Beyond the Stolen Dreams, Depth of Darkness, and the Rush and Strain of Modern Life – the Y2020 Scripts -By Jimi Bickersteth

The world is a theatre of dreams, mysteries, myths, darkness and logic. Of all this unrealities of realities, of human struggles, foibles and frailties, comes dreams. Dreams – a series of images, events and feelings that happen in the mind is every mortals common friend and ally; borne out of the wish(es) to possess on one hand, the will to turn the hopes and dreams of a good, prosperous people into reality should be the aims and goals of all leaders.

Sequel to Father Matthew Kukah’s Easter Metaphor and its griping remarks from the presidency, today, in a reality from which the presidency was immuned, the vibes across the length and breadth of the lay of the land is that of a circumstance in which things hoped for in spite of the nation’s embarrassment of riches do not seem real, and the nation is moving around in absolute dream. The nation’s lot is that of thinking about things without actually doing anything, and what it has was a dream stolen by its own (ruling) elites.

The Y2023 is around the corner and the pressy had duly laid his
national budget proposals and consequently a supplementary plan before a joint session of the National Assembly as
demanded by the constitution. Having said this, it became obvious that there’s a thing about the Year 2023 that catches the fancy of all,
a. the parlous state of the federation, b. the PHCN menace and its attendant malaise coupled with, c. the lukewarmness of the nation’s politicians and political leaders. These issues as a matter-of-fact triggered this write up.

The sun had come out while I was putting this together after days of unrelenting rain and the characteristic floods that threatened to submerged some parts of the federation. Now the
sun has gone in again. The sky dull and menacing, and wind came in sudden erratic little puffs. It was as though one had stepped out of normal everyday life into the queer half-world of enchantment.

In this stupors of enchantment the nation’s leaders, political and spiritual fly with amusements in jets of assorted configuration even as they neglect the poor states of the Nigerian roads, they are at the twilight of the Y2023
unconcerned and or unconscious of:
the dire lack of electric power supply, the astronomical rise in the cost of living, the incessant ASUU strike(s), the overcrowded learning and teaching environments in dilapidated and collapsing structures all over the federation, the flip flop of private schools at a time fuel sold locally at between #163 and #165 a litter and on the global reckoner at $35×560.

One feels properly sympathetic with the nation’s cause even as higher crude prices and the uncomplimentary recourses to extensive debt profiling and its attendant servicing added to this the big pay packet of the nation’s elected Representatives, put together were the albatross of the great depression all around the marvelously spoilt and fantastically corrupted nation.

A nation whose budget among so many improprieties, anomalies, wrong priorities and perceptions had provisions that:
(i) would cater to the tune of #2.5billon on Air travels for two people, are they travelling to Mars, you’ll ask,
(ii) empowered the National Assembly of less than 500 Nigerians with an amount that was more than that allocated to the Health and Education Sectors,
(iii) did not see and foresee the opportunities the current global crisis, the Russian/Ukraine face-off is creating for the national good and prosperity,
(iv) still did not provide that enabling environment that should see its bourse or what is called the Stock Exchange that had been bear-hugged and consequently comatose since circa 2003 to recover and bounce back in a bull shape.

Are our leaders actually alright? I asked myself that question often, even now as I put this thoughts together. The question was present at the back of my mind all through last night. It came suddenly to the fore when I was finally seated in my library. The nation’s euphoria of a siesta was one thing, plenty of petronaira to blue – a carefree atmosphere of potholes, flooding, hunger, littany of poverty, more hot stifling nights, more blinding sun and a combination of mist, rain and flood, and tropical beauty of rich vegetation. What contrasts!

The federation on an April day that had defied logic, old physics and geographic lessons of Rain and Dry seasons.
Climate change to boot! An April day, with a grey cloudy sky. Nothing fascinating about her on a day like this! And the people! Heavens, the people! Crowds of them, all with complaining mien on grey faces like the sky – anxious worried faces under the full glares and intense activity or was it inactivity of politicians and public office holders with immense sense of self-importance, and who had without exception been decidedly good politicians as politicians go including the pastor vice-president.

The politicians and the
acknowledged craving for drama, melodramatic extravagance at its best. What with taxes and Pharaonic-dues on the people upwardly mobile and increasing while services to the good people is at a standstill, even as civil/public servants clamour for wages/salaries increase, which is going to triple the expense of running cost. Quite permissible – though I do think nowadays there is so much waste – and nobody saves or thinks of the future as all sallied forth in pretense in search of amusement, unabsorbed in the elusive eldorado in the nation’s political, security and economic situations.

The nation singularly unspoilt by recent developments, lay innocently and relatively peaceful in the sunlight. It seemed singularly remote, strangely untouched by the pull and tug of about 200 million people, but got everyone stupefied by the appalling and incongruous castellated mass that greeted all. A once brilliant vision, delicate etching – poignant and beautiful. The picture wavered and broke up – became meaningless and foolish.

The nation’s political leaders just have to descend from their Olympian heights to the level of more ordinary mortals determined to get out of the rut, raising selves by their own efforts, perseverance, hard work and divine connection ( that explains the proliferation of churches in the nation’s nook and cranies, matter for another day). That’s what made the nation what it is today – the prevailing self-help ethos of the citizenry which had overwrote and overrode the ‘Derivatives Principles and Policies”
enshrined in the nation’s constitution, and they oftentimes pandered to the public servants worst flight of imagination.

It’s a great thing for the nation as it were, that, its men and women know what they want and has sharp survival instincts to counter the insurrection and the cruelty of politicians on the people, through their greed, mindless fleece, heists, which is not so much innate as due to the fact that even the nation’s political imagination is slow in ripening. That is why the current crops of the nation’s political leaders are conceived as grown men and women with the mentality of a prodigal child. They’re either unconscious of and or unconcerned about the assessment. Of course, you realise that the cunning and brutality of a lunatic may be unrealized by the man himself.

A lack of growth somewhere is at the root of much of the cruelty of politicians on one hand and that of man to fellowman and to society, the stupid bestality and brutality, kidnapping for ransom, rape and so in the world today. A Man who is a child is the most frightening thing in the world today. And either in the USA, Nigeria or elsewhere, they have to be told that they are men and women and should endeavor to grow up and be one.

Today, the nation is indifferent and has a somewhat illogical prejudice against its politicians in general – based on the grounds that so many politicians are corrupt diehards of the worst description. The nation’s politicians, most of whom, as it were, are actors who do not know their cue, stood in the way of the nation’s progress. Imagine that at sixty-two, the nation still found itself in the quagmire of despair, from the days leaders opined that
“Nigerians are not picking food from the dustbin” to now, when most pick from the dunghills in the name of “Food for the dogs”
with no adequate functional and
stable electric power supply, no
functional health care at all levels, poor educational standards owing to poor infrastructures. The country looks colourless.

Without mincing words, most of the things the nation’s public office holders said and not do were positively actionable. At this, I smiled. My anger subsided as quickly as it had arisen. But then anyone with real intelligence was bound to see through the razzmatazz of the caricature called Nigerian politician, pastor or not. The people had better chose effrontery to tell the politicians that have no sufficient brains to give the nation not only dance, but also, what its good people wants.

The nation often spare its politicians feelings, but its time they know that the past, the future and the present means so much to the people. “–which is absurd!” How succinct and nicely Euclid put things. Truth be told, there should not be complexity in modern life, its governance and providing for the very needs of the people but for some famous inverterate political diehards who oppose progress, favour the status quo and consequently disrespect human life while lining their pockets at the peoples expense.

But who’s to be the judge of a man’s fitness or unfitness of public office physically, mentally literally and figuratively. The pacifist would condemn the agitators and neither is wrong or right. You’d have to have a scientific man a judge, in any case, how many living Nigerians have the mindset, pose, and
poise while wrestling with lack, hunger and poverty. Would the nation have been a better place without the muddling, fumbling
politicians? One might be inclined to say so. Well, it’s not a kind of gospel with me.

I might be a fanatic on democracy and its antithesis and thesis, good governance, perhaps the general layman’s idea. But to all seeming, democratic dividends should be:
Free press/Social Media,
Free and unfettered judiciary,
Provision of sound health care delivery system, that synergies from the local dispensary through the health centers, the General Hospitals and the Teaching Hospitals,
24/7 Electricity to all nooks and crannies of the Federation,
Motorable roads worthy for
vehicles,
Adequate qualitative education tailored and suitable to the nation’s needs, and provision of
other infrastructure and the enable environment that makes life worth living and a valuable experiences.

Should the nation be content to stay in a rut till eternity while bullion billion roam the streets to everywhere but nowhere? The people’s psychology and self-help ethos is amazing in spite of the nation’s politicians dithering, but peoples smiles had been that of a grownup amused by the cleverness of a child (politicians). I can’t help but hoping that some of the elected Representatives I could name but won’t – sober middle-aged people – find it hard to remember the electorate, and where they do, it is with wheelbarrows, hoes and cutlasses, at a time the world had moved ahead in mechanised farming.

The nation – looming mass of humanity -it’s getting on one’s nerves, and one is assailed by a strong feeling of complex unreality and all that. So smiling and peaceful – so innocent – and all the time this crazy streak of murder, kidnapping for ransom, the Abuja-Kaduna road travails, debauchery, heists and grand fleeces running through it. Potholes and flood everywhere but politicians in their amazing
garrulousness, gallop away in the air their supersonic jets.

I lifted my eyes from the LED
contrast of the 17′ monitor, and thought that, brightness – sound mind and body – sanity, one unbelievable bore in this clime. A potential leader is one who must be madly eager – deliciously mad, slightly twisted- to see life from a new and entrancing angle – and at once, the unreality passed in my mind’s eye.

The country is real in spite of its long frowning aging lines etched on its peoples faces – and at once the unreality palsied. The nation knew strange things, human cruelty, blood lusts, rape, evil rites, poverty and lack. Bewitched also by the inferior quality of advice on offer from civil servants who have little or no control over the political office holders and who themselves are at a loss to know what to say and do and therefore truncate wily nilly critical democratic practices – political leaders thus propose what it wanted and preferred rather than what the nation’s good people really wanted. This been the case, all were surviving in an idyll of confusion and wrong priorities.

Yet, the people carry on with exceptional fortitude, stamina and endurance. The youths,
supposedly, leaders of tomorrow, have today been fixed and their personality wilted – just wilted into the abyss of frustration, drug, alcohol, Yahoo and Yahoo Plus. The situation have further compounded as the Chrisland school experience in Dubai, half-baked girls are forced into prostitution or early marriage to men old enough to be their father’s since the young ones are not ready for marriage due to the long lines on the unemployment queue.

The Society have turned most of its ‘boys’ and ‘ girls’ out neck and crop because they do not suit or fit the nation’s ideas of a modern society. I sat quite still – a queer numbed feeling spreading over me. I thought to myself ruefully: Who’s to break the spell! There’s no one. The nation wore on as though in a trance some weight of care or perplexity bowed it down; and still showing signs of vitality and life despite the rush and strain of modern life.

Twilight 2022, a twilight that hung rather sadly for the nation. It’s nice to be optimistic but experience and prejudice are very bad, but curiously anything other than this is – living a lie. There’s a lot of wickedness
about. All must be prepared – fight it or be left behind standing in the half gloom. Kukah spoke well!

PS
I tuned on a cable satellite to a recap of the talk shop at the last COW LSO – ( a perquisite and miracle of married life) an elitist configuration in a troubled, broke and terribly flat nation, and in all honesty could not grab who the discussants were really talking to on that platform, certainly, not the dehumanised girl-child on the streets in search of survival nor the elegantly turned out and dressed to the hilt damsels on
television. Even at the end of the jamboree, the participants all stood uncertain as though something still unsaid lingered among them.The nation has to do more. Contraptions, put-on and
put-ups like this were the worst of reality. Women – always down on their own sex. I have a feel this is putting it awkwardly and not seeing how to put it better. I hope am not committing lèsse majessté.

#JimiBickersteth
Jimi Bickersteth is a writer and blogger.
He can be reached on Twitter
@alabaemanuel
@bickerstethjimi