NIGERIA is in distress. What assail the nation are consequences of the conspiracy of the ruling class against the Nigerian people. That multi layered conspiracy manifests in the socio-economic injustice perpetuated against the Nigerian masses all over the country. The rich and the powerful have been waging a socio-economic war against the Nigerian people since 1960 through exploitation, oppression, poverty and alienation.

The people have been denied access to the basic things of life such as quality education, health care, employment, electricity, water, roads, good and affordable housing and more. This programme of exploitation aimed at holding down the people for ever bred accumulated resentment in them. Right now the people are reacting through the only way they know best which is violence.

The biggest burden of Nigeria’s ruling class at the moment is the Boko Haram campaign which is currently disgracing the Nigerian armed forces in the North East.

The Boko Haram insurgents have successfully affronted the nation’s integrity as an independent nation with a commander in chief. There is hardly a day that passes without blood curdling stories of deaths arising from the Boko Haram activities. Their accomplices are on rampage in almost all the northern states and even Abuja the seat of the Federal Government! Nigeria is at war! But government apparatchiks say otherwise.

Yes, the Boko Haram jihad has taken a political colouration, but its roots run deep in socio-economic injustice engendered by the criminal neglect of the masses by the ruling class. The agony of poverty which is a concomitant of that criminal neglect is further aggravated by mindless corruption which has become a sine qua non for Nigerian leadership.

That Nigeria is in distress is not only a function of Boko Haram. Just pause and think about the other five geo-political zones. In the South-East and South-South are the twin menace of armed robbery and kidnapping as well as economic brigandage via as crude oil theft. Armed Robbery and bloody rituals take centre stage in the South-West.

The North Central is under siege by deadly Fulani herdsmen who are Boko Haram surrogates. The North-West also suffers the spasms of deadly attacks by amorphous armed men! The months of March and April have been particularly tragic and distressing for Nigeria. First, some 49 school boys were murdered in their school hostel in Yobe State.

Then the Nyanya bomb blast that killed about 100 in Abuja. After that over 200 school girls were abducted in Borno at night in an operation that lasted for six hours. In between these happenings were mindless killings in Zamfara, Kano, Nassarawa, Benue, Taraba, Plateau and other places. The attack on the Department of State Security (DSS) headquarters in Abuja which shares boundary with the Presidential Villa also took place about the same time. There had also been attacks on military barracks which left the nation’s security chiefs confused and embarrassed.

Early in the year President Goodluck Jonathan appointed new service chiefs with the hope of turning the tide against Boko Haram.

The new Chief of Defence Staff Air Marshall Alex Badeh got over excited and became garrulous. He told the nation that the military would end the Boko Haram war by April and in another press conference he boasted that he could go to sleep with the calibre of the new service chiefs. Badeh could not walk his talk.

For it was soon after those statements that Boko Haram took their campaign to higher notches to the chagrin of Badeh and his armed forces which is the largest in the Third World. Badeh’s army is helpless. Since the abduction of the girls every finger has pointed at Sambisa forest in Borno as the stronghold of Boko Haram, but Badeh’s army could hardly go near the fringes of Sambisa.

Nigeria’s distress manifests in manifold ways. From a badly run economy that has impoverished the populace to failed infrastructure, non-existent health sector, mal-functioning education system, massive unemployment, unprecedented corruption, poverty, collapse of the energy sector (electricity and petrol), to crime, majority of Nigerians now live in distress.

Nigerians now have to die from a variety of causes to the extent that life no longer has sanctity and value. The killing of David Akiri on Sunday 27th April by armed robbers at his residence in Abraka besides the over 30 people kidnapped in the University town between 2012 and 2013 can be located in this context. One of them Dr. (Mrs) Mercy Mokobia has not been found one year after. But the army and police in Delta take delight in terrorising innocent people and escorting the rich to parties.

The political undertone of the Boko Haram concretises the view of some northern irredentists that only the North should rule Nigeria. This is unacceptable. What Nigerians should campaign for is good leadership and not what region a president comes from.

The ongoing National Conference should be seen as an opportunity to rework Nigeria. But I have my fears since majority of those at the conference belong to the class that ruined Nigeria in the first place. However, the people of Nigeria must gird their loins and be prepared to redeem the country. Trade unions, civil societies, labour organizations, youth movements, market women, students’ bodies must rethink their mission and roles in the birth of a new Nigeria. 2015 is election year and the mobilization for change must begin now.

A new movement must evolve to change the present crop of inept leaders through the instrumentality of elections. It is true that Nigerians have lost faith in the electoral system and the judiciary, but if the people are well mobilised now someday the tide would change for good. Then a credible leadership that will bring about genuine transformation will be enthroned. Only then will our distress end and the likes of David Akiri would not have died in vain.

Dr.  SUNNY AWHEFEADA teaches Literature at the Delta State University, Abraka.