Our Beloved Country Is Bleeding

 By Sunny Awhefeada

 I do not know why countries or na­tions are thought of in feminine forms (she/her). Perhaps, it is a strategy to endear us to the place of our nativity and create a bond, the kind that exists between a mother and her child. Growing up, we sang songs that endeared Nigeria to us. Our young and impressionable minds glowed with no­ble ideas to which our sonorous voices gave clarion utterances. Men and wom­en who lived generations before this era also thought of their place of birth in endearing terms and they went to war in defence of their homeland.

*President Tinubu and Senate President Akpabio

Empires and kingdoms rose and fell in battles to defend the homeland. Even Nigeria’s national anthem and pledge have mem­orable and endearing words to configure our allegiance and love for “our beloved country”.

The old national anthem that was jettisoned in the 1970s was also quite idealistic if not inspiring in its percep­tion of Nigeria. And in time past, our leaders, aren’t they dealers really?, did talk about Nigeria with an uncommon sense of affection and allegiance. There was something dear and sacred whenev­er they mentioned the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Those observant enough will know that that allegiance died in August 1985. That was the year that General Ibra­him Babangida seized power in a palace coup.

At what point does the love for country die? The love for country is embedded in patriotism which is a sine qua non for na­tional advancement. Do people suddenly wake up to discover that patriotism or love for their country has vanished? No. It doesn’t happen that way. Patriotism gets attenuated gradually until it weak­ens to the point of being broken, but it never gets broken eventually. Its strain no matter how weak or tenuous does survive and with time it recoups what was lost and resurges with a burst of energy that will help galvanize the polity onto the path of progress. 

The factors that weak­en patriotism are mostly occasioned by people’s connivance or collusion with the rulers either knowingly or ignorantly, but more of the latter. When a people are not perceptive or didn’t go through the test of fire to attain independence, they are bound to be laid back and fall for the wiles of dealer-leaders who see a cobra and call it an earthworm. That was what happened to Nigeria beginning from 1985.

Ours has been an anguished history. It was true that the politicians of the Second Republic were scoundrels whom the soldiers led by grim-faced Buhari and Idiagbon came to chastise. The “dour duo” as the media described Buhari and Idiagbon because of their unsmiling faces thought and rightly so that cor­ruption and indiscipline were Nigeria’s major problems and hurdles against her march to greatness. The sage and famed novelist, Chinua Achebe, made the same submission in his pamphlet The Trouble with Nigeria.

Although, the “dour duo” went about sanitizing Nigeria the wrong way, the man who overthrew them in the guise of setting things right merely sold the people a pig in a poke. If the preceding regime, despite its draconian character, inspired hope in the populace, Babangida took the nation on the road to perdition to the point of breaking the people. But that strain of patriotism stoked the em­bers of resistance that birthed the hope that not only saw the people through the Babangida years, but also through the half a decade macabre rule of his suc­cessor, General Sani Abacha. The reality that military dictatorship capitulated in the last year of the last century was the tonic that was needed to rejig the nation’s patriotic zeal.

When the new century, the magical year two thousand, dawned it was just like another day or moment for Nigeria. The ills of the preceding era of coups, a civil war, brutal military dictator­ship, combined to form an apparition we couldn’t exorcise. If the preceding era was marked by corruption, indisci­pline, declining economy and political instability, newer and more horrendous indices birthed by the ills of old reared their heads, became hydra-headed and are now sources of untold affliction for the people. 

Insecurity manifesting in mil­itancy in the Niger Delta through pipe­line vandalism and kidnapping, Boko Ha­ram insurgency, banditry and herdsmen terrorism in the North; climate change and decline in agricultural productivity; failed infrastructure; the crash of educa­tion and health sectors; collapse of the manufacturing sector; and other ills that now appear inveterate have come to buf­fet the nation. The economy continues to spiral in a free fall just as corruption has become too massive and frighteningly endemic. The nation looks on in helpless­ness. Nigeria has not only emerged as the global poverty capital, but her people are struggling under the excruciating bur­den of multi-dimensional poverty.

The essence of “bleeding” in the title of this article derives from the very re­cent helpless submission by Mele Kyari, the Managing Director of the Nigeria Na­tional Petroleum Corporation Limited that there were four thousand eight hun­dred illegal connections through which crude oil is stolen in the five thousand kilometers of oil pipelines in Nigeria. This is bleeding. Knowing that petroleum is the soul of the nation’s acutely sick economy, the thought of carrying out such sabotage manifesting in crude oil heist is most reprehensible.

This is cor­ruption that equates war against our be­loved country, Nigeria. Like every other country, Nigeria is also addressed as she/ her. Thus envisaging her anatomically as female, we can equate the pipelines to her veins and arteries and the crude oil as her blood. What the economic saboteurs have done then is tantamount to ruptur­ing Nigeria’s veins on multiple spots and sucking her blood like the vampires that they are. The oil industry is both boom and doom for Nigeria. Right from its ear­liest days in 1974, it has been a source of ruckus for the ruling cabal.

Some still believe that one of the reasons for the fall of General Yakubu Gowon from power in 1975 was because some soldiers were not happy with the choice of the man in charge of the oil corporation. It has been said that the Second Republic Senate probe of the theft of N2. 8 Billion oil money under Buhari’s watch as pe­troleum minister in 1978 was a reason he supported the coup against President Shehu Shagari in 1983.

Nigeria has been bleeding non-stop through crude oil theft. Mele Kyari has said nothing new, but for the extent of the bleeding. There was a time crude oil theft prevented Nigeria from meeting her quota in the oil market. The nation was producing just eight hundred barrels per day instead of its assigned quota of one million two hundred barrels. 

The vol­ume of revenue Nigeria was losing was humungous. A nation with the largest armed forces in Africa couldn’t secure her pipelines which are her national assets and sadly the authorities turned to private citizens to help protect them. What a national embarrassment! There has been no love lost between the firm protecting the pipelines and the mili­tary with both parties saying; “you be thief….I no be thief….you be robber….I no be robber” in accusation and deni­al.

Former Central Bank Governor and ex-Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido, also recently decried the opaqueness of oil finances. The ruse for subsidy removal was that it was going to free up billions of dollars for other sectors of the econo­my. Unfortunately, more than six months after subsidy removal, the citizens are yet to see or feel the impact of the billions envisaged. 

Income remains at its lowest and infrastructure continues to sink in collapse. Yet, as stated much earlier, our love for our bleeding country will not die. We shall one day, rise and bandage the wounds and the bleeding will stop. That strain of patriotism will revive Nigeria. Yes, the day will come.

*Professor Awhefeada is a commentator on public issues