Lunatics don’t unite!

There is a parable concerning a lunatic asylum with thousands of inmates. Conditions were unsanitary and abominable with not enough food, virtually little opportunity for self-improvement, non-existent medical care, and rampant outbreaks of deceases.

Remarkably only three guards who usually had their backs turned towards the inmates, ignoring their needs and making merry with the funds meant for their upkeep, controlled all of them. It was evident that if the inmates united they could overpower the guards and improve their lives. When asked if they were not afraid this could happen, the guards replied “it can never happen because lunatics don’t unite!”.

This is analogous to the situation in which Nigerians find themselves today. Rather than unite to achieve a common beneficial purpose, a spreading insanity disunites us to our continued detriment. A symptom of this disunity is the quit notice to Igbos living in the North issued by Arewa Youths. Instead of learning the lessons of history, the youths are gearing up to repeat the mistakes.

Even though the 19 Northern Governors condemned this provocative and uncalled for quit notice as having no basis in either law or common sense, a former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Prof Ango Abdullahi supported it. Thankfully Ango is not the North, he is only one of over 70 million Northerners. He is of little consequence and speaks only for himself since he has not been elected to represent anyone. He exhibited little cogent reasoning and a warped interpretation of history when he fallaciously attempted to justify his support. His conclusion that the major problem of the poor people of the North, is the poor people from the South-East is not only superficial but also illogical. It’s the same warped thinking that has misled the poor people of the South-East to believe that the rest of Nigeria is the cause of their problems.

The Inspector-General of Police quite correctly asserted that “no individual has the authority to stop any Nigerian from pursuing his daily bread in any part of the country because these are rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution”. Well said, but reality is that nobody is at peace in the nation today and nobody is safe. He should ensure that the constitution is placed in the graves of all the victims. The Minister of Information Lai Mohammed claims that Nigerians are safe everywhere and should feel free to reside in any part of the nation. This is sheer bunkum. On a daily basis suicide bombers kill the innocent in the North, rampaging “herdsmen” spread their murderous activities further south, armed robbers operate on every highway, and most citizens are afraid to sleep in their own houses let alone elsewhere. The internet is overflowing with videos of victims of ritualistic practices, brazen daylight bank robberies, public lynching, and extra-judicial killing or maltreatment of the public by Nigerian security forces.

If the Federal Government declares they have the capacity to maintain law and order, then why aren’t they doing so? Regrettably at a time when we need unity to solve our problems, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has approved five new political parties to make us more divided than ever! Although the ruling APC is indisputably disunited, disorientated, and detached from reality, the solution lies in political reform not new parties. Indeed, there is no indication that our elected officials irrespective of party affiliation possess the capacity, competence and patriotism to move the nation forward. Nothing exemplifies this more than the bruhaha over the South-East Development Commission (SEDC) Bill. The resurgence and increasing support for Biafra, indicates that the peoples of the South-East feel marginalized, and with some justification. In response, the House of Representatives has once again called seriously into question its’ ability to act sensibly in the national interest. Their unwise rejection of the SEDC Bill only lent credence to accusations of a “calculated attempt” to side-line peoples of the South-East.

Thankfully the Senate restored some sanity when a similar Bill scaled through its second reading in the Upper Chamber one week later. The only possible justification for not supporting the establishment of SEDC is that Development Commissions are unnecessary in the first place. All such Commissions have been enmeshed in financial scandals, have failed to have any impact commensurate to their massive funding, and have proved to be an unnecessary duplication of government functions. They are in themselves an admission of failure by the three tiers of government which are supposed to effectively comprise the National Development Commission.

The demands for Development Commissions proves that our disunity and insecurity is a manifestation of poverty, not a matter of ethnicity or religion. There is an adage that it is only when there is not enough meat in the soup that you look at the hand of the person eating with you! Nigeria’s problems are self-inflicted. If we cannot establish the value of truth in our society, then we will continue to have injustice. It appears as if human depravity will remain widespread in Nigeria simply because in our collective madness we refuse to learn from history the senselessness of violence and threats, and the benefits of unity of purpose.