Nigeria: How much more before it’s too much
For the bad reason, Nigeria is grabbing global news headlines a second consecutive time this last quarter. Gunmen on Friday abducted 333 school boys from a Katsina school. The school’s authority says 668 students on their database are in fact missing.
Four days since the kidnap, there’s been no positive response from Nigeria’s security institutions. No word from the one who parades himself odiously as president. Nigeria’s defence minister has said “only prayers are needed” at this point. Of course!
What however appears nearly as appalling as this kidnapping is how quiet opinion leaders, policy influencers and a section of the media in the country have been since this direct brazen assault on those families, and indirect attack on the Nigerian state.
Over 600 school boys are missing and we are going about our businesses in the country as if nothing at all has happened. It would appear that very few people are interested in this collective tragedy, and among those who obviously do not care is Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari, a contemptible decrepit craven who unworthily leads as president of the country, was seen today tending lovingly to his cows in Daura. I hear the man is taking a vile holiday from doing a total of zero work since he happened to the country in 2015. You have to look at Buhari to fully appreciate the infinity of God’s patience.
Next door to Buhari’s holiday ranch are hundreds of parents who are feeling the grief and sorrow at their loss. But for this man, nothing unusual has happened. The kidnap of the school kids and a visit to the grieving families cannot be more expedient at this time than a presidential visit to his cows, his indisputable first love.
But not only the president is guilty. Our quietness has made us as guilty. And to be honest, I do know that there might be an explanation for our attitude in the fact that we have become all too numbed over time by unending national horrors which have never met any government response. We are jaded and have become a mostly insensitive people who are incapable of feeling anymore pains and emotional breakdowns from tragedies that should normally break a nation. We have been conditioned by our chain of sorrows.
Yet we will be worsening the situation if we fail to shift from our state of conditioning and become whom we have always been known to be – a people who resist assaults of all kinds. We must ask ourselves if this is how we hope to continue for another 3 years.
Buhari must be reminded to do his job of at least protecting Nigerians. He might be deaf, but if we all scream hard enough, there’s a chance we could pop his ears open for once in 6 horrible years. There’s never been a more important time for Nigerians to confront the menace that is the Buhari government. When will enough be enough? How much more nonsense shall we take before we realise we’ve taken just too much already?
