Many of our compatriots will not query me if I say, without mincing words, and without water in my mouth, that Nigeria our country as it is currently is a country of pusillanimous people, whose pusillanimity is responsible for the afflictions they (or we) experience and suffer today. Indeed, ours is a country now (or the country now) of uncountable human aberrations inflicted on us by our so-called political leaders and masters since time immemorial. Things have only come to a head now in the regime, this regime, of those who deluded us (and are still deluding us) with promises of change and of the next level that would transform our country in such a manner that would make it a place, a haven, of honey that is sweeter than honey, a haven and a place where honey that is sweeter than the best honey in the world is found and located.
And when those who made their honey-promises made them, those who mocked them and scoffed at their great minds were alleged in some quarters especially of conservative fellows to be demonstrating their own moral and political shabbiness. Even up to the afore-mentioned next level stage of the great minds of our country’s honey-politics and well-being, all scoffers and mockers of the great political, economic and social thinkers were seen as fellows of incongruous thoughts whose incongruities would cause our country serious and tragic social disharmony. Up to the last elections – presidential and non-presidential – the plus and minus benefits and expected dividends of promises and positions did not really motivate the bulk of the electorate to cast ballots that constituted a big plus for the one of stout stature and unimpaired personality and his party – after the turbulent rapids of the elections. Yet our collective pusillanimity debarred us from exercising our benevolent urge to ask the right questions and from motivating us to engage in non-malign acts and activities to let almighty power know our sincere feelings questing for new conceptions.
The total, amusingly wrongly stubborn feelings and responses everywhere came to this: “Na dem dem. Head or tail, kobo na kobo.” Really and truthfully, this ironically tight-lipped utterance became a huge joke everywhere especially in my Edo-Delta axis and Lagos, Onitsha and Port Harcourt areas of our country. As Robert (Lee) Frost, American poet (1875-1963) of distinction, observed: “Any form of humour shows fear and inferiority…. Humour is the most engaging cowardice.” In this country now we seem always to be turning every activity to go for our rights into empty words and words, and empty words and words. How can our country be as sweet as honey or sweeter than honey when serious matters and things that should be treated seriously and positively are simply not treated seriously and positively?
So-called Fulani herdsmen (and presumably herdswomen as well) are roving and ravaging everywhere, sacking towns and villages everywhere from Yoruba-land to the Middle-Belt up to Adamawa-land and Taraba-land, for example. In truth, there is hardly anywhere the bandits have not been to in Nigeria our Nigeria creating havoc and thrashing everything and everybody on their way. They have even I hear, authoritatively, been invading Katsina with devilish zeal and grand gusto of forest urchins. And Katsina is the home-state of Mr. President, our one and only GMB! If the bandits are above the law, they are not above the Lord.
In any case, one thing the Fulani bandits and invaders of Katsina have demonstrated is that the president’s promise to combat insecurity in our country is one huge joke that cannot lead us to honey-time or honey-haven. And his solid faith in Islam to do the magic of caging the bandits needs to be re-focused, for it is, for want of a better way of putting it, becoming subversive. If the president cannot protect Katsina no place or state is safe or ever will be safe for us to lick honey throughout his presidency whenever it will cease to be – if ever it will cease to be. Am I kidding? Am I flying a kite of subversion? Am I kidding? Phew!
Reports reaching me (they are not hidden from public view really) are indicating that our country is among the five very turbulent, or, better, is among the five most commotional countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which means, according to 2019 Global Peace Index (GPI) of the global think tank, Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) headquartered in Sydney, Australia with branches in New York City, Mexico City and The Hague, and chaired by technology entrepreneur Steve Killelea, the founder of Integrated Research, our country is among “the five least peaceful countries” in the world. The GPI ranks Nigeria number 148 out of 163 countries. The other countries in sub-Saharan Africa listed in the least safe bracket include Democratic Republic of Congo (number 155), Central African Republic (number 157), Somalia (number 158), and South Sudan (number 161). All these countries, including GMB’s country, have serious “safety and security, on-going conflict and militarisation problems.” And we pride ourselves as Africa’s real brains and problem-solvers that could and can never be matched. Are we under GMB not building castles in Spain? Phew!
Now one ironically positive plus for GMB is that the Fulani invasion is no more strictly in the South and the Middle-Belt. The core North is now depressingly and malignantly having more than a fair bite, taste and share of it. Unless it is a strategic invasion of the core North to draw attention away from the core North’s imperialistic oligarchs’ attempt to “Fulanise” and “Islamise” the whole of Nigeria, one cannot say for certain any longer that GMB is supporting and abetting the sadistic and barbaric invaders, bandits and terrorists.
But GMB should, as the rugged military general that he is, combat the terrorists head-on and head-long; he should and must combat the Fulani menace with every military and psychoanalytical arsenal at his disposal. A Nigerian war general must remain at all times a Nigerian war general. He is never a retired animal of battles and of wars. And did GMB not distinguish himself in the great war to keep Nigeria one? It is incongruous to think that a military general of his calibre, who did not hold his military advancement to his post of a distinguished general of our army to any dirty and mediocre politics of military advancement, could not, cannot, tame the Fulani rag-tag invaders and stamp out perpetually from them their riotous high spirits of evil. What we ask him to do to the Fulani plunderers we similarly request him to do to the Boko Haram mad dogs of war. Time is running out.
Without maximum security and maximum economic prosperity other prosperities will be at odds with our honey-yearnings and honey-desires and wishes in this fatherland of patriots that is also our beautiful motherland of angelic angels when they mean to be angelic angels. I expected this to be the real focus of Mr. President on June 12, which he turned into something else to placate those he can never ever placate unless he makes Nigeria sweeter than honey. When will this be? We are not going to wait for ten years for him to do this.
No, no, no and no, no, no. We nor go agree and we nor agree. His promises are becoming the promises of the general of comedy, who I hear is an acknowledged master of jokes. His comedy cannot defuse the dissent in our country. It cannot make less dangerous the danger in the polity or that is lurking around like a noiseless poaching tiger. This is prophetic advice from divine masters of contemplation and of meditation. They are not prophets of doom. Time is running out. When will Nigeria be as sweet as honey or sweeter than honey? When? In ten years’ time? Na lie GMB. Na lie.
Afejuku may be reached via +2348055213059 (SMS only) or via tonyafejuku@yahoo.com
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