By Bisi Lawrence
This country today is awash with ill-feelings. The land crawls with bad faith. Anguish and bitterness compete for space, and our vision is blurred by bad faith in high places.

Trust has retreated in shame and hope resides in vain yearnings. We live in a wilderness deprived of truth and in dire need of honour. The shards of our shattered values are scattered among the deteriorating structures of our social standards.

It is all in the open. Our politics is like a rehearsal for the Third World War; our economy struggles against an acceptable definition; our energy supply is a standing scandal; our tertiary educational system swoons in the arms of dismay; people in various communities are bedevilled by the absence of ordinary drinking water; men and women who have served their country at great sacrifice are left to crumble in long cues for their retirement benefits.

But, in the midst of all these harrowing conditions in which old people face constant issues about enough to eat, and the young are daily frustrated by the paucity of labour opportunities those who are chosen to create avenues for a better existence are bloated with facilities which they have used their positions to acquire for themselves. And that is the rub.

As you can imagine, these elements who are relishing the vile gains of the putrid situation are the very people who are in the position to make a change. They can be trusted, naturally, not to shoot themselves in the foot. That is why they will cling to the advantages which derive from their positions as ministers, and commissioners, and legislators, and political agents of all hues. And they will do anything but budge – willingly.

The towering strife in the political scene is the manifestation of the resistance to change. In the main outline, we see the contention between the firm establishment of the Peoples Democratic Party, the PDP, and the fresh emergence of the All Progressives Congress, the APe. The PDP declaims their rivals, as it were, to be birds of “different” feathers which cannot naturally come together in a united front.

But then, it is all a matter of coalition, or re­arrangement, which has consistently run like a thread through the fabric of our historical development in politics. Political organizations have usually come together and broken apart in this country without any ideological base for disagreement or re-alignment.

Even the PDP itself is little more than the rump of the defunct NRC, the National Republican Convention. As it turned out, unfortunately, its counterpart in the two-party structure designed by President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the Social Democratic Party, the SDP, disintegrated to the old pattern of the East-West dichotomy.

However, it is now becoming clearer every day that the IBB formula would have worked.He had expatiated on the theme of a consolidated political configuration at that time by sensitising the polity to the fact that there was no clean-cut difference in the outlook of the various groups in the country which were summarised as “progressives” and “conservatives” beyond leanings of “a little to the right”, and “a little to the left”.

And that is true today as it was then, over thirty years ago. With the approach of the 2015 elections casting a dark shadow on almost all considerations of our political life, there is still not much to choose between the PDP and the APC in the way of a distinctly articulated political philosophy. One says there must be change; the other says the so-called opposition can’t create the change. And the rest is noise.

But the people cannot feed on political philosophy. They do not need the noise either. They only crave for the delivery of a decent quality of life from those who presented themselves as able agents of progress. Now they are merely agents of self-interest.

When they equate the rigours of politics to issues of life and death, they are not talking of politics per se, but about what they gain out of politicking. And, unfortunately, this starts from the top— as always. No incumbent president has ever lost an election at the polls, and Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is not planning to blaze the trail in that direction. He does not even need to fly a kite; we all know in what direction the wind is blowing.

The proliferation of Governors’ forums was a device to create an elbow room to manoeuvre situations for the support of GEl 15; the grounding of the Rivers State government aircraft was a clear attempt at embarrassing the governor whose alleged inclination towards a presidential ambition was not deemed conducive to the open aspiration of Aso Rock; the upheaval in the Rivers State legislature was a blatant design to weaken the political base of the Rivers State Governor.

The ambition of staying in Aso Rock guides, and sometimes seems to mislead, the Presidency’s contemplation of every consideration. The Presidency has assumed the nature of a citadel of acerbic repartee with the “opposition” (meaning: any source of an opinion that does not appear totally committed to the idea of President Jonathan succeeding himself)

Even a cultured mind within the “Rock”, from whom a note of sophistication might have been expected has not withdrawn from the sustained mud-slinging match of those who might be said to be in their element in such an endeavour.

As for the medical practitioner who has reduced himself to the mean measure of a clown, his contributions to political discourse reveal a preference for the bludgeon in situations that deserve the passage of a rapier. They must now defend the President’s wife against even the flimsiest criticism. In any case, could Dame Patience have calmly stood by whilst the political storm was mounting with her husband at the centre? Do those who criticise that deserve a reply?

But, if it has to be repeated, our economy keeps staggering like a drunken sailor: we are not in debt but owing so much, and still borrowing. We cannot afford the sum of 92 million naira for the recovery of our decaying university system, which is virtually crumbling before our eyes; but we have enough to save supposedly from the overflow of revenues.

We acknowledge the fact that our oil wealth is being siphoned through crooked deals by billionaire thieves, but we must remove a questionable subsidy when it is clear that what is being stolen would more than accounted for the so-called subsidy. We do not have to add the perennial issue of security in a country whose citizens in one area appear to be under a siege of terrorism.

Our patched-up roads eagerly await the rains to show up the shoddy work we have been wasting billions on. While we proclaim the advent of a better supply of electricity, we cannot hide the evident fact that there is a steady decline in our generation capacity. The prices of our staple foods are rising. House rents are going up in the cities. And our young men and women still are shouting for jobs, jobs, jobs!

That is the backdrop against which self-interest and personal ambition clamour for supremacy. But the people are the architects of their own fate. They have to do something for the amelioration of their condition. The government, for me, have shown very clearly that they do not deserve my respect as a citizen of this country. We must make them turn around to consider the destiny of the people who put them there.

The academic staffs of our universities are on another of their token strikes, for that is what it would turn out to be if they once again recoil from fighting to the end. Their fight should be the spearhead of a demand, a massive demand, by the populace. We should all arise in their support – which, after all, is for our future.

Nigerians used to be able to stand up for their right. As far back as 1929, some 84 years ago, Ibo women in Aba staged a massive confrontation against the colonial government over their resentment against a measure of taxation. Several of them lost their lives. But that did not deter the fighting spirit of Nigerians as a people. I grew up in the thrilling age of industrial disputes, the major and most successful being the general strike of 1945.

In the mines, on the railway tracks, and in the offices, men and women threw down their axes and spades, their pens and pencils, and took to the streets asking for the response of government to the rising cost of living. What they wanted was called “Cost Of Living Allowance” —COLA. It was under the regime of the white man,but the Nigerians got their dues. There were no epileptic “warning” strikes in those days. A strike was called for an objective properly considered, and it duly achieved its purpose.

If the Nigerian Labour Congress has become bourgeoisified, Nigerians are the losers. This nation needs massive action, and only the NLC can marshal it’

lagos is in yorubaland

A statement like “Lagos is no man’s land” can only be made by a man looking for trouble. And, as Fela would say, “He go get him own.” I never thought very highly of the man, anyway; he always impressed me as a good candidate for “The Village Headmaster”. He usually presented the image of an unenlightened citizen who needed to be gently made aware of his surroundings … the personification of “Cavaliera Rusticana”, a proper bushman.

Granted that the Lagos State Governor,Babatunde Fashola, committed a faux pas in the removal of some destitute elements from his state to their assumed state of origin—which I cannot defend and won’t even try to — I find it most immature to employ the merit or demerit of the action as an implement to cause a widespread ire against one section of the nation against another.

It is provocative and basically untrue that the Thos contribute no less than sixty-five percent to the wealth of Lagos State; but even if that were so it does not relate in any positive way to the subject on the floor, to wit, the congregation of destitute elements in Lagos State from other states. Does the contribution of any percentage to the development of an area warrant the swamping of the same place with undesirable people from anywhere?

An aspect of this issue that is glossed over by those whose aim is to make capital out of it, is that the exercise was not limited to Anambra State alone, but also involved people from even Yoruba areas.

The government of Fashola epitomises the open generosity of Y oruba people to strangers in their midst. Instances need not be mentioned. They are legion. Lagos is a Y oruba town. Anybody who needs yet to be convinced about the friendliness of Lagosians needs an urgent visit to a psychiatrist. Anyone who is made to compare the hospitality of Tho people with that of the Yoruba only needs to live in Iboland to regain his sanity. I lived there. I enjoyed the warmth and companionship of a friendly people, throughout my sojourn.

Enugu, as many of my friends would testify, is still my favourite city – after Lagos, of course. All the same, I do’ find some aberrant behaviour in some Ibos, especially once they are out of their land. They are the type who would say “Lagos is no man’s land.” And they will find trouble.