Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.
In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.
Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?
That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.
In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?
It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.
Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.
I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?
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