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A giant at 40 |
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ANNOUNCE THIS VIEWPOINT TO YOUR FRIENDS! |
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"IAM going to Abuja." "What's up? "I hear Abuja is going to be very hot in the next few days, and I don't want to miss any part of the fun. Someone sent me an invitation, and I intend to use it." "It looks as if the only thing they do in that Abuja these days is to have fun. When Clinton visited, it was fun all the way. So, what fun is this new one that you are talking about?" "My friend, stop pretending. You want to say you don't know that this is the season of independence anniversary, and that this one is special. Nigeria will be 40 years old on Sunday. In Abuja, the party is on. I hear government is planning to make this one, the mother of all celebrations." "Nonsense." "Sit down there and be criticizing. Look, government is having parties, shows, lectures, a big gathering of the tribes at 40." "Yes, I know. Every government ministry is also staging some small show on the side. State governments are also doing something. Local government chairmen are sending out invitation cards. I hear the Committee of First Ladies is planning to sew a special boubou, with Nigeria at 40 printed all over it to show that we are a happy people. The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Alabo Graham-Douglas has even boasted that he would put up an elaborate carnival in Abuja, and that for as long as he is in that ministry, there will be two carnivals every year, the Democracy Carnival on May 29, and the Independence Carnival on October 1." "Don't mind that one. I guess the man has no idea what he should be doing in that ministry. Why doesn't he just rename the Ministry the Ministry of Carnivals? That is not what culture is all about. If the man doesn't know what to do, the people around him should assist. He just wants to waste money on carnivals. What has the price of yam got to do with the size of crayfish?" "Precisely, my point. All this elaborate show that people are putting on just because Nigeria is 40 is totally senseless. It's like a man having many problems around him and choosing to drink himself to a state of stupor." "Like South Africans." "But the point is that the hangover will eventually wear off and you'd be back to the reality that you are avoiding. Celebrating Nigeria at 40 is a grand act of self-deception. There is nothing to celebrate, nothing to cheer, we have lost it." "Your pessimism is not going to stop me from going to Abuja, in case you must know, anyway. I mean, your opinion is predictable. That is what everyone else who has said something about this 40th anniversary is saying. It is too easy to dismiss Nigeria as an unworkable equation, as a failure. The truth is it is also a great nation. We Nigerians must learn to be patriotic. There are too many traitors in this country. Treason is a crime but we don't enforce it as we should. Otherwise, people like you who have been putting Nigeria down and calling for anarchy should be in detention now. No country can become great if its own citizens are always gripping." "I am sure you know the truth. You are just saying this because of what you stand to gain from going to Abuja. Who is inviting you? Is it an NGO, with the promise of a generous honorarium. You think I don't know? Look, Nigeria at 40 has become a big racket, the biggest racket of the year. All those government officials who are insisting that the country must celebrate, you think they are interested in Nigeria? No. They are interested in their pockets. They are going to award contracts, buy gifts and manufacture fictitious souvenirs, and place adverts in newspapers. They are going to make good money from celebrating an abstraction called Nigeria." "There you go again. Nigeria is not an abstraction. It is a living country, with a total of 120 million people, one out of every four Africans is a Nigerian, and in case you have forgotten, we have just won two silver medals at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. We are a country, not an abstraction, the most populated and the richest country in Africa cannot be an abstraction". "So, is Nigeria really 40 years old? When you say Nigeria is 40, of what use is that to people in Abonema, or Okrika, or Okitipupa, or Ugep who have a consciousness of their own history running back into centuries. To such people, they are not in any way defined by your celebration of liberation from white minority rule. It is not a significant part of their history." "There you go again. You better don't go and talk like this in public. You could be charged for treasonable felony. You are lucky General Abacha is dead. If you had talked like this three years ago, you'd have been given a good dose of Abachamycin and you know what that is." "The white man left true, and he gave us a flag and a national anthem." "Point of correction. Nobody gave us a flag and an anthem. A Nigerian designed the flag, another Nigerian composed our national anthem." "Six and half a dozen, what is the difference. Don't you get my point? That really all we have is that flag and the national anthem. No more no less. No substance. The white minority elite has been replaced by a local power elite that is just as bad as the colonial elite. The British plundered Nigeria, fine, haven't our own people been plundering Nigeria since independence? The white man ignored the natives and did nothing for us, fine but what has independence brought us? Since 1960, the new power elite has ignored the people and satisfied its own interests and secured the future of its children." "I don't get the distinction, I think we are all guilty, we are all part of the elite." "It is easy to know who the elite are. They are the ones who have occupied government positions at one time or another. They don't watch Nigerian television, they'd rather tune to CNN. Their children are in schools in England and America. Nigerian schools are not good enough for them. Their wives travel abroad as they wish. It is this same elite that is responsible for the crisis in the Niger Delta, military rule, and every other ill in the land. They are rich, ambitious and vicious in the extreme. They have agents all over the land; and they simply cannot afford to let Nigeria work, because a Nigeria that works is not good for business, their own kind of business." "You are blaming only the leaders, the ordinary Nigerian is a big problem too. Look at what people do to each other on the streets, consider the menace of armed robbery, the violence on our streets, the sheer inhumanity of man to man. Oftentimes, when I drive on the streets, I keep a rosary by my side; other road users will not grant you the right of passage, the Okada man is trying to run down your car if he can, the man on foot is envying you and you can actually feel the enmity. And these so-called elite, are they not Nigerians, their children who go to foreign schools are they not Nigerians?" "Victim. The average Nigerian is a victim. If we can get rid of the elite, we will move forward. Elite-conspiracy, elite-inefficiency, elite-madness, that is the problem. It sucks you in before you know it. I am talking about the injustice of it all; the rape of the nation, the inequities in the land, the pain which forces many to ask for the dismemberment of Nigeria. Rather than this drunkenness that is going on, we should reflect, act and think." "Reflect. That word again. Every year, we are told to reflect. And yet the people who reflect a lot are in the psychiatric hospitals. A nation that spends all its time reflecting is a mad nation, I tell you. That is why I am saying we should celebrate, maybe in the process of the celebration, we can find some meaning about our circumstances." "No. You'd only create a few more millionaires, and empower many others. The celebration of Nigeria at 40 will not solve the problem of bad roads, of telephones that do not work, of salaries and pensions that are never paid, of hospitals that have become mortuaries, of a national currency that is unpredictable, of a national economy that is dependent..." "Go on... I have heard it all before". "We are a nation in perpetual transition really because we are not yet a nation. There is so much distrust in the land. The Arewa Consultative Forum met last week, the Pan-Yoruba Congress met in Ibadan yesterday, the Igbo at home and abroad are all meeting today. They are all talking about the personal interest of their ethnic group. That should tell you something. We are a gathering of tribes, with each man locked in an ethnic and time capsule, and that is in spite of whatever affinities that we may appear to share. Nigeria you see exists only in the minds of those who benefit from it. What has Nigeria done for me?" "You are one of the anarchists, I know. Nigeria cannot do anything for anarchists because you are all beyond redemption." "I am not alone." "One thing you are overlooking is that this is still one of the best places to live in the world." "I thought we have been told it is the most corrupt country in the world." "I don't know about that. But I know that this is one country where you don't have to pay tax. If you are a big man, you can always dodge tax. It is also the only country where you can make free and easy money. You see a man or a woman in January, by April you could be told that he is already building a mansion and he has become very rich. It can only happen here. We have given the world the phrase and phenomenon of 419; our girls are in Italy carrying the national flag in the oldest profession known to man. We fought a civil war and we survived. They say AIDS is ravaging Africa but have you seen how healthy we are all looking? They say sanitation is important: we have the filthiest streets in the world but there has been no epidemic anywhere. We are a resilient nation. Liberia did not experience a quarter of what Nigeria has seen before it went to pieces. What of Somalia? And Burundi and Zaire? They say Nigerians are thieves but the Nation is still very rich and now that crude oil is doing well in the market, the sky is our limit. I know what you are trying to say man, but fair is fair, there is no country like this one anywhere else." "The consolation of the drunkard. Your hangover will eventually clear off." "Look, can't we talk about something else? I don't want you to infect me with your bad mood." "What is there to talk about?" "Like Vice President Atiku." "What about him?" "The man has been quoted as saying that the Arewa Consultative Forum which dismissed the Obasanjo government as being inefficient did not mean any harm. He sounded like a member of the Forum, like their Public Relations Officer." "You know sometimes, I don't know on whose side the Vice President stands in the politics of Nigeria. That was how the other day, he showered praises on the Speaker of the House of Representatives." "But I hear the man is a good politician." "Yeah, I know. A good politician in Nigeria is a disloyal ally in any cause." "And what cause is this?" "Eh, stop pretending. Democracy of course." "Anyway, happy anniversary in advance." "I am not interested. When you get to Abuja, you can say that to them. They'd need it." 
Reuben Abati |
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