The current state of the nation is a sad story! Most of us in the diaspora are so upset with the way Nigerian elders reason and play on our intelligence. It is also very disturbing and disquieting to see our elders whom the youth should seek advice from, making unguarded statements that can trigger uprisings in a troubled nation struggling to unearth peaceful coexistence. Some of our elders are tortoises, some are ghouls while some are grandstanders and political opportunists. Their preys are the unsuspecting members of the public. Our political elders’ thought processes seem senile and appalling! Regrettably, some of us are still falling victims to their misnomer. The youth group has failed to read the handwriting on the wall.
Retired Gen. T.Y. Danjuma’s tantrums at the convocation ceremony at the Taraba State University last week brings sour feelings to the precarious situation in the country. His accusation without facts that the military colluded with the miscreants in the State is not only disingenuous, it is scary and dangerous.
There is no doubt that the security problems in Nigeria is a failure of the State to protect lives and property. The numerous intractable problems bedeviling the nation is also understandable. But for an elder statesman who had benefited from the looting of the commonwealth to accuse the collective efforts of our men and women in uniform is condemnable. The elder statesman has no moral justification to incite the poor people against one another. Our elders seem to have short memory of Rwanda where Hutus and Tutsi killed themselves for the ghouls of their leaders. Our elders’ sense of history is short and it is nauseating to have forgotten the Bosnia and Herzegovin’s ethnic massacre and genocide. In retrospect, to come home, more than 2 millions of our brothers and sisters from the Eastern part of Nigeria were killed like locusts in a senseless and avoidable war in the 60s. All these bitter lessons are gory pictures that continue to torment our souls and give us endless psychological trauma. If we fail to learn from the ugly lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat them.
Our political elders should thread it softly, softly. They shouldn’t constitute an impediment to a troubled nation trying to recoup her lost glory. Instead of being part of the solutions to Nigerian problems, they are being additions to Nigerian mundane problems. Gen. T. Y Danjuma shouldn’t forget that Nigerian Army is made up a multi-ethnic entity. His message to the vulnerable people of Taraba is like drumming for war. It must be seen as such, and with much caution! There are so many responsible ways to castigate the security lapses in the country. And the buck stops with the president as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As the chief security, President Muhammadu Buhari has the constitutional responsibility of ensuring security of all citizens. President Buhari is failing in this circumstance. The current security lapses in the country are a circumstantial evidence of Mr President failure to keep all Nigerians safe. President Buhari must know that Nigerians are beautiful outside the country, but we are very ugly with odors in the Homefront. It is a reality we must all contend with.
Our elders like Gen. Danjuma should have helped the people of Taraba and Nigeria with his wisdom. He should bring his elderly wisdom and knowledge to bear positively on all of us to stop the intractable problems in Nigeria.
Certainly, Retired General T.Y. Danjuma’s narrative and tantrums are understandable, but his disposition was very (un)elderly and counterproductive in a fragile environment! The retired General must tend the ineffectual and fragile state of the nation and security very softly, softly. Those who have seen the strikes of thunder will not partake in mulling to brawl with the king of Koso! Unfortunately, the retired General has seen it all as a statesman. He has been part of the tumultuous journey of Nigeria from grace to her present condition. Nigeria seems to be on a famished road to nowhere!
Meanwhile, the admonition should be, if the voters want to send Buhari to Daura in 2019, they must do it through the ballot boxes, not through the sound of bullets. To encourage innocent people to start an internecine war is easy, but to control or stop it is ominous and suicidal. We are witnessing the unending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, yet these supposedly elders saw something, experienced everything but learned nothing! Nigeria has had its own taste of the internecine war; the war that claimed and consumed the lives of more than 2 millions of our brothers and sisters in Igbo land. We do not want another “No Victor, no Vanquished” again.
Furiously, war has never been a solution to any intractable problems anywhere in the world; rather, its escalation is a menace to human lives and property. I will implore the hapless Nigerians to see while weeping or crying! Those who are asking other vulnerable Nigerians to close their eyes while weeping have their children ensconced in the opulence they acquired through corruption and the sweat of you and me. The deprived Nigerians are always the sacrificial lambs at the slightest upheavals anywhere in the country.
It is pertinent for these vulnerable Nigerians to be wise, love life and ignore those people whose consciousness of guilt is at par with the warped Nigerians’ consciousness of complacency. Remember that these elders are ‘code red’ in your midst, you must be alive and conscious of your responsibility to avoid their imagination. The stealthy intention of men of yesterday must be taken with cognisance it deserves. Do not be a willing tool in the hands of your political elders and men of yesterday. Wake up guys; begin the process of taking your own country back from the political sociopaths who are mortgaging your future! Stop being used by politicians and militaricians for political gains. Stop being a weaponized object to destabilize your country and your future. Rwandans were able to overcome their burdensome entity because of their formidable unity after the genocidal war in Rwanda. Their unity and love was able to conquer their hate, religious bigotry, corruption, ethnic resentment and other vices that were cooked in the minds of the people during the genocidal war. It is now a new day in Rwanda. Rwandans are using their present to further imagine a brighter future.
Lastly, Nigerian youths must say enough is enough, this moment! We must consign the decades of hopelessness, mismanagement and corrupt practices in our system into the dustbin of Nigerian history. The youths must renew their hope and aspirations to be the magnificent representations of the progress of Nigeria.
