PATRIOTISM, DEAD OR ALIVE
As I Was Saying/Sonala Olumhense
Patriotism, the art of loving your country, may be compared to spiritual faith.
If faith had anything to do with places of worship, in terms of vast numbers, I am certain that Nigeria would lead the world. All you have to do is travel around the country, and you will be humbled by how serious our people are about worshipping our Creator.
We are a roadside people. The roadside is where we build our finest houses, to let the world judge our prosperity. The roadside is where we set up our trading stores and businesses. The roadside is also where we like to locate our places of worship; that enables the world to see our piousness and our prosperity.
As we log more and more holy places per square mile, the curious thing is that we do not seem to change. We are still poor; indeed, the average Nigerian is increasingly poorer by the year. We are still unorganized, and can neither make our traffic flow nor make the roads safe. We have more robberies, especially if you multiply those who rob with guns by those who rob by the pen by those who rob with false political promises and by those who rob by the magic of making public funds disappear into foreign countries.
Apparently, faith has nothing to do with our general values when we interact outside worship. If it did, perhaps there would be fewer robberies, formal and informal, armed or unarmed. Perhaps there would be less hypocrisy, especially of leaders and their wives who preach one thing, but do a dozen others. Perhaps we would be less greedy, and a little kinder.
On the contrary, it is often each man unto himself. The headlines show how brazen are our thieves, in and out of uniform or office; they demonstrate how hypocritical leaders and citizens often are. Spiritual faith is not a concern when we use, abuse and convert public property; it is a concern when it comes to a speech and we want to sound profound and pious.
It is this Bermuda triangle of credibility between ourselves, opportunity and others that has Nigeria struggling not as a developing nation, but as an "underdeveloping" one: we are going round in circles. The effect, when you look at the rest of the world, is that we are spinning back in time; we are underdeveloping Nigeria.
This is indeed the reason why President Olusegun Obasanjo could make the pompous assertion that any Nigerian that is not prepared to die for Nigeria does not deserve to be a Nigerian. To begin with, he is in no position to define either Nigeria or Nigerian patriotism, because he behaves like the leader of an army of occupation. There is nothing in his bearing, the sound of his voice, or his track record since 1999 that suggests that he really cares what is going on in Nigeria.
Since his hero, the "Prince of the Niger," annulled the 1992 presidential elections, President Obasanjo is the first to be elected to lead the nation. But let us be clear: President Obasanjo was not voted in for his economic or managerial wizardry, or his intellectual savvy, or his boyish charm, or his oratorical eloquence. Nigerians gave him leadership in 1999 because he said he would chart a new ethical direction for this country. In making that historic error of judgement, Nigerians were guided by Obasanjo's stand on political developments after he left office - including his affiliation with Transparency International - and his prison sentence under General Sani Abacha.
If I spoke French, I would have described 1999 as "mistake monumentale": five years later, we are where we were: the most corrupt nation on earth, practically asking the same Transparency International what we have to do formally to take the top spot from the nation that dares to be ranked above us.
President Obasanjo came to office claiming he said he would create a new Nigeria and a new political atmosphere. We know now that it was a ruse; what he meant was a new National Party of Nigeria, the Profoundly Decadent Party. It is an atmosphere in which the watchword is hypocrisy, and in which the President is not ashamed to be politically two-faced. It is a party whose Chairman warns Nigeria not to annoy the President since the man has military credentials. It is a party the Chairman of whose Board of Trustees openly tells the nation that the President - a man with two grapefruits and only one vote - would determine his successor.
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, the government sensationally announces that state governors are looting the treasury. It not only lumps the good with the bad, it fails to identify any of them, or to do anything to ensure that any of the funds are repatriated. Perhaps this is understandable: given the law of averages, many of those gubernatorial thieves are certain to belong to the PDP.
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, anybody can have a cell phone but nobody has drinking water. You have the freedom to travel five miles, but you do not have the freedom to expect actually to complete your journey: armed robbers, or government sirens, or bad traffic can stop you. In Obasanjo's Nigeria, education continues to deteriorate: schools are throwing semi-illiterates onto the streets to enhance the unemployment lines, or to make and implement policy.
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, the President advises departing ambassadors to ignore Nigerian citizens, especially when they are desperate. In Obasanjo's Nigeria, Nigerian diplomats are often humiliated, as the current Foreign Minister himself well knows, their salaries delayed, Nigerian policy unclear.
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, top Nigerians seek medical care abroad. They send their wives to shop, to rest, to get a massage. They know no Nigerian hospital.
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, a senior public official can buy up swathes of choice property wherever he likes, or manipulate the law in his favour. Nobody sufficiently powerful is likely to bother him, except the likes of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and Dora Akunyili, director general of the National Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, National Honours are not necessarily given to those who are advancing Nigeria. No matter how dubious, duplicitous or infamous, you can have your name put on the list, and tell the President what title you want.
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, if you have stolen public property (or even public office), you need not fear you might not be able to keep it, unless your last name were to be Abacha, in which case you must be prepared for long negotiations!)
In Obasanjo's Nigeria, nothing has changed. There is no sign of the new atmosphere he promised. In Obasanjo's Nigeria, leaders make bogus and pompous speeches; they do not respect the law, and are not gracious enough to respect the peace.
It is this country, unfortunately, that President Obasanjo calls on Nigerians to be prepared to die for, or else... It is the worst form of blackmail I have ever heard: that a people betrayed by successive leaderships would also find the quality of their patriotism questioned.
Hopefully, President Obasanjo will not consider dying in office in the hope of being able to argue before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates that he gave his all for Nigeria. For 44 years, for our leadership, Nigeria has proved worthy only of lying to, not dying for. For 44 years, for the Nigerian people, this nation has proved worthy of crying for; many people, unfortunately, are still drowning in their own tears. They don't need a preacher; they need a true leader.
Is this nation worth dying for I think the President's answer, away from the microphone, is an emphatic "NO!" Here is my proof: last month, his son took a diploma. The First Lady happily journeyed to the ceremony with a shipload of privileged wives and friends, all of them extravagantly dressed in the expansive smiles of those who do not have to pay a kobo of their expenses. The location, by the way, was not Abuja, Otta or Ijebu-Remo. It was New York.
If you ask me, both patriotism and preaching the gospel must be made of sterner stuff. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, "Ask not the people to die for Nigeria; ask if they would like you to leave Nigeria."
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