The End of The End

Abstract:  This is an article I read late last year. Never mind the currency, just look at the dialectics and situate with with the current Nigerian context. Something has to be done, and done fast!  

By Femi Adesina

 Nigeria has had many beginnings of the end. The 1966 pogrom. The Biafran Civil War, which lasted for three years. Religious and ethnic riots across the country. The crises that attended the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. OPC/Hausa clashes, in Sagamu, in Lagos. Endless Jos killings. Retaliatory bloodletting. Sharia riots. The Niger Delta uprising. Many more. No country ever lived more dangerously. But somehow, we always manage to pull back from the brink, before the final, fatal crash. We have been like a cat with nine lives.

 We tempt fate sorely, and get away with it. But now, we seem to have used up all our luck, and we’re on borrowed time. Daily Sun columnist, Okey Ndibe, says, “Nigeria is a dying idea.” But I say the situation is worse. Nigeria is a dead idea. In a manner of speaking, Nigeria is dead, all that is left is to sing the Nunc Dimittis. 

Nigeria had been dying for long, but last Sunday, it took its last breath. America had predicted the eventuality for 2015. But it came last Christmas Day, ironically on a Sunday, the day of resurrection.

Shall We Now Not beg for our lives? (2)

By: Olusesan Ogunyooye (@sesansoulmate)

I struggle each day to agree that this nation is a not failed state. I hate to think our democracy is “A Clueless Government; run by Boko Haram, for the poor people”. I sorrow at the thought that Nigeria; the ‘giant’ of Africa, now appears big for nothing in global perspective. I cannot but agree that life in this country is now brutish, nasty and short; and the only hope is Ola Rotimi’s “Hope of the Living Dead”? 

Yoruba says; “if your mother’s concubine is powerful than your father, you must call him daddy”. This is the ugly reality in Nigeria today. If Boko Haram is bigger, powerful and more ambitious than our government; then, shall we now not beg for our lives?

Today, Nigerians are like the proverbial monkey who strives not to be shamed; and once we are disgraced; we should strive not to die. If we strive not to be shamed as a people, and Boko Haram has made us dance naked in the market: shall we now beg not to die?

For me, all hopes that this government will save us are lost, all their options are exhausted and the government is ran, de facto, from the jungles of the northern states. If you think I’m cynical, have you heard the president speak lately? Did you hear him resolve to Psalm 91 as the panacea out of this national harvest of death? I am not against prayers, but I know even King David, the Psalmist, did not write Psalm 91 as a miraculous wand of protection.

CP Escapes Death As Sucide Bombers Hit Taraba State.

A round of suicide bomb attacks on Monday led to the destruction of a portion of the Taraba State Ministry of Finance in the state capital, Jalingo, and consumed valuable documents and property.
The News Agency of Nigeria quotes the spokesman for the state police command, Ibiang Mbasike, as saying that the blast affected a large part of the building and a nearby market.
The bombs exploded at about 8.45a.m when workers were resuming for work after the weekend break.
The blasts were triggered by two suicide bombers riding motorcycles and were apparently targeted at the Commissioner of Police, Taraba State Command, Mamman Sule, as he made his way to his office.
There was no information about the state of the CP but some reports said he escaped unhurt. However, three police officers and the two suspected suicide bombers were among those killed while a dozen others were injured.
One of the explosives hit the rider leading the police commissioner’s convoy.
The police headquarters in Taraba is 40 metres away from the main entrance to the finance ministry. The ministry’s premises forms part of the entrance into the building leading to the police commissioner’s office.
“The Police Commissioner usually has to go through the Ministry of Finance to enter his office.
“He was passing by that usual route when the explosives were thrown. So the Police Commissioner’s convoy was clearly the target,” a top police source, who preferred anonymity, told NAN.

BOKO HARAM: Shall We Then Not Beg For Our Lives?

By Olusesan Ogunyooye

I hate to write that this nation is a failed state. I hate to define our democracy as “Government of the people by Boko Haram and for the people”. I hate to think our Nigeria; once “A Fuji House of Commotion, has become A Hammer House of Terror”. I hate to admit that life in this country is now brutish, nasty and short; and the only things we can all do is pick one of Ola Rotimi’s works and ask; where is the “Hope of the Living Dead”?

Yoruba says; “if your mother’s concubine is powerful than your father, you must call him daddy”. This is the ugly reality in this nation today. Therefore, if Boko Haram is bigger, ubiquitous and more determined than our government; shall we then not beg for our lives?

Today, we are like the proverbial monkey who strives not to be shamed; and once it is disgraced; it strives not to die. If we strive not to be shamed as a people, and Boko Haram has seized into the ineptitude of our government to make us dance naked in the market; shall we then beg not to die?