A country’s lies exposed

We surely do live in interesting times nowadays! The originals of those words are embedded in the much more popular proverb, “May you live in interesting times”, which in their original expressions, are not meant to be positive. In the north, these times are as interesting as they can get; what with Boko Haram continuing to unleash terror that is claiming lives on a regular basis.

These times are also interesting because a statistical report released by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that in this land of perceived hunger, Nigerian households are spending more money talking to each other or talking to nobody in particular than they spend on something as essential as food! That says a lot, doesn’t it? You’ll have to think long and hard if you were debating the topic of how there are ajority of Nigerians living under poverty line! Statistics! Damn statistics! Even more, damn, statisticians and their brothers—economists!

I am sure that for some reasons, of which when you get to know, you’ll feel sorely ashamed and then become disoriented for much of the remaining part of your life, those who lead this country, did not imagine that the euphoria that followed the back slapping and celebration of our economy becoming the largest in Africa, after the rebasing exercise announced on April 6, 2014.would be overshadowed by  a very grave incident, the abduction of over 200 innocent school girls in what is now truly known to be a neglected, even forgotten, area called Chibok.

You get to know how truly backwaters it is as a part of this country when you see all the pictures that the Cable News Network (CNN), AlJazeera, and the likes have been bringing to our living rooms and offices since ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ broke and began to draw enough global attention to make these networks camp out in Chibok.

I don’t know how the federal government and its officials are feeling right now, but you can be sure that this feeling will also include stomach churnings, the type that will be sending them to the toilet every time they tune on to CNN or they as much as hear the name ‘Oby Ezekwesili’, who is showing all of us that there is a good use of life and time on this earth no matter your status in life, even after a stint at the World Bank.

And did you see how Isha Sesay the other day; and the other day, grilled Labaran Maku, our Information minister, who, on one particular night, was ‘torn’ to pieces by Sesay and he couldn’t say, like they normally say to hapless Nigerian journalists, “I will call your publisher or MD and report you, you this bloody journalist”? And in some extreme cases, when the power becomes very intoxicating, ask a police orderly to “deal with that journalist”. Standing toe to toe with Labaran Maku, Isha Sesay was dealing serious upper cuts to the minister demanding answers from him on the failure of his government to respond properly to the sudden disappearance of close to 300 young girls with the whole of their future ahead of them! Of course, with the cameras rolling, with the whole world watching, all the minister could do was offer wry smiles, but you could see how uncomfortable he was throughout the short session.

There is a broader narrative in all that’s going on right now, especially surrounding the kidnapping of these young school girls. It’s a Nigerian narrative. It’s something we have all always thought we knew but which are issues we often sketched around. In a sense some government officials might see the intense international media focus as intrusive, but they really can’t do anything about it.

This is now an international matter; and once something goes global, there is little you can do to keep away the international media. It very quickly goes out of your hands and out of your control. So as the world gets to see our country much more broadly, this narrative is opening our eyes to see our own land even better.

As the international cameras roll on in Chibok and further into the other parts, towns and villages, on the way to Chibok, we see evidence of how our leaders deceive us; telling us that they are doing things, when most of what we see is that they have been doing ‘underdevelopment’. Yes, that’s what they do mostly. We see poverty. We see neglect. We see the lies. Then, we are able to make up our minds that outside their capitals and their acknowledged big cities, some of which were actually built by colonialists, governments care very little what happens in the hinterlands.

Chibok was just another name; and even didn’t exist for some other people, until Boko Haram terrorists went to carry away young girls from their school dormitories, after what must have been a horrific awakening from sleep! But as the television cameras bring us pictures from the school showing how the terrorists razed down its buildings, we also can see the surrounding areas. We can see some areas even beyond the school and we can see that this was a forgotten town before now. It’s perhaps a town forgotten in the recent rebasing of the economy, we can never know.

But so are many parts of the country, until something like this happens. Or it even happens elsewhere and nothing is heard, nothing is said. The victims get forgotten!

The Nigerian media largely know this – that there are many areas where government demonstrates a high level of incompetence. And the media have been saying this for such a long time. You don’t need anyone to cry in public and say, “there’s God o”, to confirm this incompetence. This ongoing crisis has only helped to draw world-wide attention to the scale of the incompetence, the lies that are at the heart of governance.

We live with politicians who would make promises in voodoo-like manner; and end up doing little to nothing!

PHILLIP ISAKPA