CRETINOUS IMPUDENCE

When was the last time any surprise of real substance was sprung on Nigerians? Yep, I know that's like asking what the length of a piece of rope was, but the point being made here is that we, as Nigerians, have forgotten (or have never experienced) what normal 'normal' is. We have grown accustomed to subnormal 'normal' and adopted it as the Nigerian 'normal'. For instance, wouldn't a gasp of sheer surprise be bellowed out if a seriously compromised politician was convicted of his/her financial crimes and given the appropriate jail-term? Wouldn't it be out of the 'Nigerian' ordinary if a public official being investigated for an official wrongdoing of any sort stepped aside until a conclusion of any investigation? Ha! Consider this, wouldn't it be a 'Nigerian' extraordinariness if the so-called President had the balls of a 'normal' President? Now you can understand the premise of my very first question. You see, our public life is populated with 'subs': substandard, subnormal, suboptimal, subversion, subtraction, subhuman, subplots, subordinate, and so on. Oh, lest I forget, isn't the level of morality among our politicians and public officials in all areas of our national life subterranean? The Nigerian life is that of subs.
This is precisely why we have been in the doldrums for a long while, and we've been engaged in a race to the bottom while those entrusted with running our affairs are dancing on life rafts of stolen billions. For how much longer will Nigerians tolerate such levels of cretinous impudence? Doesn't the long line of official banditry and sheer callousness of elected politicians attest to the fact that the holes on the Nigerian ship need plugging before it's too late? Isn't it bothersome, and frustratingly boring, to keep repeating the ills afflicting our nationhood? Isn't the combination of the collaborative reticence of the clergy and the contrived duplicity of the judiciary a fuel to the inferno of political meltdown?
Political shenanigans are the order of the day while we deny our youth a promising future, and destroy the very foundation of our humanity. Is the remissness by the political class of our collective well-being and social cohesion so unimportant that we fail to countenance it? Okonjo-Iweala reels out economic figures like confetti at a wedding while 90% of Nigerians go hungry. Stella Oduah is fortifying herself in her armour-plated cars while our skies become a free-for-all. Alison-Madueke is forever busy selling the family silver at discounted prices to her associates. Jonathan is preoccupied with staying in office while conniving with economic terrorists in his government and party to continue plundering our commonwealth to their hearts' content. Official convoys killing and maiming innocent Nigerians with deafening sirens announcing the presence or passages of thieves in robes. So-called First Ladies, created by greed, and not by the Constitution, conduct themselves as if they were elected, and dispense favours at whim, at unimaginable expense to Nigerians.
Too many 'subs' to contend with, but 'unsub' our nation we must, and we will. The era of political tyranny and economic terrorism will become history, but only if we are united in dislodging our culture of acceptance of 'subnormal' normal. We cannot rewrite history but we can, and we must, write our future.