, I wonder why we don't just collapse the budgetary process such that we now have one long list of constituency projects recently proven to be the magic wand. 
3) Fear of your neighbour. Nigerians generally live in peace with their hosts. However the fear is always there, and has been proven again and again, that the political class can set the hosts against settlers in their midst. Everyone has the capacity to engage in conspiracy. However, I fail to imagine say the much derided masses of the north sitting down to actually plan anything negative against their southern neighbours. They would normally be too busy coping with their poverty or working really hard (contrary to the standard stereotype, many, many do!) to support themselves and their families. Anyone in doubt should visit the farms and farming communities. 
4) Fear of the Future. This is a generic fear that assails all and sundry. Most deal with it with some planning and hard work while trusting in Providence. The theiving elements of the top fraction have a different kind of this fear. They fear that the system will experience CHANGE. Even if not of the violent kind, this will at best staunch the flow of ill-gotten wealth or at worse subject them a retribution of sorts. Yes, they are afraid that the party could be over! 
5) Fear of Political Domination Up north, the vast majority have for decades been basking under the comforting glow of the notion that, "We are northerners! We are Muslims! We won! We are on the winning side!" After that then what?? Many cannot understand how long it took General Theophilus Y Danjuma to put into words what he must have been feeling inside him long before the Zamani Lekwot debacle in Southern Kaduna. It took decades. A supressed ethnic minority group populated with upwardly mobile individuals cannot forever rest on the laurels of a civil war won half a century ago in circumstances that everyone is afraid or ashamed to explain to its youth. Hear Rt Rev Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Kaduna State born Catholic Bishop of Sokoto try his hands on this. General Gowon must be living in torture right now. Apart from his recommended prayers, we need good works. This should include telling the truth, no matter how it hurts. # One wonders if in the north, among the minorities, whether the presence of Southerners, especially Ndigbo, is regarded as a good thing. An asset? As this depletes further, it is only a few indigenous Christian clergy who have come out boldly to say, "Please do not abandon us." That cry has been heart-rending for many southerners, who through thick and thin had stayed put up north. # Down south, in the Niger Delta area, the ambivalence has been remarkable. They FEAR and COVET northern domination in the same breath. Why?. Because they fear (perhaps in small letters? Who knows?) their immediate next door neighbours with whom they have cohabited for centuries without external influence. They resent overbearing northern influence in their politics and economy and strangely enough send out subtle signals that they need say Igbo support to overcome them. Meanwhile the sign over the door says, "Keep off! Don't interfer!" Of course the north loves it and stokes the envy, disinformation and ambivalence. Postponing the day of reckoning. 
 6) Every Nigerian is afraid, and perhaps justifiably so, that his freedom of religious worship is being or will soon be extinguished. The recent statement published by the US State Department does not tell us anything new. Meanwhile the Christians and southerners in the Buhari administration are carrying on as if nothing is amiss. It is also possible that some group in the north is not only propping up the hoi-poloi with the story line that if Sharia and Islamic Law is not extended to the rest of Nigeria, by hook or by crook, then there could be a reversal whereby the practice of Islam would be constrained even on their home front. This is my sheer conjecture. In Nigeria, nothing is beyond these people. 
7) Fear of #Restructuring. No matter how much revenue/resources are expropriated from the Niger Delta for distribution up north, the visible impact on the lives of the generality of the citizens there is minimal at best. For example to get farm inputs at near market prices, with little or no cost to government is such a big deal, that these people hardly ask for anything else. Those that have thankfully taken on the technical lines dominated by southerners will only be grateful for steady electrical supply on which nobody can count along the length and breadth of Nigeria. Pray, in the last 36months, what has been the trend line for the development indices of Buhari's own Katsina State? What are the absolute figures. Meanwhile the story is told, spread as FEAR, that if we do #Restructure via devolution of power, #ResourceControl and proper #FiscalFederalism, that the poor masses, who have been largely ignored, will suffer! What a scam?We know for a fact that it is only the freeloaders who skim the cream off the top, that will suffer. Hence they strain to rope in the masses, who have valiantly taken care of themselves. This they do by heightening their fears, real or imagined. 
8) Fear for their Lives. Most Nigerians, probably all, are afraid that they could easily lose their lives right in their own homes. Then again they are afraid that when they go out they would not make it home again alive, worse when they have to travel long distance. They fear armed robbers, Boko-Haram, cattle herdsmen, (Fulani or not), the Nigeria Police, SARS, The Army of occupation, etc. It's FEAR all over the land. The usual technical term is FEAR of INSECURITY. One of the strangest developments is that until quite recently, the chairman of the Northern Elders Forum, Paul Unongo, has cried out that it is people from Amassoma Brass, Enugu and Abeokuta who are formenting the killings in Zamfara State, etc. Strange, isn't it? Perhaps we have come to the juncture where all honest individuals will unite over those FEARS that we hold dear (see above) and announce to Buhari that he has failed us. This has nothing to do with his handlers wanting to try their hands on the 2019 presidential election. They are on their own

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