The vultures are gathering again and will soon feed fat on our lean flesh. This mass grave called Nigeria is collapsing by the day…
Tony Iwuoma
When you look up in the sky and you see a flock of vultures, it could only mean that their food is ready, or almost. When you look up in the sky and you see a flock of vultures, train your eyes well, as a trail of blood looms and cadavers about to be strewn along the highways.
The slaughter in the land forebodes evil. The copious bloodbath in the Middle Belt breaks down even steely hearts. Horrific tales from far-flung climes have suddenly berthed at our doorsteps, even making nonsense of the Boko Haram goons of Abubakar Shekau.
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But some say it is history coming full circle to haunt those who did not learn from it. Others say it is the faithful karmic law in full manifestation. They recall how today’s victims ganged up with their present-day nemesis to commit the first pogrom Nigeria witnessed, against the Igbo. They ambushed escapee Igbo and guillotined them as sport, ripping open wombs of pregnant women and roasting both fetus and mother with mirth.
Now the tables have turned and their one-time ally has again bared its fiendish nature, a bloodthirsty expansionist bigot, pushing to dip the Koran into the Atlantic and must crush every obstacle on the way, including former consorts in Benue, Taraba or Plateau. One bad pogrom begets another, perhaps, worse; it does not matter how aggrieved a Danjuma is, as avenged Aguiyi Ironsi chuckles in his grave. It does not matter how much a Gowon prays or whimpers because not even the arrest of Miyetti Allah can pacify Karma as vengeance for the wantonly wasted and crying Igbo blood.
Nevertheless, the Igbo are not unforgiving and cold. They too mourn but not so much for the dead but for the deafness of a people that had eyes but refused to see; they had ears but blocked them in deference to a deaf god doused in blood. So, though the Igbo too mourn, it is with self-satisfaction and vindication. Their foresight that was unfittingly garbed in presumed defeat has turned to plaudits, as it is now apparent that Nigeria would have been a better place if the Aburi turncoats had not crushed the antennae of sensibleness. However, we pray for mercy upon poor souls and poor mangled nation!
And yet again the nation(?) is agog with the news of the tsunami that has hit the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). How tens of lawmakers junked the ruling party. How the party is now speaking from two sides of the mouth, going to the decampees at night like Nicodemus but showing bold face in the morning, saying they lacked electoral value.
But I have a problem here. These decampees were once thieves in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but became saints once they joined the APC. Now, why would APC, the saintly party, lose sleep over the return of the thieves they had inadvertently haboured to the den where they rightly belonged? Even the decampees left PDP because of its sticky fingers and went to purge themselves in APC; why are they going back to PDP, having been cleansed of its leprous virus? Was the public deceived after all and PDP wrongly tagged? I tell you, it’s all about self; nothing altruistic.
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That reminds me of our ‘brother’ killer herdsmen. They came from Libya but the government could not protect its citizens from foreign predators. Soon, the herdsmen morphed into blackwash squad of the opposition but though the opposition said crucify them, yet the government was reluctant to do so. Rather it tells Nigerians to either surrender their patrimony to these foreigner-opposition mercenaries or be killed. Haba! What’s gwan, as the late reggae crooner, Ras Kimono, would ask. Anyway, they should be ready to kill us all than ranch us into a caliphate; after all die na die … Oh, I digress.
What is objectionable about the exodus of APC members? Was it not so with the PDP in 2014? Unfortunately, the poor masses are eager to relish this development. Everywhere you go, that is the main discourse, without knowing that we are the pawns on the ghoulish chessboard of the rogue politicians, who are driven by neither integrity nor ideology. Yes, it is their right to freely associate but even right is limited to the point that your right stops where my nose begins. This rigmarole of the restless birds of prey is ripping us and our children apart.
And, by the way, imagine a whopping N242 billion to fund electoral charade next year? When many homes go to sleep on empty stomach? Imagine how many factories and jobs that princely sum generate! What do we need the election for; to select leaders for the dead or living? I beg, share the booty among our estimated 180 billion population and forget about purposeless exercise. The government can continue with its static motion as long as we exit the economically distressed camps to which most of us are manacled.
Now, don’t call me a simpleton; I know I am. Don’t even tell me it’s uneconomic either. Where have our economists led us? Inside the deep, damp pockets of very few Nigerians, who plunder and rape us! And, sadly, like the late MKO Abiola once advised a helpless rape victim, we have resigned to fate, pretending to enjoy the painful thrusts of fiendish rapists.
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Nigerians never learn from history. The incineration of lives in Middle Belt first happened in 1967 but we chose to expunge our history from school curriculum and here again, we’re caught in a replay of cyclic history. PDP’s haughty attitude led to the implosion that gave birth to New PDP, which fused with APC to chase Goodluck Jonathan out of Aso Rock to enthrone the messiah. Sadly, imperious APC has exhibited the same tendencies, especially with the emergence of Adams Oshiomhole, who is acting like an angry headmaster with a cane to rein in his wards, forgetting that party supremacy is alien to politics in Nigeria. So, his ‘bad luck’ helped detonate the grenade whose fuse was already ticking to go off. Now Reformed(?) APC has upset the apple cart and strengthened groveling PDP.
The vultures are gathering again and will soon feed fat on our lean flesh. This mass grave called Nigeria is collapsing by the day and one wonders if the Movement for Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, is right when it says Buhari is the last president for an entity called Nigeria. But the question is, after Nigeria, what next? Is Buhari really the problem or the conscienceless ‘Ajala traveller’ politicians? Is there a better hope for Nigeria after Buhari? What makes us feel things will be better after Buhari? How sincere are these ‘reformists’?
Let no man rejoice yet; I prophesy without equivocation that it will get worse. Unless we resist the rapists with the last drop of our blood. Neither APC nor PDP offers us any hope. Only restructuring can bring Nigeria from this dark alley.