Nnamdi Kanu’s re-arrest, frenzied reactions and neglect of real issues

On the day the re-arrest of Nnamdi Kanu was made public by the Federal Government, the entire country entered into a frenzy mode.

Many Nigerians rummaged the internet to get the real gist of the development. Some online portals of media organisations got their highest hit in recent times.

It is no longer news that Kanu is in Nigeria, and in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) as directed by Justice BintaNyako of the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, Tuesday.

Read Also: Nnamdi Kanu will get a fair trial – FG

While some of his supporters are feeling the pain of the re-arrest of their leader, some others are clinking glasses. Just as there are two sides of a coin.

But while Nigerians wallow in celebration of re-arrest of a political prisoner on one hand, or condemnation of his ordeal, Nigeria sinks deeper into the nadir of hopelessness as hunger and poverty continue their ravenous punishment on a large number of the populace.

Nigeria has always focused on featherweight issues while leaving weightier matters unattended to. The implications have also always been devastating. No wonder the country continues its cyclical moves decades after decades.

While citizens are here discussing Nnamdi Kanu; while the country is bent on a return to the medieval age of encouraging the anachronistic nomadic expedition from the North to South, and while we are more concerned about the welfare of cattle above that of the suffering masses of Nigeria, in a country with over 20 million housing deficit and over 33.3percent unemployment, the biggest news in Ghana today is that Toyota has opened a plant there to build cars and sell in Nigeria.

The most cheering news today in Ghana is that the country is arresting poverty, while Nigeria is arresting people and bandits are over-running villages, communities and attacking governors’ convoys.

While Nigeria banned Twitter, Ghana welcomed Twitter. Nigeria banned Cryptocurrencies, Ghana is banking on its own cryptocurrency, opening the space for its citizens to make legitimate wealth and permanently bid goodbye to poverty.

Why Ghana’s population is 30.42 million (2019), Nigeria is close to 200 million people. But it is clearly showing that it is not size that makes a country the Giant of Africa.

Someone noted: “The elephant is the giant of the jungle, but it is the lion that is the king of the jungle. Never be intimidated by a person’s size. If giant size is not accompanied by giant intellect, it will end as a liability!”

Nigeria as a nation should be concerned about a lot of things going wrong at the same time in the country.

All the ratings by international agencies have negative reports on Nigeria.

A new report by the World Bank says a full decade of economic growth in Nigeria is likely to be lost by the end of the current year, 2021.

The international bank said that Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) is likely to approach its 2010 level by the end of the year, thus, reversing a full decade of economic growth.

The bank in its bi-annual Nigeria Development Update (NDU) report series said that there would be a constant decline in the country’s GDP per capita despite recovery from recession, projecting the country’s population to grow faster than its economy.

The NDU report by the World Bank is said to have estimated that despite the country’s gradual recovery from the 2020 recession, Nigerian masses will continue to suffer the adverse effect of the economic downturn.

Commonsense demands that the leadership of the country should be more concerned about averting the doom’s day that pursuing irrelevances.

Where the country is today is an aggregation of many years of injustice and inequity which have been elevated to statecraft. And like in every society of homosapiens, there must be reactions, sometimes, violent. Hence, the Nigerian nation is simply reaping the whirlwind, having sowed to the wind.

Hostilities by all manner of terrorist groups- Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, bandits, among others scaled up their murderous activities in the last two to three years now. This rather underscores decades of leadership failure in Nigeria, painting a troubling picture of the future for the touted giant of Africa.

The earlier we do away with nepotism, the better for Nigeria.