The correlation between Nigeria and Sobibor

LET me start by saying that the inspiration for the title of this article was as a result of my reflection over a discussion I had with one dear friend. My friend relocated from Nigeria to Canada few months ago. He was joined almost immediately thereafter by the immediate members of his family. While I was congratulating my friend for his long overdue escape from Nigeria, my friend described his escape and that of his family in a way that left me thinking about how our dear country has found itself in a precarious condition that should not have been her lots. Many other Nigerians, both at home and in disapora, have described the country in many ways. Some refered to her as failed state and some others used words that are quite more uncharitable, the most recent been the World Bank calling her the “poverty capital of the world”. My friend who just escaped with his family called her something I never heard before and so intriguing to me. He called his escaped from Nigeria an escape from Sobibor.

I mussed over that description for about two weeks without getting nearer to what my friend might have implied. In order to set me free from the misery of this unsuccessful quest, I decided to speak to my friend again to find out the meaning of his enigmatic word. He obliged my request and told me that Sobibor was an exterminating camp established by the Germans to liquidate the remnant of the Jews that escaped Adolf Hitler’s barren of guns. What the bullet could not killed; Hitler designed the most evil disingenuous way to exterminate; a kind of slow death seeping through diseases and malnutrition. When my friend called Nigeria a Sobibor, what he implied was that it is a nation that gradually suck life out of her citizen with poverty, diseases and hopelessness. If this is how my friend felt about escaping to Canada, what on earth is going on in the minds of other desperate Nigerians seeking a way out of her shores

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I do not have the crystal ball to pip into the hearts of this desperate Nigerians. But I can deduce some apparent facts from the conducts of the 21 million jobless youths, from the vices and the criminal activities they are unleashing on the nation. It seems to me that the appearance of many criminal activities and vices once alien to the nation is a way in which the youths are venting their anger against a country that perennially turn their dreams to nightmares. Our leaders never learnt from the challenges and opportunities the civil war thrown at us; they refused to learn from the human tragedy that is starring the nation in the face. It was established that one of the greatest mistake of this country was her failure to rehabilitate and re-integrate the Biafran youths into the national economic and political life. The country failed to realised that youths whose innocence has been sacrificed on the alter of civil war will later ask for their pounds of flesh from the system that killed that innocence. That singular failure ushered in violent armed robberies the post-civil war era ever known in our hemisphere.

Every decade henceforth has been a plethora of missed opportunities. The shameless display of ill-gotten wealth by the Shehu Shagari government and their cronies birthed a new crace for wealth in an unproductive economy which turned the youths to drug pushers and prostitutes. The Ibrahim Babangida slogan of live and let live and deliberate shielding of criminal elements resulted in the embrace of advance fee fraud known as 419. From the Sani Abacha era to the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the Nigerian youth have been subjected to trauma occasioned by maladministration and incompetence. All these decades of missed opportunities and the criminalities they midwived has now metarmorphised into more dastardly activities threatening the fabrics of the nation. The popular saying that an idle hand is the devil’s workshop is glaringly expressing itself in our country. Banditry among the youth has become a normal occurrence. Kidnapping is now going on in an industrial basis across all regions. Money rituals that used to be frown at has become a badge of honour among some youths. When a man and his family escaped from an ill-infested environment like Nigeria, how can he not call the country Sobibor?

Nigeria should not be a place where dreams and aspirations are held in abeyance, not to talk of killing them. God has endowed us with both human and natural resources to reach every height imaginable. The reason why it has become Sobibor is due to our leaders’ selfishness and incompetence. My friend was not gloating about his escape. It was rather a honest reminiscence on his many wasted years in the country of his birth. Now he falls into the welcoming embrace of Canada and the prospect already starring him in the face. His calling Nigeria a Sobibor is an expression of delight at having a second opportunity at fulfilling the dreams that have for for long been in coma in a country massively rigged against him. For some of my friends that want to escape from Sobibor, May God crown your efforts with success. But please as you plot your escape, bear it in mind that the road of the western world is not littered with gold. The best efforts can still be best employed to make Nigeria a truly great nation.

We can start by asking pertinent questions about our country and making our leaders accountable to us. This Sobibor can still become a truly great and glorious nation. What it requires of us is to be politically conscious and demand for a new paradigm in the affairs of state. For some that only see freedom in escaping from Sobibor may God be with you in your quest.

• Arowosaye writes in from London, United Kingdom.