It is no secret that I am as fond of Muhammadu Buhari as a mosquito is fond of Raid. I don’t dislike the guy — that would be a gross oversimplification of the relationship I have with Nigeria’s friendly neighbourhood military dictator. Well, “ex” military dictator if that makes you feel better. No, it isn’t a simple distaste for his personality or a grudge against him from the past. Sometimes I wish it were that simple.
If I were Nnamdi Kanu for example, I would have a very clear and straightforward relationship with him. He was involved in the 3-year genocide against my ethnic group that we euphemistically refer to as the “civil war,” therefore he is my perceived enemy, full stop. Or if I were Deji Adeyanju or Sheikh El Zakzaky, he would be the African dictator-strongman-Idi-Amin-Mugabe-Biya composite bad guy who locked me in prison for months and gave me a grudge against him. I really wish it were that simple.
In my case, what I think and feel about Nigeria’s president is something altogether deeper and more repellent. How do I describe it? Let’s say the world were to be taken over tomorrow by a race of giant 6-foot tall, flesh-eating mosquitoes. These mosquitoes don’t just eat their victims’ flesh and drink their blood, but also wear their skin afterward and pretend to be people, but the deafening, unmistakable mosquito hum is a dead giveaway, as is the crooked, ill-fitting skin of the victims as it droops over the thin mega-Anopheles body.
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Think about how terrified, revulsed, sick and utterly dismayed you would be every time you put on the telly and you saw a race of mosquitoes wearing your leaders’ skins and delivering an address to you, its “citizen.” You feel like a hostage while it drones on, speaking English in an unfamiliar mosquito hum.
That is how I feel
You see, it’s not just that the past few days have been a throwback to a bygone era that I grew up genuinely believing I would never witness again. It’s not just that we’re living through the banking equivalent of that time in 1996 when I saw my mom frantically hush my dad because he was making a comment about Gen. Sani Abacha inside our own house. She was afraid that someone would overhear it and get him disappeared via Sgt. Rogers. It’s not even that our central bank governor has all the economic awareness of a 50 year-old unexploded Biafran Ogbunigwe. I can live with all of that — the eras of Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan were not exactly characterised with MENSA-level intelligence, if we’re being honest.
What really gets me about him and where Nigeria is heading is that, we have taken anti-intellectualism and mixed it with malevolence alongside a sprinkling of bigotry and a generous helping of banter culture inside the witch cauldron that is Nigeria’s public space. Nigerian public sector frontmen being obtuse did not start with Godwin Emefiele, but it has become celebrated and institutionalized now.
Like the mosquito colonisers from my illustration, he sits there looking blankly with undisguised bad intentions, laughing in my face, daring me to stand up and say something if my papa born me well, insulting my intelligence and mocking my extremely expensive education.
We’re all stupid, Hooray!
These days, insulting everyone’s intelligence has become the standard. A governor gets caught on tape pocketing cash bribes? Lol. The military massacres 300+ people for the egregious alleged crime of “touching a General’s chest?” Haha. Mismanagement of the economy results in a recession, record job losses, ridiculous brain drain and a debt crisis? It’s all in your head. Political dissidents getting disappeared and jailed? What dissidents? Using VAT to fix an un-fixable revenue crisis? You’re an err-conomist. Shutting down AbokiFX to save the naira? Yes of course, why not?
We have witnessed over the past few years, the slow and unmistakable slide of a country into national foolishness
We have witnessed over the past few years, the slow and unmistakable slide of a country into national foolishness. I know what it feels like because I’ve experienced it before in a different country. Before the idea of a Brexit referendum became an actual thing, Britain was doing something similar. The leaders were jokesters or morons, the people followed in their lead, “immigration” became the scapegoat for everything from airport noise pollution to toilets that wouldn’t flush, experts and expertise were demonized, and the practise of politics and governance degenerated into that horrible game of media one-upmanship that we are all too familiar with.
I witnessed the way a stable, prosperous country changed from the tail end of Tony Blair’s tenure into a rabidly xenophobic, anti-intellectual, tribalistic mess toward the end of David Cameron. I fear it will be much worse for Nigeria, because — to put it lightly — the UK was already far ahead of us. Our education is trash, and there is not much in our history to fall back on as a failsafe. If the mosquito colonisers succeed in turning everyone into an idiot who does nothing but regurgitate whatever narrative the regime puts out, I suspect it will be many, many decades before the dark ages come to an end.
We’re becoming stupider, and the mosquitoes are licking their lips.
I don’t know about you, but I am terrified.
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