Unveiling the Truth of the Nation’s Reality at Blue Moon -By Jimi Bickersteth

Leaning back in my chair, I regarded the activity of the street outside from the study terrace through the Venetian blinds, its traffic of cycle rickshaws, known widely as “Kẹ̀kẹ́ Marwa, I recalled OBJ brought his own version in his millennium clueless poverty alleviation problem, but that couldn’t wipe away the Marwa’s initiative from the people’s consciousness. That’s by the way though; the dangerously driven motor cycles and the stream of bikes ridden mostly by the ‘visitors from the north, or is it Niger’, and small taxis driven with equal recklessness by amateur drivers who had no Idea where they were going, some chattering away on their cellphones, some go as far as texting while driving in the process, maiming and killing pedestrians, and were quite happy so long as they kept their cars in motion. For the unwary, the streets were full of menace, one violence after the other.

Eager for an excuse to do something other than leaning on the armchair watching the tragedies on the streets, I got up and walked barefooted into the study and my writing desk. Let me write about the disapproving atmosphere in the land, which were generally felt but not seen. Write about the politicians who minded not what the people thought of them. The people knew what rackets, caucuses alignment and realignment that was going on and gossiped about it in that bored, sophisticated way they have in Nigeria when discussing other people’s sexual adventures. Some intolerant and more critical than others depending on where you hailed from in the geographical expression, the north, south, East west, and the new one, south-south. In any case, they all hinted silently by their attitudes and expressions that the politicians had lost face by taking the wrong turns on the road to nationhood and true fiscal federalism.(Matter for another day).

By now the moon floated in a cloudless sky, shedding its light in a reflection on the glass windows. Terror, insecurity and the fear of the unknown were making our compatriots eyes larger and glistering in the moonlight. Talking about the moon, the full moon – the lunar phase when the Moon appears fully illuminated from Earth’s perspective, though there’s still some dark spot when there isn’t a lunar eclipse. The full moon is generally a suboptimal time for astronomical observation because shadows vanish. The shadows of the present times must thus be lifted like a mist in the nation’s consciousness.

The saying once in a blue moon meaning “very rarely” is recorded since the 1820’s. The term “blue moon” is recorded in 1528, in the couplet Oh churche men are wyly foxes […] Yf they say the mone is blewe/We must beleive that it is true/Admittynge their interpretation. Humans were reportedly more physically efficient during full moons. The nation must chorus enough of all this shadow boxing by its leaders.

While priming myself up to the task of writing, I remembered I have been out of circulation for some days. I got a newspaper from the pile on the table, settled down to read. There was nothing in the paper: the usual dreary depressions, the politicians hopeful promises, Russia growling, all of which had become a Wagnerian music in my ears. I had the sight of Abuja jumped on my mind: and what a city! In the brilliant light of the moon, I could see the wide boulevards packed with cars, the luxe high-rises: a picture of opulent wealth and disarrangement and wrong priorities.

I just gaped at the ultimate in luxury amidst the pervasive and widespread poverty all over the federation looking like a mix of oil and water. Added to this, the sadistical long queues at the filling stations. It made me sick to think of the poverty streaks that has come to fit our compatriots like a glove and in contrast, the stupendously wealthy political entrepreneurs – the ruling class, looking like three month old stiff, crawling with maggots. The signs were all there, and yours truly know that there is the need to cross the division between the people and their rulers.

It was a temptation, but not the time, with the politicians being coaxed like a mother with a wayward child.

The well-to-do politicians, whose faces look like they had been chiselled out of marble, and in turn were coughing like a refugee from a T.B. clinic, meanwhile, there is no light, no food, (where there are the costs are so exhorbitant), no water, no fuel, no gas, no work and no money, and the citizenry consequently, faced with a future looking horrifyingly bleak. One can’t isolate this problem singularly, as one was the offshoot and outcome of the others.

Thinking here was an immediate complication and I felt a wave of irritation run through me at the bunch of people at the helm who were not interested in honours. Their eyes opened to their widest extent at the nation’s treasury. This was no time and moment to think of the politicians, but of the nation and its men and women whose faces have become a network of wrinkles like crushed parchment, and how to put the pieces of the scattered jigsaw that makes up the Nigerian federation. It is discovering that without the right mentality and the right people at the helm, and with the way things stand, without the right cues, and without a light at the end of this frightening tunnel, the nation could collapse.

Why should the nation collapse? Well!

i. the Nation has over expanded over the years, with a growing and unabridged mistrust and lack of faith and confidence in the ruling class,

ìì. the recurrent, heightened fear of domination of the minorities,

iii. marginalisation propped by the winner-takes-all syndrome inherent in the presidential system of government,

iv. religion intolerance,

v.  insecurity and hostage taking,

vi. a feeble attempt to overcome its growing economic inertia,

vii. the nation is been borrowing huge sums of money both locally and internationally. The nation has such a reputation. Presently, its name is gold, the real deal would be when its creditors would begin to call in their loans.

The politicians at the helm and the academia with crooked grin at the realities on ground were like actors getting carried away. Their mien gave no confidence to a dithering and drowning nation and a people walking on a lethal tightrope. The nation kept staring at itself the way Frankenstein must have stared at the monster he had created. A nation where money and blatant lust were God. A united Nigeria in name, but not in fact.

Everyone was still bored stiff about all this Nigerian arrangements with how people got into offices, and the general situation of ‘No melon’ spelt backwards, but being offensive to no one. I became calm but breathless, no calmer than a spinster who had found a man under her bed. A sudden thumping of my pulse and a tight feeling across my chest. The situation is breath-taking, continuous with no end in sight. What with corruption, debt crisis, hypertensive hyperinflation, unstable ($-₦) dollar-naira exchange rate, and darkness.

A clime where politicians and their coterie of advisors were ‘government’ and you do not know whose side they were on, the peoples, justice, rule of law or the president’s and or governors as the case maybe. To the nation government was a set-up right out of a movie. That It presented a challenge!

The saying that money is power is an accepted cliché. In the writers world, I had heard it often enough, but as I never had enough money, the cliché meant little to me. But at the whole charades otherwise named political parties primaries, the results of which the nation took as if it was news of a weather forecast, I witnessed the cliché come true with a devastating impact. As simple and as easy as that: The power of money! The power is money!

I studied the 62 year old farcical and messy situation that the nation has found itself, all of which were making me scarcely controlling a fermenting rage. A terrible mess for an enfant terrible and ‘ólulẹ̀’ nation. For several minutes, I sat still, panic stamping all possible thought. Then after a while, I forced myself to standup, walk to the bathroom and throw cold water over my head. Drying my face, I returned to the study where I have my writing desk to pace up and down. My panic began to recede. Perhaps, it was a sudden nervous reaction?

This is a nightmare nation! The people have suffered enough, and have earned the right to know the truth and be more and more imaginative and creative about finding solutions to the myriads of problem confronting the nation with all of its unknown factors and x’s. All over the federation it was like playing the same old disc again and again. The nation and its people have lived in a Technicolor dream for far too long: spending what it does not have and living a borrowed Life.

The nation has been driven to high hedges. There was the desperate, wild note in everyone’s voice that brought back all the nation’s old fears, the macabre dance of deaths, the massacre all over the nation, and now, our nerves have been stretched to breaking point, with many longing to get away, see the senator Ekweremandu organ matter in the UK and the senate is alleged to be sending a delegation with taxpayers money to London, in solidarity or what!. Some mad people!.

The senator’s incident had shown that something evil was going on: something far too complicated for the leadership and the ruling elites to solve, and the issues were weighing down on everyone, and we must find a solution, set of solution(s)or way out of the miserable quagmire. Meanwhile, there was a heavy oppressive silence in and around the nation.

A long, explosive silence hung over the dimly lit room and a tension that only deep shock can produce. I heaved a hopeless shrug. The people can’t upset  politicians empire. I was in suspense, worried about what the nation’s next move should be. I would have to wait and see what happens.

The only sound I could hear was the steady beating of my heart. I sat there, in utter silence, scared, feeling the silence, and the conspiracy of silence. I thought how nice it would be to get this nation moving again. A nation big enough to more than take care of itself. But I know if we are to get somewhere (and anywhere) there are certain things that must be in place, lots of bigger ideas in our minds, but first a changed mindset.

It is fashionable and easy to criticise, you’ll say, but Nigerians are getting it hard and rough and in a very difficult position. What you see on Nigerians and imagine as a smile, is the kind of spasm you see on someone’s face when they have a sudden stomach cramp. The nation therefore, need more than the stilled conversation and the need to be shielded and excused from the moral burden on its leadership. It is not about what we want to do, what ‘we’ are going to do, which always often don’t get to first base; it’s what ‘we’ are doing without rubber cushioning. This is the time to shelter an ugly illusion, stating the facts as known, soberly and without hysterics.

I listened with growing irritation to the high-pitched chatter of my grandchildren downstairs, the discordant sound of distant vibes on stereo and the nerve shattering racket of passing motor cycles and the depression of my thoughts. Bored by the same, shameless faces on the political stage, the same i-di-otic: small talk, the same round of dreary ‘scandals’.

The politicians know that it was impossible to recognise any of them as the culprit(s) of the nation’s woes, and this obscurity gave them in a pathetic but defiant voluptuousness and deceptive.

Nigeria we hailed thee.#Jimi Bickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a super blogger and writer.

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