How did we get here?  

• By Mike Kebonkwu

My boss and mentor sent me a WhatsApp message a fortnight ago containing an interesting snippet with the picture of a donkey sitting bemused on a water tank.  On it was an epigram: “Question is NOT how to get him down, but “Who helped him get there?” 

I did not need an AI (artificial intelligence’s) robot or Google to decipher the poetically sarcastic message.  Nigerians complain perpetually about everything under the sun.  We are living like people in a captured territory, under the mercy of criminal gangs who unleash mayhem on citizens.  Yet, the system offers protective shields to those responsible for the problem because they are sacred cows. 

You cannot cure a disease by treating the symptoms while you leave the cause of the ailment.  You cannot task the thief that stole your jewellery to help you find it, it will be in vain. This is the helpless state we find ourselves since independence, no redeeming feature.  You cannot be doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result; that is opaque illusion and insanity. This is the time to do a soul-searching reflection and properly interrogate the state of the nation and roadmap to our nationhood.  While we are playing the ostrich, burying our heads in the sand, Nigeria is slipping away from us as criminals lay siege to the country.

How did some street urchins come to acquire military grade rifles and turn kidnapping into a lucrative industry? We have morons and buffoons wielding and trailing weapons all over the place and we are complaining about insecurity and rising gun violence!  How did we get here? 

We are rehabilitating and reintegrating terrorists and insurgents, offering them amnesty while the victims are still languishing in internally displaced peoples’ (IDP) camps.  How did we get here? 

Who recruited these people, and who are their sponsors? How did we get here, that supposedly seasoned military commanders would reduce soldiering to negotiation and deradicalization of insurgents and enemies of the state? 

A soldier is not trained to trade words with the enemy of state; there is no such military teaching. A soldier is trained to delete or neutralize the enemy and not rehabilitate or de-radicalize him. The liberal scholars’ appeasement and pacifist’s non-kinetic approach to fighting insecurity should not be allowed to be elevated to a military doctrine.  The Armed Forces of Nigeria is not a human rights organization to my knowledge. Senior military commanders should be seen to talk like soldiers that they are, and spit fire on the enemy.  This is what gives confidence to citizens and jitters to the enemy.

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How did we get the bunch of people in the National Assembly who are fixated on self-glorification and gratifications while the entire state palpitate in fear of insecurity and consuming economic strangulation?  How did we get a civil service and police force that is cesspool of corruption?  How did we get here that Nigerians no longer have faith in the judiciary and justice becomes illusory?  Now, judges and justices are identified by their political sponsors and godfathers and filial affiliation in appointment.  Is knowledge and integrity genetic?

How did the insurgents and bandits acquire the sophisticated military grade weapons, surveillance drones and other platforms?  They make and circulate videos, collect ransoms and get supply of victuals with heavy logistics. They launch attack on our troops and travellers alike and get away with them, no consequences! 

Meanwhile the security agents are chasing protesters and yahoo boys and tracking them even to the gate of hell but do not appear to have any clue where kidnappers, insurgents and bandits are operating from?  And our military commanders see these criminals and terrorists as prodigal sons to be rehabilitated, criminals who have killed our troops, including generals and unleash terror on the people?  Criminals that have turned cannibals roasting and eating their victims! 

There has to be honest self-examination and retrospection. Let us stand before a mirror and take a good look at the image we cut.  If we do not like the way we look, breaking the mirror will not change our image, we have to change ourselves.  Nigeria has to change and we are the ones to fix it.  There are questions and more questions! 

At independence Nigeria was such a promising country with great potential to drive global leadership.  All that now is a pipe dream; we are struggling for the soul of the nation.  Who got us here? Nigeria is at “Bermuda Triangle”. We do not need outsiders to tell us that the country is not safe.  Just in the course of last week, the American Embassy issued travel advisory and security alert and directed non-essential elements of their embassy to leave Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of power.  Someone in the senate leadership is quoted as saying that insecurity will end two months after the next general election, 2027.  The state of insecurity in Nigeria should be of concern to all of us; we just can’t continue like this! 

The Ika people of Delta State have a saying that, “when you blame the kite for carrying the chick, you should also blame the hen that exposed its chick”.  We vote and chose our leaders, but if you disagree with this assertion and say that elections are rigged, Nigerians are the ones that rigged the election.  Come to think of it, what is actually not rigged in this country?  Even marriages are rigged, hospitals swap babies in the labour room and maternity wards.   At the end we have troubled homes, failed marriages and challenging parenting.

We cannot be surprised that there is corruption in this country because we are all in it together. We should not be surprised at the insecurity ravaging the country; we were here when some desperate politicians recruited them and imported some; go and ask former governor of Kaduna State.   

If we have to fix Nigeria, we have to first fix our brains and change the way we do things.  Nigerians even at old age are voting with their legs for greener pastures in Europe and America leaving the lush green vegetation of the rivers Niger and Benue, and the luxuriating savannah grass for criminals, bandits and terrorists to take over. Nigeria is not going to be fixed by political rhetoric and sloganeering, this should sink into our heads.  The path is strewn with banana peels and we are not going anywhere led by geriatrics or their minions and heir apparent.  As the saying goes, ‘what a snake sires will be like a snake’. 

It is only in Nigeria that one sees those who did not contest or stand in for party primary elections becoming senators and governors by magisterial declarations of the court and judiciary.  In Nigeria today, judgment is rigged the same way elections are rigged. 

We are the ones to fix Nigeria. You do not need to write to the European Union or to the International Criminal Court at The Hague to come and solve the problem of brutality and human rights abuses in Nigeria; it is our battle, we have to fight it.  You do not need scavengers and merchants masquerading as human rights activists and non-governmental organizations or civil society organizations that come out to protest only when the price is good. Corruption permeates the body system and fabrics of the nation and even the temples of worship are contaminated. 

•Kebonkwu Esq, an attorney, writes from Abuja. He writes via mikekebonkwu@yahoo.com