By Chioma Gabriel

If you are driving into Nigeria from the Murtala Muhammed International airport, Nigeria would shock you. The unkempt airport and its pathway give an apt description of what is happening inside Nigeria. As if that was not bad enough, a contractor by way of road expansion or whatever broke the dual-carriage way into two and worsened the situation.

It may not shock you if you are a Nigerian who easily adapt to any situation and if it has been imbedded in your psyche that it is the way things run in Nigeria. But imagine an investor visiting Nigeria and entering through Lagos and is perhaps heading towards the ports, then you can imagine a journey from the international airport in Lagos to the Tincan Island and Apapa ports.

You are dead if you don’t know what to expect.

What kind of a country will have a pathway like that? What kind of country will have routes to its ports like the Oshodi-Apapa expressway? Has the problem defied all solutions? Nobody is wishing Nigeria bad but if the Mile 2 flyover and Berger bridges don’t collapse under the weight of the containers and the tankers, then we will be thanking God over and over. The businesses along that route are dead, People living in that axis are living in limbo.

Typically, it is what once-upon-a- time music sensation Eedris Abdulkareem saw when he sang Nigeria Jaga Jaga and drew the ire of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo who asked “How could a sane man dare to call his country Jaga Jaga? It is the height of blasphemy”.

In today’s Nigeria, he would be accused of making a hate song. But Eedris had responded to Obasanjo’s comment with a remark, “ Mr ex president, Nigeria still dey Jaga Jaga, in fact it worst pass Jaga Jaga.”

What would Eedris Abdulkareem say now?

No one can gag Nigerians. If Fela Anikulapo Kuti, had not died, only God knows what he would say of Nigeria now, the dirtiness of the Nigerian environment, the fact the Lagos is competing to be the dirtiest city in Africa and the fact that governance has gone to all time low.

To comment on the fact that things have gone south in Nigeria amounts to hate speech. But Wole Soyika did say that ‘the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.’

Democracy has lost its meaning in the present time and many are perceiving governance as an invitation to come and chop and not to come and serve. And what do we get? Those convicted of corruption in the past are being invited to come and run things in Nigeria.

As long as you are in the ruling party, you are right and not capable of wrongdoing except the people begin to scream and then, one goon who thinks he’s an image -maker for the government in power will come out to blame a former government.

Must a defence be made for wrong-doing? Must we ridicule ourselves to show we are doing the will of our slave-masters? Can’t a government apologise to Nigerians for once?

Today’s Nigeria is filled with people suffering at the expense of corrupt politicians and ineffectual leaders and Fela Kuti aptly captured it in his song: ‘Shuffering and Smiling’.

Fela though is physically dead but his spirit lives on. During his lifetime,he had many run-ins with law enforcement agents due to his radical stance and views. On one occasion, his home, Kalakuta Republic in Ikeja was attacked. He was severely beaten and almost all his property destroyed.

Fela spoke against everything that was wrong with the Nigerian society which have become worse since his demise. But his words are evergreen.

I met Fela only once and he changed my world view. As a student, I went with some friends to his house somewhere in Ikeja and during introductions, I told him my name. I was bearing an English name then and he asked, don’t you have a native name. Each time I hear Fela, what comes to my mind was must you bear a foreign name, you are African and Nigerian? How he said it went deep down. I went back to school and changed to my native name.

Fela was much more than a singer. He used his fame as a force for good. His lyrics criticized the Nigerian government for corruption and human rights abuses, and he paid the price for speaking the truth. He had a record of being arrested about 200 times, and his mother died from injuries she sustained during a raid on their home. Those disturbed by his lyrics burned down the original African Shrine.

But no one could cow Fela. Every attempt to slow him down failed. He even tried to run for president. He proclaimed that his first act upon being elected would be to enroll the entire population into the police force. He said, ‘Before a policeman could slap you, he would have to think twice because you’re a policeman too but he was barred him from participating in the election.

In Nigeria now than ever, despite trillions injected into the system electricity will go out for weeks at a time. And the unemployment crisis has prompted so many Nigerians to leave the country that they accounted for 10% of all migrants and refugees who crossed the Mediterranean.

The youth in Nigeria are at war with the system.

Indeed, Nigerians must speak when things are not going well. The outrage against the recall of Maina stopped the madness of bringing him back to the system. The same outrage revealed that many Nigerians and public officials convicted of corruption in the past were brought back into the system through the back door by a government that is fighting corruption.

Kudos to Nigerians. Secular history is replete with roles played by champions of justice, equity, truth, and liberty.

It was for the same cause that the man, Chief Gani Oyesola Fawehinmi, acclaimed Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM), Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), teacher, advocate, crusader, activist, social critic, emancipator, and hero extraordinaire lived and died and will forever remain an example of what it means to truly be “A Man of The People”.

No one can gag the people in a democracy. Nigerians should talk when things are going wrong.

l’homme meurt dans tous ceux qui gardent le silence face à la tyrannie ( the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny)

God bless Nigeria.