WHERE DO YOU GO TO SELL A COUNTRY?

Every waking moment, for a typical Nigerian, is another attempt to fight against the gravity that shoves millions into the miry clay of extreme poverty, lack and destitution. The gulp between the paradise of a few and the hell of many Nigerians, seem to stretch several kilometers apart each waking moment. The inhabitants of the paradise seem to experience daily depopulation, whereas the other end, though over populated already, seems to record massive influxes of people.

The Nigerian Labour Congress still bickers with the Federal Government for a N30,000 minimum wage that became inadequate to survive a week of an average Nigerian life, a decade ago. Yet it hasn’t been implemented even though it has been given an elaborate lip-service of assent on the heels of elections, earlier this year.

Half of the thirty six states in the Republic still owe civil servants of meager wages, several months, oh please let’s not talk about the dying pensioners. This situation however appalling hasn’t moved any of the state government to cut down the cost of governance, even starting with his salaries and allowances.

These states government received two bailout funds and a huge share from the Paris fund, all given in trust by the Federal government for the offsetting of the heavy backlogged wage bill. Yet, after the funds, states still owe and owe they do. What a pity!

But this is not all that is wrong with Nigeria.

Every sunrise is filled with trepidations and terrors for the unknown. In a country that isn’t at war, none is certain of crossing a bridge or highway and getting to the other end safely. Kidnappings have become a constant reality on the highways. Who did this to us?

Miyetti Allah that should have been proscribed a terrorist group and dealt with heavily by the nation’s military might, is being allowed to speak boldly on any national issue it deems fit. Imagine the boldness and affront, calling for the arrest of a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, simply because in his latest letter to the President puts forward a position that doesn’t support their private ventures.

Yes, cattle rearing, in civilized climes, is a private venture that predicates the businessmen involved to decide on private acquisition of lands and facilities to facilitate their enterprises. But not so in Nigeria, the Federal Government thinks it is alright to meddle into such murky waters and get dirty by trying to use her might to obtain “free lands” for these cows and their clowns.

In a country where if poverty and starvation doesn’t get you first, you may be unfortunate to crisscross a senseless tribal or ethnic bout. Peradventure you survive that, a reckless, trigger-happy madman on uniform may plunge two bullets into your sternum because you failed to give him less than $1. Today, may be your lucky day and you survive the uniform demons, then a herdsman may feel you owe him and cattle (that isn’t his) a grass field and he would only take it in currencies of blood. Then, the elite team of kidnappers that lurk in shadows of thick bushes may be another hurdle to jump over as you transverse this fire pot called Nigeria.

The country has become a dangerous wilderness, full of wild animals. Animals that take no prisoner. Cannibals, they eat their kind and drink their kins. It has become a jungle of predators and preys, where the mighty of the past have become the chased of the present.

Yet the Lion King is sleeping away the crisis, in self-denial, resting on a rocky pillow in Aso. Thinking that the reports on poverty in his land are foreign manipulations, since his dinner doesn’t come in later than the evening news. Then deputy lion feels that these figures are exaggerated, too much to be true, yet people are dying in their droves daily in a country that is relatively at peace.

No doubt, Nigeria has always been divided along ethnic and religious lines. May I add, will continue to be for a long while more. The unconstitutional geopolitical arrangement further gives credence to such polarity. However, the safety of persons of ethnic and religious minorities have never been this threatened since after the Civil war of late 1960s. Each Nigerian has become awaken to his ethnic bloodline. Therefore, any attack on a South western person by a Northerner in any part of the nation is an attack against the entire Yoruba race, which must be met halfway with enough malice to cook the moon soft. However, the Igbo man is there looking at such as a case of two fighting and therefore remains unbothered. After all, it is the neighbour’s roof that’s on fire, and the smoke entering his own he can deal with. Until the entire nation is agog and become a massive bed of ashes.

But before that happens, please do you know where a country may be sold? Is there a global market, where citizens of a country can approach and get a buyer that may be willing to take this country? We don’t mind selling it for free, because as typical Nigerians if it is sold for a fee, a lot of the masses, for whose sake it was sold, would be cheated of their due weighted gold. As many of their representatives will pocket the dollars and release the cents for others to share.

May we not have reasons to draw an inference, at the end of this government, that there was a country, like Chinua Achebe.