If death comes naturally, it becomes a thing of joy. After all, the Holy Book tells us that there is a season for everything under the sun- a time to be born and a time to die. But that is not the case in Nigeria today. Most deaths occurring in Nigeria these days are unnatural, hasty and brutal.
Tears of sorrow are flowing ceaselessly everywhere. As if that is not heart-numbing enough, the government appears insensitive to the on-going carnage. Politicians seem to dance on the grave of people who die needless and avoidable death.
Nigeria is presently at a crossroads, very much unsure whether to turn the corner or to take a retreat. Nothing could be sadder and more confusing than a time when a government that, constitutionally, is supposed to protect lives and property of citizens looks so detached and unperturbed in the face of widespread killings. Fear and frustration have taken over the land.
In his book, Beyond Pardon, Bertha Mclay says, “there are many sorrows—the anguish of death, the pain of betrayal, the misery of long suffering, etc—but none is as heart-rending as the treachery of the one we love, trust and cherish.” Like Lady Lionel in the epic English novel, never in the history of Nigeria have the citizens, for inexplicable reasons, been so traumatized and abandoned by their government as Sir Lionel did his loving wife.
The question that has refused to leave every lip today is ‘how did Nigeria and its people get to this sorry state? Another is ‘at what point or why did they get it so wrong as to deserve this slavish sojourn in their own land like the Israelites in the land of Egypt where life was brutish and short?
Like the song writer says, in Nigeria today, many “homes are cold and bare; and the lambs for whom the shepherd died, are straying from the fold”. To make matters worse, the powers that be have become increasingly ambivalent, rubbing it in the minds of the people, especially the helpless and hapless poor, that only the death of the rich matters to them. That may have accounted for the reason Abuja so busied itself last week with the matters surrounding the brutal killing of Funke Olakunri.
Politicians of all persuasions in the country went to Akure last week to show their faces to the grieving Fasoranti, father of the murdered Funke, but no one spared a thought about the trauma of those families whose relatives were brutally murdered in Katsina, about the same time the death of Fasoranti’s daughter was trending. It is even alleged that the where-about of Funke’s driver is not yet known but nobody is talking about him because the poor driver has no ‘name’.
We have seen state actors hit hard at real and perceived opponents rather than put on their thinking cap on how to rid the country of this leprous stigma. Something is dreadfully wrong with a country that attaches no importance to life. No wonder a report that bandits kill 20, 30, or 40 people in a single swoop in parts of the country does not move anybody. Life, anywhere else in the world, is sacred, precious and valuable because it epitomizes the human person.
The human person represents a country’s human capital or resource which is highly treasured because of its capacity to translate and transform the country’s latent and material resource into wealth and growth. Nigeria doesn’t seem to see life this way and therefore, can afford to waste it wantonly.
The leaders of the country at any level you find them are after themselves and their families. Of course, however, there is nothing wrong with somebody thinking about himself first. But there is everything wrong and bad with someone who thinks about himself first, himself next and himself last!
That, exactly, is the story of the Nigeria leader. Apparently, Abuja is only jolted to life if someone close to power or if a ‘big man’ is involved; it is that moment that all the security architecture will be let loose and rallied to swing into action.
Last month, when Dayo Adewole, son of the immediate past minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, was kidnapped in his farm in Oyo State, hell was let loose. Within hours, the young man was rescued, hale and hearty, and those allegedly behind the abduction were rounded up.
Since Dayo’s rescue, a huge number of other Nigerians have been kidnapped, raped and ransom paid also without government or security agents’ intervention.
Last month, a young lady and her brother were travelling home (East) in preparation for their mother’s burial. Somewhere in Ore, the commercial vehicle they were travelling in developed a fault. While all the passengers alighted from the bus, waiting for the fault to be fixed, kidnappers swooped on them. The lady and her brother were among those that were taken away.
The struggling husband in Lagos had to run from pillar to post to raise N3million out of the N10million ransom initially requested. By the time the captives were released a week after, the lady had been repeatedly raped and the brother was spotting bruises and machete cuts all over his body. No government official or political practitioner paid a visit to that family. That young family has remained traumatised thereafter.
Just last Tuesday, suspected herdsmen ambushed an inter-state bus from Akwa Ibom State to Lagos somewhere in Edo State. In the course of herding the victims (about eight in number) into the bush, one Felix Akanbi, a Naval warrant officer, was shot dead as he was allegedly not moving at the pace their abductors expected him to move. Since that day, it has not been heard that government officials traced his family to commiserate with them. But he was a Naval officer, but of a lower rank.
Those who are daily robbed, kidnapped, raped or killed on Nigeria’s highways these days, bear their grief alone. Those in power must realise that no Nigerian is more Nigerian than the other. What confers the Nigerianness on anybody is being born by bonafide parents of Nigeria origin.
It means therefore, that every freeborn of this country deserves to be treated with respect. But it has since been established that there are two laws in operation in the country- one “for them”, and the other “for us”. The one for them is not even activated let alone operational when it comes to the rights such citizens should enjoy; whereas the one “for us” (those in government and their cronies) is working 24/7 in their favour. What a country!
People are dying out of poverty. Many are dying out of treatable diseases. Many are dying by the sheer neglect of government; many are dying in the most bestial ways ever heard of – people are today being slaughtered like goats; kidnappers and ritualists make a mince meat of their victims. It is misery, agony and tears across the length and breadth of Nigeria.
Government appears to have lost control. The security agencies appear to have been divided and there is no longer synergy in the fight against the common enemy. What is happening to our beloved fatherland?
The killing of Fasoranti’s daughter has further exposed the underbelly of politicians. Some genuinely went to commiserate with the mourning nonagenarian; but some others could best be described as miserable mourners. They went to further their political dreams and ambition, using the opportunity of the woman’s brutal murder to do so.
Their utterances have shown their real colour. And the question is; is there still hope for a country whose leaders behave in this manner? Like King Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning, Nigerian leaders seem to be fiddling, too, while the country burns.
In the Cambridge English Dictionary, to fiddle is to act dishonestly in order to get something for oneself, or to change something dishonestly, especially to one’s own advantage. Going by what we see now, Eldorado for Nigeria is still decades ahead. But hope is real and it will never disappoint those who have and hold on to it. Nigerians do.
ZEBULON AGOMUO
