There Is Nothing We Can Do

There is nothing we can do.

Really!

I cannot count how many times I have heard the different versions of this statement from the mouth of Nigerians.

It is either that ‘There is nothing We can do.’ or ‘There is nothing anybody can do.’

Different versions of this same powerless mindset.

Is it a surprise that a people being celebrated on YouTube as having a lot of swagger and now holding the world hostage by their cultural outputs is so powerless in delivering good governance to themselves. Indeed, the politicians know us well. Everyone was tired of suffering under Buhari and were together to kick him and his party out until you were reminded of your religious affiliation and ethnic origins. Then, you took on the gab of an ethnic nationalist and a religious bigot and began to defend people that will not remember if you exist once they get into power.

If it even stops at that, may be it would have been bearable. However, they will go a bit further and ensure that they make your life a misery, knowing that after four years they don’t need to beg you. You are the one that will be begging them to run and continue to ruin your life.

Even if Ibrahim Traore, the famous and trending young Burkinabe president, came to Nigeria to deliver them. You know what they will tell him? Wait! I will tell you. They will tell him that he is ‘omo ibo lasan lasan’ or ‘ordinary aboki’ or ‘a cowardly Yoruba’. Everyone will prefer a person that will belong to their tribe and they can point at them and say: Do you know that so and so is my brother/sister? Her/his village is beside my own. It is in our psyche. Is it a little thing that there is nothing we can do. If you dare hold a different view and believe that you want true change and not a fake one, they hound you down as a ‘bastard’ that is against your tribe. What shall we not see in this country.

I have said it and I will say it again. Nigerians are not yet tired. When they are, they know what to do. This much Dr Kemi Olunloyo echoed in her video recently. This virtue that Mr Ibrahim Babangida found in them years ago and which the politicians have been exploiting to their own advantage since then is a currency that will one day fail. He said he admires Nigerians because of their resilience. Hmmm.

They say that everyday is for the thief but one day is for the owner. Let the drama continues. The new game now is to make people disappear. This is a democracy and not a military junta. No problem. We are all watching the drama.

Someone even made a cartoon to show that Nigerian politicians deserve many awards for their dramas. Who can agree less. I am yet to see people with more dramatic performance than our politicians.

The same old trick is to commit all the fraud you like while in government. Once the government at the centre comes after you, you decamp from the party that elected you and jump ship. Then you become a saint. However, as the citizens have been captured and sold the dummy that there is nothing they can do, they do not realise that as you have left the party on whose ticket they voted for you, you should be recalled and asked to recontest on the platform of your new party.

However, when their constant song is: There is nothing we can do. How can they know that they can challenge you the way the American citizens are challenging their representatives in the town halls across the whole of the United States of America for the activities of the President that they elected but are now saying that they did not send him the things he is currently doing. In short, those ones will let their voice be heard loud and clear. Maybe because they would not disappear for talking. Or because no one will trace their phone number and call them to threaten them for crying on X.

Anyway, we may never know.

The new trend is that Nigerians are crying online, calling on Mrs Oluremi Tinubu to beg her husband to give them some relief because she is a mother. It is well o. What can she do? She is just a wife. Anyway, maybe as a mother, she will hear the cry of her children that are suffering. One even said that due to the Nigerian insecurity, which led to her husband being kidnapped and killed, that is why she is now widowed and unable to provide for her children, despite all her efforts. Indeed, I sympathise with her. However, giving only her food for the moment may not trickle down to everyone that is currently in the throes of the current economic realities in Nigeria. What we need is for everyone to be secure and be able to walk freely in Nigeria once again without being afraid of being kidnapped. Maybe Madam First Lady can help us with that. I pray.

Everyone being able to afford feeding and sending their children to school is what we need. When the people in leadership become insensitive to the plight of their people, I just pray that they don’t realise too late how careless they have been.

Aisha Yesufu had been warning that when the goat is pushed to the wall and it has nowhere to turn anymore, it will turn on its pursuers. That is the way of life.

As shown in the histories of civilisations that went out of circulation, they didn’t plan it. It just happened. Life cannot be like this forever. People of the past have become history.

I only hope that Nigerians will cast off the mindset of ‘There is nothing we can do’ and take on a mindset of ‘We deserve better’.

I was really bothered the day I was speaking to my Master of English (language) students in Contrastive Linguistics class in University of Benin and they too made the statement: There is nothing anyone can do. I was really pissed off. They were describing the terrible rot in the Ministries of Education in Delta and Edo States and how it is impacting the educational system. I was quite surprised by such nonsense going on. But as teachers, I asked them if they have tried to bring all those things to the attention of people in government. They continued to reply me that there is nothing anyone can do. How will you know that if you do not do anything? You can never tell.

I remember once calling the attention of a Commissioner in Delta State, who is from my husband’s village, to an observation I made about the Delta Line Transport Company. I reported my observation to him. Whether anything was done about it or not, I cannot verify, because I think the business is actually almost comatose now (from the reports I have heard recently as I have not patronised the Company for quite a while). However, I have done my part by making my report. The idea is if you see something, say something. You never can tell if the person in authority that could do something about it could get access to the truth through your report that their sycophants would not tell them. Though, I heard from someone that was once close to a governor as a Special Assistant telling me that the mood of the man determines if they can tell him anything or not. Why should such a person that cannot handle the truth about the people they purportedly lead ask to be empowered to lead them? This shows that they are only power hungry and have no real vision about making a difference. This will always show in the way they handle the opportunity.

Some only want positions for transactional purposes. Will it not be obvious when they begin to steal from the people they lead by turning them into business ventures rather than seeking to make their lives better? I even learnt that the student loan deposit of N100B has grown wings as about N71.2B cannot be accounted for after giving out loans of about N28.8B within one year. Is it not better to actually make life easier for everyone to afford the education they can give their children? The question is, how is Botswana able to do this and not tie a rope round the neck of its citizens. How did Libya do it under Gaddafi? How is Ibrahim Traore doing it currently in Burkina Faso and started giving sleepless nights to the imperialists that want him out by all means (May the merciful God continue to protect that young man till he fulfils the vision he has for his country).

I came to the conclusion that we deserve the people that rule over us considering the sort of wickedness Nigerians exhibited against one another during the cashless crisis in early 2023. Who do us like this?

Indeed, my question and heart cry to God everyday remains: God, when will Nigeria experience the progress she deserves? I think when we realise that we are the one that can change our story by taking hold of our destiny.

If we can move from obscurity to becoming a people that our music was played to celebrate the win of the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, then, we can change our story if we change our powerless mindset. If we can be the first music that hits a new comer to the O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, then we can rewrite our story as a great people with self-respect.

The answer is not in running away but in facing our fears and holding those in position to run our resources accountable to us. Lekki Gate shooting shows us that it may lead to a supreme prize being paid, but where has it been known that fearful people ever make history. The national banner had already been stained, not by those that want a better life but by those determined to deny them of that better life.

I was highly embarrassed yesterday when the anchor on the African News Channel asked some pertinent questions about our fake resilience that looks more like cowardice and fearfulness. I think it is time we begin to educate ourselves on what really matters to give us a true sense of pride in ourselves. As long as we continue to be easily bought with N5000 every four years, indeed there may be anything we can do.

However, when our sense of national pride and desire to experience better begins to overcome our religious and ethnic divisions, where we do not think that ‘Up NEPA’ is a proper song for us to continue to sing from one generation to another, we will sure take charge and become the people God ordained us to be from the beginning. The greatest nation on earth of people of the African descent and a pride to the African race the world over.