Nigerians have penchant for dark humour: Happy recession! Happy Strike!!, and then for regurgitating undigested mantra: Corruption is fighting back! In Kogi State, that puerile company of so-called political handlers led by Gov. Yahaya Bello, the undigested dark humour has been taking a notch higher: from destroying the presumed charm infested roundabouts, to unearthing ghost workers, he has now discovered a new specie: political civil servants.
Once, Bello represented a form of hope for the majority of Kogi people. But not anymore.
There is a horrifying parallel between George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’ and the ‘Big Brother Government’ of Gov. Bello. “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing” wrote Orwell. In Kogi there is a giant state-sponsored media industry manufacturing consent for the people; in print, on the television, on the airwaves, on every imaginable social media, an avalanche of dark humour and undigested mantra are unleashed on the people. The ‘Newspeak’ and the ‘doublespeak’ and the ‘alternative facts’ are belched on the psyche of the people relentlessly. There is a growing and disturbing world of government surveillance and censorship in the state- Big Brother Bello is Watching You! Legitimate dissension and opposition are clamped down and hunted into silence.The masses have lost the capacity to revolt, because a large majority have not been permitted to have standards of comparison, they have never even become aware that they are oppressed.
This is the tragedy.
Very unfortunate too, the youths have no benchmarks for peer-assessment, Kogi state is sandwiched among 10 other badly behaving governors and 10 other states that are giant oppressing feet upon the destinies of their people. The so-called lucky youths have been gagged by this talent and resource wasting titles; SA-this and SSA-that, and a little consoling dog tag: Honourable. And of course, regular pay. They have become the procurators of Gov. Bello in pelting the graves of the enraged with customised salt and picture-bearing dwarf bag of rice. Enemuneme-has become the vast indefinite roar of this army of youth who are now well adjusted in hell. These are aptly Bello’s ‘political civil servants’ curating the hell Kogi State has become. One can only imagine how Prince Abubakar Audu is turning, no- spinning in his grave.
The ‘sanity’ of these breed of leaders is equally disturbing. We usually equate sanity with justice, with fairness, with humanness, with prudence, with magnanimity, with ability to love and the capacity for compassion-especially for the poor and most disadvantaged. The world over rely on the ‘sane’ people to defend and preserve it from barbarism, madness of despots and from burying the poor and oppressed while they are still alive. But now, as the case of Kogi shows, it is exactly these ‘sane’ people who are in government and in leadership that are the most dangerous to the survival of the common man. As President Buhari reacted recently: “How can anyone go to bed and sleep soundly when workers have not been paid their salaries for months? In Kogi, last week Pa. Itopa a pensioner who has not been paid for over 20months died in Okengwe because he could no longer afford his prescriptions; in Oguma a teacher has now resorted to selling his belonging to feed his family; in Odolu, Agnes is a widow whose only child did not write JAMB this year because there was no salary to buy the form; in Isanlu Makutu, Toyin is still nursing the fracture sustained in an accident travelling to Lokoja for endless and fruitless screening; in Ankpa, Idah, Okene, Kabba, Lokoja the stories are the same. Yet Gov. Bello and his brigades go to sleep each night without qualms and without any form of nausea. We should no longer presume that because a man is ‘sane’, as a consequence, he is in his ‘right mind’. No, don’t get me wrong, Gov. Bello is ‘sane’ and it is for the pathological calmness of such sanity that we should be afraid, very very afraid.
If you want a picture of the life of the common man under Gov. Bello, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for 21 months.
The lesson for us all, is to learn to wean ourselves from this giant feeding bottle called Kogi Sate government. Let us come together to think of little start-ups, little cottage industry, small businesses and community organised farming; become your own government, only in these, do we have a secured and sustainable future. Then education is the foundation on which this superstructure can be anchored. The future that has come- institutional (Secondary or tertiary) education alone- will be greatly insufficient to earn you a life worth living. Self education, learning an art, skill or developing a mastery of your talents as added expertise to your education will stand you a competitive advantage in the knowledge economy that has come. YouTube, Facebook, twitter, and thousands of open source hubs are freely available for this purpose. Tap into them.
Now that the parade of the naked mad king is on. And the state is saturated with applause of dark humour and undigested mantras of how well-dressed the mad king is. We need an innocent bystander to dare shout it out: The King is naked. Yahaya Bello is naked, a naked liar. A pathological liar. The coinage “Political civil servant” is the evidence of his nakedness.
The Kogi political leadership may be broke and empty, but we are not broken as a people. We are resilient. We are hopeful. We will triumph. Government comes, government goes, we the people will decide who comes next. May the patience of the watchman who awaits daybreak be ours. And always remember:
Behind the clouds, is the sun, still shining!
– Michael Achile Umameh
University of Leeds, UK
umamehmichael@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment