Anyone who has ever walked through life, on a path littered with pathos and thorns, truly knows that hope is a beautiful thing.
Hope is the one thing that makes you hum a song still, even when your tongues are parched and your chords are singed by the surrounding misery. When your breath seems gone, but a desire refuses to die.
It is that imaginary oasis that thrives in the mind of a man trapped in the desert of existence. It is the lone green herb, in a forest of dry leaves. A piece of spring ensconced in a bizarre winter and a flicker of light in the belly of darkness.
Hope is the thing that makes you crawl forward still, though your limbs are gone. It is the yearning of a dry dying plant for a scent of rain, that makes its roots refuse to rot in spite of a dire draught. It is the secret voice that the ear hears, which makes it the last human organ to die.
Hope is therefore the most crucial drug that keeps a life, alive.
In the last decades, Nigeria has become a land littered with thorns and so much troubles, that the word ‘wahala’ has been added to its national lexicon. It’s become difficult to be a Nigerian whether living at home or abroad, without being on a daily dose of this drug called hope, to keep your sanity.
From the pillaging of the national common wealth by inept corrupt politicians, to gross insecurity, kidnappings and wanton destruction of human lives by terrorists and security services alike. Massive food shortages, astronomical inflation, violent outbursts of secessionist tendencies, high unemployment rates are amongst an endless litany of avoidable woes.
Yet hope had always come to the rescue. The common mantra that “ i go better” tomorrow seemed to suffice. And so in the year 2023, over two hundred and fifty million lives hung their final hopes on the power of the Permanent Voters Card(PVC) in order to vote out their woes and vote in their dreams based on the candidates of their choice.
At the end of the democratic process, it turned out that the prophet was right again, where he said
“Can the Ethiopian(Nigerian) change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” (Jeremiah 13:23 KJV).
The last hope of many for a civilized process were quashed by the men and machines in charge of midwifing the dreams of a people into reality. It was no surprise therefore that shortly after the ‘results’ announced by INEC, a young man reportedly committed suicide in Nassarawa and another in Jos because life without hope was not worth living.
This election was their last hope to live in a better country. Countless other Nigerians have taken to shredding their national passports on live videos as a testament of their lack of hope in the motherland. A growing fury is seething across the land waiting to explode like a latent magma, because indeed, “Hope deferred, makes the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life”. (Proverbs 13:12 KJV)
The irony of hope is that while it has the power to make a man sacrifice everything and endure anything; It also has the power to turn a prince into a beast, and an angel into a demon, once it’s taken away. A man estranged from his hopes and denied of any sane method of reaching his dreams, is nothing but a mobile body of infinite tragedies waiting to happen. And more tragic is the fate of the land where such a people abide.
- Nixon Uzoma, born Sept 12, 1969 to Nigerian parents, is a dual Dutch and Nigerian citizen currently residing in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. A 1992 graduate of Philosophy of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Uzoma is a social commentator, Motivational Speaker and President of Onix Incorporated, and Onix Curacao B.V. based in the Netherlands Antilles.