CredoWriters: Wakdok, Samuel Stephen.
The boy's funeral has been arranged while he is still alive. The Girl's funeral is been deliberated before she gets the chance to consummate her wedding. The baby is just entering the world and no one is sure if its funeral will not outlive the few days of its existence. The men and women know that they must watch as their funeral is organized. No one knows when, it may be sooner than rumoured, it could be now and it can take a while but something is certain; there is a funeral in the offing. That is so sad! Ordinarily no one is happy at a funeral except witches and wizards but ironically in this situation the victims are not only helpless but some are culpable.
The funeral started when he went to school and could not pass his exams because the schools are either under funded or the teachers are not qualified. Money meant for education is diverted by selfish government officials and their assistants. Now the students have seen the futility in reading hard because hard work is tantamount to failure, it is easier to cheat and pass. Even when you read you will not pass, that is the curriculum we have these days. The government itself is not only confused but maliciously wicked. They toy from UPE to UBE; they do not know whether to use 6-3-3-4 or 9-3-4 and some cases they tinker with 6-5-4. They sold the government schools and paralyzed the Unity schools they couldn't sell. They starve the public universities with funds and establish their own private universities. No country in this world has an ex President as the owner of a private university. In Nigeria an Ex President whose tenure witnessed some of the most protracted industrial actions in the Ivory towers owns a private university; his vice owns an American University . All those who went to free government schools are the ones insisting students must pay tuition, those who studied on government scholarships have returned and removed the ladder so that others can’t climb. Rather they have acquired fraudulent wealth to send their children abroad and have reserved special employments for their offspring even unborn.
Her funeral started immediately she walked in to the medical centre that looked like a garage. Packed with dusts and outdated instruments, she can not even deliver safely in a tertiary hospital not to talk of a primary health care centre. Yet those who claim to serve her interest run abroad for head ache and even bottom ache. A sitting Vice President who was campaigning to become the President strained his leg and was rushed abroad for treatment. He came back on clutches and was received at the airport like a man who has won an Olympic gold medal.
Their funerals began when the security agents failed to curb the web of violence. Their houses were razed down in Jos and bombs thrown at them in Maiduguri , Suleja and Abuja . They were killed in Bauchi, kaduna , Katsina for an election that now holds no promise for the future; they died in vain while those who they died for live in vanity of opulence. They are kidnapped in the East and South and ransome demanded; some are used for rituals even in the West and North. The Police who should protect them had their headquarters bombed in broad day light, so they people may as well run to the gangs for help. The National security adviser said verbatim that they were not prepared to fight terrorism, if that was a true confession the shocker came when he said they couldn’t prepare for a situation they did not have. But couldn’t they have envisaged it? What is planning if not against the future whether good or bad? When in 2001 terrorism took a central stage in global affairs, Nigeria opted out of the world if not why will the security arm see no need in preparing for what was spreading like wild fire, despite of the vulnerability of our location, population and composition.
The economy has been on life support, we know that soonest unless by miracle we will march at our own funeral. They read out nominal growth figures while we count real decline. They read out politics of numbers while we see the sociology of underdevelopment. Poverty used to stare at us from a far, scared that she will be eradicated or even alleviated; suddenly poverty pokes at us in the eyes and even puts her dirty fingers in our nostrils. There are many funerals to go round and I am sure we have the need to hire more people to meet up the demand for our funerals.
For sure black out will not have a funeral despite all the billions spent in over hauling the power sector; instead darkness will be the special guest of honour at the funeral of a people who ordinarily should have sent power failure to its grave. They want to increase power tariff by 50-100%, which is paying more for darkness. Now they are proposing a 200% increase for the cost of fuel from N65 to N200 in the name of deregulation. They are tired of subsidizing the cost of fuel but never tired of subsidizing corruption, for it is corruption that has prevented our refineries from working or we building new ones. Therefore all of us, our funeral commenced when we adopted corruption as the official language of government. It is our bane and as Simon Kolawole succinctly puts it; “we have the whole sale and retail corruption”. Whole sale corruption is for the big boys and big wigs and mega politicians, which we the smaller fish buy in retail measures from. The Big man collects the money and doesn’t execute the job, the medium man smiles when his is greased by the big man and also demands returns from the small man; then the small man who is into the retail corruption expects favours from the big man who he knows is profiteering even when he has not done any work to deserve a reward.
Government money in Nigeria is not only tempting but alluring. When people leave their foreign jobs, or their professional fields to accept government posts, it is not always for selflessness but because government fund in Nigeria is a sinking fund that will never be audited nor accounted for. It is not out of the butcher’s benevolence that we eat meat for dinner; it is called harmony of interest. Corruption in the police is the omen for indiscipline and indiscipline is what reinvigorates corruption. So the two reinforce themselves and have led the police to its impending funeral. A corporal has the audacity to tell the ASP that he has eaten N2, 000 out of the money he was due to remit, money of course from extortion. The Sergeant negotiates with the DSP that he can only afford to return N15, 000 weekly when the former asks for N30, 000 and they arrive at N20, 000. How can such men take orders from their superiors? Is anyone therefore surprised that the police can not effectively tackle crime?
The civil servants are no more servants, they are “uncivil lords” they descend on public funds with such an impudence that will make any one shudder. They steal out rightly from the treasure, or demand instant bribes, or inflate contracts, or divert budget allocations, or sell government privilege. 50 years of budgeting has not prevented this imminent funeral, because monies meant for education are found at people’s homes, monies meant for roads and other infrastructure are routed to people’s pockets, monies meant for security are secured in offshore accounts, monies meant for development have only made the few cabal richer at the expense of the citizens.
Now we live with freedom from unpleasant consequences and may die because of insecurity. The jobs are gone, those working are poorer, and to be entrepreneurial is a very Herculean task. They have set up an early committee to drop a bundle on the country’s 100 years of nationhood, but it takes almost half of the year for our budget to be passed, and hardly any early preparation for sectoral projects in education, health, or social amenities. We should rename nationhood to “nationwood”, because now more than ever the nation is in a bed of nails. Is Nigeria really a nation or a country of nationalities? Do we have drums to beat or funerals to mourn? Do we celebrate mass murder, rape, economic mismanagement, political brigandage, or a nation which we were told is on the brink and we denied.
We claim to bring peace to war torn nations but our nation is in a dearth of peace. We are talking of independence, it is not just enough to be independent from colonial rule when we are not independent from the woes that sweep across our land like a flying vulture. If anything, the people have always bore the brunt of a lapse from grace on the part of our leadership and government. My friend said that in Nigeria they campaign in poetry and rule in prose and I concur. For when a politician promises to build a bridge where there is no river, that is poetry; and when the electorates can not have a bridge to cross a real river that is prose. While they loot in billions and jeopardize the lives of millions in poetry, people are suffering and dying in prose. 51 years of independence where are the drums to celebrate? They have stolen everything and even the drums, meaning they have stolen the people’s happiness too.
After 51 years of independence and 97 years of existence Nigeria ought to have a place in the sun unfortunately the country is just like a pig in a poke due to failure of leadership and crass irresponsibility from the citizens. They had no shoes; now they own not only shoes but shoe companies while we are in need of feet. The best thing we can do as a people is to avert the funeral of this nation by any means possible and recover our drums of jubilation.
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