© Numero Unoma
It’s only been 8 years but feels like an eternity since our country’s latest bout of decline began. It reminds me very much of an experience I once had when I lived in a small estate of lovely town houses down at the bottom of Takwa Crescent as it curved to the right, behind Exclusive Stores in the Wuse 2 district of Abuja. It was 2012 or so, and none of us tenants had any idea that the landlord was in a dispute over the land title, or that the matter was in court. That is until one day I got a phone call from the security guard urging me to hurry back home. What could be so urgent, I wondered, from the faraway city I had travelled to at the time. There are people here removing everything, he explained. Removing everything? Yes, ma. I didn’t even know what ‘removing’ was meant to mean. Turns out he was right, they removed…everything.
They’d begun with the doors, windows and burglar proofing. This of course rendered any possessions within the buildings vulnerable to inevitable pilfering and plunder. Tenants who were at home scrambled to secure their belongings by moving them to safe storage. By the time I got back to Abuja, there was not much left in the house. Large furniture and bulky domestic appliances but no smaller ones or electronics. Books were left behind, but not the DVD collection of movies. I could only stand there gaping in horror as the dismantlers patiently continued to systematically disassemble each house, taking anything that could be re-used for a future build. I hastily recovered all that I could and fled for the hills. For a good while after that I dreaded going grocery shopping, because you could not turn into Exclusive Stores without seeing the progress, if one might call it that, in the distance. What had been a lovely estate soon began to look like a ruin. It traumatised me just to see it. The roofs had come off, and they had even dismantled the interlocked paving and carted it all away, stone by stone. Can you see how this could be a metaphor for Nigeria?
Indeed Abuja is known to have a lot of surreal stories, and most of us residents of the city have at least one to tell. The real estate stories are pretty commonplace, the laws surrounding tenancy etc do not seem to work as well in Abuja as they do in Lagos. In addition to that, it being the capital city, ‘The Booj’ also has an abundance of surreal political anecdotes as well. But the greatest surreal story of all to have come out of ABJ in recent years has got to be – hands down – the story of Nigeria itself.
Fast forward just over a decade to the present day. When I try to describe the current situation to my friends the world over, I find myself having a really hard time making them comprehend the situation at all, let alone properly. My friends, worldly and well travelled, living as far flung as Europe, America, the Caribbean and India, either think that I am making things up, or they believe I am giving a grossly exaggerated and melodramatic account of events. None of them has a compartment in their brain in which to process the pandemonium that is Nigeria right now. Tbh nor do I. My sisters, my brothers…which one of us does?!
Given a choice between laughing and crying, we Nigerians invariably choose the former. Our wonderfully generous men (I hail una o) were laughing at themselves over the past weekend, about how they have had excuses delivered to them awoof on a silver platter, to avoid any expense on Valentines Day. Send money, no network. Give me money, no cash. Take me out, no fuel. They forgot the one about staying in for a romantic evening. No light.
But many have no more laughs to give, not even of the hysterical type. There are all manner of videos doing the rounds, of Nigerians melting down. In utter exasperation they strip down to their birthday suits in public, and let their frustration all hang out. Outside the bank in the queue, inside the bank on top of the counter. But my favourite one was that curvy, shapely lady who seized the fuel pump from the gas station attendant and wielded it like a Kalashnikov, naked as the day she came into the world. She swung wildly from side to side with her weapon, taking out anyone who stood in its wide range. I swear if she’d had ammo in that gun, that would have been a mass shooting right there.
Dazed and confused, Nigerians seem to be wearily toiling and plodding through the final days before the election with tunnel vision, keeping their eyes on the prize, albeit not really knowing what the prize is, and how it might affect their lives going forward. That glimmer we see ahead as we squint into the baking hot sun, is it water? Is it the oasis that the parched man in the desert sees in the mirage before him? Can we dare to hope?
If the last eight years have felt like eternity x infinity, then understand that no matter who wins the election on the 25th, we still have a long haul ahead of us. There will be no quick fix, no magic bullet. In fact, statistically, there is a mathematical probability that we will not recover from this, going into the future.
All those who can be given the credit for the hot mess will still be living in our midst, post 25 February. The buck always stops with the government, whoever they may be, whichever party they belong to, or whichever armed force for that matter. However, none of this could have been possible without the cooperation of a whole battery of corrupt officials both in government and its agencies, as well as in the private sector. Let’s call it by name. The banks have proven themselves to be some of the most corrupt institutions ever. That sickening creepazoid Godwin Emefiele, let’s start with him. Look at the utter muddle of a maelstrom he has unleashed on the already repressed people of Nigeria, who persevere through thick and thin, and have just kept morphing and transmuting, against odd after odd after odd.
These days I find so much comfort in scriptures such as Exodus 34:7, and I feel no pity for the 3rd and 4th generations of Emefiele et al, who will pay for the savage sadism with which they have bestowed the ordinary Nigerian, even as they themselves enjoy privileges that they have never once rightfully earned. In so doing, they also corrupt the offspring of righteous citizens, who look at Emefiele et al, and then look at their poor long-suffering powerless parents, and draw their own conclusions. Guess where they recognise a winning formula? Yup, follow the money. The high street banks with their racketeering and profiteering are of course no better. Unscrupulous, they take advantage of the suffering of Nigerians, compounding the problems on the ground, while acting as though there is nothing they can do about it.
Naturally, the now public private ATM of Nigeria, NNPC, has also entered the fray, with their NUPENG cohorts and the rest of the extended family of gangsters with legit IDs. I am nauseated right down to the bone marrow by what we have become. I am embarrassed about even trying to explain it to anybody, because…how….how in heaven’s name does one explain THIS?!
The trouble with situations like these is that it’s not as though you can just turn the tap off and stop the flow. The flow of corruption, of disintegration, of suffering and depravity. The decline, the hate, despair and decay. Decay of values, of infrastructure, of all that has ever been good about Nigeria.
I fear that these 8 years might be turned on their side and become infinity. I know, I know, that’s a bit pessimistic, but the sheer size of the problem that is Nigeria, and the unrelenting population growth during all of this, come together to make something that to me seems to be nothing short of a perfect storm. It doesn’t help that we might soon get a next set of bad actors to steer us down a brand new road to perdition. I have just one word for you: Shituation.
I am hoping and praying that this time around we will not just remain content with making jolly slap-stick memes about the three presidential candidates, rather get down to the business of jolly well getting rid of all those characters in the political arena who have become warped caricatures of themselves even in real life.
Incidentally, the other meme that was doing the rounds just before Valentines was the one that said that not every boo is a boo. Some are taboo, it said. Some are booshit. Some are boodogs, while some are Tinuboo, Meanwhile, the meme concluded LOL, some are oloribooruku. For me there was one boo glaringly absent from the list. I have been referring to him as my boo for years now, and one person actually looked at me with a double take and amazed eyes. You mean you dated him?!
Normally I’d say for crying out loud, don’t be so literal! But right now, abeg take me literally…read my lips…okay read my words then:
Boo!! Harry up and go!