I am Responsible for Nigeria’s Problems -By Israel Dara Sobaloju

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us. – Barack Obama

The coughing Rats and sneezing snakes sometimes consider if the Rabbit do lay egg, they sometimes connive to search out the reason behind the bleating of the goat, and neglect the ostensible efforts that needed to be put together to exhilarate the residual effect of Cat and Crocodile. In our social system, some lives have been wasted due to the fact that a society that is allergic to reality and truth has commissioned its own collapse. In a society that will rather unite to build the tall tower of Babylon, than to fight against the responsive evil of the villains, all they usually get is distractions from ethnicity and languages.

Our nation has been on a rotten mask for a long time, with we the citizen believing that we have buried the face of our mischievous denigration and overconfidence in the exhaustible hope and Patience our father implanted in us. The gods of the goodwill of patience may no longer be on our sides, as he has taken a walk to visit the crying country, whose pretty building just fell from the shock of the land, whose little children fell from the back of a speeding lorry trying to escape the war he never knew about. We have spent such a long time crying over spilt milk even while the scorching sun has dried the milk away to give us showers of blessings. Our anthem now become sour in the ear of the singer and the listeners, with our resources tappers dancing to the tune of it, as all they can hear is the hip-hop of some wailing citizens.

Hip-hop, when the singer chant the crowd and the crowd turn back the chant expressly not minding the palatine life of their stage men. The minds and the consciousness of our dear nation has gone to Zanzibar beach for a vacation. The beauty of Zanzibar has made the women of Tanzania lock it down under the tall palm tree, relaxing while its owner are under government who are building fiefdoms of oppression and hatchery of mischiefs. The pseudonym expression of the lives of certain members of our species and nation would be treated with ignominy and unparalleled indignity even without the permission of the citizens of the nation, thanks to our festival of unjust choices, cowardice, and silence which has enthroned injustice as a tradition in our milieu. The injustice now hunt after our sacred conscience, feeding on the nectar of our gullible choices and decisions.

How will I prefer to see a man who stole two tubers of Yam in Onitsha market because he had nothing to eat and feed his family with due to the dryness and feyness of the land, through the siphoning ability of some little few, than see a senator who has carted away the countries resources and budgetary allocation of the country preparing for a future they are destroying for the mean man? It seems that Nigerians as a people are in perpetual slavery to self-deception and abnegation of civic right. We are so very allergic to reality. Truth for us is whatever consolidates our unexamined prejudices. We prefer to chant our mischievous politicians when they ride in exotic cars, for them to throw out just a piece of the naira. We prefer to ask a senator for selfie, when we purportedly sit beside them luckily in the church than ask the reason while that beautiful girl still roams the street with the food she ate three days ago. We follow our governors and ministerial appointees on social media, when they follow back, we’re happy as if we won a lottery, and pass by the crippled woman who asked for our help while passing through the stinking river by the street.

I carried a woebegone expression when I saw the number of youths congratulating the Senate President of Nigeria’s upper chamber when he was acquitted of all charges by the code of conduct tribunal on the social media, instead of pushing against the decision of the tribunal despite every evidences placed before it. Why do this youth do this, to get a retweet, and show it to their social media friends as an achievement their father could not attain. We prefer to talk, and discuss about our celebrities whose impart on the society are neither existing or negative, than reprove our senate of the policies they are incorporating into our sphere. This is why a Nigerian will rise up and proudly declare himself very happy, be followed by a celebrity on the social media, even though the tenets of his religion, and the codex of self-respect forbids his pledging himself as a slave without the chance of manumission to any man; his ignorance and juvenile naiveté armed him with the effrontery to celebrate the supreme insularities of his narrow-mindedness in the village square.

See, our dirty pipes, which carry the filthy feces of our pretense and ignorance has blown in front of our case judges’ chamber. The secret we spent our entire life protecting has been revealed. Our brothers and sisters in the north now want our eastern siblings to leave the shores of their country, our Yoruba sisters now want to create their own state because the will of our Igbo brothers is to leave the laboring mother of the North in the labour room and pass through the window to the nearby stream to save him of the stress the new baby will cause him. What else can we do? Our Naira can no longer work confidently in the state of currency as the lord of the town – Dollar is found of mocking its retarded growth and degenerative ascension. No more food for the hungry child whose father gave up his life saving the country. The lean mother whose breast is dry of milk cry so bad that the vultures shakes at her cry. But some men whom they have chosen with the myopic and sentimental discretion of ethnicity and religion sits in their habitations to afflict them.

Am I Nigeria’s problem? Am I responsible for the family who died on the road which has become death slab last week? Do I owe this nation anything? Yes, I need to make this confession, tell the acting vice-president of our nation – Prof Yemi Osinbajo that I am the author of Nigeria’s problem. When I refused to protest the decision of my representatives at the senate, when I saw that little girl crying for food and I could not help. We are individually responsible for Nigeria’s problem. It will be a disgrace to conclude some minority has caused the problem of over 150 million people. Social media has become a curse to us rather than a blessing. Machiavelli couldn’t have invented a more genial game to occupy and distract all the freshly-minted professors of ignorance, and and elite of stupidity. The little minority have however taken up the social media to torment our ignorance instead of we taking it up to monitor and keep them on their toes. It is time we all stand up to the call of our national anthem and pledge to challenge the lascivious act of our government and define our democracy. The people forms the government in democracy not the government form the people. Until we can stand up to beat our chests and say “I am responsible for Nigeria’s problem” and take necessary steps, our nation may slump one day for us to find out that it has woken up in three different Dreamlands (Biafra, Oduduwa and Arewa).

Israel Dara Sobaloju is a Public Affairs analyst, Journalist, Curator of ScholarZine Nigeria and Student of Obafemi Awolowo University.