The Clan Of Unreason

The latest round of EFCC arrests does nothing to arrest the imagination or arouse passion. This well-trodden path of propagandized arrests has now become rather tedious, to say the least. Had there been a culture of matching these arrests with comparable tales of successful convictions and lengthy incarcerations (commensurate with the gravity of the infractions), pulses might have been set racing. What the vast majority of Nigerians feel about these arrests is one of having been there before. The ineffectualness of the process of prosecution has long rendered it an absolutely irrelevant and a largely time-wasting and resource-draining exercise in futility. Again, what one tends to hear from Nigerians are a yawn of uninterestedness and a throaty groan of ‘leave off!’

Ignorance emanating from unmitigated stupidity abounds among this clan of unreason who wormed their ways into power to wreak havoc, the like of which has seldom been seen in the history of human endeavour. The concept of justice is anathema to them; the subject of fairness is alien to them. How not to concur when James Baldwin opined that “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”? We must not mistake ‘ignorance’ for a lack of formal education. One could have all the academic degrees known to man in all the areas of study known to man and remain as ignorant as a dead bat; academic qualifications do not a man make.

Do we blame these ignoramuses or have pity for them? I’d say YES on both counts. Me ambivalent? Oh, hell, NO! Come with me.

Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become. One cannot justifiably blame them for their background and circumstances, but they stand condemned for becoming the villains that they have turned out to be. Irrational greed and illogical lust rule their world; they stand for nothing and fall for everything. They are not satisfied with little, and thus, satisfied with nothing. Their only measure of achievement is affluence accrued at the expense of those whom they purport to serve and in their warped sense of high achievement they wallow in the bosom of idiocy, intellectual inferiority and moral decadence. In that sense, one cannot but pity them, for “The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.” (Confucius)

When these muppets find themselves hurled before the courts as a result of their ignorance, they hire expensive SANs, who bring the court’s attention to the ‘fact’ that their clients’ fundamental human rights are being ‘abused’, and something along the lines of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Who can blame these lawyers for doing their job? Even though a number of them are as corrupt, if not even more corrupt than, their thieving clients. In times of adversity they conveniently remember the very fundamental human rights they have ruthlessly denied their people. They plead for fairness, for which they previously had no flair, and freedom. Pity.

Why is this President so hopelessly impotent? Why are incoherence and a dearth of moral courage the hallmarks of his presidency? Why is he being amnesic? Why is he in an intellectual stupor and a seemingly perpetual state of unsureness? How much longer do we have to wait for him to start doing the decent and right things and turn this unlucky country around? What does he want to be remembered by? Does he not know that we have had enough of oral combat, and that what we desperately need is moral combat? Give real teeth to the EFCC and set up special courts to deal with these crimes against humanity. Is he loathe to being the real deal, or is he hoping that his slow-motion and even slower-acting ways are what we expect and deserve?  Please wake up to your responsibilities, Mr President, the alarm clock sounded long ago. Nigeria is sick and getting sicker by the day.

 
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God bless Nigeria and all of her people.
Thank you for your time.