The ides of 2015 are come

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Act 1, Scene 2

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, / Cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak; Caesar is turn’d to hear.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March

Act 3, Scene 1

Caesar (to the soothsayer): The ides of March are come.

Soothsayer: Ay, Caesar, but not gone

Need I repeat what has oft been feared for the country for this year? No need. Rather I have gone back to see how we, through this column, welcomed the New Year of 2011 ere the elections, and the back glance at the “welcome” of 2010. Both are important, for nothing seems to have changed; our fears have multiplied.

I wish my readers and all Nigerians a better year than foretold!

Happy, but anxious, New Year – 2011 (Sunday PUNCH, January 2, 2011)

Looking into the crystal ball there isn’t anything “happy” about this New Year. In truth, 2011 is a year we enter with the greatest foreboding. It is a doleful year.

We are going into national elections this year, ay, we should usher in a new government at the federal and most states levels in another five months, but there is no excitement in the air, nothing to cheer about. In a country with some of the world’s greatest minds, those in the forefront, and with a modicum of chance, seeking to lead us leave us with the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea — frying pan or fire.

None out there with a past to reassure, an intellect to persuade, a charisma to inspire, or a vision to drive us to greater heights.

We enter the New Year with anxiety: Jos is burning; Nigerians have turned unto themselves with savage, senseless and untameable rage. Boko Haram is unstilled. Bombs, hitherto alien, have become the language of violence in unfathomable protests. Abuja is clueless. Everyone (at Aso Rock or NASS) is for himself in the mad race to see who can out-steal the other from the nation’s coffers. Illegal bunkering goes on apace in the Niger Delta, reckless and unchecked. Our country is being drained of blood. The masses are buffeted without respite: no roads, no light, no water, no food and no hope.

The saddest part is that nothing has changed since this time last year when we ushered in 2010. Below is this column then. Everything in it, including the call, seems for today.

Welcome 2011.

The time for revolution is NOW! (SUNDAY PUNCH of January 3, 2010)

The title above is meant to alert, alarm, and provoke. And it is resorted to in desperation but with all sense of responsibility.

But, in truth, the call is not a new one, and without bringing names of some eminent personalities into the fray lest one looks like what the Yoruba would call ajegbodo to nwa eni kun’ra (company seeking!), there have been quite a few lately who have openly subscribed to the need for a revolution by whatever name or type. I take full responsibility for my call.

Nigeria has never had it so bad going into a New Year.

Our catalogue of woes keeps multiplying by the day. The country is enveloped in total darkness (and no pun intended on the failed clowning promises of 6000 MW electricity); there is evident leadership vacuum even of the otherwise weak and inept albatross the country has been saddled with upwards of two years; our rudderless state has remained for over a month in the hands of vagabonds who are having a field day in the spoils of office; murder and pseudo-religious mayhem have become staple, to be expected even without provocation, in a land of marked socio-cultural and socio-economic disparity amplified by general chasmal ineptitude.

As if all that is not enough, a Nigerian has now put us on the map of countries with nationals with international terrorism inclination — to usher us into the New Year!

A revolution is needed and NOW, lest our country becomes a land of anarchy with consequent probability of disintegration. So far only those who are benefiting from the existing malady and chaos would read it differently, buoyed by the deceptive premise that we have gone through “more trying” times and survived.

But have we? Have we had a time when the country was a free-for-all on account of an inept, largely ailing and now extensively absent president?

It can be read on peoples’ faces — faces without a voice — the questioning gaze of wonder and despair – when and where will all these end? Where are we going?

Having gone this far let me be quick to state categorically that the military option is out of the question in my call for a revolution. It’s a road we have gone through before, several times indeed. And at each point we have only succeeded in jumping from frying pan to fire. Even the best of them —challenged by inadequate preparation, lack of critical mass of equally committed lieutenants, and a debilitating and lingering ethnicity problem — soon infiltrated by agents of the displaced power bloc, lose focus and collapse.

Many Nigerians, in frustration, are now calling for the Rawlings Option. Rawlings’ is a cleaner and more successful variant of the Kaduna Nzeogwu’s military putsch against the First Republic. It failed woefully in the Nigeria of that time for reasons too many and too divergent to go into. Since then, however, Nigeria’s army has metamorphosed into a politicised behemoth, containing and exhibiting all the ills and mores of the larger society.

Our soldiers have proved themselves no better than the rest of us, indeed that they are lacking in ideas, lacking in intellectual sophistication, lacking in genuine love for the country above personal or parochial interests, lacking in ennobling character that is clear and transparent enough to infect and command followership of the citizenry.

No, we don’t want soldiers. The revolution we need is of the people.

Already people are at a point where they are taking their own lives in their own hands, without a government to look up to for any need, people are providing their own security and providing their own infrastructure. This set of Nigerians are content to croon and groan. They don’t want the boat rocked; they don’t want to die. They want to wait their own turn to have their hands on the national till. They “shuffer and shmile,” as Fela would say.

Then there are those who can’t afford the above luxuries, they have no roofs over their heads and no food in their stomachs. Their situation is dire. But rather than lend themselves to any revolutionary ideals against the powers and the system that have so abused and impoverished them, they become easy agents for political thuggery and ethno-religious fanaticism —both considered as avenue to make some money so as not to die of hunger, even if paradoxically dying in the process! For some too, it is a chance to let out pent-up frustration and get back at the society in a misdirected and hopeless way.

Nigerians don’t want to die, and that is the more reason why the young Umar Farouk Muhtallab’s suicide-terrorism instance is a surprising aberration! He is not an illiterate, he is not an almajiri, he is not hungry. Educated and easily a billionaire-to-be by inheritance-rights, neither the promise of money to the exceedingly wealthy family he would leave behind nor of “seven virgins” that would “await him in aljana” would cut ice with him. What could be his source of “frustration” then? Suicide for a political reason is an aberration of the “Nigerian character”.

And so is Muhtallab’s the “aberration” from a lunatic mind or one from a growing number of his kind for which the lack of a meaningful “nation” to call their own presents sufficient incentive if not raison detre to seek a “global” engagement?

Nigeria has an army on its hands, an army of well educated, unemployed and angry youths. There must be a time in their frustrating life when the mess their country is being made of will reach such a boiling point for them to say so far and no more. Then they’ll form themselves into an “army” and campaign for change, campaign for the leaders they want, defend their votes with even their lives, go on the streets, even march on Aso Rock, to put a stop to the mess going on; they will reclaim their country and proclaim: “Nigeria, this is our country, damn it!”

Until then, welcome a 2010 pregnant with uncertainty, and not a happy New Year – yet.

(PS: “Everything in it, including the call, seems for today. Welcome” 2015)

source: punchng.com