J. P. Clark’s poem “Night Rain” recounts the hardships faced by indigent people in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. According to the poem, the persona and his household are rudely roused from sleep by heavy raindrops “falling like orange and mango” at a time of the night he could not precisely recall. But he was sure it was not morning because there was no cockcrow. Once the household woke up, they remained awake. Through their leaking roof, raindrops permeated the room, gathering on the rough floor. Led by the astute mother, a true leader, the family responded to the immediate challenge – bailing water out of the house. The reaction was swift and deliberate. Of course, man’s encounter with nature is inevitable. The ecocritical interpretations of the poem have, over the years, celebrated man’s ingenuity in responding to nature’s vicissitudes. Suddenly, like the night rain analysed above, the US President Donald Trump violated Nigeria’s slumbering leadership with a threat to decimate terrorists in the country. Since Trump made his intentions public, Nigeria’s political characters have remained awake, bidding goodbye to their once-sweet, once-inviolable night sleep. Coup stories, 2027 re-election, and other sundry issues that the government deployed to titillate our sensibilities have all receded into distant memory. Everybody is awake due to Trump’s impending night rain, which I am sure will “fall like orange and mango”.
In international politics, the President of the United States (POTUS) is a revered, domineering figure. When the president of the US coughs, the world catches a cold. Trump’s declaration of his intentions on Nigeria has once again exposed how far many Nigerians have gone in cognitive deficiency. It is indeed a sad story. Over the years, Nigerians agreed that terrorism held the country by the jugular, with successive governments paying lip service to the fight against the menace. Nigerians have lost thousands of lives to terrorists, wives have become widows, children are orphans overnight, and parents assume childless status all of a sudden. Nigerians have cried and agonised, but help eluded them. So, it defeats every iota of reason that some Nigerians would be apprehensive when Trump offered to help the country wipe out terrorists in a “fast and furious” manner. Instead of jubilation across the country, instead of parties and congratulatory messages to all Nigerians, a section of the populace suffers mental haemorrhage in their bid to sound more patriotic than the rest of us. Anyone who is against wiping out terrorists from Nigerian soil is an incurable enemy of the country.
I am for anything that would make Nigerian politicians in the corridors of power lose sleep like the persona and his family in J.P. Clark’s “Night Rain”. For too long, these politicians have slept while the masses floundered in anguish and misery. Perhaps, Trump’s threat of wiping out terrorists from Nigerian soil exposes the incompetence of the current government and therefore, sycophants are playing the patriotic flute to the delight of demons. The point of tension in Trump’s statement is his focus on the killing of Christians in Nigeria. Mortar and pestle know that Nigerians, irrespective of religion, are kidnapped and slaughtered by terrorists. Christians are killed, Muslims are killed too, and people of various religious persuasions are indiscriminately killed by terrorists, many times under gory circumstances. But again, we all know that the number of Christians killed far outweighs the number of other religious faithful in the country. I do not worry so much about the religious division. The lives of all Nigerians matter; therefore, I wholeheartedly support Donald Trump to wipe out terrorists from Nigerian soil.
Some demented souls, high on unidentified substances, not worthy to eat from Trump’s dustbin, are threatening the US with a reciprocal military action, and I laugh in Greek. Ola Rotimi reminds us that “it is ignorance that makes a rat attack a cat” but I say, it is too much motivational speech that makes a goat attack a lion. Many Nigerians suffer from bleeding amnesia. They forget easily that the current president, Bola Tinubu, on the 29th of January 2014, through his official Twitter handle @offocialABAT, tweeted that “The slaughtering of Christian worshippers is strongly condemnable. It calls to question the competence of Jonathan to protect Nigerians”. On the 9th of September 2014, he tweeted again, “The festering Boko Haram attacks on the North East and massacre of innocent citizens is concrete proof that Nigeria has no government”. On the 6th of November 2014, he tweeted again, “Why should any part of this country be under occupation? In any civilised country, Jonathan should resign”. The question is, what has changed? We can easily substitute Jonathan’s name in all the tweets above with Tinubu’s name and perfectly capture the prevailing scenario in the country.
According to media reports in 2014, Tinubu, in the company of the late General Muhammadu Buhari, Rotimi Amaechi and Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, went to the US and asked the US government, led by Barack Obama, to deny the then Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan military aid to fight Boko Haram. Thus, they betrayed and sabotaged the country most treacherously. Under normal circumstances, the three should have been arrested upon their return to the country. But Jonathan was a different president. Of course, Barack Obama listened to them and starved Jonathan of arms to fight terrorism in the country. That gave impetus to Boko Haram and other terrorist groups to grow. Today, Nigeria is reaping from that official betrayal. Then, no one talked about patriotism, but today, some people are echoing the patriotic mantra like debased beings. The APC government in the last ten years has made it a point of duty to negotiate with terrorists and sometimes give them scholarships to study abroad after they beheaded Nigerians and ripped open the bellies of pregnant Nigerian women. Many of these terrorists are reintegrated into the army with benefits, while the families of soldiers they massacred wallow in penury. That is the story of Nigeria, my country.
At a time when Nigerians should all celebrate that the US is willing to end terrorism in their country, some people have decided to play to the gallery by twisting facts to mislead the gullible. I have heard people vomit such a fetid declaration that Trump wants to “invade” Nigeria; therefore, Nigerians must all stand up to defend their country. Nothing could be more jejune. I have been forced to check the meaning of “invade” again. The dictionary defines “invade” as “of an armed force, enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it”. From this definition, certainly, Donald Trump is not invading Nigeria because he has no intention to “subjugate or occupy it”, at least he did not say so. He only said that the US will wipe out terrorists as quickly as possible. How wiping out terrorists amounts to “invasion” is beyond me. To throw words like “invade” and “patriotism” is to raise sentimental tension in support of an incompetent, irresponsible government that has looked away while Nigerians died like cockroaches in their country. Let me categorically state that any Nigerian of good conscience will support any effort to wipe out terrorists in the country.
Nigerian politicians and their cronies are also awake because Donald Trump designated the country as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). He went on to refer to Nigeria as a “disgraced country”. I am nonplussed that many people are worried about the CPC designation of our country. This country, if we are honest, has always been a Country of Particular Concern, and we know it. A country where terrorists call a press conference, armed to the teeth and give terms and conditions of negotiation before the Nigerian military can only be one thing – a country of particular concern. For lack of space, one cannot itemise all the many instances that qualify Nigeria as a country of particular concern. However, I vehemently disagree with Trump that Nigeria is a “disgraced country”. Who disgraced us and where? Is the country’s lack of diplomats worldwide tantamount to disgrace? Did the conduct of the 2023 election and the global media outrage about the identity and history of the winners equate to disgrace for the country? Do the frequent trips of our politicians with taxpayers’ money abroad for medical tourism constitute a disgrace to the country? What exactly did Trump mean by saying that Nigeria is a “disgraced” country? Well, while we tinker with what Trump meant by referring to Nigeria as a “disgraced country”, let us rejoice at the prospect of seeing the end of terrorism in Nigeria via a US military action. If that keeps Nigerian leaders awake, let them remain awake. They have slept for too long.
