By Abuchi Obiora
The Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary (Special Price Cover Edition) defines the word ‘Undertaker’ (Mortician) as a person whose business is to prepare dead people for burial, e.t.c and arrange funerals for them. In Corporate (business) world, these same functions are specifically exercised by an individual or a legal entity (company) called Receiver /Manager.
The same dictionary defines the word ‘Receiver” (definition number four in the dictionary) as ‘an official appointed by a Court to handle the financial affairs of a company that is bankrupt, that is to call in the ‘Receiver’, or to put the business in the hands of a Receiver, i.e. to put the business of a badly managed company under the control of a ‘Receiver’ (under ‘Receivership’)
In real and practical terms, the Undertaker and the ‘Receiver’ (‘Receiver’/Manager) are saddled with the unenviable task of laying to rest, or to quicken the journey to oblivion ( as some very bad cases that may have undergone certain irreversible adverse conditions) may demand; to drop the sick and disused carcass of a human being or a corporate entity or a badly managed country (as will be seen with the subject matter of this discourse), either to the mortified earth whence the human being came or to the dustbin of history thence the corporate entity or country sprouted.
In this discourse, we shall be looking at the possibility that Nigeria, through the combined tenors of misrule by her past leaders may have been quickened to the unpleasant, strict and highly regimented stable of a Receiver/Manager, nay, an Undertaker, in the person of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Executive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Is Nigeria a distressed country beyond repair such that the option of death, courtesy of the natural law of change unto perfection has become the only means to strengthen her moral, social and economic fabrics in order to force her out of stagnancy that points to nowhere but oblivion and extinction?
In one of my books (Physical Transition; The Initiation Of Death) written with the pseudonym Rabbi Abram A. ben-Uriel, I advocated that there are only five stages/cycles in the life of human beings, systems and processes. These five stages are Birth, Development. Maturity, Decay and Death. I also said in that book that an ill-developed person, system or process can muddle up the maturity stage and slip on to decay and death.
Is it possible that Nigeria as a country muddled up her maturity because of improper development for which reason the process of decay and death caught up with her barely 64 years after her independence? This brings us to the issue of Nigeria being a Failed State as has been mentioned in several forums including as discussed in a previous discourse in The Kaleidoscope Archives, (Reference: “Is Nigeria A Failed State” written by ABUCHI OBIORA and published in The Global Upfront Newspaper, The Authority Newspaper, and other major media houses between November 18th to 21st 2021), but before we revisit that reality, let us find out why the only option available for the present Federal Government in the country to take, driven by natural forces and the country’s cycles of existence (if things must be put right and unless the government wants to move against the tides of time), is to exercise the unattractive, unenviable and cold job of an Undertaker, to grab a much-abused, tired and expired country, now disused, and put her to rest in a ‘democratic’ way free of strife and rancor from the federating regions and diverse ethnic nationalities.
The next question one would want to provide an answer to in the consideration of this matter is, “is Nigeria really dead beyond repair that she needs an Undertaker for an interment?
The other question would be “how does a country die?” To answer these questions, we need to find out what the essential components of a viable country are, that is those components whose absence could render a country to be what is commonly called a Failed State.
I will restrain myself from giving out figures that I do not believe in as churned out by government agencies including the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) because the motives of the sources of these figures that these agencies of government provide could be politics whereby in the same manner that an Undertaker will not reveal the hopelessness of the dead to his principal, the government through its agencies may be reluctant to reveal to Nigerians the true nature of the country it picked up to dismantle through some subtitle onslaughts to her flawed constitution.
For example, one of these government agencies made an impossible and ridiculous claim in development economics that the national economy “expanded” and is doing better than it was doing before the inauguration of the present government on May 29th 2023, in spite of high government expenditure and executive extravagance, a spiral and nerve-breaking inflation, the dwindling purchasing power of Nigerians as a result of the removal of subsidy on petroleum products and the uncontrollably high foreign exchange regime of major international currencies to the naira, the extinction of both the upper and lower middle classes who hitherto acted as the buffers for the sustenance of the low income earners and the economically marginalized poor Nigerians, plus an avalanche of new, cunny and dubius mismanagement techniques which have been observed as one of the characters of the government.
This character of government makes one suspect that lies and propaganda may have become another policy of government to justify the current state of hopelessness of a country that is presently receiving the services of an Undertaker but this is not a surprise because it is in the character of an Undertaker, a Mortician to tell lies and exaggerate the apparently worthless value of the dead so that his pocket will be better enriched through high and bloated costs of casket, entertainment and other paraphernalia necessary and expedient to laying the dead to rest.
As a matter of fact, the Undertaker is the final beneficiary that closes the affairs of the dead and for this reason, he is ever ready to cash out maximally from this opportunity.
So, afraid to reel out dubious and non-existent figures that may not be relied on, let me simply list out those indices that practically show that Nigerian is a failed and dead country needing the services of a ruthless Undertaker such as the one presently in the saddle.
The following prevailing factors in Nigeria are pure signs of a distressed and Failed State. They are:
- Gross insecurity across the length and breadth of the country wherefore the joint security networks of the armed forces and allied Nigerian paramilitary establishments have been overwhelmed by the activities of non-state actors and militia some of whom have taken over sections of the country where they levy all manners of taxes on Nigerian citizens. The trend is more pronounced in the northern part of the country.
- Chaos in the Nigerian judiciary wherefore Judges oppose themselves through conflicting Rulings, counter Rulings, Injunctions and Court Orders, all of which may be proofs that the Nigerian Bar and Bench could be one of the most corrupt and compromised in the world as cited in a recent report.
- Near collapse of the rule of law in Nigeria wherefore might has become right in the country in so far as one has the corrupt means to get across the law enforcement agencies and the court.
- Low moral disposition amongst the citizens who have resorted to despicable, beastly and unwholesome means, to survive without regard to social ethics, norms and values of a sane and normal human society.
- Excessive corruption and executive lawlessness amongst politicians, the elites and the ruling class all of whom seem to have lost faith in a dead country and are only interested and determined to quickly slice out their portions of the national cake before the pack crumbles.
- Unending external borrowings that runs into several trillions of naira with reckless abandon by a government that is aware that the annual external debt servicing requirement gulps more than ninety percent of annual foreign exchange earnings as Nigerian crude oil resources is sold in advance for upward of three years even before they are drilled. This is a disaster in-making because Nigerians may wake up one morning to be told that the country has become insolvent, bankrupt!
- Total lack of patriotism and faith in the country by members of most of the constituting ethnic nationalities and federating regions who see themselves as being trapped in Nigeria, a country that does not allow them to attain their best possible potentials.
In analysing three of the policies of the Nigerian government which point to the fact that the major motive and intention of the government is to literally lay the country as presently constituted to rest through a re-set of her internal structures, we will find out why the government is determined to walk Nigerians along the policy direction that it presently pursues in spite of vehement dissenting voices within the camps of people who either feel that they will lose out with a change in the status quo or those people who may be ignorant of the implications of the government’s policy direction.
By the way, I must observe that this discourse is not about the unmitigated effects of the President’s economic or social policies such as inflation and hunger but an expose of the possible forces driving those government policies that may, if managed well with executive corruption properly checked, bring about numerous positive effects to the powerful and competing federating states that will eventually emerge from the debris of a demised country that may for the purpose of identification only, retain her colonial name after the transformation hurricane. This discourse does not also dwell on the rightness or wrongness of the President being on his seat. I had been done with that before, during and after the electioneering campaign of 2023 and my views are properly expressed in the works I did at those periods. These works are online and can be seen and read by anybody who wishes to do so.
The Oxford Learners Dictionary also defines the word “Euthanasia” as “the practice of killing without pain, a person who is suffering from a disease that cannot be cured or from extreme old age, so that he or she can die with dignity”.
In order words, “Euthanasia” is “mercy killing” based on the assumption that it is far better to die and be rested than live a life of hopelessness devoid of future chances of survival.
Though morally contestable, “Euthanasia” is generally seen as an expedient and unavoidable action to retain the dignity of man and save man from unnecessary and prolonged suffering that could still lead to death. For this reason, doctors and other medical and social scientists whose professions demand the administration of euthanasia to their patients are seen by the society to do humane and noble jobs in furtherance of the good in the society.
Is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu unknowingly engaged in administering the euthanasia pills to Nigeria and Nigerians to enhance the solvency of corporate Nigeria? This opinion is also contestable (as it could be when Euthanasia is applied to end a human life) depending on the camp that one belongs to because different people in Nigeria especially from different political camps believe that the problems of Nigeria can still be solved without making her citizens go through such grueling economic conditions that they are presently passing through.
My opinion is that all the policies of the government of Mr. President inevitably point to the fact that the President may not only be interested in revamping Nigeria. He may also be interested in ending some of her structures with only her colonial name as the remaining vestige of identification.
From the first day of this government, the President made it clear to Nigerians that he was determined to withdraw the government-sponsored and long-abused subsidy on petroleum products. He did exactly that. The aftermath of that government policy revealed how vulnerable some sections of the country can be without direct assistance from the federal government.
Be that as it may, the policy of the government in removing subsidy on petroleum products is a sure evidence of the job of an Undertaker, to reveal the ‘nakedness’ of the dead in a Last Testament (The Will) or as the Probate Registry may require, a Letter of Administration and the appointment of an Executor in cases where the deceased died interstate as with the subject matter, Nigeria, under discussion.
Undeniably and most probably as fate and the good fortune of the indigenous Nigerian ethnic nationalities would have it, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has become the Undertaker of a demised Nigeria and the Executor of her affairs, the last Testator of her Wills.
There are a few other policies of government which support my interpretation of the present Nigerian government as the Undertaker that the country deserves at this time but I will mention only one more here for the convenience of space.
Nigerians were surprised when one of the first Executive Bills submitted by the Presidency for the approval of the National Assembly was that on a reversal to the Colonial National Anthem. In a jiffy, that Bill was passed by the Green and Red Chambers of the House of Assembly.
With hindsight on the events culminating to the reversal to the colonial, national anthem that recognized the regions and TRIBE in Nigeria, and even mentioning them, giving the TRIBES and the ETHNIC NATIONALITIES (‘though TRIBES and TONGUES may differ…’), level playing grounds to compete and excel in their strong catchment areas (Groundnut Pyramids for Northern Nigeria, Cocoa warehouses in Western Nigeria, Palm Produce in Eastern Nigeria, etc.) during the First Republic, I am in no doubt that the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a master political strategist (as has been shown with his antecedents) had decided from day one that Nigeria must revert to the former and pristine regional and powerful sub-divisions or risk an impending violent disintegration along the lines of Biafra, Oduduwa, Arewa and may be a middle Belt nation with whatever name it may decide to go. This is, of course, not mentioning the possibility that all those soldiers of fortune and Islamic Jihadists from the Sahel region hanging on the horns of Africa are ever ready to overrun the northern part of Nigeria in any event of crisis, chaos or anarchy in the country.
ABUCHI OBIORA
GLOBAL UPFRONT NEWSPAPER
The Kaleidoscope Archives
abuchiobiora@gmail.com