Democracy may have taken deep roots in Nigeria after all. The Fourth Republic is 25 years old. Evidently, there was little to celebrate as June 12, our Democracy Day came and went by with hardly a cheer from Nigerians. It would appear that one does not need to look too far for a reason why.
The people are hungry, and frankly, they do not care.
After eight years of carnage inflicted on the hapless people by a combination of herdsmen, bandits, terrorists, kidnappers, and looters of the treasury under Buhari, we have a nation in trauma. The coming of Tinubu was supposed to bring hope. He called his agenda: The Renewed Hope Agenda. We did not like the way the election went. We did not like the results. We seemed sure that what we got was not what we ordered. In spite of all of this, we also knew that we did not have the stomach to protest. We were too hungry to protest. And so, right at the moment the new president was being sworn in, he inserted something in his speech which every president had tinkered with and beaten a retreat from. The new president said boldly—Subsidy is gone.
Pandemonium followed immediately afterwards. One year after those lines were spoken forth, the neck of the people has been on the pavement and a knee has been on it.
We need to breathe. Who will help us breathe?
As we await help from a messiah to breathe, many new plagues are unleashed upon us. They do not stop there. They insult us. It would be nice to wake up to a retraction from the spokesman of the President of the Senate. Did he really say as was widely reported that, I quote: “We know that Nigerians are hungry, but the President needs a new jet?”
I want to believe that was a mistake. Everyone knows that Artificial Intelligence can manipulate anything these days.
As much as we are happy to see the continuation of democracy, we also want it be known that we are hungry and we need solutions quickly. Thank you, Mr. Senate President, for the insult. You are free to insult us, but give us food and we will let the insult slide.
That delegation to South Africa
Nigerians love to do things in a big way. We have big weddings, big naming ceremonies, big birthday celebrations, and big funerals. If ordinary people do these big things with lean resources, how do we expect government officials to be modest? Why then do we quarrel with big delegations to foreign events?
Last week, Nigeria paraded by far the largest delegation to the inauguration of President Ramaphosa of South Africa. It did not take long before pictures began to circulate on the internet that our president had been snubbed by the president of South Africa. Curiously, even as unhappy as we are with our president, every single sharing of that picture which we later discovered to be fake was met with outrage. People were ready to begin to boycott South African businesses in Nigeria. That outrage goes to show one thing:
Nigerians love Nigeria. Nigerians love their leaders. All we are asking of them is to love us back a little bit.
I hope that is not too much to ask.
Rebirth of a nation
In Burkina Faso, a president in the image of Thomas Sankara is in charge. He is leading by example, a virtue we cannot ask of our Local Government Chairmen. In no time, his country will begin to shine. Where will Nigeria be at that time?
In the play, Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, Godot makes an appointment with two individuals, Vladimir and Estragon, to meet up with him at a certain spot at a certain time under a tree without leaves. The individuals arrive for the appointment, but Godot never shows up. It is still as relevant today as it was when it was written 76 years ago. The people are still waiting, waiting for Godot, waiting for the fulfillment of a promise of a good life, a safe environment, schools for children, hospitals that people can attend, roads we can travel on, wages that can actually feed a family and drugs we can buy when we are sick.
For how much longer can the people wait in the scorching sun, under a tree without leaves? That, my friends, is the question that is being asked by 200 million people.
*Ovienmhada, author, poet, playwright, and public affairs commentator, can be reached at [email protected].