The Agony Of A Tumbling Nation  

By Abimbola Emdin-Umeh

One cannot but agree with renowned Pastor and activist, Tunde Bakare, when he declared at the wake of the Nyanya Motor Park bomb blast in Abuja that the on-going National Confab be put on hold to concentrate on the security challenges bedevilling the country. Of a truth, who will remain in Nigeria for the report of the Confab to be implemented, when people are currently being killed in droves?  To reinforce this line of thought, few days after the Nyanya bomb blast, another bomb blast occurred at same venue sniffing lives out of yet other helpless  Nigerians. This sad incident occurred while we still wait for the release of 234 students of Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, who were abducted from their school while writing their West African School Certificate examination by members of the Boko Haram sect.

Mothers who have experienced the pain and agony of child-birth cannot but feel pain with all the terrible happenings in the country, especially as it concern the lives of innocent children. One naturally feels numb and emotionally cold when tales of acts of man inhumanity to man are being discussed. To some of us who listen regularly to news and read newspapers, each time we come across or hear appalling news about the country, we cannot but shed tears for our dear country, Nigeria. Except for the incurable optimists or hypocrites whose daily routine is deception, our future as a nation looks bleak, especially in relations to the plight of the youth and children who obviously are the main victims of the various irresponsible acts of adults who have sold their hearts to the devil.

The possibility of living successfully and peacefully to old age, propping  your head on your pillow to die naturally is becoming  more and more remote each passing day in Nigeria. Apart from the Boko  Haram’s conflict which causes death on a daily basis, the frenzy of ritual and other killings, for money making and other purposes, the selling of babies, which has become so lucrative that people now set up factories to produce babies en-masse, kidnapping and countless cases of preventable deaths due to accidents on bad roads, which contracts have been  severally awarded, have turned our country into a sort of jungle where anything goes. Others have encountered untimely deaths when nomadic herdsmen decide to go on the rampage either to retaliate the killing of their cattle or being disallowed into certain communities or farmlands to grace their cattle. Other villages have been wiped out due to ethnic acrimonies  or religious crisis.

The current prevalence of acts of cruelty, brutality and heartlessness in the country have been widely attributed to poverty, corruption and lack of education. Many of have been introduced into dastardly acts as a result of difficulty in making ends meet even after securing education which their impoverished parents paid through their noses to bequeath to them. One is rather afraid that our nation seems to be heading towards a state of anarchy. Presently, the only people who are so sure of their safety are those who have the luxury of being protected by either public or private security personnel. Living in Nigeria has suddenly become a frightening experience. Just a few days ago, unconfirmed news filtered across Lagos that members of Boko Haram sect were wrecking havoc along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Trust Lagosians, there was pandemonium and panic  everywhere despite the fact that police authorities later came out to dispel the news. The traffic jam caused by the scary news along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, with security personnel mounting road block, is better imagined. That is what our nation has abruptly  turned into.

The sad thing, however, is that we seem to be carrying on as a people as if all is absolutely well. We seem to be saying that Eldorado is already here. Or how else does one explain the abduction of over 200 children from their school, for over two weeks, and all of us  (the government and the governed) seem to be acting in ways that imply that we don’t care a hoot about what becomes of the girls, their parents and loved ones? In saner climes, government through relevant agencies would be updating the people, on a regular basis, about efforts being made to rescue the girls from the grip of their evil abductors. But not here. Rather, our leaders are busy scheming for political offices, fanning the embers of ethnic and religious crisis and behaving in unbecoming  fashion while the girls are agonising in the den of their captors. God forbid! But how does it feel to think that these evil men are actually having sexual interactions with these innocent girls? It only shows that we are becoming a people with a dead conscience who only bother about power, money and fame.

Sadly, the issue at stake is not only about the government. Most of the time we find it convenient to lay every blame at the doors of government. But the truth is that we have all become selfish and self centered. All we care about is what happens to our immediate family. If all is well with us and our family, every other person could go rot in hell. One wonders what would have become of South Africa if the late Nelson Mandela and his compatriots refused to stand up in the face of the oppressive apartheid government. In same vein, one wonders where the Nigeria Labour Congress and other such bodies in the country are. It is absurd  that our labour leaders only find it convenient to mobilise for national protests when it comes to the issues of salary increase and fuel subsidy. But on such sensitive issues as the abduction of innocent school girls, they seem to be unexpectedly quiet. Only God knows why the ‘wise’ men and women at the national conference in Abuja did not agree with the position of Pastor Bakare that the conference be put on hold until we resolve pending security issues. The truth of the matter is that, the way things presently are, only God knows who the next victims of insurgent attack in the country would be.

One would like to call on the womenfolk to stand up and be counted. Since they are the ones that naturally bear the burdens of current instability in the country, they need to come up with a platform through which they could resist and reject on-going dangerous trends in our nation. Also, as mothers, it s imperative for women to begin to inculcate moral values in their children right from the cradle so that the nation could be a better place for us all to live in. This is the time for women to arise, take time off from buying powerful SUVs, jets and owning luxury mansions to save our children and our land from the suffocating grips of wicked men.

•Umeh is of the Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.