Every country that has gone on to forge a happy citizenry has always done everything within its power to carter to the contentment of that citizenry. Within the border of any country that is peaceful and prosperous and even beyond the borders, taking into consideration that country`s diaspora, the emphasis has always been on keeping the citizenry happy.
Historically, a happy citizenry is one that has at its beck and call not ultimately the best life but necessarily a good one marked by a comfortable standard of living and everything that comes with it.
When people can take care of themselves and their loved ones, when they have social security, when their lives and property are secured, when adequate infrastructure is in place and when the political process work like a well-oiled machine, there is usually no problem and people thrive.
Good governance which takes in active participation of citizens is usually the lubricant that oils the machinery of any country that works like clockwork. Whenever this lubricant is lacking or expires and nothing is done expeditiously to refill or replace it, the lances of discontent are swiftly sharpened and in the lightning speed with which they are pointed, the country in which bad governance has brewed discontent can see its own unravelling.
In 1960, the colonialists finally packed up their baleful briefcase and left Nigeria to its own devices and as it turned, its demons. A country of great promise was handling its teething problems pretty well until military interlopers took leave of their barracks and stampeded a newly independent country into chaos.
Two military coups in 1966 combined with some inordinate ambition to crash the country into a calamitous civil war that raged from 1967 to 1970. A peace of the graveyard was restored in 1970. However, more military coups continued to rock Nigeria until the providential death in 1998 of Mr. Sani Abacha who ruled with an iron fist while he stole the country blind, convinced everyone that democracy was the future. Indeed, at that point, the military knew that it no longer had any hiding place as Nigeria`s halls of power came under the searing scrutiny of Nigerians home and abroad, and the international community.
Since 1999, the dais from which democracy has sought to direct the affairs of Nigeria has remained a deeply damaged one. The fire which has continued to ferociously eat it up from below has been stoked by corruption and bad governance.
During the early years of Nigerias return to democracy, corruption raged freely under Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo who later sought to crown a madcap tenure with the desecration of Nigerias constitution to accommodate his bid for a third third term. Gratefully, the shameful move ended in a humiliating failure.
However, the stage for bad governance had already been set in Nigeria as corruption proved again and again the sultry mistress of Nigerian politicians and public office holders.Thus, getting into power in Nigeria has largely become synonymous with getting rich quickly or increasing in riches as the case may be.
On Thursday April 28,2022 Professor Nora Ladi Dadu`ut, the Senator representing Plateau South Senatorial District in the National Assembly was attacked by suspected hoodlums in Namu, Qua’an Pan Local Government Area of Plateau State together with her entourage which included top government officials of the Plateau State Government and about 14 journalists from the Plateau State Chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists. The Senator who was held hostage for about three hours while the hoodlums threatened her life was said to have been in Namu to commission an ICT/e-library center as part of her constituency projects when she was attacked by the hoodlums who burnt a couple of vehicles in her entourage and also damaged her official vehicle.
They were said to be protesting the arrest of some youths in the community by the police early that day and also the failed promises of the Plateau State Government to give them the sum of ten million naira promised them after their yam market got burnt.
Also, on May 5, 2022, hoodlums attacked members of the Federal Capital Territory Administration Task Force at Gaduwa District of Abuja. A police officer injured while other members of the team were taken hostage by the hoodlums during the attack. The members were of the Development control who went to Gaduwa community to mark illegal structures for demolition but came under heavy attack by some persons bearing dangerous weapons. Some members of the task force ended up in the hospital.
Now, a pattern has emerged which is extremely disturbing to put it mildly. A country that used to be relatively peaceful has suddenly become a theatre of blood baths and raging fires with every day bearing witness to attacks on people or buildings all over the country. The flames which burnt the vehicles in the entourage of Senator Dadu`ut recall the fires that razed down the headquarters of Aguata and Nnewi Local Government areas of Anambra State between March and April 2022.
The vandalism of the secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ondo State last week by hoodlums also springs to mind.
There can be no doubt that those who do these things are criminals and nothing more. They have no place in Nigeria.
Righteous indignation cannot be used as an excuse for attacks that amount to criminal attacks in every manner. If there is any grouse with how power is exercised in Nigeria, and by those through whom it is exercised, that grouse must be properly ventilated just as those who vote during elections must also be properly grilled about the choices they continue to make.
If power in Nigeria is always exercised by those who roundly fail to serve the people, then there must be something wrong with those who continue to vote them in and the process that continues to let interlopers loose in the corridors of power.
It is not so much about anger than it is about resolving to clean up the halls of power in Nigeria by voting out those who sip fine wine while termites waste away the common weal and putting in only those who ready to commit their noses to the grinding stone for the sake of a new Nigeria – another Nigeria where every nut and every bolt is in place.
With the 2023 general elections bearing down on us, those who by themselves criminalize their complaints about the abuse of power and the abuse of public office by renegade public officers in the country must clean up their acts and properly ventilate their grievances. It is only then that history can hear them and render all the redolent recalcitrants who do these things redundant.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
