At a time like this...

As I write this piece today, #Nigeria is trending. Ordinarily this ought to be good news. And it could have been. After all, the nation just completed a rebasing exercise which, unlike the verdicts from our recurrent electoral contests, was so very professionally done that no one has accused us, yet, of ‘figures-rigging.’

Again the outcome of that exercise should ordinarily predispose us to a year’s standing ovation from all over the world. As the outcome so graphically outlines, the result situates the nation in the rank of high-flying economies as one with the 26^th largest GDP base globally and incontrovertibly the numero uno economy in the mother continent.

Another reason why the glasses ought to be clinking is the fact that the nation last week hosted regional and world leaders and indeed the global investing community to a Special session of the World Economic Forum on Africa at its Federal Capital city, Abuja.

There are other things to cheer, including the fact that its national football team, the Super Eagles, is one of only 32 the world over that would shortly be headed for the South American and samba-loving nation of Brazil to take part in one of the biggest events in the globe today, the World Cup.

But then there are other issues that dampen the mood. One is that the impressive GDP results, as we say in these parts, have not translated to dividends for the mass of the people at the grassroots. And yes, while the President is right that the 24^th richest man in the world is a Nigerian and that the nation is today the private jets capital of the world, the other very inconvenient truth is that Mr. Poverty is indeed also Nigerian. Talk about having the best and the worst of indices cohabiting together in the same space!

Second, Nigeria has continued to grapple with an embarrassing barrage of clearly solvable troubles. It cannot refine enough oil for its people so fuel queues are an enduring decimal. Graft has gone haywire. The educational system is tepid and comatose. Power supply is a mirage. Roads, rail air, water and other transport infrastructure stinks. As some friends casually remark, the situation is indeed so dire that it looks like the nation, citizens included, has indeed been kidnapped!

Within this climate of despair has been added a gory scepter of senseless killings, unexplained deaths, kidnapping and abductions with the security services that ordinarily should inspire confidence in their stern and professional resolve to combat these aberrations now having an added credibility deficit in terms of their conduct and public pronouncements. So where do Nigerians turn?

It is within this vortex of confusion and disappointment that fresh word came out last week that the Presidency had accepted to receive help from the United States and indeed some other nations to help resolve the issue of the abduction of Girls and other wanton atrocities being perpetuated by operatives of the Boko Haram sect in Borno State and elsewhere within and beyond the nation’s borders. So we also now have the scepter of formal exposure to foreign security operatives carrying out campaigns within our sovereign national space!   

On a normal day, my patriotic self will object to our so-called ‘Post-colonial Sovereign State’ accepting help from another nation 63 years after it began its sovereign nation-building journey. It just does not add up.

But these are strange times and existence surely precedes essence.

But how did we really get here?

The writer, Chinua Achebe is many things to many people. But without any controversy there are three attributes that resonate from his life’s story. One is that he is simple even when he is not a fool. Another is that he can be blunt and would not cower from a fight if one was needed. And third, he was such a deep and introspective thinker that when he did step into any fray, his views were not likely to be so casually dismissed.

And so when he picked up his pen to write what his perhaps his slimmest published book during Nigeria’s second republic, many read him. In the book, ‘The trouble with Nigeria,’ Achebe, went straight to the point: ‘the trouble with Nigeria, he laid bare, ‘was simply and squarely a failure of leadership.’ He had made his point. And characteristically, he would not say anything else.

At a time like this when Nigeria is caught in the throes of multiple crisis and failings, we need our Achebes to stand up to be counted. This is the least we can do to avert looming disaster and the latter-day censure of history for all who would survive. As J.P Clark would say: the casualties are not only those who are dead.’  And there surely must be hope ‘for the living dead.’

Nigeria will rise again.