NO LONGER AT EASE

The only people who cannot see that the times are fast changing are those fat cats who are feeding fat on public funds all over Nigeria. And they are eating with impunity and without any iota of shame. In the process, most of our youths have been left despondent, hopeless and helpless. Many generations of unemployed and possibly unemployable graduates are roaming the streets, rudderless and defenceless. In deference to the laws of stimuli, they are forced to take to all manner of crimes. The natural instinct of man is survival. Not everyone can stand the scorching heat of suffering. Meanwhile our men of power continue to behave as if nothing would ever change. All it takes is to go through endless charades of elections, and declare whosoever they endorse as winner. They are already warming up for another round of rigmarole. For them, elections must be treated as a theatre of war. All, they say, is fair in war. But must it always come to this? Why must an attempt to serve the people become a matter of life and death? Why must a tiny minority, and not even the best amongst us, continue to hold all of us to ransom? The reason is simple. For too long, we have considered politics the exclusive preserve of never-do-wells, upstarts and nonentities. It was the same attitude that made us to send the dregs of our society into the army and police for so long. We didn’t realise that one day soon, the falcon would no longer hear the falconer, and everything would fall apart. We have now reached that state of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. Accordingly, anarchy is reigning supreme. What is worse is that our children living abroad are not able to return to the old kingdoms, where they can visit their aged parents, eat organic meals that are washed down with original palm wines. In the modern kingdoms, the Obi Okonkwos are not able to return to the ancient villages of Umuofia because the kidnappers are hovering in the wings and ready to pounce on any careless returnee. Such is the tragedy of our land overtaken by the pestilence called politicians in our clime. We are governed by people who obviously hate their country with uncommon gusto. Nothing seems to work and it matters not to our tin gods. No one seems to know these leaders and where they come from. The youths have been stupidly patient. Now they seem to have exhausted that patience. And they are expressing it in different forms such as militancy, kidnapping, terrorism and all sort of crime. The elders think it is a joke. They are saying they are yet to see good examples among the few ones in their midst. But they forgot that they handpicked their godsons, and that a reptile would always give birth to a reptile. It is in the nature of all reptiles to crawl. Besides, most are harmful and deadly. Many of our youths are world class. They’ve conquered the world. They have been flying like Angels. But back home the demons of democracy are making it impossible for the eagles to soar into the skies. They are frustrating every attempt, and thinking the ravening clouds would always be victorious. They have forgotten the sonorous words of Albert Luthuli in Let My People Go: “No nation can live perpetually in servitude”. There was an end to slave trade. Apartheid collapsed before our very eyes. A black man became not just an American president but the most influential man on planet earth. It is high time to tell the tyrants men in power that every day will not always be your day, a radical change may be inevitable in the days to come if the myriad of problems facing this country is not resolve on time. Just a little change and adjustment in the way we are govern and the way rulers rule this country will save us a lot of evil that is looming. So tell me who can stop the eagles whose time has come. It is time to unfold those incredible wings, and begin to fly higher and higher. These eagles are ready.