Opinions

Like Wakanda, Nigeria needs a Black Panther

After the death of his father in the movie Black Panther, T’Challa returns home to the African nation of Wakanda to take his rightful place as king. When a powerful enemy suddenly reappears, T’Challa’s mettle asking — and as Black Panther — gets tested when he’s drawn into a conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the entire world at risk. Faced with treachery and danger, the young king must rally his allies and release the full power of Black Panther to defeat his foes and secure the safety of his people. So I closed my eyes and it was Nigeria and I saw a vision of an experienced president. The man I saw had seen the good and the bad, a man that would have been able to guard the nation against itself, such that we would be on the course of building a new political edifice, one that would be truly Nigerian. A system that works and is suited to our needs; and also capable of improvement based on our experiences.

An enviable Arewa, Afenifere, Biafra, Niger Delta, in a strong and stable, united Nigeria devoid of the thieves we have today, but oh, how cruel life can be, all that I said was in a dream. In that dream, I saw us as a secular Federal Republic of National Independence, without all these Paris, London and Beijing or Moscow lending crooks breathing down our necks, controlling our president like my little cousin does with the remote to the television and the sister does to their guard dog ironically named “Opposition”. In that dream, we had a home-made political system not the crooks in APC, PDP and the confusionists in other clubs called political parties. I saw a nation of that had a self-activating economy, I did not recall sighting a woman in any form who was busy speaking English with the UK accent.

The dream was that in which the political system was a two-party system, where both parties were people’s parties securely insulated from the cash-power of both domestic and foreign business. I saw a nation that had better leadership to offer. I never saw APC/PDP as such sights would only be seen in a nightmare. The national ideology that appeared in my dream is national patriotism, a nation built on a solid foundation (unfortunately Nigeria is not). This foundation was literally, planned from the people, by the people, for the people. The Nigeria we live in is unfortunately an accident of passion. Lady and Lord Lugard thought up Nigeria for administrative ease. In my dream, an Igbo man was distinctively Igbo, same applied to my kith and kin that remained proudly Hausas, Fulanis, Beroms, Tivs, Urhobos. The Yoruba man remained such whether he be Ijebu, Egba, ara oke or ara isale.

And that one was Igbo did not necessarily mean that the Hausa or Yoruba was his enemy. Sadly this was a dream because in reality Nigeria was established with the diverse ethnic build as a tool for disability rather than strength, and the mistake we call leadership has continued to exploit it to and for their selfish and ‘sellmeat’ as long as the greed, power, money are proportionately equal to their mad ego. In my dream, the land called Nigeria belonged to the different ethnic entities that make up the nation and all lived in an appreciable level of peace and harmony. In that dream, no one was forced to be Nigerian, no one lost his/her identity.

That dream had a Yoruba Nigerian, Hausa Nigerian, an Ijaw Nigerian, Isoko Nigerian, Ibo Nigerian, and all sorts of Nigerian all living happily there, here and after like in the lion and sheep in those colorful Jehovah witness’ awake magazines. It was simply a beauty to behold, a people’s patriotism, not a presidential dictatorship and a party’s despotism and colonialism of its own people. My dream saw citizen-oriented armed forces and police politically monolithic in term of the national ideology, not the type that fought themselves and left crime on the prowl. Not the type that went on strike, borrowed arm robbers their uniforms to perpetuate crime and harassed innocent conductors and kabukabu drivers and motorcycle riders for N20.