Progress froze in the womb of time. The sand in the hourglass
congealed to arrest development. It was February 13, 1976 when the watch
stopped ticking clockwise and began whining anti-clockwise. The
mounting grime and grease gathered in the past 43 years have formed a
cushiony bed of filth wherein maggots, bedbugs, worms, lice and
cockroaches multiplied. This bed is the imagery of a country long lost
to greed, clannishness, slothfulness and wickedness. On this bed,
Nigerians and their subsequent leaders frolicked and relished.
Sleeping on this type of bed comes with an unhealthy price tag
called insomnia, and schizophrenia is one of the costs of sleeplessness.
Medicine tells me schizophrenia is a long-term mental disorder in which
thoughts and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with
external reality. The intolerable poverty presently tearing the country
apart confirms the years of psychosis that have afflicted our leadership
and turned the nation into an adult baby. This is the plight of our
Nigeria, a country that never was; never might be.
Even the dead, on the way to their graves, lamented the pestilence
which leadership has turned Nigeria into. Everybody knows the problems
of Nigeria. Everybody knows that she’s accursed with the vilest of men
and women, gallivanting on the corridors of power. Men and women who
conform to the minutest of laws in the white man’s land, only to fly
back to their sophisticated automobiles at home and grind the masses on
the streets and highways, sinking their fangs and talons into the
citizenry.
A few weeks to the 2019 general election, the psychosis afflicting
our leadership appears worsening, and it’s gradually getting to the
masses. I’m not a Muhammadu Buhari fan. In a boxing contest, I won’t
root for the President. I rather would cheer the 10-year-old boxing kid
sensation from the Lagos slum of Mushin, Raheem Animashaun, who eyes the
future with hands raised in pugilist poise and an education that’s
unlikely to disentangle him from the cord of poverty. I was impressed by
the efforts of Raheem’s dad, Jamiu, who himself a boxer, has taken it
as a duty to train Raheem and his five-year-old daughter, Animat, who
stung like a bee and floated like a butterfly in a trending online
video. Sadly, Jamiu’s fatherhood and coaching of his children will never
be like that of Richard Williams, the man who nurtured his children,
Venus and Serena, into world tennis champions, utilizing the sports,
medical and financial facilities provided with taxpayers’ money by the
American government. Jamiu and his promising kids will conveniently be
overlooked by the Nigerian system and her nest of vampire leaders, who
would rather race to an auto accident spot with cameramen in tow,
exhibiting nonexistent kindness, instead of constructing motorable roads
to check carnage. Their wives will announce pretentious gifts to
newborns on New Year’s day, smiling at the camera, instead of equipping
antenatal units. This is our yoke, our woe.
The indicator on the CT scanner monitoring the nation’s health
shows that all is not well with the mental health of the political
class. Headache, depression, irritability, fatigue, forgetfulness and
high blood pressure are some of the disciples of sleeplessness. But a
proper diagnosis and management of psychosis could lead to quick
recovery. This was the case of the family of five in Bekwarra, Cross
River State, who were struck by a queer mental disorder that left the
father, mother and three children daily plodding the streets to the
horror of a benumbed society. It took the intervention of a National
Youth Service Corps member, Progress Oberiko, who uploaded the video of
the tattered family online, last October, to attract the attention of
the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, who directed the Federal
Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Calabar, to treat the Bernard Ogar family.
Sadly, the authorities of the Bekwarra Local Government Area and the
Cross River State Government failed to assist the family six years
before Oberiko shone her light of progress on the family. Bernard, a
graduate of Mathematics from the University of Calabar, had sired and
raised three healthy children on the streets with his wife. Actually,
Bernard was the one mentally challenged but his wife stayed on with her
fiftyish husband, sharing his delusion with him. If Nigeria had a
working health system, medical help would’ve come to the Ogar family
from the Bekwarra Local Government Council.
Recovery from psychosis could be quick or slow, depending on
diagnosis and treatment. Were it a party with an enviable past, the
Peoples Democratic Party would have successfully diagnosed and treated
the underachieving All Progressives Congress as a writhing bulldog,
whose obituary and internment in February would’ve been a foregone
conclusion. Ironically, however, it’s the PDP that’s rolling out the red
carpet upon which Buhari might stroll to a second term. Nigerians are
gradually waking up from the lethargy imposed by the years of leadership
psychosis. They can see the latest hiss-inducing idiocy displayed by
that Dinosaur who ought to be forever chained inside a zoo cage. The
latest sickly pretence after an eight-day dingdong in Abuja is the stuff
that defines full-blown madness. Going by the online criticism the
video of the sickening act attracted, many Nigerians seem to be prepared
to endure four more years of the APC’s arrogant lethargy rather than
suffer eight years of annoying clownishness.
In another bizarre call, the opposition party said Buhari should
apologise to the departed ex-President Shehu Shagari, whose tenure was a
flip side of the Goodluck Jonathan/Buhari years when corruption became a
state policy. Depending on its suitability, the Shagari narrative has
been used as a two-edged sword with the opposition, at a time, accusing
Buhari of putting Shagari under house arrest after the 1984 coup while
he (Buhari) clamped politicians from other ethnic groups into jail. If
Buhari had been so benevolent to Shagari in the past, doesn’t the demand
for an apology fly in the face of commonsense? Or should millions of
Nigerians who celebrated the ouster of the corrupt Shagari regime have
their heads examined?
Like the APC, the PDP has nothing refreshing to offer Nigeria.
Otherwise, methinks the PDP should by now be bombarding Nigerians with
creative solutions to issues like making the executive and legislative
arms of government part-time, resource control, security, job creation,
economic growth etc. Rather, the PDP and the APC are perpetually locked
in infantile tango, without discussing the issues that matter. It’s
unfortunate that none of the other presidential candidates can
individually muster the clout to upstage either of the two political
albatrosses.
The latest form of psychosis in town is the stealing of female
panties for money ritual purposes. This new form of madness is prevalent
among our youths, who are in contest with politicians over sinful
wealth acquisition. Believed to be the pastime of Yahoo boys, stealing
of panties isn’t the forte of the young anymore as the old have been
caught engaging in the ignoble act. Without defending the merciless act,
I submit that the ruthless trend wouldn’t have gained moment among the
youth if Nigeria wasn’t a failed state, where grinding beggary has
blighted the masses.
Nigerian youths, like Bernard’s wife, are sharing in the delusion
of the leadership class. They’ve for so long stayed by the riverside,
washing their hands with spittle. They’ve been bedecked with rust while a
few not better than them walk on gold. Nigerian youths walk naked in
cotton farms.
They go hungry while harvesting crops for a conscienceless
leadership but hunger has now opened their eyes to the evil routes to
prosperity.
Though my forebears were glorious hunters, who knew the esoteric
language of leaves, roots and the deep, I don’t believe ritualism can
make panties mint money. But I won’t keep my panties where anyone is
going to steal them. Would you?
****
Written by Tunde Odesola
Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com