Nigerian youths are lazy: President Buhari
Let me say that my greatest anger with Nigeria is that it wasted my youth. And I saw the best minds of my generation, to make a riff of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, destroyed, driven mad and into internal and external exile, by a mindless lootocracy of military Generals and politicians, and their handful of recruits who have managed to recycle themselves over and over in Nigeria since the end of the last civil war.
In the annals of this nation, Nigeria basically came to an end in 1967, and has been living on half-pumps. It has tried all cosmetic things to cover the deep wounds of its history, but it has not reconciled itself to itself, nor has it truthfully re-established the nation as a historical imperative.
What Nigeria has become since January 1970 when the last civil war was said to have ended is indescribable. The least that can be said is that this nation became a Faustian space; a frontier of greed and looting, the result of sudden wealth from oil that drove everyone mad. We have inherited a Mephistophelean nation. It is the fit subject of a play – a great epic tragedy, in which no one escapes.
As Ibrahim Babangida, one of the major actors on that theatre of history feels the approach of the end of his mortality, he must wonder what it was all about – all that power to menace; to play God. The greatest gift providence offers to any living person is to afford them the chance by any means to affect and impact on the lives of people whom chance gave them the opportunity to serve. Such individuals choose their spot in history, consciously or unconsciously. Let me say now, that the annulment of the June 12 elections will not go down as the greatest basis on which Babangida would be estimated and judged, and confined either to the rubbish bins or to the pantheons of immortality.
It will be by the entire detail of his work particularly as political leader of Nigeria from August 1985 to August 1993. No one reads Chidi Amuta’s Prince of the Niger for a reason. It is hagiography. Mr. Babangida certainly has a high sense of history, and does certainly worry about his place. This is probably why last week he said in lament that he feels constrained about writing his autobiography because, “no one will read it,” and his lament that Nigerians have not been considerate or kind to “those who fought to keep the unity of Nigeria.”
Babangida has often talked about the unity of Nigeria as if “unity” is in itself an abstraction. The late Odumegwu-Ojukwu in fact did once suggest that unity must not be for some, the situation of Jonah in the belly of the fish. Otherwise it is pointless. The unity of Nigeria has not been beneficial to majority of Nigerians. This is why today, Nigeria disdains those who “fought for its unity.” The great symbol of Nigerian unity and nation-building, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe is now relegated to some kind of middling footnote in the trinity we have long invented as the founding tripod of Nigeria.
The great regionalists and ethnic nationalist leaders, are now the great heroes of Nigerian people. Why? Because Azikiwe’s nationalist project and vision failed. It is said to have failed because it was constructed on a lie – the lie that “unity” is a primary historical and material condition rather than a state of mind. But at least Azikiwe could be forgiven for idealism. Those who came after him were not builders of “national unity,” they were always cynical and greedy.
The condition for unity for them was that they and their inheritors alone must decide how to kill and divide the carcass of the great elephant called Nigeria, while the rest of us are quarantined, and if we make a little noise about injustice, attacked and sometimes killed for speaking out against the treachery of political leadership. That is the legacy Babangida leaves behind: the legacy of cynicism and repression that has created a profoundly alienated people who no longer believe in the unity of Nigeria, or that Nigeria has meaning for them, and who
In the annals of this nation, Nigeria basically came to an end in 1967, and has been living on half-pumps. It has tried all cosmetic things to cover the deep wounds of its history, but it has not reconciled itself to itself, nor has it truthfully re-established the nation as a historical imperative.
What Nigeria has become since January 1970 when the last civil war was said to have ended is indescribable. The least that can be said is that this nation became a Faustian space; a frontier of greed and looting, the result of sudden wealth from oil that drove everyone mad. We have inherited a Mephistophelean nation. It is the fit subject of a play – a great epic tragedy, in which no one escapes.
As Ibrahim Babangida, one of the major actors on that theatre of history feels the approach of the end of his mortality, he must wonder what it was all about – all that power to menace; to play God. The greatest gift providence offers to any living person is to afford them the chance by any means to affect and impact on the lives of people whom chance gave them the opportunity to serve. Such individuals choose their spot in history, consciously or unconsciously. Let me say now, that the annulment of the June 12 elections will not go down as the greatest basis on which Babangida would be estimated and judged, and confined either to the rubbish bins or to the pantheons of immortality.
It will be by the entire detail of his work particularly as political leader of Nigeria from August 1985 to August 1993. No one reads Chidi Amuta’s Prince of the Niger for a reason. It is hagiography. Mr. Babangida certainly has a high sense of history, and does certainly worry about his place. This is probably why last week he said in lament that he feels constrained about writing his autobiography because, “no one will read it,” and his lament that Nigerians have not been considerate or kind to “those who fought to keep the unity of Nigeria.”
Babangida has often talked about the unity of Nigeria as if “unity” is in itself an abstraction. The late Odumegwu-Ojukwu in fact did once suggest that unity must not be for some, the situation of Jonah in the belly of the fish. Otherwise it is pointless. The unity of Nigeria has not been beneficial to majority of Nigerians. This is why today, Nigeria disdains those who “fought for its unity.” The great symbol of Nigerian unity and nation-building, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe is now relegated to some kind of middling footnote in the trinity we have long invented as the founding tripod of Nigeria.
The great regionalists and ethnic nationalist leaders, are now the great heroes of Nigerian people. Why? Because Azikiwe’s nationalist project and vision failed. It is said to have failed because it was constructed on a lie – the lie that “unity” is a primary historical and material condition rather than a state of mind. But at least Azikiwe could be forgiven for idealism. Those who came after him were not builders of “national unity,” they were always cynical and greedy.
The condition for unity for them was that they and their inheritors alone must decide how to kill and divide the carcass of the great elephant called Nigeria, while the rest of us are quarantined, and if we make a little noise about injustice, attacked and sometimes killed for speaking out against the treachery of political leadership. That is the legacy Babangida leaves behind: the legacy of cynicism and repression that has created a profoundly alienated people who no longer believe in the unity of Nigeria, or that Nigeria has meaning for them, and who
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