Animal Farm Nig. Ltd

Power corrupts incrementally through small compromises. The sentence you just read is not my own. I borrowed it from ‘Today in History’, a history-on-the-go handle on X which goes by @HistoryNutOTD. It calls followers to learn what happened “on this day in history” from the handle’s perspective. On August 17, 2025 @HistoryNutOTD made a thread of expository posts through which it celebrated the 80th anniversary of that book for which you and I knew the name: George Orwell by heart. Yes, I mean Animal Farm. I bet many would not readily remember that George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair and that Animal Farm, because of its seemingly eternal relevance, has been edifying us for eighty whole years!

@HistoryNutOTD said the posts were “ten truths from Animal Farm Orwell warned us never to forget” and one of them is the opening sentence of this piece. It is very apt and had spurred this reflection on the animal farm which our dear country, Nigeria, has sadly degenerated into. As Nigeria trudges on in its chequered political life, it is easier to see that our political leaders have both secretly and brazenly altered “Unity and Faith Peace and Progress” to suit their whims. Just like Napoleon’s manipulations in Animal Farm, our leaders over the years have also altered “all animals are equal” and have innocuously inserted “…But some animals are more equal than the others.”

That is our reality. But Orwell is also known and described as a prophet because of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” or “1984”. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm deserve all the seriousness we can give them. 1984 not because it was completed in 1948 by Orwell, but because the book predicted nearly all the evil machinations governments are practicing against their citizens today. 1984 foresaw totalitarianism, subjugation of citizens through surveillance of their activities and their dehumanisation. Then they would be swallowed in government propaganda. These have become a norm among governments today, and Nigerian governments are not an exception.

Today, just like Animal Farm, 1984 has thoroughly unfurled in our life as a country. The enduring relevance of the books, especially 1984, lies in their “depiction of government control over information, thought, and personal liberty through pervasive surveillance, doublespeak, and historical revisionism, making its dystopian themes feel alarmingly timely.” That rings a profound bell about our dear Nigeria. Eighty whole years after Animal Farm was first published, we have arrived at a point where the book has left its target – communism, and has hit the bull’s eye in our brand of popular democracy.

And the loss of our footing in popular governance didn’t come like a bang. It innocuously seeped through our hands into everywhere else except the goody bag of the masses. Like Today in History said, Nigeria got corrupted “incrementally through small compromises.” @HistoryNutOTD noted: “After the revolution, the pigs justify keeping the cows’ milk and apples as necessary “brain food” for leadership. This first small inequality sets a precedent that escalates step by step to mass executions and Napoleon the pig becoming an absolute dictator.”

A contention says that “Animal Farm reveals why every communist revolution follows the same tragic pattern: liberation to corruption to oppression.” To that, I simply say these people might not have studied the Nigerian brand of popular democracy. The variant of Nigerian democracy introduced by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) since 2015, has made Animal Farm come to life in one cryptic relief. The sheep are those Nigerians who are perpetually primed to sing the praises of the oppressors and tackle anyone who does otherwise. They know themselves, and they are in various species.

They do not care that our economy has been reduced to Have you seen the sachet engine oil? It came to me like what the Igbo refer to as NtiOfuo… new ear. Its sighting was both strange and disheartening. The only positive about the sachet life of the country is that businesses, especially manufacturers are desperately seeking cheaper ways of going about their businesses. Those ones are not targetted at the young children. That was the argument against those who said sachet tomato paste and sachet milk were targetted at children. Na Naija we dey…

Nigeria has not turned to an animal farm? In its simplest analysis do you truly think that our country has not become the plaything of the rich, high and mighty? Really? It is said that when the eyes relax well, they can see the nose. Relax your mind and think of Nigeria when it started out as an independent country in 1960. Then compare that same Nigeria with the country we have got in our hands today.

One has been wondering where the country would start from in the onerous task of taking steps to right the wrongs in our social system and in our economic life. Did we change our national anthem so as to erase the thought of the labours of our heroes past? Did you see that interview granted by Taribo West? I hope you saw him with your inner eyes and heard him with your inner ears in that interview. If you did, I am sure that you saw a bitter but muffled cry. It is called akwaariri… that type of weeping that is triggered by the thoughts of past unpleasant events and experiences. One Yoruba word for it is arokan. The Yoruba say remembrance of past ugly experiences come with protracted weeping.

The sight of a man like Taribo West, who publicly moaned in agony because of the treatment of one of our fallen national heroes, Peter Rufai, is not a beautiful one. With such in various situations that have come and gone around the country, can one still competently argue that we are not living in an animal farm? If Peter Rufai was the archetypal Nigerian politician and had risen to the status at which he died as our Number One national team goalkeeper, would he have been treated like Boxer a la Animal Farm?

If not in an animal farm, where else would a truck belonging to a company cause a permanent injury to a person and move on like nothing, even if insignificant, happened? A truck belonging to Dangote Group permanently injured a lady, Elizabeth Obi, said to be an HND II student at Auchi Polytechnic and she has been literally abandoned at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital in Edo State since September 2024. Miss Obi should thank her stars that her matter became a social media topic. That has led to the intervention of no less a personality than that state governor, Monday Okpebholo, who cleared her hospital bills and made a commitment to see that her laser surgery was performed.

If it was not that ‘all animals are equal but some are more equal than the others’, should Elizabeth Obi have been left to her fate in a hospital for nearly one year before help could come her way? This is not to say that justice has been served in her situation. She would have lost her time while nursing her injury, while the train of her future has also been derailed. Then, nothing would come out of the emotional and physical injury. Her only succour now is that her matter got to the attention of the state government, it is not that there is an institutional basis upon which she can seek redress. That is a sign that we are living in an animal farm!

It is better imagined how the woman would feel when Dr Paddy Iyamu, the Edo State Commissioner for Education, led a government delegation to convey the message of Governor Okpebholo to her. This should not have been her fate. Road accident could have befallen anyone; anybody could be a victim of an accident. But should our hospitals be what they should be, she would not have been there since September 2024. These are the institutional inadequacies that we must fight to bring to normal as a people, as a country; we cannot continue to live like it is normal to see knee-jerk approach to issues as normal. We can only keep descending in humanity by that.

Meanwhile, Senator Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, who has now unofficially assumed the ignoble role of running dirty errands for the Senate, and the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission are laying the foundation for a review of politicians’ salaries while university lecturers are fuming and threatening to down tools. Different strokes for different strokes.

The people who are bent on not seeing a working Nigeria, I hail o. Your place in the animal farm is secure for now. But, like the Psalmist said, weeping can only endure for a night, joy comes in the morning. Nigeria must be purged of the spirit of Napoleon.

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