Road from Kigali to Mogadishu

BY KAYODE AKINRIMISI

Nigeria has been described in many ways in bad lights which to some extent is the true reality on ground, successive regime is worse than the previous, system decay, widespread corruption now, banditry, kidnapping, waton killings, Boko Haram, insurgency and ethnic agitation is the order of the day.

Now, there is a government which body language is aloofness and self denial of the truth, claiming Eldorado… The above ills were the order of the day in Kigali, so Nigeria is not on the way to Kigali, Nigeria is already in Kigali- waton killings, you can’t travel from Lagos to Port Harcourt without embarking on prayer and fasting for divine intervention. Kaduna-Abuja road is home of kidnappers, likewise all over the country. If Nigeria were to be a small nation like Rwanda then there is crisis. Imagine the killings in Benue state, so the huge size of the country is what is helping us to postpone the evil prophesy.

The ability of these criminal actors not to be able to do their hellish work on a national scale due to the size and the diversity of the country has helped a lot. In the words of the experts, the security forces are stretched and thinned out, they can’t cope with the security problem confronting them. From South-West we have ritualist, kidnappers, herdsmen. South-South and South-East is worse off in ethnic agitation, oil theft, pollution of the environment, kidnapping, herdsmen and armed robbery etc. North-Central Nigeria is waton killings and mass poverty. For North-West and North-East, total poverty, bombing, killings, bokoharam, illiteracy, underage marriage, abject poverty and total lack of Government.

These are the Kigali symptoms of a dead country claiming to be alive. Now, we are seeing the rise of ethnic gladiators, territorial warlords, humans principalities championing the cause of their ethnic nationality with a President that is aloof, a weak centre, a fail security architecture and you say this is Nigeria… on this is Somalia where warlords hold the country to rasome, till date the country is still not settled. The likes of Sunday Igboho, Nnamdi Kanu and their likes sound good but in the long run will begin to demand for their own pound of flesh for stopping the onslaught of the so called foreign Fulanis… Late Fray Adi in Solamlia defy even the Americans in the 90’s to become the biggest warlord in Somalia after the overthrow of Late Saidi Bare and Nigeria’s fruitless effort at peace since then Somalia has been thrown to the dogs.

Our beloved Nigeria is treading the same path to perdition, central Government is weak reminisce of the imperial China days and the nationalist Government there until the communist send them packing in 1949. Nigeria ethnic diversity is turning out to be her Achilles and a Government that profess change but cannot give national outlook in discuss and appointment into key post is toying with danger. The looming hunger in the land, unemployment with corruption is turning Nigeria into a waste land that Congo DRC crisis will be a child’s play if not checked in time. The political class is a disaster and the military is ill equipped, poorly paid with low morale.

This country needs a strong will leader and in this case Obasanjo with all his errors seems better off than the rest and including the current one. A strong will leader that will forge a nation state not this ethnically bias leaders and ethnic champions using their ethnic background to score cheap political points. For outside this scope of argument they can’t offer anything tangible and this category goes the Northern Elders Forum, Afenifere (the current one, not the one Awolowo started), Ohaneze and the noisy Nnambi Kanu.
The elite need to change from their top class house if the avalanche of crisis start no one is safe, go and ask the children and the grand children of the elite of Liberia (read some of Pat Utomi’s write-up on this). The children begging on the street will one day rise and get what they want from you by force.

The low level corruption must stop if we want to change Nigeria, you that have assisted the needy, it might safe your life when the time comes. The Endsars was a wake up call. The political elites will be the biggest looser if this enterprise call Nigeria collapse, do the needful like some of the first republic politicians, if not for Sarduna quest for unbridle power of deeping the Quaran in the ocean and Awolowo’s arrogant stands of conquering Nigeria intellectually, this might have taken a different dimension but as it is the two clash, the rest is history, Nigeria is down in the path of hopelessness, first civil war, now an unfinished civil war- bokoharam, banditry, lose borders, visionless leaders, hungry followers, 419ers, kidnappers, danger everywhere with a weak security structure. It is a matter of time before this fake edifice collapse unless something drastic is done…

Kayode Akinrimisi is a media practitioner based in Lagos.