Re: The change that never was

Dear Simon, I read your piece on Sunday morning titled “The Change that Never Was.” Not too far into that piece, you wove in the title of your latest book, “Fellow Nigerians, it is all politics.” And that is what got me irked. My friend, this is not all politics. This is death, and the service of songs has begun.

I have been around for a while. I was here when Shehu Shagari came up with ‘Austerity Measures,’ while his party chairman was busy brandishing champagne bottles that carried his name.

I was here when the self-proclaimed “Evil Genius” Ibrahim Babangida declared “Home-based Structural Adjustment Program” after a rancorous national debate and rejection of IMF conditionalities.

I was here when the “hallelujah men and latter-day messiahs scaled fences and vowed to make the country ungovernable until the so-called “Clueless abdicated the throne.”

Nine years on, we are here (and I am still here) neck-deep into the cesspool like everyone else. My dear friend, I am still on oath. I will not lie. The current experience is different. Going forward is as bad as going back if we continue on this same trajectory and tragedy.

And this is where I will pick a quarrel with you. It is abominable and a heresy to say that “This is all politics.” This is arson of indescribable proportion. We shall all either die by fire (or hellfire, if you wish) or by “end of times scale” smoke inhalation. Sometimes, I wonder whether we have not inadvertently conscripted into wishing death by fire upon ourselves. The Protestant churches just won’t stop invoking fire at every service. I cannot understand our attraction to this grand arson. But who is burning? It is we the people.

Whatever we suffered in Buhari’s eight years has been quadrupled in seven months of this administration. Yet, it is still very early in the morning. That cannot be all politics. Nigerians are in an unimaginable financial distress and choking. That cannot be all politics. Nigerians are becoming more afraid to live than to die. That cannot be all politics. Nigerians are being asked to make sacrifices far beyond their capacities. That cannot be all politics. Nigerians are being asked to take their leaders for a walk and clean up after them. That cannot be all politics. When those who should know that there is a smell of death in the air go about flaunting their gowns and smirks on our faces, that cannot be all politics. When you can feel the giddy descent into the abyss, that cannot be all politics. When every tincture of hope (or renewed hope if you wish) is being incinerated, that cannot be all politics. It cannot all be politics when hordes of young people think that a messiah has been impaled.

I hear people say, “God will do it,” there is nothing beyond God, “It is well,” and all manners of trite phrases. Are we under the influence of something? Or are we suffering from some bizarre congenital disease that has completely messed up our capacity to think rationally? What have we given to God to bless? Hypocrisy?

I am neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet. But I see the Haitian experience looming on the horizon. Except that given our obese foolery and propensity for self-harm, our experience will be of an undefined multiple.

It will be inhumane to wrap up my belligerent response without breaking bread and making peace with you. I agree with everything else you said in that article. Just like you, I had my fears very early on in the last administration. And I am getting that same eerie feeling right now. Some people will argue that it is too early to judge. That is not correct. It is all about trajectory (or should I say, “Fellow Nigerians, it is all trajectory?”) Among the Urhobos, there is a saying that when a person keeps bending his neck to one direction, he would end up with a bent neck.

All things considered, I have given up, my dear Simon. I actually gave up in 1975 when I began high school and had an encounter with ‘God’ where he told me that Nigeria was going the wrong way. Please don’t roll your eyes on me. I didn’t really have any such encounter. But in this era where everyone claims God spoke to them, should I not be entitled to one miserable encounter with the Creator? This “encounter” was so impactful that I wrote to my uncle who left the country to the United States a few years thereafter on a Federal Government scholarship not to return home after his studies. Since then, my worst fears have become a reality and a daily trauma. To those who still nurse some hope, all I would say is “see you at the other side of midnight.”

Adjekuko is an economist and public affairs analyst. He wrote in from Abuja.