By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Protest is all the rage in Nigeria today.
Democracy allows for peaceful protest, but it is well-nigh impossible for overzealous state agents and sundry nefarious elements not to conjure up violence to complicate matters.
In this wise, the demons of death are on the loose, arranging mayhem and spreading damnation.
We walk an ungodly but very familiar Nigerian road littered with shattered bones and broken dreams.
The pity is that people who ought to know better are flashing the dangerous aspects of ethnic baiting that will do the nation no good.
Only the very self-deceptive Nigerian adults would discountenance the fact that there is hunger and anger all over the land.
Cost of living has gone beyond most Nigerian citizens.
Parents and wards can no longer pay the astronomic fees of the students, and hordes are dropping out of school.
House rent is beyond the reach of even the rich who are not in government, and the impossible electricity tariff is mind-bending.
The situation in the country calls for the leadership to adjust to the strenuous circumstances instead of trying to be clever by half.
The catch in Nigeria today is that a president from the Southwest, a zone that was the staunch ally of the North, is being offered hell by Northern mandarins of power.
But instead of addressing this clear and present danger, literally all the president’s men would want to divert attention by claiming that the former rebel Biafrans are causing the problems!
Beyond the ethnic baiting, the issue is that the masses are hungry, and hunger has no tribal marks.
The hunger and anger in the country portend protracted danger.
The perennial fear is that something grave would come upon the country if anti-democratic forces are allowed a foothold following the protests.
Nigeria needs to confront her demons now.
Nigerians must as a whole insist that we are ruled by constitutional means instead of the wishes of some devil-may-care power-grabbers.
It is incumbent on the presidency to win back the trust of the Nigerian people by pursuing pan-Nigerian policies instead of aping the nepotism that did the pathetic regime of General Muhammadu Buhari no good.
What has to be understood is that real development does not depend on where power is based.
Otherwise the dominance of the North in ruling the country over the years since independence would have transformed the region beyond all others.
Emphasis should now be placed more on the devolution of powers than piling up everything in the centre.
This way, the injurious pampering of the Northern oligarchs that has resulted into the underdevelopment of the entire country, particularly the then overlord region, will be stemmed.
The insecurity all over the country is without any shadow of doubt an accursed road to national damnation.
Nobody is safe anymore in the country.
Monarchs have been kidnapped and murdered in the Southwest while the Southeast bears the burden of the Monday sit-at-home imbroglio.
The North-Central zone has been turned into a killing field while the Northeast is so violent that some of the political potentates over there all have a somewhat safe haven by staying in Abuja.
The Northwest titans are so oppressed by insecurity that they almost always go beyond the borders of Nigeria to sleep at night!
Nigeria needs a comprehensive reset so that the country will not end up as a wasteland of endless youth revolts.
That the arrangement called Nigeria has become a butt of jokes all over the world can be located in the antics of the touted over-patriotism by the insufferable defenders of the government of the day.
As Samuel Johnson said as far back as the evening of April 7, 1775, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
Going back in time, everything about this nation is shrouded in mystery.
Nobody can tell for a fact the accurate population of the country.
It does not need a soothsayer to know that elections in the country are rigged, and the so-called winners are thus not responsible to the people.
The very idea of democracy in Nigeria is akin to abracadabra that can only be defined as “coup at the polls!”
The heart of the matter is that Nigeria is an eternal captive made for exploitation from the very beginning.
It did not just start with the flag Independence of 1960.
What greater Advance Fee Fraud could have been arranged on God’s earth than the so-called Amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 by Lord Lugard from which our colonial masters continue to reap bounteously to this day?
The pity is that Nigerians were better off in those early days than today, a monstrous disaster.
The national currency has all but collapsed, and the dream of almost all the youths of Nigeria is to escape to any foreign country, even Fiji Island!
The heart of the matter is that the youths have enough reasons to protest in this famished land, and they do not need distractions, no, make that provocation, like the reverse to the old National Anthem as state policy.
From East to West, to North and South, the hopelessness is a sweeping and devastating onslaught.
A truly patriotic leadership needs to take charge here before revolution supervenes.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author