By Sulaiman Salawudeen
There comes a time in the life of a people when they must confront unsavoury truths about their own existence and ask themselves whether what they call a country actually really exists beyond and is anything more than just a hollow shell! Nigeria, continuously touted as Giant of Africa, has become a phantom, mere geographical expression without substance, a tragic experiment that has failed its citizens so egregiously that many are compelled to declare: Nigeria is nowhere anymore!
To such, what is seen is just vast expanse of land where millions of people are trapped in survivalist struggles, condemned to navigate daily horrors of insecurity, corruption, and economic strangulation. The very essence of a functioning country has evaporated, amidst the din and flurry of errors that collude to reduce modest hopes to tall dreams, and basic pursuits to unreachable imaginings!
Cost
of living here has become death sentence for the masses. Prices of food,
fuel, and basic necessaries rise with the ferocity of a wildfire, consuming the
meager earnings of ordinary citizens. Inflation is no longer a statistic; it is
a weapon wielded against the poor. Families are forced to choose between
feeding their children and paying rent, between buying medicine and affording
transport. Government, instead of confronting this crisis, appears complicit in
its perpetuation. Policies are crafted not to alleviate suffering but to enrich
a tiny elite, some of which loot the treasury with abandon.
Insecurity
has become the defining feature of life in Nigeria. Insurgencies keep raging in
the northeast, bandits terrorise the northwest, kidnappers prowl the
highways in the southern flanks, while ritual killers unleash hell across every
community. Armed robberies are routine, and killings have become so normalised
that they barely make headlines anymore. The blood of innocents stains the soil
daily, yet perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. Instead, they are
shielded by political patrons, protected by compromised security agencies, or
simply allowed to vanish into the fog of official negligence.
Armed robbers and ritual killers
caught upon solid intelligence, movement tracking and community combing, as
well as bandits and insurgents rounded up in killing fields are often released
to enjoy undeserved freedom through laughable official policies and scandalous
schemes! The state has abdicated its most basic responsibility: protection of
life! Citizens live in fear, barricading themselves behind iron gates, praying
that the next knock on the door is not death itself! A land where human life is
quite cheap, where murderers walk free, where corruption and stealing in public
offices have become accepted as norms, cannot be called a country. It is a
jungle masquerading as a republic.
The
rot of mis-governance is the albatross that has dragged Nigeria into this
abyss. Leadership has become synonymous with plunder. Public offices are
treated as personal estates, revenues as loot to be shared, governance as mere
charade! Accountability is a foreign concept, transparency joke. The opacity of
conducts in public offices by officials ensures that billions, even trillions,
vanish without trace, while hospitals decay, petrol perpetually hiked,
electricity on the run, schools collapse, and roads crumble. Every
administration promises reform, yet every administration reforms nothing!
Elections, instead of being instruments of renewal, are rituals of recycling
incompetence.
Votes
are bought, results are manipulated, and the will of the people is trampled
underfoot. The consequence is a political class that is unanswerable to the
masses, ruling not by legitimacy but by subterfuge and manipulation. This is
not democracy; it is organised fraud.
The anti-corruption agencies are
toothless bulldogs, barking loudly but never really biting anyone. High-profile
thieves are paraded before cameras, only to be released quietly through
“technicalities” in courts. The message is clear: stealing is not a crime in
Nigeria if you stole enough and shared with the right people. This
institutionalised misconduct has crippled development, destroyed trust, and
entrenched poverty. A country where corruption is rewarded and honesty punished
cannot survive.
Killings
that plague Nigeria are not random acts of violence; they are symptoms of a
deeper collapse. Security forces are either overwhelmed, compromised, or
outrightly complicit. Bandits routinely overrun garrisons, killing scores of
soldiers and officers kitted with outdated fire-power! Victims are left to bury
their dead and move on, while perpetrators thrive. This is not failure; it is
betrayal. When government cannot or will not protect citizens, it forfeits its
claim to legitimacy. Nigeria has crossed that line.
The tragedy of Nigeria is compounded
by the fact that these ills are avoidable. The country is blessed with immense
natural resources, fertile land, and a vibrant population.
Yet
mismanagement has turned abundance into scarcity, potential into despair. The
result is a paradox: a rich country with poor citizens, a giant crippled by its
own leaders. For and in Nigeria, poverty is not destiny; it is choice. Yes. The
country is underdeveloped, not by accident; it is underdeveloped by design!
The
reality today is that Nigerians are abandoned, betrayed, and brutalised. They
survive not because of the state but in spite of it. Communities organise their
own vigilance groups, families rely on remittances from abroad, and individuals
hustle endlessly to fill the void occasioned by government failure. The state
exists only to extract taxes, enforce decrees, and protect the elite.
Where
then is Nigeria? The country exists only in textbooks and diplomatic circles,
but banished in practical terms from daily lives of citizens. Until
accountability is enforced, until corruption is punished, until life is valued,
Nigeria will remain a ghost, and ghosts do not build nations; they haunt them.
The
question is not whether Nigeria can be saved, but whether Nigerians can summon
the courage to bury the remains and build something whole new.
*Salawudeen is a commentator on public
issues (sulaimansalawudeen@gmail.com)
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