By Hope O’Rukevbe EGHAGHA
We live in an age of uncertainties. Global uncertainties. National uncertainties. Local uncertainties. Clan uncertainties, and family uncertainties. What about individual uncertainties? What constitutes bad and what constitutes that which is good? When we thought all of these were settled, new thinking has upturned the old tables.
To be sure, uncertainty governs our thoughts, plans, and actions. No one, not even the highest policy makers are sure of how and where we stand. Our identities too are in a flux too. Marriage is boldly redefined by the powerful western world through the agency of the ubiquitous social media.
We are somewhat in an era of neither/nor. Either and or. Not even pastors or imams can tell with any certainty what will become of faith before the century ends. Are there going to be events that will upturn faith? Already some are contending that the end of times as predicted in Christian eschatology is mythical. That our stay on this planet is cyclical. A forever cyclical journey.
In Nigeria, there is political uncertainty. When we thought we were done with military coups, some upstarts had planned to seize power last year. And if we are to believe media reports, they were ready to shed blood. There is economic uncertainty. Social uncertainty.
All of these uncertainties coalesce into psychological uncertainty. The level of anxiety in the country has quadrupled in the last one year. Too many people need the services of psychologists and psychiatrists. Narratives of the country being surrounded by jihadists and the ineptitude of the state in combating them is a big issue.
Insecurity like we never knew before has seized the land. A travelling general of the Nigeria Army is killed on the highway. Sends a bad message. We are highly vulnerable. Groups of people are routinely kidnapped. Schools are not spared. Churches are not spared either. Insecurity now has a religious coloration. It carries the face of a jihad. Extreme Muslims want to cause mayhem, breakdown of law and order. They want to set one religion against another. Which is highly dangerous. Videos of hoodlums broadcasting scary messages dominate social media. Our security men and women are overwhelmed. How many security men do we have to police two hundred million Nigerians? What is the state of our security gadgets?
Different persons have developed coping strategies. Escape into the comfort of religion. The japa syndrome. Drugs, hard drugs that muffle the pain of bleeding anxieties. There are more persons living with social anxieties these days. High blood pressure. Cardiac arrests. Sudden deaths. All these are indicators of a high degree of anxieties.
At the global level, no one really predicted the upturning of the world order which seems to have been settled in the last seventy odd years. No one could have predicted that the bulwark of the Western alliance would threaten to seize the land of a NATO country. The green in Greenland caught the fancy of an American president and he wanted to take it by force. Winston Churchill and Frankin Roosevelt would turn in their graves if they could see what modern America has made of the ‘special relationship’ between America and Europe!
In Nigeria, we have always been on the brink. IBB testified to this in his days as military president. Before then, the western crisis of the early 1960s and the gradual descent into national anarchy put us on the brink. The civil war fought from 1967 to 1970 once again put the nation on the brink of a breakup. Somehow, we survived the war. Surviving the peace was a different matter. Perhaps surviving the peace has become more challenging.
There are economic indicators which show uncertainty. The volatility of our local currency is one. The naira bounces like a rubber ball. There is capital flight. Inflation spikes and unpredictability have become a steady companion. This is especially debilitating. It touches on the very basis of survival of the common man. But as they say, the rich also cry.
But the tears of the poor fill the ocean of time! Foreign Direct Investment decline is also in the picture, though the government assures us that investors are flocking into the country. Remittances from the diaspora to families at home help to salvage the situation. But the average Nigerian is living with/in fear.
Political and governance indicators of uncertainties include policy flip-flops, leadership ambiguity, election tension, security deterioration, and constitutional crises. The struggle to secure party nominations is so fierce that we wonder what the election itself would be like.
The gladiators are not concerned with issues or ideas. The parties are SPVs for the purpose of capturing power.
Social indicators such as increase in protests, brain drain, ethnic rhetoric and misinformation spikes have become common. As I write this essay, some pupils and teachers are in captivity in the hands of some vagabonds of the lowest order. Schools in Oyo State are closed down by a strike action called by the teachers’ union. Children are in the forest at the mercy of the abductors.
Sadly, the whole issue is being politicized by the men in Abuja and their opponents at the state level. A former minister’s sister is abducted with her two kids. Something sinister is afoot. We need a new class of leaders that will swear to a patriotic return to certainty.
These leaders should set aside their personal desires and think about the common good. This is the time to create a new Nigeria. Revolutionary thinking is mandatory to achieve this. If Nigeria collapses there will be no place for anybody. Libya and the Sudan are good examples of a bad disintegration with ripple effects in the Sahel region. Any talk about the Jihad started by Uthman Dan Fodio which must continue into the deep sea is old hat. Anybody who still nurses that thought should forget same.
The world has changed. The notion of religious conquest is anachronistic.
Finally, the citizens have a role to play in recreating Nigeria. The current placeholders in Nigeria will not give up power so willingly. There must be a fight. Who will bell the cat? Time will tell. Nothing goes down and down indefinitely!
No one should be dragged into unnecessary arguments and contentions over land ownership where such issues had been settled. The dead should remain dead. If we return to the valley of dry bones to resurrect the dead, there will be no space for a second burial.
Those who have ears should hear!
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