A conspiracy of evil forces

Last week, my friend did not give me a chance to respond after he announced his vote. On Wednesday morning, he woke me up with a mournful voice, boiling with rage inside.

“It is worse than you ever imagined”, Opalaba announced. “There is a conspiracy of satanic forces. Even the visually impaired can see it. How can a country prosper with such an alignment of evil forces against it? This is becoming unbearable for me.”

“You sound terrible, my friend” I said. “Last week you were upbeat. Though you didn’t tell me who you were voting for, you were damn sure who wouldn’t get your vote. What is the matter now? Is it the postponement? But the new date is upon us and before you know it, it’s all over.”

“It’s more than the postponement. It’s about the remote causes of the postponement. It’s about our mental and spiritual state as a country. It’s about wickedness in higher places. It’s about powers and principalities. It’s about the rulers of the darkness of this world who refuse to let the country make progress. My friend, it’s about our godlessness, soullessness, and shamelessness. It’s about an inspiring ideal that confronts a dreadful reality.”

At this point, I knew Opalaba was up to something profound that has agitated his sharp mind for some time. I chose to listen rather than interrupt with questions which might provoke negativity.

“This is a serious matter, and I am absolutely not in a joking mood today. We approach the 59th anniversary of our existence as an independent country with little to nothing to show for it in terms of physical development. But more problematic is the reality of our moral degeneration. Churches and mosques litter our land-space while we deviously pay obeisance to mammon. We have sold our soul to the god of money, the root of all evil.

“Poverty is a terrible disease that afflicts millions of our fellow citizens. But as the Prince of Peace once remarked, the poor have always been and will always be around. We were poor at independence. The Brits fleeced us to the bones. But our leaders inspired the best in us with outstanding examples of thrift and modesty. They embarked on the development of human resources across the land with the West laying initial example of investment in public good.

“Convinced that education is an effective antidote against poverty, they invested heavily in public education and we and our generation are evidence of their success. As politicians, they had to seek the mandate of the people. But they held their heads high and only needed to point to their fulfilled promises. The people trusted them. They needed neither to buy votes nor to deceive.

“Of course, even at that time, there were enemies of people’s progress. In every generation, there are progressives who care for the masses, and there are reactionaries whose self-interest is always the gauge of public policy. In the days of the advancement of free education policy, naysayers railed against the benefit of the scheme.

“Those naysayers are no more, but they left behind equally terrible offspring. Oka bimo sile o bi oro (The cobra can only produce poisonous offspring). For these modern cobras, feeding school children amounts to bribery. Providing loans for poor market-women selling plantain or pepper and tomato for a living is vote buying. They are children of their fathers who decried free education because it would prevent children from helping their parents on the farm. This is the mental state of exploiters. They are happy if ordinary people are poor and dependent. For, they could use them at appropriate time during elections by buying their PVCs or tossing #1000 which doesn’t fill their pot of soup.

“In a North Central state where his father has always been the feudal lord, it is alleged that a senator has disbursed in the last week of campaign more than 800 million Naira in one city. His associates fanned out across the state with truckloads of money to share out in their various communities. Your guess is as good as mine where that money comes from. Why are there no developmental projects? Why is there no public infrastructure?

“In the southwest, the pacesetter region and the origin of all good developments that other regions emulated in those days, where our hardworking parents were satisfied with their modest means but sought and appreciated the provision of public goods by the government, a new language of empowerment has emerged. In Ogun State, a law-maker used his constituency funds to provide town halls, classrooms, bore holes, etc. Some party leaders were allegedly not impressed because they were not empowered personally. They would rather those funds were given to them to share.

“You could say that our people are so impoverished that their sense of right and wrong has been fatally assaulted. You would be partially right. But you could not compare the level of poverty today with what used to stare our parents in the face in the 50s and 60s. Yet they were not this morally bankrupt. Those who were harassed to join NNDP to avoid huge tax assessment (agbeka) had their game plan. They knew which party was going to get their votes. Of course, we also know how things turned out with the rigging industry.

“Our parents were poor, but we had good education, thanks to a sense of public good that animated politicians imbued with the ideology of life more abundant for all. However, generations following us were not that lucky. Theirs was the era of new breed politics masterminded by the corrupt institution of the military and their sponsors.

“With a conviction that anyone can be bought and pocketed, the military led an era of impunity and gross indiscipline. This culminated in the neglect of rural development and public education from primary and secondary to higher institutions. Subsequent governments did not fare better.

“This criminal neglect left the country with hordes of youths with no skills to offer to secure gainful and honorable employment. With sheer muscle, they massed on the streets of our major cities, hopeless and visionless. Politicians take advantage of their hopelessness, arm them with weapons, and deploy them to maim and kill opponents, snatch ballot boxes, or burn down INEC offices.

“The Yoruba know too well that if we spend our fortune on building mansions all over the land and we fail to build up our children, those children will end up pawning off the mansions. The same is true of the nation, and it is what is happening before our eyes. Do we really expect our hopeless youths to have a sense of respect for national assets? What does a utility pole mean to them but a bunch of wires they could vandalize and sell to make ends meet? What passion does an INEC office conjure for them if they are offered #5000 to burn it down?

“To make matters worse, these youths don’t even now have many role models in the adult population. Those in positions of authority, by virtue of their education and/or parentage have hardly demonstrated any love of nation above self. They acquire assets by dubious means. They use their positions to thwart the cause of justice and good governance. The allegations of corrupt enrichment against the CJN should not have divided a nation with a sense of common good. But few in the political class have such a sense. Many see everything in terms of their self-interest.

“Governors want to replace themselves with their clones. Thus, a governor running for a senate seat on the platform of one party sponsors his protege to run as governor as candidate of an opposition party. How do you even describe this kind of lunacy? And he chose the presidential campaign rally to unleash terror on the president and party leaders. And is it alleged that he has the president’s blessing?  Stranger than fiction! I am done contemplating any good coming out of this contraption.”

Opalaba thus ended his solemn reflections on mother Nigeria. And he hung up without a goodbye.