You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Sometimes it seems those selected or elected to rule us are more of aliens than human beings like most of us. This is so because of their inhuman and unsympathetic attitudes to their fellow countrymen and women as they carry out their myopic policies, especially in the federal capital territory Abuja, where Nigerians are daily tormented, brutalized and dehumanized in the name of land swap and demolition.
This same capital that was supposed to be home to all Nigerians have since been hijacked by a greedy few, not even the indigenous inhabitants of this city have been spared from this insensitivity and madness, all purported to bring out a man-made master plan –the Abuja master plan. What about the God’s made master plan that created and made these people who they are and planted them where they are today? I believe it would beat the imagination of every sane mind on the way and manner at which the FCT administration arbitrary used uniformed men and some of its officials to harassed and bulldozed law abiding citizens, whose only offence was to have laboriously erected a house in their country to shelter their frustrated heads from poor government policies over the decades.
I believe it is only in an insane society that those in power would wake up every day with no other better things to do than to torment their fellow men and women with demolition of their property. It is actually a sign of administrative failure if the policy of government dwells so much on kicking out people from their ancestral land without recourse to their historical lost and cultural heritage. I wonder how most of these insensitive tormentors would have react if a government policy should ask them to leave their ancestral villages? I am sure the FCT minister would not close his eyes and allow a Bauchi state government policy to bulldoze him out of his ancestral land; neither would those working on his order take it lightly with any government policies that might affect their own homes.
It is always funny when men on earth, who have slightly been opportune to have vanity power, shield their eyes from reality that we all came into this transit world naked and naked we shall all return, leaving all the land and gigantic mansions behind. I tell you, not even an atom of sand shall accompany any one of us to the grave; Then why all the fuss over land and housing in Abuja? Why built multi million naira worth of estates for only rats, spiders and other rodents to live in, why the little space in our slum-like satellite towns on which the vast majority of ordinary Nigerians built their little homes are daily bulldozed and the people subjected to harassment and antagonism, without respecting their dignity? Why steal this land from the people in the name of land swap and demolition and at the end the same land are later allocated to the rich and the powerful to continue building their expensive estates for rodents and rats? Are some people more favored and better than the rest? Are these elites more human than the rest of us, with different biological attributes of one head, two eyes and one soul? Or maybe we now have an Animal Farm setting in the federal capital city, with some animals more equal than others. Are ordinary Nigerians expected to pack their baggage and source for land in the sky to build their homes?
So many questions begging for answer on this insensitivity going on in our country. Is Abuja no longer that united city conceived by some of our past patriotic leaders? The fact that our present crops of politicians and enforced leaders are mere beneficiaries of this legacy should be a reminder to them that one day they shall relinquish their present rigid positions to others, whither they like it or not. Soldier come, soldier go and the barrack remains. The truth is, no man or woman in whatever position torment others, should expect respite from the almighty God. Even the ordinary curses of the masses whose homes and houses have been demolished are enough to evoke the wreath of the creator on those who have unjustifiably subjected them to pains and sorrows. They should expect the stolen sleep of those little children who have been forced to squat around with their parents amidst fear and hunger to bring about a terrible repercussion on them, sooner or later.
No doubt many Nigerians, especially the masses could be said to be more at home in Abuja during the military era, unlike the present democracy dispensation, where ordinary civilians like them in position of power have subjected them to misery, intimidation and demolitions. What an irony, that the civilian rule that was supposed to give them freedom and respite in their fatherland is now the monster daily tormenting them. What a pity that those on whose hands held the ladders that lifted these men and women in power into their present positions are the same people whose hands are now daily bunt with fire and constantly robbed of their sweats.
Well, as long as the present administration keep tormenting the people with demolition and other negative government policies, then the day shall come when these men who are now happily upstairs, and feel they are safe where they are, shall seek their ways downstairs, and then, they shall realize that those hands that once held those ladders for them firmly are no longer there, for they are free and no longer in their selfish power.
