Nigeria: A COUNTRY OF ABSURDITIES – Ogueri Onyeukwu

Nigeria: A COUNTRY OF ABSURDITIES

BY  OGUERI ONYEUKWU

As long as Nigerians continue to reinforce and encourage failure, and electoral malfeasance through our hypocritical attitudes, as long as we

continue to reward criminality and pretend that all is well because we happen to be beneficiaries of this fundamentally flawed criminal enterprise which is devoid of equity, justice, and fairness, the country will continue to grow in the reverse.

When we come to the consensus that this country has not worked, is not working and will not work as presently constituted no matter who is at the helm

of affairs unless fundamental surgical restructuring is carried out, then and only then shall we be ready to build a nation where economic growth, development, security of lives and properties of

citizens and the welfare of the greater majority will be sustainable and guaranteed. By restructuring this polity, the various federating units will have respect for each other, there shall be equality of citizen, the power of the people in power will become naturally

subordinate to the power of the people. When the power of the people is superior to the power of the people in power, the nation will start realizing its true potentials.

 The Federal system operated in Nigeria today is uniquely awkward and promotes disunity, injustice, bigotry, inequity.

At every occasion you hear government functionaries declare that the unity of this country is not negotiable. The question should be, what are the factors that can guarantee non negotiable unity? Can injustice, tribalism, bigotry, inequality, guaranty unity? The lawyers will say you cannot build something on nothing and expect it to stand.

The psalmist will admonish that if the foundation is faulty what can the righteous do? Consequently, we now ask ourselves who laid the foundation of this country? Was the Foundation built on nothing? Is the foundation faulty? Can the country be sustained by its

The only guarantee for a greater tomorrow for Nigeria is restructuring the polity, every other cosmetic policy by the ruling class is for the protection of their class interest and not in the best interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.

Finally restructuring will emancipate

Nigeria from British colonial bondage.

The priority of the police and security forces has been essentially regime protection. This is why they are swift in arresting critics of excruciating government policies. Nigerians

have lost trust in the ability of the leaders and the security agencies in protecting them. The uproar raised by the killing of the armed fulani whom the press quietly and mischievously branded hunters is an indication of the value the government places on the lives of the various nations that constitute Nigeria. A couple of days after the incident, there were attack on several plateau villages allegedly by fulani herdsmen where more than 80 innocent Nigerians were killed and over 5000 displaced and are now in IDP camps in their own country.

Ironically, in no distant time, herdsmen will occupy these land from which those plateau indigenes were chased out with their cattle, rebuild the land and occupy without any consequences or implications. The state government will continue to supply the internally displaced persons now refugees in their own country with food items. There

are people in IDP camps in Benue state today. Some have been there for up to six years, their ancestral home are occupied by herdsmen. Nothing is happening to clear out the illegal occupants and resettle the original inhabitants in their ancestral land.

This is Nigerian for you. A country of Absurdities. Nigeria cannot make progress until truth becomes the final authority in our dealings with each other instead of men of power. Is the loyalty of our political leadership to men or to the truth? We lack the courage to challenge falsehood. This is the greatest obstacle to unity, peace, and progress.Our democracy as practiced today has become impotent,. Democracy without

opposition will never be in the best interest of the people. As an opposition leader president Bola Ahmed Tinubu was at his best organizing, funding and physically participating in protests both after the annulment of June 12 presidential election and while PDP was in power. Protesting was a veritable weapon of trade used by the

opposition AD, ACN and later APC to checkmate the PDP. All of a sudden under the presidency of Tinubu, protests are gagged, threatened and restrained. This is simply unacceptable.

* SIR. TEMPLE OGUERI ONYEUKWU FCA, wrote from Obazu Mbieri, Mbaitoli LGA, Imo State.