Nigeria And A Week Of Mixed Feelings

The Insight

By Lateef Adewole

This week has been eventful in Nigeria. There was hardly a “boring” moment. Fortunately or unfortunately, what was responsible was either positive or negative or both. Series of incidents and events happened.

One thing that usually pain me is how my good mood, spurred by exciting events in or about the country, are almost always ruined by dastardly counterparts that have become perennial. Many times, I wondered how people who defend this administration manage to do so. They must possess hearts of stone or must have “killed” their feelings and emotions. It will take someone’s blanking out all the bad news that happen daily in Nigeria, for one to be able to sing the praise of this government, unashamedly, as they do many times.

I was so excited and proud with my government, headed by President Buhari and my country, Nigeria, with the stand they took against those countries which tend to ridicule us by banning our citizens from coming into their countries or denying a Nigeria-based airline from coming to their airports, selective about where they can land and limiting their frequency, despite being generous to their own airlines. I have never been more proud about the government in recent time.
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With such hardline stand, some of these countries have been compelled to reverse their earlier stands. Imagine United Arab Emirates (UAE) refusing to grant a request of 3 frequencies per week for Air Peace, a Nigerian indegineous airline, to land at the Sharjah International Airport, Dubai. They said they could only approve 1 frequency, except Air Peace will use other airports outside Dubai. This is the same country whose Emirates Airline was granted 21 frequencies per week in Nigeria and allowed to land in major airports in Nigeria; Lagos, Abuja, and Kano. What rubbish?

“T’iya nla ba gbeni sanle, kekeke a si ma gun ori eni”. This was the same country that came cap-in-hand to beg for loans in Nigeria in the 70’s. Nigeria did not lend the money to them but gifted them. Can anyone blame them? “Onigba lo pe igba e ni ekufo, t’omo araye n ba fi ko idoti”. If we have not degraded our country and sank it to rock bottom or should say “shithole”, thanks to our leaders after leaders, would we be disrespected by countries like that? They have not just reversed it from 1 to 3 requested but to 7 frequencies. And that the planes can land in Dubai.

Without any scientific proof, that was how UK added Nigeria to their Red list of countries not allowed into UK and where visitor visa processing was suspended, following the new Omicron virus found in their country. This was despite that the virus did not start from Nigeria or Africa but there in European countries. That was discriminatory. It’s unacceptable. This was widely criticised by not only Nigerians and Africans but also the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who referred to it as “travel apartheid”.

Nigeria had decided to reciprocrate in the same manner by this week before we found out that UK has changed their mind and cancelled the Red list but replaced with rapid covid testing and quarantine in government-approved hotel, on arrival, to be paid for by the travellers, to the tune of over 2,200 pounds. That’s going to two million naira. “Na wah o”. The suspension of visitor visa processing in Nigeria has also been lifted. That’s good news. The only pain I have is that this will now allow our leaders to run away on vacation abroad for Christmas. I had thought we will all be forced to stay in Nigeria by the ban. Canada has also reversed their earlier ban on Nigeria.

There are other countries that have treated Nigeria like that too. Saudi Arabia and Argentina. Nigeria decided to do the same to them, in the spirit of diplomatic reciprocity. Yes, some people think those countries are at more economic advantages over Nigeria and that whatever Nigeria does to them means nothing. That’s partly correct but I don’t think there is any country all over the world that can take Nigeria for granted, even in its comatose state that it is right now.

The world knows that Nigeria is a sleeping giant, with enormous untapped, abandoned, misused and abused potentials. Nigeria is one country with everything, I mean everything, except good leadership. I say this with all sense of responsibility and modesty. Talk of human and natural resources. We have them in excess. But what have we done with them? Wasted! Most of our gifted and talented human resources only blossom when they leave the shore of this country.

All our natural resources that were explored for so many decades were mismanaged and misused. We cannot boast of landmark revolutionary achievements we attained deploying their proceeds. Many more are still abandoned, untapped and unutilised because of dysfunctional constitution that constricts the space rather than allow for expansion for growth at all levels, with the exclusive list jargons. Why won’t the world kick us around?

There was this wonderful statistics released recently. It was conducted by the reknowned international audit firm, Ernst and Young. It reported that Nigeria remains the number one destination for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa. This is in line with what President Buhari said recently in Dubai that Nigeria remiains the most attractive investment destination, in spite of the challenges facing it.

As sweet to ear as that information is, the reality on ground is not supporting it. How can FDI to the country be increasing and highest in Nigeria but unemployment is also increasing, with attendant increase in poverty too? That’s paradoxical. Where are the FDIs going into? Real productive sector or just rent-seeking ventures, the “igi da, eye fo” kind that invest in semi-liquid assets like stocks, shares, bonds, etc, when the prices are right and sell off at slightest sensing of trouble? These hardly contribute to real growth, employment, production, GDP of any country. They are more for the benefit of the investors, not the country.

Baba Bisi Akande launched his autobiography last week in Lagos: “My Participation”. This is the kind of book that younger generations are expected to grab, read and learn from. Sadly, the book has generated more controversies than lessons, given the many scoops bothering on allegations against many citizens, some of whom are his generation and immediate after. Many of them have been replying him. This has been unearthing many ugly pasts. I am sad at such turn of event, given the divisiveness the book is now causing, especially among many highly respected Yoruba leaders with all kinds of name calling. It is still ongoing.

Who would have thought that very soon, a time will come when hashtags like #Thenorthisbleeding, #Savethenorth, etc, will trend on social media? Not so soon after the same north was very antagonistic to the south because of #EndSars movement that swept southern Nigeria and Abuja last year, whose spirit is still looming over the country. The north then bought the narative of government and concluded it was about “overthrowing” President Buhari, who they considered “their own”.

Whereas, apart from the protest against the police brutality, whose face then was Special Anti-Robbery Squard (SARS), the state of the nation, topped by the insecurity that is ravaging the country, which the north suffers the larger chunk, was a critical demand of that protest. Sadly, elements from the north were made to fight their southern counterparts during that protest. But now, the chicken has finally come home to roost.

In the last six years of this administration, as the security situation continued to degenerate, and the north and northerners remained the major victims, the region and people who have continued to raise issues about that are the south and southerners. I have written many times about this as it affected the country and the northern Nigeria in particular. Rather than the north to join hands with the south, they were complacent or even antagonised them. They criticised southerners who demand that the president lives up to his responsibility of protecting the life and property of Nigerians.

It was Daily Trust Newspapers that blazed the trail with their scathing editorial of Sunday, with title: “Live has lost its value under Buhari’s Nigeria”. This might also have shaken the north to wake up from its slumber. In the past one week, we have witnessed unprecedented protest against Buhari administration because of the insecurities in the north. Prominent northerners are beginning to speak up. Few even join the protest.

My heart broke watching two videos. One was a woman who probably now stays out of Nigeria. She recalled her bitter experiences in the hands of terrorists. How she was raped numerous times while in their captivity and lot more. She broke down in tears in the process. The other is one by Mrs Zainab Kadaria Ahmed. While crying, she stated that she just lost someone very close to her. She narrated how that person was raped by 8 bandits who abducted her, filmed it and released it online. They still killed her. I was moved to tears. How did we get here?

Another of her video showed her “firing” the government and frontally calling out President Buhari, “this time around”, that he has failed them. She also stated that they are not scared of him releasing his security agents against them to harrass, attack, arrest and detain them, as they usually do and have done to many of them involves in this protest. What an interesting time.

I put “this time around” in quote for emphasis. This is because, Kadaria Ahmed is a person who tried as much as possible to avoid confronting President Buhari for any wrongdoing or problems bedeveiling the country since he took over the administration of country, contrary to the Kadaria Ahmed, the “fearless” person who drills whoever she had interviewed on her show. The one who spoke truth to power in the past, regardless of whose ox is gored. She was admired all those years. But all that changed in the last six years.

May be, it’s because she was part of the people who championed the cause that brought President Buhari to power. She was a prominent member of Bring Back Our Girls (#BBOG) Movement. Ever since, she never confronted the president frontally about the worsened insecurities, even when hundreds of school children were kidnapped, in similar or worse ways than the Chibok girls, whom she championed their cause. She usually use tangential approach, by blaming others from what is clearly the president’s responsibility.

In April 2019, she and some others, protested in Abuja. She even laid on the road in a dramatic display. At that protest she blamed all the killings in Zamfara, her home state, on the former Governor Abdulaziz Yari. She called him “the most useless governor in the Nigeria’s history”. That was about what was obviously the president’s responsibility. Aren’t all security apparatchik in the hands of the president and under his control? Why blame a “toothless state’s CSO” for what is beyond him?

In similar manner, early this year, she released a voice note that went viral. There, she spoke “like a patriot” but many saw it as being smart by half. In that voice note, she criticised and blame the media for their reportage of the insecurities in the country, as if they caused it. Or, as if they were responsible for preventing or solving the problems. Some of us never took her serious. “O fi epa sile, o n pa lapalapa”. Instead of her to address the problem, the cause, whose responsibility is it to handle it, she blamed the media. That’s insincerity. Now, her close relative has fallen victim. I sympathise with the woman.

More prominent northerners have been speaking up. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was not left out. May be what angered the northerners more was the seeming lack of empathy from the president, which triggered the protest. They were angry that he went to attend Chief Akande’s book launch in Lagos at the time 23 people were burnt alive inside the bus they were travelling in from Sokoto, by bandits but did not deem it fit to visit the victims of bandits’ attacks.

In all, it is important that we all join hands to rescue our country. We cannot move forward in situation where one region or some groups will be lifting up the country while other region or groups drag it down. Like Senator Shehu Sani wrote on his Twitter handle: “During the EndSars protests, the North refused to join; During the End Insecurity protest, the South refused to join”. This should not be.

However, such dichotomy is to the benefit of the ruling elites. They strive on the disunity among the ordinary Nigerians who are the first and major victims of such kidnappings, raping, maiming, killings, and general insecurities. Likewise the economic difficulties. The ruling elites live on our common meagre patrimony as they pay themselves well, irrespective of the financial strain the country might be going through. They still “live large”. Ostentatiously!

We are calling on President Buhari to rise up to the occasion and put an end to this menace. Every excuse given by government in the past has been addressed. Super Tucano fighter jets have been delivered. The bandits have been declared as terrorists. What else is the government waiting for to crush these beasts called bandits? I supposed everyone has now had it to their throat. Everyone is now overwhelmed; north and south. We hope the end will come soon. Nigeria is bleeding, not just the north. Enough is enough!

May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.

God Bless Nigeria.

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