Greek mythology teaches us that a woman named Pandora was the first created goddess on earth. On the day Pandora was betrothed, she was given a storage box filled with all manner of evils as a wedding gift. And one by one as she opened the box, all the evils therein flew out freely into the world. As the evils were let out, something stirred up inside of Pandora as she shut her box, leaving one evil trapped in. That evil was HOPE.
There is a widespread belief that Nigeria is a complicated, intricate, and flummoxing organism where wrongs rule and doing right is impossible. Many muse around in a miserere how much they despise rampant injustice, ravaging inequity, and frenetic unfairness regarding man’s inhumanity to man taking place in the country. And all may be right about their sequitur. But ask around the world. Probe haters of Nigeria and drill despisers of Nigerians. Query those ones who have refused to agree that a scintilla of good will one day come out of the country, and you will still find even many voices quipping that Nigerians are a peculiar people with an extraordinary bounce-back ability from oppression and hard times.
Hope drives Nigerians. Hope keeps them alive when government policies and implementation of the same should have entombed them in despair. Hope keeps them sprinting to the finish line, whatever that is, when their leaders are sprinting to foreign lands with their purloined patrimonies. Hope energises them in the face of brazen robbery, corruption, and cumshaw by a coterie of cruel and corrupt leaders. Nigerians’ bounce-back ability rests on their tested tenacity and tried intestinal fortitude. Their innate urge to keep going even when all is stagnant is nonpareil. Hope drives Nigerians.
I ran into a fella recently here in the United States who once was a heavy-hitter with the Nigerian government. He went on a tirade against the same system from where he fed fat. On-and-on, he blew hot in a tongue lash on Nigeria as if he was never part of the problem. You hear them everywhere as if they were never part of the disease that’s threatening our hope from standing erect. At the end of the tirade, he said, “But, I have hope for Nigeria. Nigeria will be great”. Really? In any sports competition, hope for goals doesn’t come true until the team sets a goal to score. Rhetorical hymnal of hope without setting goals is nothing but buccal retch of rubbish and hallucination. The belief that what a man confesses will automatically become a reality is fat phantasm. Any school of thought that teaches confessing as a stand-alone winning weapon in life is nothing but a teaching tribune of deception, debauchery, and flimflam.
Confessing based on hope without setting goals is the beginning of foolishness and zaniness. In consistent collaboration with confessing must be efforts and work. What a man confesses and works hard to make happen is the only dream that has a chance of coming true. Is Nigeria working in tandem with her expressed hope? Where is hope for the people without help from their government? Where is hope without set goals? Over 80 million or 64 per cent of the population live below poverty line; 120 million people across all ages are poor and hungry; 37 per cent of our children under five years old are stunted, 18 per cent wasted, and 29 per cent underweight. Only 10 per cent of children aged 6-23 months are fed appropriately; over 10 million Nigerian children of school age are out of schools with no knowledge and skills. Two-thirds of the Nigerian population today is below the age of 35, and youth unemployment was 42 per cent in 2016 and climbing.
By 2050, the United Nations projects that Nigeria will become the third largest population in the world. How does Nigeria feed a ballooning population tomorrow when plans to feed the people today are haphazard? Where are rock-solid plans to provide jobs, housing, and infrastructure in the future to unemployed youths? If our leaders have convinced us that they have a clue, we hear it only in delivered papers, in seminars and workshops, and on bully pulpits during campaigns. How do paper policies translate into proper living? My heart wants to hope that Nigeria will one day be great. But friends, it is a heavy lift in this season.
For the guy who was appointed a minister, and the one elected a governor or senator, opportunity to serve in government is perceived an opportunity to loot loud and loom large. For 16 years, one Nigerian political party smashed and pulverised the treasury and dug a big hole of nightmare with which we still wrestle till today. In two years, its successor political party, filled with crossovers from the old pillaging party mixed with a horde of hyaenas from other folds, has been in charge. Alas, the new ruling party is gradually, and brick-by-brick sculpting Nigeria into a free-for-all territory of clandestine corrupt syndicate with bigoted cover-ups as its hyped hymnals, and ethnic coziness-in-corruption as its sing-song. This new party now protects a certain clan as it goes full-length delivering others into the hands of Herod, the hangman, for torment.
And I don’t want to write about ex-pension axe man, Abdulrasheed Maina, one who once served, stole, and absconded; then, brought back under the cover of darkness to serve and steal again. Maina is a tiny bit out of a haystack of serving thieves even in a season of ‘Change’.
And where is the captain? Aloof, frosty, offish, and seemingly unbothered. Yet, many things are wrong with the decaying system we were promised would improve when power changed hands. Yes, we notice a few changes, but what about these hangers-on who shove you one hundred steps backwards as you surge only one-step forward? What made Lucifer become the devil were the angels he recruited working with him. What will make a good leader bad or better, and a bad leader, good or worse, are men working closely with him.I had so much hope in 2015 when Muhammadu Buhari became President. But some money-mongering angels of darkness in powerful positions are working against the man in whom 15 million Nigerians invested their votes and hopes. Is the man voted for as President two years ago truly running the country today? My friends, HOPE is now held hostage.
Nigeria, an island of wealth, hemmed by a sea of poverty, and captained in many departments by unrepentant galere and a gang of callous corrupt characters who use religion and ethnicity as covers. Who is that one person around whom Nigerians will fight evil and win for the people? Was the crusade to fight corruption a fluke and flake from the beginning, or the fighters have lost the fire and focus? Whose ox have Nigerians stolen that they deserve all these ruthless rogues dashing their hopes?
Now, we know that Greek mythology tutors us that Hope was the last evil left in Pandora’s box. Is Hope evil? In my faith parlance, no! Hope means anticipating a change with pleasure and confidence in the face of discouraging indices. Hope provides all of us with a sense of destination and the energy to get started and complete projects on hand. So, I will continue to hope that Muhammadu Buhari will lead Nigeria to turn the sharp corner. He is obviously the lone soul fighting corruption in Nigeria; very many others are just hanging around to cash in on hapless Nigerians. And they are men this President trusts. I only hope that Mr. President will muster the boldness and rid his verandah of these mean men with mercantilist agenda who are out for themselves and themselves alone; and who mean well not for him and Nigeria. This is only my Hope!
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