How many ways can you die in Nigeria? Let me count a few:
The badly-constructed structure in which you are can collapse and kill you in your sleep, or as you sweat it out in the dark, or in your classroom.
How many ways can you die in Nigeria? Let me count a few:
The badly-constructed structure in which you are can collapse and kill you in your sleep, or as you sweat it out in the dark, or in your classroom.
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You can step out into the street and be crushed by a motor vehicle driven by a man who has no driver’s licence, or which has never been inspected for quality, driven by a man who bought his driver’s licence from a street operative illegally empowered by a licensing official.
You can be shot in front of your home or your business by armed robbers operating with guns obtained from socially well-regarded small arms operators. You can be killed by armed robbers who are angry they have worked the entire street for three or four hours for very small returns.
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You can be forced to lie on a highway by armed robbers because you do not have money for the, until a speeding trailer runs over you.
You can be killed because you did not know the highway you have been driving on ended abruptly.
You can be killed because your doctor left halfway through your hospital surgery to go and participate in a strike.
You can be killed by a stray bullet from a policeman’s gun. You can be killed by a stray bullet from an armed robber’s gun.
You can be killed by a policeman who is angry that you failed to produce a N20 road “pass.”
You can be killed in your home by kidnappers angry you are resisting a kidnap. You can be killed in front of your children by kidnappers who returned you to your home because your family could not afford the N10 million ransom they demanded.
You can be killed because you needed to travel at night in order to attend the single job interview to which you have been invited in five years. You can be killed because you did not believe it was dangerous to travel by day.
You can be killed because your electricity generator exploded as you tried to start it halfway through the night.
You can be killed because you believed a politician’s promises of change and improvement which turned out to have been a joke written for him. You can be killed because you did not believe a politician’s promises of change and improvement which turned out to have been a joke written for him.
You can be killed because you drank bottled water. You can be killed because you drank tap water.
You can be killed because you mistook Gombe for Gombi. You can be killed because you mistook Gombi for Gombe.
You can be killed because you believed the security agencies know how to spell security. You can be killed because you did not believe
You can be killed because you took Boko Haram seriously and decided to get out of town. You can be killed because you did not take Boko Haram seriously, and stayed in town.
You can be killed because Jomo Gbomo issued its “first and final” warning to the federal government and you did not think it applied to you. You can be killed because the federal government said the water was safe to drink and you drank it.
You can be killed because you are in a uniform of the armed forces. You can be killed because you look like someone who wears a uniform of the armed forces.
Still, there are ways in which you are almost guaranteed never to be killed. The first is to be the president. If you are the president, you cannot be killed because wherever you go, you simply make certain that the heads of the security agencies are no further than a few feet away from you. Their bodies provide immediate buffer against incoming hostilities, while their cowardice and selfishness throw an impregnable security cauldron one mile in every direction.
Another way is to build a mountain of money around you. Nobody can shoot through a mountain of money. With it, you can buy peace and happiness. The tallest fences go up around your family, homes and offices. You have your own small army. You travel in convoy. You can buy National Honours, journalists who are superior to journalism, and an army of lawyers with the letters S-A-N engraved on their names.
Or you can establish yourself as Oga. An Oga is that stratosphere where you are you own justification. You are superior to facts and logic, and you exist not to serve, but to be served. The bigger an Oga, the more self-importance and infallibility he is allowed.
The prevalence and multiplication of Ogas in Nigeria is one of the reasons that we are in chaos, forever trying to combat ghosts we cannot see, when the real menace are the Ogas with fat stomachs and fat egos.
Why is Boko Haram running rings around Nigeria security? That is because a cursory evaluation must have shown them that Nigeria security, anchored on Oga’s ego and incompetence, is a contradiction in terms. For decades, funds voted for institutional development and training were never used for them. Oga after Oga manipulated budget appropriations, stole them, or sent them to private bank accounts to earn interest.
We were then left with husks masquerading as buildings and institutions; inferior equipment, non-functional organizations. People were promoted to positions they were not trained for, or transferred to operate equipment they had never seen before, and armed with outmoded or irrelevant skills.
When you are Oga, you resent younger people, especially if they are better trained or appear to be brighter than you are. You respond by marginalizing and trivializing them; you curtail professionalism and bend the rules to support your designs. You promote the weaker over the stronger. You brutalize the decent and justify the twisted.
That is how pedophiles, certificate forgers, looters and failures have become key figures in our country. That is how preachers of political heresy dine lavishly with preachers at the Lord’s pulpit.
That is why Boko Haram is running rings around Nigeria’s so-called security. That is why Abujas top hotels turned into ghost towns after a foreign government warned that Boko Haram has set its bombing attention on them. Remember, Nigeria’s rulers fled into hiding and Eagle Square was abandoned for National Day when another militant group announced it would detonate explosives there because there was nothing to celebrate.
How did we get here? Well, when there is a pregnancy, there is usually a delivery. Where there is a planting season, there is usually a harvest. The harvest that is on our plates today is the product of the deceptive and self-serving administrations Nigeria has suffered in recent times.
Regrettably, there seems no end to it. Tomorrow, for instance, a battery of Ogas will be decorated with National Honours not for the content of their contribution, but for the depth of their hands in the trousers of the government; not for the quality of their patriotic hearts, but for the reach of their sycophancy. Our bastardized National Honours now measure not the loftiness of our dreams, but the certainty of our fall.
There are some wonderful Nigerians who will be “honoured” tomorrow who do not want to offend the powers that be by saying the most powerful word in civilization, “No.”
But it is one thing to be honoured by Nigerians, and another to be honoured by Nigeria. If you do not know the difference, you do not deserve true honour.
It is by making this distinction that we enhance the hopes of our people that they do not have to die while trying to live.
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