Nigeria has not been blessed with too many heroes. Awolowo for instance, looked at the willful and stubborn children of the western part of the country and sent them to schools under the free education programme. Perhaps, it was to rid them of their stubbornness, but I suspect it was more for the mental peace of the parents while the children cried. But by some strange pull, the malaise spread to the rest of the country and the government adopted it as a national habit. And now, the parents are crying because they have to pay so much for their freedom, and the children have found their own peace by forming secret cults.
Balewa is another example. He told his people in the north to stay still and he would bring Nigeria to them. While they waited, they did a bit of farming and by another strange power pull, that act also spread. Now the rest of the country is still, nothing is moving and no one is farming.
Zik, our last example, asked his people in the east what they wanted. They replied that they wanted to trade, so he told them that the entire country – nay the world – was a market for their capture. Again, the trading culture spread all over the country and everyone has broken out in a rash of shop-keeping ever since.
Obasanjo, starring in ‘The Return of Uncle Sege,’ galloped up, looked at the situation of things, and exclaimed ‘Whara mess!’ Twice, he said it! And he promptly began the task of trying to put things right, throwing trade, education, farming and stillness into the air like a circus juggler in a practice session. But he either did not know how to throw or the things themselves defied the law of gravity, nothing went up or came down, except maybe his blood pressure.
Then Buhari came, cape flying behind him, and landing with a thud. The whole country reverberated as he strode in with his heavy boots. Quickly, he sized up the situation, and decided that the country was too full of sores for his liking. Deftly, he traced the putrefying sores to some strange concept called corruption caused by Nigerians’ greed for material gains where they had not sown. Promptly, he brought out his sword from his back pocket and began waving it around madly at the guilty. Many of them are still trying to look for their decapitated heads.
I really wish JFK’s statement – ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country — could be credited to a Nigerian because no country needs it more than ours. Many of us in this country do not know the words of our anthems; it is all we can do to even recognise its tune! I understand there was a quite a stir in the assembly recently because an ambassadorial nominee did not know verse two of the national anthem. I don’t know it either but that has not prevented my amala from going down the red lane in peace, meat or no meat!
The flag is definitely not our hero. No one seems to have realised that it is anything beyond a piece of cloth. If we did, no policeman or navy man or soldier would willfully kill another Nigerian citizen while the flag stands hoisted on a tall pole in front of his police station or other public buildings, waving its love and benevolence and cover for all its citizens in the air. We would also refuse to soil its whiteness with the blood of our fellow human beings in the name of religion or politics or greed or anger. We would, in addition, keep its greenness lush with cultivated fields where amala and brothers would sprout in obedience to the invitation from our fingers, to feed the nation.
We need national heroes who can see better and understand better and instruct us better. We are looking for heroes who will look at all of our infantile kleptomaniac tendencies and turn down the corners of their mouths at us and tell us to ‘grow up’. We need heroes to rescue us from what presently goes as our national ethos defined in broken down structures, dilapidated infrastructures and constantly changing policies. We need people to teach us to dream in matters of national planning, education, what can or cannot be imported, industrialisation, and even eating! This last has been known to be the cause of a great deal of instability. Let me explain.
From three square meals, the average Nigerian who does not patrol the corridors of Aso Rock previously learnt to keep his soul within his body with the contents of two meals, garri and groundnuts making a very satisfying second. Then Nigeria went down officially to a one-meal policy, when cassava came into its own and found its primary purpose on earth: as an industrial resource. To think that all these years, we thought cassava was food. Now, from that one-meal policy, the country has since descended into a one-meal-in-two-days-or-more policy.
This country definitely needs heroes, to redefine many things for it not least of which are the domestic and foreign policies. Among the domestic problems to tackle is the question of population control. In view of the food situation, I need to know whom I can call ‘Brother’, one who is allowed to fight with his siblings and can therefore share the family’s amala and oil dinner; and one whom I can call ‘Oh Brother!,’ and from whom I should, in one single, swift and supple movement, deftly hide that amala pot under the bed.
The domestic policy should also naturally compel all husbands to declare all their assets and their salaries to their wives. The wives should also be given the right to pick what they need and want from such declared assets and emoluments, or go on strike. And where two or three women are gathered together in deep discussion, it should not be thought that they are gossiping but are only discussing union affairs, mainly children and husbands. They may also be discussing whether or not to declare a strike, which may be worse than the NLC total strike, over the price of garri. The alternative is that all the housewives, to a woman, may pull on Buhari’s agbada.
The foreign policy should spell out for us whom we can declare war against, such as noisy neighbours, intemperate market women who hike prices indiscriminately, and government officials who delight in changing the country’s policies without a thought to anyone else. Our heroes would also help us decide which aligned or non-aligned movement or league to join, such as the comity of homes sharing the same ideals: refusing to have anything to do with new-fangled things like iPods.
Seriously though, this country could do with all of its one hundred and fifty million national heroes, who would fashion out some ideals that would pave the way to a more purposeful future for us as a people. We are looking at things like inventing the mouth organ (roasted corn), weekend burial ceremonies (happiness), but would, on no account yield any more money to the first world countries for the privilege of living in the same universe with them (keeping foreign accounts).
Sadly, that hero lies deeply asleep in each one of us. You and I are the heroes that this country needs to pull out of this gargantuan mess that past decades of national carefree jamboree has plunged us. There is no single hero’s cape that can fight the mess. Buhari’s alone cannot do it. We all need to put on our capes. Come now; let’s be the heroes Nigeria needs today.
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