The valueless life of the Nigerian
It would appear that every household in Naija that has not been touched by disaster is just waiting for its turn. It is no longer an issue of if, but when it would happen and how grievous it would be when it happens.
This Hobbesian state of living in a country so blessed is not the magnet that attracts the investors that our clueless leaders are wooing with their mouth. The only legitimate investor that shows up in a state of anarchy are the merchants of death who sell poison and jet out with their proceeds before they are nabbed. They are likely the ones that our yet to be unveiled new visa policy would attract.
A people living in peace without fear are a magnet for investors. I guess that is why it is said that a good wine needs no bush. As I write, the government in Abuja is trying to get security agents to rescue some German archaeologists kidnapped at Janjala area of Kagarko local government area according to local news. It is not a shock that this is happening, as it is not the first time that expatriates are targeted. These ones are making headlines because they are foreign nationals.
We live in a nation run by a leadership that has no respect for the welfare of its people except during electoral campaigns. A people infected with a virus called - making it populate us. Those who have been bitten by that bug have one motto alone - the end justifies the means. Hardly an hour passes without a family negotiating for the life of their loved ones from kidnappers. Some are so hungry for the next fix they’ll settle for peanuts while those high on something else would take the money and still waste their victim. They know that they can get away with it, and very often, they do no thanks to lack of the zeal to really crack cold cases and the lack of the technological capacity to do so.
From time to time as recently happened in Benin, the police ‘burst’ a kidnapping ring, try them by video and help the suspects succumb to the wounds allegedly sustained during ‘the exchange of gunfire with the police’. That is how the story begins and ends. The mob constitutes itself into a prosecutor, judge and executioner of suspects because they know there is no judicial procedure in the country. Nobody believes anymore in the capacity of our security agencies to deal with lawlessness. Most families confronted with kidnappers’ would surreptitiously negotiate and pay ransom than involve the police in areas where there is no press or social media reach.
Where do we count the number of lives wasted by lawlessness? Is it in Odi, Zaki Biam, Nasarawa, the Plateau, Taraba, Enugu, Agatuland or Southern Kaduna? Virtually everywhere, the state is failing the citizen and the citizens are employing extra-judicial means of preserving the sanctity of human. Crime and criminality pays more than hard work.
Where people who steal the equivalence of the budget of one or two states combined enjoy the judicial shield provided by senior advocates, legality is usually not a defense for the preservation of the life of a locally nabbed suspect all recorded on phone and uploaded to go viral. Viral videos do incalculable damage to the image of a country and the psyche of its citizens.
It is basically pointless to ask the state to wake up from its lethargy and restore sanity. The barons of sleaze, whose penchant for incredible looting have brought us to our knees are in control crossing the political rubicon for the remission of their sins. The fear, expressed years ago of a Hobbesian state in which people troop out for selfpreservation and sanity have driven many to their deaths from the Sahara to the Mediterranean.
The amount of money ‘borrowed’ for the perilous journey is usually enough to start a petty business, but how do you sustain a business against the insurmountable odds here. We are now targets of criminal gangs, from the failed state of Libya to the gallows of Asia and repeatedly now, the streets of post-apartheid South Africa. It is devastating to listen to the agonies of our compatriots in South Africa knowing that two years after it was elected, the government in power has no envoy anywhere in the world.
It is obvious to anyone following the news that the Nigerian has no value at home. A citizen without value in his home country is open to abuse and even wastage anywhere else. It’s a shame that now, the mob have resorted to self-help, targeting the businesses of those who apparently have no hands in the xenophobic attacks in South Africa, forgetting that these conglomerates employ hundreds of their fellowmen. In established climes, there are other ways of targeting businesses without arson, but the mob is too far off our rockers to understand this. Make a Nigerian life count at home and his value is shored up anywhere else. If they are not valued at home, they simply become nuisance anywhere else.