As we step out of the comfort of Christmas ritual and we trudge gingerly into a new year, 2014 Nigeria is on my mind. Will Nigeria 2014 be anything different from Nigeria 2013? Will Nigerians continue to live as sub-humans in 2014? Will the president and the rest of the political class behave differently? I don’t think so.
Year 2014, the precursor of 2015 the year which many people said would be Nigeria’s Political Armageddon steers us in the face with great trepidation. I see 2014 as the year where we stand metaphorically at a sacred moment when the elemental forces would coalesce to bring about the frighteningly prediction of the political Armageddon of Nigeria.
The time capsule of life in 2014 for Nigerians will be between intensely bitter taste and disgust. Nigerians will remain at or near the bottom of main indices of quality life. The unwinnable perpetual war on corruption would escalate and make life more miserable and unbearable for the citizens. The spending frenzy of President Jonathan and other elected officials would assume a demonic crave.
Economic forecasts will be grossly exaggerated. Economic figures and data will be invented to indicate an ever-growing economy when the reality is the opposite. The cooked up reports and manufactured stats about the economy as the “fastest growing economy in Africa” would not result or support economic equality for a high standard of life for Nigerians. The 160 million dumb Nigerians will continue to be kept in the dark, uneducated, uninformed, and intimidated so they will not rebel.
Nigerians will continue to live in poverty, hunger, and disease. Greed, filth, and viciousness will be the norm. Ruined cities and towns will compete for a place in the refuse dunghill. Social decay will reign like we have never experienced before.
The ruling class will expand and extend plundering, looting, luxuries, and lusts while the proletariat live in poverty, and are kept sedated with crumbs, fears, propaganda, and lies. Endless attempts on censorship will be the order of the day. Electronic surveillance will be on the rise and political enemies and opposition will be framed, arrested, tried, jailed, and eliminated. The federal government will subject the poor and the middle class (do we still have middle class in Nigeria?), to strict monitoring, eavesdropping, and secret police to forestall and prevent any revolution or uprising. The surveillance will allow for effective control of the citizenry. The smallest sign of rebellion, even something as small as a facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Citizens will be compelled to absolute obedience at all times.
The political drum beat will be louder, noisier, nastier, and messier marching Nigerians to the beat of the ruling class illicit desires. The hypocrisy, violence, hatred, and subversion, synonymous with our politics will provide the minefield for the Boko Haramists. People and houses will be pulled down. The plundering of the ruling class will crush the working class. All power and economic privilege will remain with the oppressors, their cronies, friends, and families.
We cannot be reminded too often that the leopard doesn’t change its colors. With greater frequency and audacity, the National Assembly will continue to illustrate moral and political compromise. Members will take their foolishness to dizzying levels of raw candor with revolutionary zeal. They’ll continue to be a sad example of representatives who failed to take responsibility. As a matter of fact, they’ll wash their hands of responsibilities in the following ways:
· They’ll evade ownership of the consequences of their choices and behaviors “our hands are tied” sort of.
· They’ll be paralyzed by conflict. They’ll have a problem with futility – no good would come from a right decision, so why waste time? So they’ll reason. Their apathy would stem from their belief that taking a right decision seems useless.
· They’ll be imprisoned by fear and preoccupied with survival – loss of control, image, and position.
· They’ll continue to lack focus – be neutral or passive over crucial decisions. They will exhibit bizarre antics and unrestrained behavior.
We will see endless parade of swindlers, con men and women, crooks, and charlatans the country ever witnessed. Nigerians will become butlers bound to wait on every command of their hapless leaders.
As for the presidency, it will become more furious, egomaniacal, and contradictory as Mr. Jonathan himself. The race for 2015 will unleash unflinching, loud explosion of brilliance and daring narcissism on the part of his campaign team for “Jonathan 2015.” They will persistently ignore the truth about the state of Nigeria with a reckless license to sell their candidate to Nigerians. Mr. Jonathan’s administration will become a hideous hybrid of cesspool of errors.
The number of scams and scandals in the presidency and the National Assembly will be chaotic, they will defy explanation or description. Moral failure, financial chicanery and public scandals will become deeper and dirtier. Both the actions of the president and the National Assembly will be repeated bizarre practices and exaggerated pronouncements based on hollow shell of human imagination.
Nigeria in 2014 will become an utterly horrible and degraded society that is generally headed to an irreversible oblivion, or dystopia. There will be exponential mass poverty, squalor, suffering, and oppression. Suppression of justice, freedom and happiness will be on the rise. Sick Nigerians will be punished as criminals while thieves will continue to be ferried to foreign hospitals for cure.
Nigerians will be doubly exploited as a slave class conditioned and drugged to obey and enjoy their servitude. Nigeria will become a more coercive and impoverished totalitarian society conditioning its citizens through propaganda and lies. Nigeria will be a country of decaying value and squeezed morals buried under tremendous pressure of shame and greed.
The various forms of atrocities that are eating up our county and our people will be the worst extended form of evil. Evil is real. Evil made up of institutions and people who respond with hatred instead of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. It is not the figment of imagination of a primitive religious mind feebly attempting to explain the unknown. The Bible is very clear and instructive on the subject of evil. To paraphrase the Bible, they hate the light and will do everything possible to avoid, including attempting to extinguish it.
The ruling class and the institutions have destroyed the light of our country and our people and in all other thing subject to their power. And 2014 will not be different. In 2014, Nigerians will experience lots and lots of evils of political power – the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion. 2014 will signal the end of 2015 even before it began!
The requiem for 2014 Nigeria may seem to many of you like an unbeliever’s pilgrimage inspired by unrepentant atheist. Well, we can’t prepare for a future we cannot predict. In Nigeria, 2014 will be the beginning of the end of 2015 Nigeria. I can hear your lingering, sneering of skepticism. Again, I warn you: don’t write checks about 2014 Nigeria you can’t cash. Then I can also hear you: what are we celebrating in 2014? … Life!
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” –Mark Twain
