On Monday, the federal lawmakers in Ghana spent hours screening their Chief Justice nominee, Paul Bafour-Bonnie. While reeling off his resume, he said he spent two years in Nigeria in search of greener pastures. His audience guffawed and snickered. They could not imagine Nigeria ever had greener pastures. But she once was, the giant of Africa, a refuge, full of real green pastures. Indians, Ghanaians, Lebanese, Britons, Americans, everyone sought us out. Life here was sweet, peaceful. It had not always been this beastly and brutish. We got here slowly but steadily, tragically. Because we did not do what we ought to have done. We treated our leprosy like pimples, left our shrubs to become forests. What we considered a harmless earthworm is now a rattlesnake.
Something has to be done. Now. We either do it or someone else will do it. Yeah, we either support Tinubu to do clean this Augean stable or Trump will do it. Yes, Tinubu or Trump, the choice is ours, urgently. And circumcising an adult male is always painful, bloody and noisy. This foreskin must go.
There is a lot to worry about in Nigeria right now. Of course, there is and will always be something to worry about. It is Nigeria, right? And we are Nigerians. For instance, we are all worried about Donald Trump’s threat, even if we are pretending that ‘it can’t happen.’ We can do all the funniest skits about drawing the attention of the American troops to the difference between Auschwitz and Bauchi and that we just installed a new Olubadan.
That is one of our national coping skills, being able to crack jokes even at the edge of a cliff. Many of us even think since President Trump did not bomb Sambisa immediately he issued the threat, he probably has forgotten all about Nigeria and moved on to bigger things at home. Ignoring a present and immediate danger, that is another Nigerian coping skills. We believe if we talk about our problems, make skits about deadly issues, they would go away and we can move on. That is how we have moved on from one trouble to another instead of actually fixing them, with a head screwed in place.
So let everybody else wish Trump away. I am not joining you multitude to do that evil. I am worried, even terrified. I do not think Mr Trump is to be toyed with. Indeed, I believe Nigeria is on his to-do list that he carried around in his breast pocket. When Trump said it will be ‘America for Americans’ and he would fence out immigrants and trespassers, has he made good his words or not? When he said he those who sneaked into America in the night would be fished out and sent back to where they came from, is he rounding them up steadily and hauling them back home or not?
When he said there would no longer be automatic citizenship for foetuses hurriedly taken to America to be born as Americans, is he doing what he said he would do? When he moved our visas all the way down to three months, did our how-dare-you statements pluck a strand of hair from his body? And if we thought Trump was just trying to frighten us, did he not cancel the visa of a whole Professor Wole Soyinka, a whole Nobel Laureate, and announced gleefully that American visas are privileges,not rights! We have been a country of concern long before Mr Trump announced it, trust me.
So what is my prescription?
Brace up. Yes. Nigeria must brace up. I think this quick and sweet incursion into our forests promised by Mr Trump will come, maybe not today, but it will come.
All I recommend is we ‘guide the missile’ so it hits only the children of perdition, not the innocent. We don’t want our pregnant women, the aged, children already with special needs getting struck with the thunder of the thunderer. No, the bomb must go where it is needed. And may it kill the sponsors and the sponsored, all of them.
Ah, why is Funke talking like this? Does she know that if United States of America invades Nigeria, it will compromise our national sovereignty? So, I ask the ‘Our Sovereignty’ people these questions.
When 276 Chibok Girls were hauled off into dark forests from their warm beds in April 2014, what did that do to our sovereignty?
When, on July 6, 2013, Boko Haram men attacked the Government Secondary School in Mamudo, Yobe State, killing at least 42 people, was that good for a country that is sovereign?
If, according to UNICEF, 1000 children were abducted between 2013 and 2018 alone, are you saying that such bulk abductions of children are a signpost of national sovereignty?
How sovereign is a nation where 38,683 people have lost their sources of livelihood, where more than 2.5 million people are displaced and an estimated 952, 029 children made to drop out of school?
Isn’t a sovereign country the one with one flag hoisted across its length and breadth? Is the one with ISWAP and Boko Haram flags in between its green-white-green flag also among the comity of sovereigns?
You heard former president Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday as he spoke on Nigeria and its golden past. Obasanjo told some youths who converged in Abeokuta that right from independence, the world and the United States saw Nigeria as Africa’s leader. He said the country lost confidence at some point before the Murtala-Obasanjo military regime of 1976 to 1979 “brought it back.“
“When I was president and Head of State, three American presidents came to Nigeria. They had not lost anything that they were looking for in Nigeria. What did they see? At Independence, the world saw Nigeria as a giant coming up. Soon after independence, we lost that. When Murtala and I came into government (in 1975), we brought it back.
“The Americas saw that there was a possibility of Nigeria being Africa’s leader and we were on the way. When I was military head of state, President Jimmy Carter was the president of America, he would not do anything in Africa without informing us. They were not taking permission from us but they would tell us that ‘we are doing this.’”
Obasanjo spoke the truth. I, young me, witnessed a very promising Nigeria while growing up. We had leaders who were every inch leaders. Even those who had no degrees showed transparent learning and knowledge. But, that was Nigeria of yesterday. Today’s leaders have degrees; how many of them have education?
Our global stature has diminished and it keeps diminishing. We can pretend all we want and talk tough. We are not in a good place. Religious extremists and terrorists wield their rods of fear to whip us out of life. Schooled men who can’t build schools and populate the schools. Learned men who live in fear of unlettered terrorists, and clerics who say and encourage ungodly things.
Mr Trump’s fast and furious option may sound like an affront but as one pop lyric line said, “she na like this we go dey dey?” Do we want things to remain like this? Are we all satisfied with the way things are, this portioned country, this broken state?
