When commencing a dream house project, the enthusiasm behind it is usually a katzenjammer. You always want it big, you often desire it magnificent and you hanker for its resplendent splendour. It is why you funnel into its resources, you pump into it energy and a Brobdingnagian precious chunk of time are invested. When men plan to build dream-edifices, the excitement is ravishing and the adrenaline is at an all-time high because the dream must live.
If a dream building effort will end up an abandoned project, there are warning signs. They are the preceding indicators before the building cascades into rough rubble. The dream could have lived but the warning signs were largely ignored. The signs indicate that you missed something somewhere that must be fixed. What did you miss? And where did you miss what you missed? Questions linger on even after the dream went kaput. If a physical dream house ultimately collapses into a nightmare, quality tests will fail minimum standards, there will be noticeable cracks in awkward places and on the columns, pillars, beams and slabs are dangerous holes. Poorly constructed buildings will eventually collapse when they fail the concrete cube test.
The fact is that buildings do not fall suddenly. There are always signs that sighings and sorrow are about to come. Ab initio, Nigeria as a nation existed as a business dream for the British overlords and their criminal accomplices. And the dream, which was lorded on our forefathers, became burdensome edifice bequeathed to generations after them. Over the last 60 years, the dream has flipped into a nightmare. The 1914 fusion of many tongues under one canopy of disparity and ethnic incompatibility is been widely adjudged a pernicious error of mind-boggling proportion because bad umbrae have largely ruled. The nightmares in all sectors of Nigerian life may be warning signs of an unfurling tribulation we now sheepishly ignore. A land of plenteous opportunities for growth and advancement has become a habitation of abnormality. Bad umbrae in Nigeria’s purlieu of power are in cornucopian counts.
Assistant Commissioner of Police Abba Kyari is one of them. A young man with so much power and swagger colluded with drug barons. He wined and dined coast-to-coast with bad people and conducted police enforcement business in the same space with the Hushpuppies of Nigeria’s weird world. Kyari got paid millions to set criminals loose to commit more crimes with ease. Abba Kyari is a Nigerian youth. And there is much clamour around the country today for an abdication of presidential power and authority to our young people. Imagine a Kyari as president in charge of Nigeria’s economic lifeline, who will his business partners be? Our future as a nation used to be a sweet dream. Now, it is a nauseating nightmare and in peril because of bad umbrae. When bad umbrae rule, a nation goes into ruins.
I heard a sitting governor claim that he spent N680 million on the treatment of snake bites in his state. It was the same state where another mysterious snake swallowed JAMB’s huge cash in the custody of a young Nigerian woman. There is nothing more venomous than the bites on our collective pies by crooks in power. When bad umbrae rule, venomous snakes are all over our space.
No nation fails or falls over a 24-hour circadian period. No country gets bludgeoned into absolute smithereens in a jiffy. Drip! Drip! Drip! The hole of destruction is burrowed under the feet of Haman until he gets buried in it. When a nation is about to get hit by an incalculable calamity, ominous signs of the illness are everywhere. The nation’s economy runs comatose. The safety and security of the citizenry go berserk. Persecutions replace prosecutions in the criminal justice arm. Criminals are let go and freedom fighters are hounded and slammed in the calaboose. Leaders no longer carry the weight of hope and their actions and inactions aid backwardness and retrogression into existence. In a nation set to cascade, the people gradually slide into hopelessness and those they once trusted as ‘messiahs’ become reckless maniacs and loose cannons launched out to torment a people gone aghast. States don’t fail overnight. The seeds of their destruction are sown deep within their political institutions. The Nigerian environment will likely maintain its status quo of lockjaw deplorable mess for a long time. And It may not matter who is the superintending superintendent.
But I still believe that Nigeria is a good idea. But any good idea in the hands of bad people becomes a bad idea. When bad umbrae rule, a nation goes into ruins. I expressed at the outset of this treatise that if a physical dream-building will ultimately collapse into a nightmare, quality tests will fail minimum standards, there will be noticeable cracks in awkward places and on the columns, pillars, beams and slabs are dangerous holes. There are too many cracks on the walls of leadership in Nigeria. Misfits are in positions of power and this is a sign that the future is in deep and harrowing troubles. What do you expect of a nation when robbers are ruling and ignoramuses are making laws and determining economic policies? Take a peep at the ones running to lead and you will ascertain the kind of country ours is. Bad umbrae many of them are. They are people with a track record of brazen thievery and scorpionic leadership dispositions. God of heaven, may they fail and fall flat like Dagon!
Somebody in the Nigerian government recently assured me that Nigeria is about to change for good. I hope so and that’s our prayers. A litmus test of how that will unfold will be conducted in 2023. We hereby admonish the rich but sick ones among runners for office to take a back seat and appeal to the feeble but affluent folks to take a sit-out. Let thieves take a leave and let the bandits with billions, and bullion vans to boast about, stay on the sidelines. Let professional politicians find another profession and let their attack dogs learn new crafts to feed their families. Let men and women with salvaging ideas step up and take charge of a nation that may fall apart in the next 10 years if urgent leadership help does not come. Nigeria is a good idea but a good idea in bad hands becomes bad. But when it is in the hands of good people, good things begin to happen. May good and great things happen for Nigeria.
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