Nigeria is like the Biblical Jabez with sorrow sown in his DNA at birth. Regardless of how the VAT controversy ends, it won’t birth a sudden prosperous new beginning for the country. But it has opened the door for a fresh start that must start with the probing question: were we meant to be?
If a man was doing great before marriage and suddenly began to witness a slump in personal prosperity after settling into the nuptial, my Yoruba people are always quick to point at the ominous shape of the woman’s left foot. Such a wife becomes a target of the in-laws, especially if they heavily depend on her husband for sustenance. Such woman will only find peace in the marriage when the husband’s wallet returns to the bulging days and family members’ cheeks begin to show signs of recovery. If there isn’t a quick turnaround, something tragic awaits the wife, especially if she begins to experience financial boom, in the midst of the husband’s doom. She might pay with her life for “using their son’s star”, even when their son has no star to start with.
If husband and wife were individually doing great before unionising into an accelerated poverty, the general thinking would be their stars didn’t agree. Except divine wisdom is allowed to rule in such a situation, divorce is imminent regardless of the love professed. In such dramatic situation, there must be plenty of midnight talks between husband and wife and when solutions can’t be peaceably worked out, expect an Armageddon. What the couple cooked before the house was incinerated would be out in the open. The world would even be treated to what played out the day they had rat with navel, for dinner.
107 years after Lugard, the blood cultist, shackled Northern and Southern Protectorates into what is clearly an unholy wedlock, none in the conjugal bilisi (troubles) can shout hurray in celebration of a fruitful union, including the North, obviously positioned to be the dominant partner in the forced marriage.
World Bank is a strategic development partner of Nigeria and an open ally of the Northern political establishment. But the global institution still deems North the most backward in human development, in what could pass for self-indictment, since the institution has been a dominant presence in the zone, executing one project or the other. Maybe Nigerians no longer remember the exposé by Jim Yong Kim, a former president of the global bank, at a news conference in Washington DC, US, on Thursday, October 12, 2017, that President Buhari secretly told the bank leadership to focus on the North.
Kim confessed they obliged the president. But four years after the focussing agenda, the scorecard is saddening. Here is World Bank’s assessment of the beneficiary; “The North has the highest population of people in extreme poverty with violence and high crime rate. The poverty rate in the North-East and North-West zones of Nigeria is 77.7% and 76.3% respectively, and 67.5% poverty rate in the North-Central zone of Nigeria. The Northern people in Nigeria are predominantly subsistent farmers with traditional skills and tools for farming. But the increasing insecurity makes it impossible for many to even go to their farms. Poverty in the Northern regions of the country has been increasing especially in the North-West zone. Almost half of all poor live in the North-West and the North accounts for 87 per cent of all poor in Nigeria.” How worse can it get to be disastrous!
Today in Nigeria, 90.8 million people are said to be poor. If North accounts for 87 per cent, according to the World Bank, which is approximately 79 million, then where is the real benefit of being positioned as the crown prince of the new country, both at amalgamation and independence, save for the bulging budgets of the political elite which abandoned boys and girls who now operate as bandits, kidnappers and terrorists, no longer allow them to enjoy.
Whatever demon that Lugard tied Nigeria to must be very wicked. After what looked like initial prosperity in the “marriage”, which is devil’s style of goading his captives into slumber, the dark spirit has moved from stripping the country of opportunities for greatness, using the willing ruling class, both military and civilian, to now demanding daily appeasement of human blood in frightening volume. The demon superintending the rulership of Nigeria is also constantly raising human blockade whenever the country is closing to casting off the yoke on its back. In the ruling establishment, particularly at the level of the presidency where all political powers reside in Nigeria, the dark world has found an unfailing ally. That is why the so-called “unity” of Nigeria, by which they mean being together, is of paramount importance to the group, regulating the socio-economic, political climate. They stand together, with everything in state arsenal to fight emerging new beginning from any parts of Nigeria.
But nothing happening in Nigeria today and happening to Nigerians is unprecedented. History is replete with countries emerging from the ashes of yesterday. But I will stay with a people who God deliberately chose as a project. You regularly encounter in the book of Judges, the rise, fall, rise again, and fall, on and on like that, of the children of Israel. Most of their undoing was joining themselves to nations of idol-worshippers and participating in their idolatry. But whenever it appears the darkest of night for them, God would raise a voice of redemption for them, out of His abundance of mercy.
Such heroes and heroines never fit into bookmakers’ predictions. They were the unlikeliest, looking nothing like a vessel unto honour or a razor-sharp battle-axe, from Moses to Jehu, Deborah to Othniel. But a particular one best fits the narrative in Nigeria today. His name was Jerubbaal, better known as Gideon. In Nyesom Wike, Rivers governor, I see a Gideon. And if Southern governors are troubled about the black leg, Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, they should read up Judges 7 Vs 2. God, long before now, envisaged his kind.
To be continued.
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