So much is happening in Nigeria today, to the point that makes one wonder aloud. In saner moments, there’s hardly any reasonable Nigerian who would need any telling to know that something is really wrong with the manner in which anomalies become the order of the day.
Years ago, writer after writer seized the slightest opportunity to refer to Nigeria as “a country of anything goes”, and one cannot think otherwise any more, no matter how patriotic one would want to be.
The senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, may have captured this aspect of the Nigerian state in his recent bid to debunk claims in the current rave of abnormalities that have become distinctly fashionable in the country’s polity: that the real President Mohammadu Buhari is dead, and what we currently have as Mr. President is actually Jubril Aminu, a Sudanese.
The story, credited to the acclaimed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, alleged that the real Buhari died in London during one of his visits to get treatment and a cabal in the Presidency decided to replace him with what, at best, can be described as a clone to enable them carry out their nefarious plan of running the country their way in the rest of the four years, and possibly up to 2023, if he wins the 2019 election.
In countering the “dead Buhari” claim, Senator Sani described the tale as a Shakespearean drama in which anything can be said. He went further to christen it one of the absurdities of our times.
Indeed, this is the season of absurdities! It is no doubt, a period of no-holds-barred, a period when anything actually goes, particularly as long as one shares the same sentiment with the powers that be, at whatever level.
As incredible as Kanu’s claim may sound, nobody seems to be bothered about its gravity considering the personality involved and implication if it were true. There seems to be a benign acceptance of the story being unfounded, as is characteristic of all other absurdities, most of which clearly question our responsibilities as Nigerians, leaders, parents, and humans alike.
It was the same way the death of late President Umaru Yar’Adua was dismissed until the spirit of true patriotism touched the hearts of some insiders in the absurdity who rightly reasoned that such absurdity can only set a bad precedence for the country with the likelihood of causing more trouble in the very near future. The country was thus able to avoid a possible calamitous situation.
Only recently, another absurdity occurred. This time the protagonist in the heat of it was the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha. He alleged that he bribed the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, with the sum of four hundred million Naira to pick his son-in-law as the party’s governorship flagbearer in Imo State for the 2019 election. Rochas’ grouse is that the APC Chairman refused to carry out his own part of the bargain after taking the money.
Again, this absurdity seems to have been dismissed with the wave of the hand, in the same way good sums of money running into billions of naira allegedly swallowed by snakes, monkeys and elephants were dismissed. Until now, the snakes, monkeys and elephants have not been found, and, it’s all well and good.
Almost by the day, politicians make quite incriminating utterances against each other in what could be termed a battle of mudslinging, and nothing is done about it, even when some of the accusations are clearly criminal.
The result is that absurdities have become the order of the day, to the point that anybody can allege anything in the name of politics, including murder.
Talking about murder, the act itself has become as common as eating when one is hungry. People are killed daily for different absurd reason, sometimes in their hundreds, as when herdsmen or Boko Haram comes calling. And life just goes on. The best that comes out of most of it is a hackneyed promise by the Police to “fish out all the culprits” involved.
The scenario reminds one of an incident in the 90s in which a top Lebanese business tycoon allegedly threatened to kill his Nigerian staff “and bury him with money”. There’s very little to say to convince one that such killing and burying is not done at will now.
Worse still, security agents, whose primary responsibility is to protect human lives and properties, are deep in it. They snuff life out of human beings and call it any suitable name, and sometimes they do it brazenly.
Those in power today, at all levels, do not seem to think about what their actions, or in actions, in the quest to create absurdities might portend for the country at large. The only time they cry foul is when they are at the receiving end.
Meanwhile, while they are in the position of dishing out absurdities, they seem not to remember that historically, since the gradual legalisation of absurdities in the Nigerian lexicon of governance, even in their minutest forms, by governments since Nigeria’s Independence, the intelligence of each subsequent government at modernising the absurdities on the ground had always improved.
Yet the same people, when they now see themselves as statesmen, will not only claim to be saints, but also venture to seek to advise other enterprising governments in their own version of absurdities.
The key questions genuine Nigerians, those who truly believe in the country, would seek answers to, as the countdown to the 2019 general elections reduces are: who will bring these absurdities to an end? When will it happen? How will it happen?