Nigeria: The Messiah (2)

[Richard Akindele]

Henry Ayanruoh


THE poor can stop being poor if this government through its policies, I am not talking of selective application of justice, forces our politicians, cooperate with Nigerians and all those in position of authority to become richer even at a slower rate. Nigerians are not well informed at all to give adequately to support anti-poverty programmes. This government must do more to get people to understand the size of the problem after all, this government did well to invite its friends to the launching of the presidential library.

During this dispensation, we have lost qualified and credible leaders. Leaders who were murdered by their friends and trusted allies. The swift and easy acquittals that followed for the accused had shocked much of the nation but the truth is that it is sending a wave of abashed triumph through the power circles. Many people wept at the funeral services for the dead and for our democracy. The personal torment of humiliation, discrimination, injustice, and oppression, Nigerians are going through in this dispensation cannot be compared to any other regime in the history of this country. This is a democratic dispensation and not a military dispensation where actions are taken in monologue rather than in dialogue.

Take a look at the different youth bodies in the Niger Delta, it is worse off today than fifteen years ago. Most of the youth leaders know this and it is the source of their despair. They are in despair because they have been forced to accept that employment, education and housing is a myth. Had they really fumbled the opportunity as the President and the power brokers are trying to describe? Are the various youth bodies in despair? Why is it that the restricted sympathy within the Niger Delta region is being abruptly submerged in indifference in some quarters or banished by outright hostility in others? Why the ideological disarray? I refuse to believe that the public and the President became infuriated and their sympathy evaporated as a result of the activities of the various militant bodies. Or that the change in mood had preceded the crisis or that the hatred had always existed underneath and sometimes on the surface of our national life. No, the answers are both more com plex and, for the long run, pessimistic.

The President is ready to demand that the area should be developed and be spared from brutality and coarse degradation, but he will never be truly committed to helping them out of poverty, exploitation and all forms of discrimination.

When the President was arrested by General Abacha, Nigerians went to the shrine of justice and progress to press their case, most of them were brutalised all over the country and those who were present in Lagos and Abuja ceremonies where leading marches took place amid a rain of bullets, tear gas and horse whip. Some of these men fought Abacha to a stand still but two years later after the 1999 elections, these men no longer held any position in the party they formed. They had been discarded to symbolise a radical change of tactics. Today, all over the country, men long regarded as thugs and political clowns have become governors, members of National and State assemblies, ministers and party leaders. Their magic is achieved with a witch brew of oppression, intimidation, half truths and whole lies. But I speak to those leaders who have been wronged genuinely not to worry, what they are going through today is a triumph for freedom over a dictator and is as huge as any victory t hat have ever been won on any battle field in this country.

Today there is disturbance within the psychological order. Everywhere there is paralysing fears harrowing people by day and haunting them by night. Deep clouds of anxiety and depression are suspended in our mental skies. More people are emotionally disturbed today than any other time of our history. Morals are no longer important. Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. Right and wrong is a matter of how the President sees it. It is relative to his likes and dislikes.

In 1998, at the beginning of this dispensation, Nigerians ran to the shrine of justice and inevitable progress to worship but they were so much in a hurry to leave that they failed to see the blue print that governs the dynamics in the line of development. They believed that every experience lifted man to higher level of perfection, so they brought him to power forgetting the words of Martin Luther King jr. "that a series of tragic developments reveals the selfishness and corruption of man", illustrated with a frightening clarity the truth of Lord Acton's dictum, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." For so many people, young and old, the light of hope went out, and they roamed wearily in the dark chambers of pessimism. Many concluded that life has no meaning. Some agreed with the philosopher Schopenhauer that life is an endless pain with a painful end, and that life is a tragicomedy played over and over again with only slight changes in costume and scenery. Others cried out with Shakespeare's Macbeth that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

But even in the inevitable moments when all seems hopeless, men know that without hope they cannot really live, and in agonising desperation they cry for the bread of hope" My hope for this country is that when we see the Messiah we should recognise him.
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