Nigeria has gone into slow motion inaction since last Friday’s attack on the UN building in Abuja. The airwaves are abuzz. Aso Rock is heaving with confusion. Newspapers splash frightening headlines on their front pages. Nigerians in cyberspace are locked in intense debates on twitter, facebook and online newspaper forums.
Nigeria has gone into slow motion inaction since last Friday’s attack on the UN building in Abuja. The airwaves are abuzz. Aso Rock is heaving with confusion. Newspapers splash frightening headlines on their front pages. Nigerians in cyberspace are locked in intense debates on twitter, facebook and online newspaper forums.
These robust at times insane debates are the sort expected from Nigeria’s over paid and spoilt officials. Slowly the world reacts. A trail of condemnations perched on disgust. President Jonathan releases a statement. It is the usual official stuff. A terse, bland tepid sermon that verges on a retching masterpiece of Schwäche.
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As if on a theatrical cue, top dogs on the Nigerian political cavement race to make follow-follow statements to the press. It is a comical dance of relevante. The politicians whose voice in our memory has since been deleted heard only in the sinkhole of the anus must renew their relevance with this tragedy. It is like the relevance enjoyed by a coffin maker in a period of sudden epidemic of deaths. As expected they had nothing useful to say. They bicker about the attack in Abuja choosing to blame some unintelligible reasons rather than themselves. There was no remark of their monumental gang rape of the nation’s resources being solely responsible for running the country into the valley of death. The senate president moaned about suicide bombing being alien to our culture. No one bothered to remind him earning ridiculous amounts for work not done is equally alien to our culture. This is a ravaging example of the terrifying obsoleteness that permeates Nigeria’s political class. They thrive on ignorance and poor reasoning.
The national security adviser (all hail NSA!) the giant iroko in the deadwood Machiavellian jungle of Nigerian security forces is all over the place labouring to be on top of the security situation in Abuja. Someone inquires excitedly whether ‘Cnn and Al Jazeera are in town? Owoye Azazi stands with the president. But like an old woman who has slipped several times on the same crag, he must pick himself up and pretend it never happened. Nigeria always pretends it never happened. The next page in the NSA and Jonathan’s predictable script: play tough and invite all the service chiefs and police IG to Abuja. Dr Abati will issue the letters: The president requests that you report to Council chambers Abuja (not facebook) for an urgent meeting. Sitting allowance provided in advance. Free accommodation at Hilton Hotels. Maximum of 3 concubines allowed per lodging. No Mobile phones. Thank You.
As part of the fallout of the NSA’s meetings, Nigeria’s rag tag bribe addicted, 20 naira police force run by Hafiz Ringim will be blamed for everything that went wrong in Abuja last Friday. After all last June Boko Haram demolished police head office in Abuja, the command and control centre of police operations without any resistance. The SSS in its little corner of oblivion suddenly regales us with its gallantry against Boko Haram. Out of the blue we learn of hundreds if not thousands of the sect’s members it has arrested but never prosecuted. We also learn of the tomes of intelligence in the possession of the SSS of faceless individuals financing the activities of the terror group. Finally Marilyn Ogar wearing a wry smile like a stop-motion animation prop promises an explosive exposé of names of eminent politicians tunnelling funds to Boko Haram. Farida Waziri somewhere in the void eats her nails lusting for such 15 minutes in the spot light!
The citizens wait for news of breakthrough as days turn to months. The airwaves simmer with fresh misfortune propelled by a gouging spell of emotion. New hardships force open new chapters. Old pains fade into the labyrinthine cesspit of oblivion.
The sympathy of spectators turns to disenchantment. The dead have long been buried. Their grave stones of our government’s giant failures sit by the grief of our shredded prosperity. Anger melts and breeds disinterest. Bloody Friday is only a chapter in Nigeria’s diary of preventable tragedies. It is a boubous gown of a blood stained fabric. This government like the ones before it is a depressing tragedy of phenomenal failures and shocking ineptitude. Jonathan’s government is a glaring burden on the citizens. The idiots in government gasp in ponderous inaction as these Boko Haram swine that value neither god nor man celebrate an immoral victory of murder of innocent people aware Nigeria lacks the government to go after them.
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