The political genomes of past leaders in us – Part 2

Meanwhile, some of our contemporary Nigerians do hate overtly, and some do hate covertly. Before this period, it was greed and covetousness that were prevalent. Now, hate, greed, and ignorance are intertwined in the warped consciousness of the people. Our people need cognitive restructuring! People relish daily in this new normal of an abnormal situation. The majority of those people who traffic in hate and corruption are primarily religious people and corrupt toddlers of immediate yesterday. They are less knowledgeable in the cruel history of Nigeria. Those who are knowledgeable of Nigerian history suffer from deliberate indifference.

Nigeria is a holy-alliance nation with spiritual entrepreneurs. Hate and resentment are now the trademarks that make people self-destruct.

I sympathize with patriotic Nigerians who are genuinely fighting daily to re-orientate and change the corrupt system. Corruption is a menace, an institutionalized problem. It’s generally an acceptable way of life. It destroys, kills, and wastes human and material resources. Whoever wants to fight corruption in a dysfunctional society must be ready for frustration, malignant abuse, hate, jealousy, and resentment.

Moreover, deceit and ostentatious lifestyle are very prevalent in Nigeria. The naive citizens now dress themselves up in borrowed ropes only to get grotesquely naked outside for the global community’s comic relief. For posterity’s sake, a ‘mummified’ President Buhari is left with only one existential option: to alleviate the impoverished people’s sufferings through people-oriented policies and programs. Anything short of this positive suggestion will spell doom for a gerontocratic Buhari among his ‘fulanized’ and poor admirers in Nigeria. The president seems to be the one-person battalion with a multitude of nitwit-foot-soldiers. You cannot distinguish between the two dominant political parties (All Progressive Congress-APC and People Democratic Party-PDP) in our dysfunctional political climate.

The leaders and the led are mutually feasting on the carcasses of an unhealthy nation. The DNAs of the two parties are genetically made up of corruption. The two predominant APC and PDP parties share the same genetic engineering and deformed DNAs of bribery and graft. Their genomes are infected with hate and survival of the fittest. All party chieftains from both sides of the aisles; their wives, families, friends, acquaintances, and those who get crumbs are fighting in the cocoon of corruption. Even the newly incubated parties do not fare better. They are all looking for how to fill up their pockets of crime. In Nigeria, the more you (peruse) look through the nation’s mirror, the more you see the preponderance (bulk) of lies, deceitful behaviour, graft, and political opportunism of the political class and followers. Here in the United States, though, not a bed of roses, the more you live in a decent and functional environment, the more you are open to fulfilling your innate potential and etch towards complete self-fulfilment or actualization.

Sadly, in our situation back home, the more you want to disentangle yourself from the murky waters of Nigeria and have your inner peace, the more you’re unavoidably finding yourself in the realm of the voiceless and unlucky people. Anytime I attempted to mute, my willingness and reluctant mind are constantly prodded by the consciousness of guilt and ugly happenings in our country. The more I want to keep silent, the more my conscience becomes unsettling with the new normal of an abnormal situation in our bruised society.

Intuitively, those of us who are captivated by Nigeria’s impending glory (or foreseeable amicable divorce of Nigeria) cannot keep quiet in the face of unrighteousness and transgression in the homeland. Our good conscience is now dangling and dwelling in-between the devil and the deep blue sea! Also, while we still have some men and women of good conscience and characters, you can’t trust most people anymore——and also, you can’t compromise and silence your conscience and voice in our nation’s political wilderness and contradictions. Contrary to the minds of the pessimists and naysayers in our midst, those of us who are incurable optimists will continue to keep the dampening hope alive for our beleaguered nation. Our hope is unquenchably alive!

May God earnestly heal our comatose nation and bring the country back to peace, or amicable disunity, and prosperity.

Concluded.

Balogun wrote from Arizona, the United States of America.