Fiddling While Rome Burns

We do really have a
serious problem in our hands. The current developments in the country are evidence that we are a people that learn something but forget everything soon after. Our leaders, both past and present, have disappointed us woefully and so we don’t expect them to do anything right anymore. Rather, they will disappoint us if they do things right.
For some time now, the stories that emanate from Nigeria indicate that we are not only descending into anarchy very swiftly, we are losing our humanity. Hardly a day elapses without reports of horrifying monstrosities claiming hundreds of lives in the country.
Though some sections of the nation experience superficial normalcy, other areas, especially the north, have since become a haven of violence as rampaging terrorists unleash mayhem against the government and security agents, maiming and killing law-abiding citizens at random.
In all, the picture that is fast emerging of Nigeria is that of a country that is dangerously and incurably adrift; a country that is fast approaching the precipice.
Those who doubt that our leaders have totally lost grip of their most basic responsibility to the people (the security and welfare of the people) may have to recall the series of bombings, particularly the recent brazen bombing at the Nyanya bus park in Abuja and the abduction of 234 secondary school girls in Borno State.
The dastardly bombing incident elicited the characteristic pathetic whimpers that had followed such incidents in the past, and which Nigerians have become all too familiar with.
Characteristic of him, President Goodluck Jonathan told a grieving nation that the Boko Haram menace was a temporary problem that “we will soon overcome”. Good talk. But how? What is on ground to make anyone believe this? It is this questionable optimism which is far flung from reality that escalates our nation’s problems, including the Boko Haram challenge.
We suffer lingering dire consequences as a people because of the apparent inability of our leaders to appreciate the enormity of the nation’s problems and develop the right attitude that is required of them.
How can we explain a situation where, while the nation was still mourning and trying to ascertain the casualty figure in the Nyanya incident, the president was found at a rally of his political party in Kano frolicking, smiling, waving and castigating the Kano State Governor, Rabiu Kwakwanso, for embezzling presidential campaign and local council funds? The truth is that Jonathan was politicking while Nigerians and indeed foreign diplomats were busy donating blood for the wounded.
It is hard to understand a situation where, in the midst of gross insecurity, poor power supply, scary unemployment problem, collapsing infrastructure and badly deformed education and health care systems, the president goes round on illegal campaign trips, canvassing support for his re-election in 2015.
The economy, which we are told is on a growth trajectory, does not reflect on the people. The growth and benefits of the so-called ‘growing economy’ have continued to circulate within the small group of the rich and our oppressors, who have access to the government.
Petroleum products, which uninterrupted supply the administration had boasted of, has remained scarce for a long time. This is a country where, because of corruption, kerosene is more expensive than petrol. While we are rebasing our economy and declaring ourselves the strongest economy in Africa, poverty and hunger are ravaging the land, with over 70 percent of us living below poverty line.
Clouds are gathering the country. The very reasons for which governments all over the world exist, no longer hold in Nigeria. We have become a country where a conglomeration of evil abounds. Here in the south, if the story is not about armed robbery, kidnapping or barefaced gunrunning, it is about oil theft.
In the north, when insurgents are tied of bombing mosques, churches, police stations, military barracks, markets, schools or motor parks, they resort to the sacking of entire communities and abduct school girls.
Though it is unfair to blame the present administration entirely for the country’s predicament, our current leaders appear clueless when it matters most. Like Emperor Nero, they fiddle while Rome burns.
That bombings take place in any part of the country is bad enough. But that it is happening in the seat of power is unacceptable. If that massive attack could take place in Abuja, where else is safe? Is it Port Harcourt where I am currently based or Lagos?
The time has come for us to change the narrative and take the battle against the insurgents more seriously. The time has come to put whatever we want to do in 2015 in the back burner and rescue our country. If the approach we are using to the Boko Haram problem is not working, can’t we try another method? Can’t we?
We have to change our approach because this might be our last chance to fix this problem. Let no one think that Somalia cannot happen here. It can. Already, massive corruption, unemployment and the socio/economic condition of the country are sufficient ingredients to trigger it off.

Arnold Alalibo