By Olumide Goodness Adeyinka
Waking up into a fresh Saturday morning with breaking news of bomb explosions in Damaturu, Yobe State and Maiduguri, Borno State, where properties were burnt and many people killed is one too many fatal stories in the annals of Nigeria. We simply do not have a government in Nigeria! Our nation is severely plundered, its resources severely looted and our people are severely disempowered to know what to do. A nation so endowed by nature and providence has become a country of rogues, scamps and scoundrels; unfortunately those who feel the brunt and the burden of the assault are too confused to define their destiny. We search the dictionary for words to express our predicament, is it corruption or nepotism, leadership ineptitude or followership complacency, should we call it corporate malfeasance or grand public larceny; some says it is divide and rule tactics and others call the Nigeria entity a contraption. None of the above rightly captures the present situation in Nigeria.
The truth should be told to all, Nigeria is under the siege of War!
Unknown to most is the fact that certain of us with a disparate entrenched interest have declared war on the majority of the masses of our country. The cult of arbitrary violence has unleashed their terror on the populace. Our oppressors over the years have built their weaponry of war within us unsuspectingly. Their oppression over us is institutionalized, it is systematic, sometimes internalized, very much economical, traitorously social and infernally indirect to the extent that majority of Nigerians are heavily burdened, mentally assailed and physically troubled with extended adverse conditions.
If you feel I am simply an alarmist, then you need to question your sanity. Are the people not confused, are we not perplexed in a state of extreme aggression with the attendant social disruption and high mortality rate? Guns have become the instruments of our throttle and suppression. And in the midst of this roguish calamity, all we hear from the goons in power is their incapability to arrest the situation. There is new calamity each day
Nigeria is under the siege of war. We are at war!
The aggression is not external. The battle is not from another planet. No! The war against us as a people is not from another nation. Our assailants are members of our sovereign family. They are the ones who have sworn to enrich themselves even if the population is plummeted; they have vowed to take our commonwealth into their private pockets in grand avarice and spite us with their ostentatious living. They put government in power to do their biding. When we vote sincerely, they arrange “boys” to disenfranchise us and declare a result that is not in the books. They are the ones who tell our Court Judges what to read as verdicts. They renege on their words again and again to our faces. Remember they told us the Biometrics for the election would be a verifiable tool to legitimize the results so declared out of all common sense. We believed, only to be told through the courts that we are less human to hold them to their words. We swallowed the insults too.
Nigeria is under the siege of war. Behold those who fight to destroy us are so few!
They set up armed militancy against us under the guise of resource control and religion, and we swallowed the bait. When we got overwhelmed with the Boko Haram sect and asked what the puppet government will do to protect Nigerians, those who besieged us replied us through same established authority of government that they are not equipped to stop the assault. The Niger-Delta militants who waged war against the entire country, disrupting our engagement so that our oppressors can feast on our resources, were settled and paid
Sixty thousand naira monthly stipends while some of them were sent abroad. Yet when the civil service asked for pennies on a dollar, our oppressors sent to the government to deny it.
Nigeria is under the siege of war. Publish it in Maiduguri and declare it in Abeokuta!
We asked for good roads, our rulers gave us tollgates. We complained about epileptic electricity, they asked us to pay more for darkness in increased tariffs. As if that was not enough, our suppressors suddenly blighted us with a ludicrous proposal to remove an inexistent fuel subsidy. We are left to dialogue while they squeeze the little left in our foreign reserve. When we ask questions, they simply tell to shut up. In all of this egregious experience our people only bark at each other in total submission to their caprices. Who are the suppressors of Nigerians? What do these oppressors say?
Nigeria is under the siege of war. Yet the people so oppressed are many more in number!
Our oppressors are men like us; the suppressors of our common destiny as a nation are people who talk with stiff neck and lofty mouth as they scoff and speak wickedly against oppression. Their strength is firm and they are not plagued like ordinary Nigerians. Pride is their necklace and to brew violence is like their outer garments. Their eyes bulge with abundance for they have grown fat and sleeky. Their houses are full of deceit, and the cause of the fatherless means nothing to them. They deny the right of the needy, and their wickedness is to the heavens. Their houses are with high walls of bloodshed and so they seem to be safe. Their bull breeds without failure, neither does their cows experience miscarriage. Their children spend their days in excessive wealth, and so dance on the street to oppress. Strong are those that malign us but they are just mere men like us. Though demonically possessed, but they are still humans like us.
Nigeria is under the siege of war. Yet the band of oppression can be broken!
Where is the face of He who sets all things in order for justice and equity? Is the Judge of all the earth asleep? I returned and learnt that God only remove oppression from those who resist it. The shackle of slavery only breaks with a struggle – a struggle for liberty and justice in the land, a struggle for equity and balance within the population. Help only comes when we are ready to be free, when we remove the veil of deceit and embrace the solidarity for freedom. When enough really becomes enough, the people shall rise from their slumber of servitude and change their songs of patronage of the oppressors. Exploitation and oppression must certainly produce the fruit of resistant starting with a seed of struggle. This is the time to struggle for emancipation.
Nigeria is under the siege of war. The people must arise for freedom!
How far is our victory if we take the path to liberation? What is the cost of our freedom if we do not relent in the struggle? I returned again and realize it is just an inch below the surface of a revolt. I also learnt from my return that the cost is already being paid in installment. Nigerians are daily murdered anyway! Then I asked why are we not free? The answer that came to me is why are we not out to demand our liberty, why are we slothful and gullible thinking the wickedness against us will stop on its own?
Nigeria is under the siege of war. Only resistance can guarantee freedom!
Let all the oppressed arise to demand their victory. Arise, and you will see victory written engraved in gold in the gates of an egalitarian society where equal access to our common resources and decision-making power is guaranteed to every Nigerian. However, liberty and freedom comes with the first step of an assertive demand for what truly belongs to all of us. Let the majority arise against the very few who daily burdens us.
Nigeria is under the siege of war. Our fight must not be delayed again. It is now!!!