Nigeria: An Irony of a Country?

By Ogiri John Ogiri.

One of the fundamental essence of government existing in any society is for the protection of citizens from any form of social, economic, security and political jeopardy or any other existential threat facing that society. Government provides this in exchange for certain obligations from the citizens to the Government. Where there is an unfavourable shift in the structure of this social contract between the people and the government, an outbreak of chaos becomes a public inevitability. In Nigeria today, the government seems to have failed in this basic area. Blessings and curses now cohabit with oxymoronic shamelessness. A consequence can be seen in what is happening in our country today. 

Perhaps, it may not be out of place to ascribe to this country of ours the figurative title of irony. Yes Nigeria can safely be described as a nation of many disturbing ironies.

From the North to the South; from the East to the West, rich natural resources straddle idly across our pristine vegetation and relief yet ours is a nation with one of the highest concentration of poor people in the world, a part of the reasons we were awarded the poverty capital of the world recently. For many years after independence, we have not been able to successfully and justly harness our diverse human and material resources for the development of our economy for the benefit of the greatest number of our citizens. Over times, citizens have been denied access to resources, information and justice. They lost their power of economic self-sufficiency while just a class of  an elite few continues to feast on those resources.

Again, we have produced(we still produce) great scholars in the arts, science and medicine both at home and abroad, and who, ordinarily, should have been encouraged to guide us from darkness to light yet our political scene is sadly dominated by educated idiots, drug addicts and savages who, unfortunately, make national policy decisions for the greatest majority of Nigerians including the highly educated citizens. The Machiavellian, shenanigan approach to the pursuit, acquisition and utilization of power adopted by many of our former pen robbers turned politicians has come to mean that the best of us, those with the right ideas for progress are deliberately alienated from the many opportunities of political power to serve our country.

Almost as a corollary, It is in Nigeria that a professor can deputize an academic nonentity without any qualm about it. It is in the same Nigeria that a non-graduate of tertiary institutions can make laws that regulate the lives of the graduates without the graduates protesting. No wonder, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah aptly captured this when he said “Nigeria educational systems have surprising outcomes. The smartest students pass with First Class and get admissions to Medical and Engineering schools. The 2nd Class students get MBAs and LLBs to manage the First Class students. The 3rd Class students enter Politics and rule both the 1st and 2nd Class students. The Failures enter the Underworld of crime and control the politicians and the businesses .And, best of all, those who did not attend school become Prophets and Imams and everyone follows them….”What a paradox and an irony of life! It can only happen in Nigeria where corruption is the order of the day….!” 

Every year, we churn out graduates from our monotechnics, polytechnics, colleges and universities like the miller churns out rice from the mill yet we have no functional systems to absorb them. Those who have business ideas most often get discouraged by the absence of an enabling environment necessary for the translation of such ideas into viable entrepreneurial realities.

Our security personnel are usually adjudged as one among the best when they participate in international peace-keeping operations yet we are so insecure at home that regionally organized resorts to self-help have become commonplace. Terrorists now operate freely in our country. Life is no longer worth a penny in Nigeria as terrorists in herdsmen and bandits now choose freely when, where and who to kidnap, maim and kill. In the end, while the villains are very likely to be granted unsolicited amnesty, given rehabilitation befitting of VIPs and re-integrated into the same society they sought to destroy, the victims are tortured further with ruthless blame and conspired abandonment with no sustainable life supports. Those who weigh sophisticated weapons do not easily get designated as terrorist groups but those who recourse to self-defence as a survival strategy including those armed with only placards and cameras, who take to the street to express their displeasure over what they consider as age-long systemic injustices and demand for a better deal for the next generation get summarily designated as terrorist groups and proscribed by the government.

It is in Nigeria that youths can be promised and failed with no consequences attached. Yet we have a sizable population of youths who can effect a revolutionary change in the way things are run here.

If countries exist where both the government and people are alive to their responsibilities; if countries exist where national interests take precedence over parochially minded ethno-religious interests of individuals; if countries exist where people value lives, where human lives are still precious and expensive, then we are their irony. Yes, we are a nation of many ironies!