17/08/2018
A map of us
A remarkable percentage of the Nigerian population has been reduced to helpless workers who depend on the goodwill of constituted authorities without who they will have little chance of getting their daily bread. There's another community, or communities, united by a commitment to greed and other flashes of corruption, a conclave of iniquities which cuts across generations, gender, ethnicity and orientations, the rumps of national and international embarrassments who are sworn to their own self-centeredness. There is also the category of the citizenry which prefers to deny both affection and connection to the country of their blood; these are the ones who scamper at the mention or reference to the name; when they travel, they put the green passport away or cover it in any other colour but green, because the Nigerian green is a nightmare at every step.
There are many who hustle by honest means, who spend their days on the road, by the roadside, in the forests, desert and the swamps of the land, men and women of meagre means who know nothing about forex but whose destiny of survival is compromised every day by the deft game of numbers by the stock exchange speculators. There is the talented tenth available in every corner of the geography, the industrious ones who refuse to succumb to the onerous odds against the dream; undaunted and untainted, they continue to excel, even better when they are pitted against other people of excellence from other nations. For this category of people, to thrive further is to exit from the state, emigrate probably forever, or depart and return and depart again from the stifling state. Yet, there is a fractional percentage of this category who chooses to stay against all odds.
The helpless worker, the worker of iniquities, the disclaimer, the honest hustler, and the talented tenth, all Nigerian subjects are beholden to the most unique group, the party of partisan politicians who rule, reign and deal with the land and its people and minerals. These are the maze breakers, the fence benders, the budget padmasters, the thirty-percenters, the failed actors and squirmy singers, the chorus of ayes, the currency peddlers, the gun runners, the ones who by their own garrulous vacuity have invited a festoon of plagues on the bellies of this land. Yet they run their wealth freely and come but once in an election year; they also advertise their achievements in the imagination of the people. Carpet-baggers of no mean ideology, they make no common sense; common sense finds them not. The party of partisan politicians are also executively prebendal; those among them who are progressive are thin in number or significance. This, indeed, is the best worst time to be a Nigerian.
Remi Raji
August 17, 2018
