Eavesdropper: Nigeria through a Londoner’s lens -By Baba Dende

When outsiders begin to take interest in problems that do not have any direct impact on them, it could be a grim pointer to the overwhelming nature of such internal challenges. The first month of the year ended about two weeks ago with a Londoner piling Nigeria’s woes into an opinion of about 700 words. Right from his take-off point at a London airport down to the seat of power in Abuja, the writer’s lens peeped into the opulence of Nigeria’s political elite. And within a short time, its “economic slump, rising debt and a calamitous increase in kidnapping and banditry” were staring him in the face.    

The Londoner, like an average Nigerian, is also aware that “familiar candidates” to replace Bubu – “mostly recycled old men” – are already preparing for elections that would break the bank, with the hope of recouping their investment in the near future. Notably, the Londoner talk say Nigeria under Mr Presido “has sleepwalked closer to disaster.” True? Even if the gofment wants to explain it away as a flippant claim from nosey outsider, isn’t it tempting to believe his claim that Nigeria’s problem is not so much about who leads the nation but more of a sick administrative system itself?

He further wrote, “Nigeria desperately needs an administration whose energies go not into preserving its own privilege but into providing public goods — basic education and health, rule of law, security, power, roads and digital infrastructure.

“….The chances of a corrupt system reforming itself are slim. But if Nigeria’s ruling class cannot manage it, any remaining faith Nigerians have in their system of government will evaporate. That way lies disaster.”   

If it were to be in a boxing ring, the Londoner’s words would pass for heavy punches so powerful to cripple a tested challenger. Perhaps, they hurt. It wasn’t an easy one for baba’s talk-talk master to reply the giddiness inflicted by the blows and muster some defence, like any dogged fighter in his shoes would do no matter how battered. 

To be fair, Mallam really tried hard in his response to launder the regime’s image. It’s just that no smokescreens can sail through the valley of compelling truths. So, in the course of defending his paymaster, he tacitly confirmed the Londoner’s claim he set out to rebuff.

Hear him: “He highlights rising banditry in my country as proof of such slumber. What he leaves out are the security gains made over two Presidential terms….The situation is grave. Yet as with other challenges, it is one that the government will face down.”

Even if you blame the Londoner for not acknowledging the ‘security gains’ made by the regime, it would be risky for anyone to discredit his claim of rising banditry in the country – the overwhelming act of which the gofment itself has declared as terrorism following loss of hundreds of lives, series of kidnappings and massive displacement of locals.         

The tatafo of Aso Rock boasted of the government’s scorecard on security but then he shot himself in the leg. He stated that Boko Haram terrorists used to administer an area the size of Belgium at inauguration but now control no territory. Chineke! One wonders if the Presido’s trumpeter knows Borno better than the state’s commander-in-chief who said on January 12 that two local government areas were still under the control of Boko Haram. This is not to deny some remarkable strides made in combating terrorism but no serious gofment should bandy security gains amid attacks by members of the Islamic State of West Africa Province now fuelling insecurity in the area.