Nigeria
is a hulking, foundering nation. Nothing captures its biting failures
more succinctly than the acronym its state energy company once went
by: N.E.P.A. (meaning National Electric Power Authority). However,
the company more than not, with its monopoly power, immerses the
nation in palpable darkness than light.
Hitting
back on its moribund condition, patrons show their frustration by
translating its acronym as, “Never Expect Power Always.”
I
once crawled in utter darkness through some dust caked halls of one
of our so-called international airports to retrieve my luggage and
those of my fellow travelers because there was no power to work the
conveyor belt. When done, I came out looking like a coal miner.
Tons
of badly needed food and industrial products cannot be preserved due
to erratic power supply.
Surgeons
use battery-powered flashlights to carry out delicate operations.
Public and college labs deteriorate because of incessant outage.
Sixteen billion dollars that were voted to revamp the company and end
its morass were simply pocketed by a president.
And
so after more than twelve hours of flight from Calabar to New York,
the long journey left me tired and confused. I felt jet-lagged by the
stark contrast between the miasmic dysfunction back home and the near
flawless order I suddenly encountered.
The
difference was instantly disorienting. Unlike the sickening low
voltage (when complete power outage was not the order of the day back
home), there was constant power supply so much so that I had to
constantly rub my eyes to make sure it was real.
When
I visited the restroom at the airport, there was no need to hitch up
my pants and tiptoe or walk on my heels as we do in Nigerian
restrooms to avoid stepping on human waste. The facility was sparkled
and gleamed like alabaster. No flies buzzed, no offensive odors
oozed, and no nauseating stains made me feel like hurrying away.
The
immigration and customs officials were professional. It was so very
unlike home, where arrivals and departures at airports are as
disheveling as passing through a deadly twister. As travelers to
Nigeria unfortunately know, conditions there are so perfectly suited
for chaos that broad daylight robbery by officials is routine.
State
security men commonly help themselves to whatever items in the
visitor’s luggage catch their fancy and devise every stratagem
to hoodwink the unsuspecting traveler. Surprisingly, no one asked me
for a bribe, nor were there toughs milling around to menace and
fleece me. At the check-in desk no one made any suggestions that if I
parted with some money I could pay less for my excess luggage. I was
pleasantly surprised I could pass through an airport without having a
terrible experience.
The
only drama was when a security man checked one of my bags. I had
brought bags of smoked fish, dried vegetable and spices to share with
my folks while keeping some to tide me over until I got used American
foods and flavors. When asked to unzip one of the bags, a bug fell
out and the security man fled! From a distance, he ordered me to zip
up and get going. I guess he was afraid he could catch something
dreadful I brought from Africa.
Speaking
out against the failure of the state to connect with its people threw
me and other like-minded fellows into exile. One of them said, “Those
of us who expressed fear that Nigeria is marching toward its
destruction, are like Noah in his day, called crazed alarmists. They
(Nigerian leaders) hated us because our criticisms revealed the
iniquities of the government in power. They accused us of being the
cause of all the troubles which had come upon Nigeria in consequence
of their actions. Though we are without wealth, position, or honorary
titles, we were a terror to evildoers whenever and wherever our names
and ideas were known. We were hated by the wicked and the corrupt.
Because of our persistence and insistence in condemning evil among
us, our views and beliefs were a constant rebuke to their selfishness
and corruption.”
Bayo
Oluwasanmi, in the above excerpt, paints the attitude of power in
Nigeria towards constructive critics. Like him, someone else once
observed that, “Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
I couldn’t agree more, especially in relation to the reality of
my nation (if one could call it so). In the first place, the nation
is itself a lie, a very big lie.
A
group of hotly contentious tribes that continually resist being
unified, the nation was contrived in 1914 by Lugard, a Briton. Since
then the tribes have been perpetually in conflict, tending more
towards implosion than coming together.
Three
years after independence from Britain, a state of emergency was
declared in the western part of the country following bloody
political crises. This tendency to be at war with itself boiled over
from 1966 to 1970, when the hegemony of the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy
was threatened by Igbo military officers who staged a coup. The
crisis snowballed into a vicious, splintering civil war, stripped the
nation to its bare foundations, and claimed over two million lives
east of the country.
Since
the end of the three year war, a no- war- no-peace truce has
persisted. Although the tribes are constantly rumbling and
threatening to erupt like an uneasy, dormant volcano, greed
(especially by the dependent Muslim North for the natural resources
of the minority elements in the Niger Delta) has held the contesting
tribes together in an impossible union. Such is the utter lack of
trust in its corporate existence that one of its leaders had no
qualms dismissing it as “a mere geographical expression on
paper.”
Thus
from its very beginning the nation was established to be exploited.
The British who founded it began the frenzied looting. The colonial
power savagely sank its fangs into the timber, agricultural products
and petroleum.
The
crises of statehood bedeviling Nigeria defy easily solution.
Currently cavemen frozen in time and left behind by civilization in
the untamed desert of the Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria are
throwing deadly tantrums. Maddened because the rest of the country is
not buying into flogging, lynching or amputating of criminals, they
seek to turn the fast failing nation into a tornado alley.
They
go berserk because people in the South embrace Western education,
which to the Sharia devotees is not only decadent but dreadfully
evil. Gunning for a medieval throwback, they claim the earth is flat
and the sun rotates around the planets. Because they do not embrace
these and several other falsehoods, Christians and their churches are
routinely bombed, leaving behind a charred and scarred trail of
debris. Thus far the slaughter has maimed and claimed more than two
thousand lives.
From
all indications, the hemorrhaging is not about abetting as efforts to
stem the political twisters convulsing the nation have proved
abortive.
A Niger Delta community scorched by crude oil exploitation.
A street running with scum in the the oil-producing hub of Nigeria.
Environmental disaster in the creeks of Niger Delta.
Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.
Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.