Hankering after blank spaces

The majority of us in this country – your country my country our country – have been observers – and are still being observers of what is going on here and outside here.

Many things, indeed, happen here – and beyond here – that defy – or that seemingly defy – our understanding of our respective attempts to understand why they happened, why they have happened, why they are happening and why they may continue to happen. With respect to myself, in particular, I have become a space-gazer of some sort to help my thinking or emotional or decision-making faculty as I assume the role of the narrator of what we want to really know about the human beings who govern us without really being human.

Many of you who are reading this column presently assume or think that our leaders at all levels are decent human beings. But are they really decent human beings? Personally, I don’t wish to query whatever you assume or think about our leaders who are not really decent leaders because they, sincerely speaking, are lacking in the decent qualities which qualify human beings to be human. Ordinarily, we all, without exception, like to assure ourselves that as humans our leaders are “supremely logical” persons who make and will continue to make decisions and formulate policies on the grounds and basis of hard facts and data and not on those of prejudice or whim-wham.

As we all know too well, our current president and all those who control him have proved us wrong. We query every ounce of their rational (or supposedly rational) decisions in every respect of our national life. Are they human? Do they have the capacity to judge and act rationally and logically? Does the system that rules or governs their behaviour give them conflicting or opposing ideas from two powerful incompatible forces and sources? Are they taking conflicting pieces of advice from logic and instinct? Whatever answers we may get, one thing that is clear is that President Buhari and his cohorts cannot be said to have the necessary ingredients of the head and gut to give your country my country our country the required stimulus to calibrate our current risk as a people and as a country. The vision of our independence winners of the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties has since been tragically knee-dropped, so to put it, by this president who apparently does not know what homo economicus or homo politicus or homo psychologicus is. The old man now apparently heartless, liverless or almost brain-less does not know that he has not been acting in your country’s my country’s our country’s best interests. No matter the accurate information at his disposal he will never allow himself or he will never be allowed by his remote and direct controllers to do what a human expert in governance who is humanly human – will do for his country and people – humanely and humanly.

This president has been truly anti-Southern Nigerian as he demonstrates in his capacity to inflict maximum pain on the people of the region, which his appointments reflect as we all know. But has he been sincerely fair to his Northern region as well despite all the appointments he has conceded to people of the region whether or not the majority of them or less than the majority of them has the practical or even theoretical competence and experience for the appointments?

As bad as things are for the people of Southern Nigeria whose lands and water-ways and oil-rich swamps this current president is being misled to lay claim to through the art of duplicity of political intention, the vast geographical landscape of Northern Nigeria is peopled by very badly unmotivated denizens whose space, whose place, whose land has become a space, a place, a land of the darkness of peculiar loneliness and pains that Buhari’s inexplicably in-human and inhumane nature cannot redeem and refresh. The political refresher we thought this president would be has turned out to be what he has turned out to be through the efforts of persons like this columnist (and this is an open confession) who were blindly on his side pre-2015 presidential campaigns and elections. And the man has since his two presidential electoral victories really imprisoned our hopes, joys, fine moods with his remorseless rush of anti-people and anti-country policies. His post-military motivations are worse than his military inclinations.

I may be sounding repetitive, but my attempts to read, re-read, study and re-study President Buhari elicit the same feeling of surprise, embarrassment and pessimism that dulls my mood precariously in the present time. Why has your president my president our president brought his pre-election campaigns and supposedly democratically rational motivations together with the “aleatory, the unpredictable, the inexplicable”? I am becoming a student of heuristics studying and re-studying the president heuristically. Imaginatively, realistically, psychologically, spiritually and mystically I am just hankering after blank spaces. I am seeing darkness only in blank spaces meaning that our people will sooner than later do more than question his number of biases and prejudices and mental shortcuts. The blank spaces will soon be filled to the brim. How beneficial will this be to him and your country my country our country? Let me leave the answer to your rhetorical presumption.

But let your fixation be on this note that is not illusory: Your country my country our country will soon be presented with refreshments of embarrassing de richesses that will not embarrass the needy. What do I mean? Exactly what I mean: Embarrass de choix for the people and the masses. I, all in all, didn’t hanker, spiritually speaking, or mystically speaking after blank spaces for nothing. Our will as a people will prevail at the appointed time when we shall snatch a moment of tenacious courage. South and North, unite! North and South, stick together! No Zuma-like people and worse ones than the ex-one of the moment in South Africa should preside over our affairs henceforth. We must put our acts together, my people our people who are our people in the very genuine sense and usage of the term. Patriots South and North, patriots of the North and South let us die and live well for your country my country our country.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.