Nigeria claims to be a democratic country. Note my word, ‘claims’.
Isn’t it in Nigeria that we have prisoners, even in spite of court orders setting them free?
We have people like Sambo Dasuki, Ibrahim Zakzaky, Omoyele Sowore and others currently languishing in various detention rooms across the nation.
The silly department in charge of holding them captive is reported to have even said the detainees prefer their stay in captivity. If you say that’s incredulous, I’ll say that’s an understatement.
In today’s Nigeria, which has been described by the United Nations as the poverty capital of the world, unemployment has, because of its frequency, become the order of the day.
Yet, top government officials earn a lot of the local currency. The politicians are in a world of their own in terms of remunerations.
We’re calling for foreign investment and tourism, yet there’s a serious rate of insecurity. Kidnappings, robberies and advance free frauds are the order of the day.
Advance free fraud has gained so much prominence to the extent that even a self styled Maradonic former president and an ex-army chief were said to have been conned!
We can go on and on!
Yet the government doesn’t have any response to all these. Rather, the head of state himself frequently goes for medical trips abroad because there’s a dearth of medical facilities in the country.
Perhaps the most painful aspect is the collapse of the basic institutions. I refer to education for example. While many of these are unnecessarily going down the drain in terms of scholarship, the private ones are springing up to cater for the interest of the few who could afford them, thereby leaving the children of the poor in the cold.
But then, while I definitely believe a people, all things being equal, deserves the government it gets, I also earnestly believe that my dear country is a revolution waiting to happen.
There’s no doubting the fact that something is about to happen. The problem is when?
113019
