Living In Nigeria These Days By Mike Onwukwe

Have you been to Nigeria lately?? The beards are staring at the face. Leadership is top heavy, adrift, completely clueless and bereft of the yearnings of the common man. All our leaders do in Nigeria is to gyrate their waist, fart openly and organize all night birthday parties on state funds. When they are not doing that, they are attending funerals and when any of the two or both happens, the whole machinery is in complete lockdown. Adverts are placed in major newspapers and electronic media either extolling the dead or the living.   Reading culture is gone and every state function is graced by one Nollywood star or the other. This is because apart from having parties, all the elite do is to glue their eyes on the tube watching home movies. The President down to the Ministers, leadership of national assembly and state governors know all these film actors by their names and for any government function to draw crowd, they latch on the popularity of these actors by making them part of the ceremony. No one talks about reading novels or other academic and scientific journals or other important books – the national pastime today is home movie watching. And they watch these actors till late in the morning, miss their sleep and stagger to the office next day like victims of dementia hardly prepared for work. In the morning, the majority of the staff start dozing and after lunch, half of the work force disappears in order to catch some sleep. Major important office decisions are left unattended for, because the entire business of governance has been abdicated to dog catchers and hangmen.   Bakassi people for no fault of theirs are between the rock and the hard place, between being boiled alive in hot oil or be shot to death. As we speak, a part of Cross River State has been ceded to Cameroon. This people are full blooded Nigerians speaking ethnic Nigerian languages and dialects. Some blood suckers are feeding fat on their plight cornering the money meant for these innocent folks. Children and the aged are falling sick and the youth amongst them deprived basic education. They are all dumped in an open school with no convenience or ablution facility. They defecate and bath in the open. Yet it will not take more than one fishing boat and one outboard engine to empower them since they are riverine people.   A child who is not educated is an anarchist or narcissist in the making. The only option left for him when he grows up is either to do Okada business or go about the village grumbling with juju in his pocket. Yet this is a nation where a senator earns more than the US President even as some of them have not even tabled one bill since 3 years, let alone debated it.   Folks are being asked to pay more electricity tariff for little or no power at all. Power supply hasn’t improved and consumers are being arm twisted and harangued to pay more – what type of economic sense is that? All these figures being reeled out by State Officials like Okonjo Iweala that our GDP and economy is consistently growing in the last 7 years is farce. The rest are hate mongers who are either heating up the polity or beating war drums.   The anomie back home now and the attendant oblivion is what you get when the rule of law squares up with rule of money and corruption! Dear People – We either get it up or we go hang! Our mumu don do!   Mikeonwukwe@gmail can be reached on skype - mikeonwukwe and submitted this article from the Great Lakes region     The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters

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