Nigeria Is Finished, They Say -By Rotimi Fasan

There’s a new song that is fast spreading in the land. It is loud and often to be heard among a disaffected segment of the population that is increasingly synonymous with those opponents of the present All Progressives Congress, APC-led government that lost the last presidential election. Their grievance which has since morphed into an inciting song of lamentation is that Nigeria is finished.

They alternate this song with another line of lamentable agony, which is in fact the title of Chinua Achebe’s last book – There was a country. There was a country, they say, as if those words, rendered in the manner of an epitaph, are of oracular wisdom. Theirs is generally a prediction of doom for the country.

They see nothing good about Nigeria or deserving of the attention of Nigerians in this present time in which they failed to achieve their political objective. For them, the country could end in a ball of fire and they couldn’t be bothered. Some of them call the country a zoo and yet hope to take control of it or lament their loss of political power when they fail. The bile in them, which feeds on their destructive illwishes for the government of the day is fuelled more immediately by their hatred of the man their principals have refused to acknowledge as president- Bola Tinubu.

They forget that Tinubu is neither Nigeria nor does he own the country. The government he leads has come to stay, at least for the next four years, and it would go when its tenure ends after those four years or eight years, if it performs well enough to win the confidence of Nigerians. Yet, whatever injury is inflicted on the country now as a result of the dark prayers of the opponent of both the present administration and the president whose very person is revolting to them will remain for a long time to come.

Like most critics of his administration and his person, Bola Tinubu is a politician. Among his most implacable critics are his two major opponents in the last presidential election whose cue their supporters follow in their criticism and malevolent wishes for the country. It bears repeating that while genuine criticism of an administration and its leaders is a welcome patriotic duty, what should not be condoned are the malicious wishes and hate-filled speeches of those who think the basis of the country’s existence should end with the voided electoral ambition of their preferred candidates in the last presidential election.

This same people who exaggerate the failures of the country are the first to remind us of how our stock has dropped in value and we’ve suddenly become an object of ridicule before the rest of the world. They huff and puff about our lack of shame even when they are the very people shaming us before the world or calling the attention of the world to the most insignificant challenge facing the country. We saw a lot of this double speak in the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court verdict on the presidential election, when Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party went on a fishing expedition to the United States of America and was egged on by both supporters of his own party as well as those of the Labour Party.

They didn’t leave things within the confines of the courts or allow the courts to make their pronouncements in the US and Nigeria. They were everywhere calling both the target of their attacks, Tinubu, as well as the country he leads as president names no self-respecting people should call their country. While at this, they also scream in our face that the world is laughing at us as if they are not in the vanguard of those shaming the country. Their mixed electoral fortune, especially the serial losses that have since followed in the courts, have only served to aggravate them the more and driven them further down the road of treasonable conduct.

Let’s be clear, there is nothing to cheer about the fact that the courts now seem to have more say in electoral matters in our country than the electorate. But that is where our politicians have brought us all despite the disclaimers from those who would want us to believe only others and not their preferred politicians are guilty of the ineptitude that is making a mess of our electoral culture.

The Obidients, as supporters of the Labour Party leader, Peter Obi, are known (and will he ever transition to something else or he’s satisfied remaining a perpetual presidential candidate?), are easily the guiltiest in this regard. They attack everyone and everything Nigerian except their leader who is yet to demonstrate his readiness to do the hard work of an opposition leader with an eye to win office the next time around. Right now, he appears stuck in time and content to posture as an alternative (or is it a de facto) president. This principal of theirs has continued in the fashion of a man still on the campaign trail even though Aso Villa is fully occupied at the moment. But Obi prefers to make the rounds of the lecture circuit where he rails about sundry issues of (mis)governance.

His criticism, often laced with examples from abroad, particularly China in the pre-election months and years, is the trigger his base needs to launch their own attack on the country. Once Obi kicks into his statistics-driven narratives (10% of Nigerians, 30% of Chinese investors etc.), his besotted supporters start applauding without stopping to scrutinise some of his claims. Take, for example, the distinction he often draws between a consumptive economy like Nigeria as opposed to a productive economy like any of those foreign countries he cites with admiration. How does this type of comparison sit well in the mouth of a man who calls himself a trader, one who owns retail outlets where imported products are sold?

Now, he says the problem of Nigeria/Africa is bad leadership and believes politicians have turned Africa into a huge criminal enterprise. This is all true. But that didn’t start today. Certainly not after he lost the presidential election. Which means he and many of those he leans on for political patronage may well be among those same politicians he criticises. Or how long ago did he stand as a vice presidential candidate of the PDP before jumping ship to LP? Does the fact of his movement from PDP to LP, not saying anything about his APGA years, remove from his complicity in the political rot he freely excoriates? To fail to understand this fact is not to understand Nigerian politics. The difference between politicians is most times a matter of degree.