From every available administrative progress indicators and indices verifiable from competent sources and authorities, Abia State and Kogi State are the most backward states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Kogi for example is both poor and wretched in economic and social development which makes it an ultimate disaster, while Abia on its own is economically viable due to the Igbo spirit of entrepreneurial and small-scale business revolution commonly visible in trade and artisanship- even through grossly unassisted by any government be they federal, state or local.
The total shutdown of the Abia State capital city of Umuahia on Friday 16 September 2022 by a public-spirited One Million Man March for presidential candidate of the Labour Party Mr. Peter Obi and his Abia State governorship candidate counterpart, Dr. Alex Otti speaks volumes about the newly-embraced gospel of change sweeping across Nigeria currently.
A new tide of a social moving train that has overwhelmed even the iron-toothed dictatorial oligarchies of the visionless general Nigerian leadership class, who have come to their wits end with the emergent Obidient Movement for national survival and Ottification Movement for the total redemption of a presently battered and pulverized Abia State. The stunning human turn-out and mammoth crowd which brought Umuahia city to a total gridlock is a salient message of things to come. This solidarity march even in the sleepy city of Umuahia which is generally regarded as a glorified village by Abia elites and other discerning progressive Nigerians makes a great socio-political statement to all well meaning individuals in south-eastern Nigeria generally and God’s Own State, Abia in particular.
The great promise which Aba the elephant city holds for Nigeria makes Abia’s case of redemption a recurring decimal in Nigeria’s political and socio-economic permutations. The question is ‘If the sleepy city of Umuahia recorded such massive human turn-out of supporters and solidarity marchers for Perter Obi and Alex Otti respectively, then what happens on October 1. 2022, when the earth-moving city of Aba marches for these two phenomenal election candidates that command a cult following of grassroots youths and eminent citizens ready to make further sacrifices to rescue the lost soul of our dear country?’ your guess is as good as mine, if you recall what Aba as a big city is known for in the entire Nigerian profile and story- The Enyimba spirit of bulldozers and long distance express trains!
However, this is just the beginning of a series of positive enthusiastic craze that started from various northern cities with the One Million, Two Million, Three Million and Four Million Man Marches which all recorded huge human turn-out amounting to over 70 million people in attendance in all, surpassing expectations each time.
But now that campaigns has started, what we are presently seeing is youth enthusiasm and expression of the support to come. It is noteworthy that no other presidential candidate or governorship hopeful has such mass support even when they have all tried to force or instigate their scanty followers to stage counter marches to support their own candidatures. Some extremist state governments have gone on to mobilize the armed forces and the police force alongside their private thugs and goons to attack these solidarity marchers to no avail as the security agencies who crave this imminent change more than ordinary citizens end up supporting and guiding these crowds of people to successfully carry out their marches and make the obvious statement, passing the yet urgent message of immediate change or the crash of Nigeria.
But why would Nigerians not massively support a man or a group of men who have offered to accept the leadership of a failed state like ours where human lives are cheapest compared to any other location in the world? Is it not obviously clear to all now that even the horror-nation of Afghanistan is currently a safe-heaven when measured in same scale with Nigeria? Nigeria as a failed state presently ranks worse than Afghanistan when measured in terms of insecurity and human safety and conspicuously placed on the lowest tables of global poverty index even with all its petroleum producing wealth. A country where no copy of any newspaper, magazine, radio or t.v. reports does not shutdown your breath with their gory records of human life losses at every strata of society on a daily basis at virtually all locations at the same time?
A Nigeria where the entire North-East, North-west and North-Central has been completely decimated by Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, arsonists, assassins, murderers and their ilks all in the guise of politics and religion?
Turning indigenous people into political refugees and displaced persons, leaving nearly a million people dead for no reason other than official irresponsibility and criminality funded with the commonwealth of the same people made victim of their supposed opportunities of a good life of security and general progress. What a country? With all the features of Nigeria’s unjust federalism, Nasiru El Rufai and Bello Masari, governors of kaduna and katsina states respectively are still working fruitlessly to frame-up or malign the personality of Peter Obi by claiming aloud that he (Obi) needs further introduction if not to other people of the world, then themselves (El Rufai and Masari) in particular. Clear cases of living in a fools paradise.
The combined brigandage of these fellows with cheap propagandists such as Garuba Shehu, Femi Adesina, Lai Mohammed, Joe Igbokwe, Femi Fani-Kayode, Reno Omokri and other negative comedians have ended up adding more fuel to the Peter Obi Labour Party locomotive, building the capacity to the level of a frightening tsunami, cyclone, hurricane, typhoon, monsoon and blizzard all joined together, even when they originally intended to act as mere flies in the ointment. Who can ever stop an idea whose time has arrived? The train has already left the station and the rest will definitely be history, moreso now that greater percentages of top All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) membership are becoming Obidient across the length and breadth of the Nigerian nation and Ottified in Aba State in particular.
All the evidences of a totally failed state are prevalent in the present day Nigerian circumstance. For example, the country’s highways are mostly terrorist drive-ways including the gullies, craters, pot-holes and chain gallops which constitute grave death traps. Secessionist groups all springing up from everywhere as a result of official irresponsibility, education at all levels totally stuck up and damaged according to the original agenda of the Boko Haram insurgency, corruption everywhere as workers hard-saved pensions funds are freely embezzled without any bit of caution, auditor generals in federal and state governments converting public funds to reckless personal wastage without consequences whatsoever, present and past ministers and government appointees buying off all the houses in London, New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Dubai without answering any question from anybody and even demonstrating impunity by abusing the general public in most cases.
No refinery is currently running in a grade ‘A’ petroleum producing and exporting country which massively refined every form of petroleum products even in the 1970s and 1980s, while Nigeria now imports every item of petroleum products from countries that purchase crude oil from it, with the ingrained petroleum subsidy scam which is now a cancerous sour on every part of the country’s body politics and economy. The country also encourages the criminal free fall of its currency- the Naira in the international foreign exchange market through deliberately fixed poor fiscal policies aimed to favour and enrich a gang of well-heeled and mafia connected economic rapists without human souls or feelings of equitable duty of care. Nigeria’s oil behemoth the NNPC operates currently as an underworld organization.
A spate of jailbreaks that has freed the most wanted criminals and bandits, murderers and assassins in Africa, infiltration of the armed forces with world acclaimed terrorists, and criminal henchmen of every shade and colour in the guise that they are repented persons and does not require to pay for the consequences of their actions as mass murderers, further leading to expansive murders, assassinations and insidious security sabotages in the armed services.
It is also a fact that up to date, Nigeria is incapable of generating sufficient electricity power for its citizens and industries in the first quarter of the 21st century. As we write till today, no body has been arrested, arraigned and convicted for terror or banditry at all levels of the country’s judicial structure except a few minor hoaxes concocted to deceive the illiterate Nigerian masses of starving and overwhelmed poor, needy and helpless people. A complete halt of Foreign Direct Investment into the Nigerian economy by foreign businesses, organizations and individuals.
Even the country’s armed forces now crave for a radical change which must also be a total civilian arrangement through the ballot box since soldiers are dying in droves as a result of their being commonly used as canon fodder in a mindless pursuit of personal religious and political agendas which makes no sense at all, causing officers and men of those services to continuously desert, abscond and elope at will without giving a damn, hoot or concern, sometimes with their weapons and at all times with their training, skills, know-how, sensitive information and all. Terrorists and bandits even go into christian churches and shoot down every moving object with automatic weapons and they are never questioned or attacked in return.
The restive Nigerian idle youths are now permanently seething and craving for action hoping for a total break-down of law and order which will give them the free reign they seek to show how bitter they have become with all authorities, God forbid, if they have a chance to demonstrate their own bestiality when the next election doesn’t return the candidates of their clear choices. Now with the rugged determination of becoming commanders of their own armies, revolutionaries and laws unto themselves. Can anybody beat that? Can this country survive that? Can these narrow-minded looters stay and relax in their homes and retain their filthy lucre? Can they continue to conceal their evils and inequities? I sincerely doubt that in all honesty! I’m sure these people and their families will be permanently banished if they ever make it alive, which I also doubt. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s forte is in the harassment and assassination of its left wing intellectuals and radicals and muzzling the press to impede free speech. Remember the cases of Bala Usman, Dele Giwa and Mailafia etc.
Truth remains that the 2023 general elections will be a determinant factor whether Nigeria survives as a great nation or dies an ignominious death as a failed republic merely struggling in the intensive care unit (ICU) all these years, as we must remember the cases of old Union Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR), Czech Republic and Yugoslavia of blessed memories. A stitch in time saves nine!
Dr. Charles Chinekezi is a chartered management professor (C.M.P.) of the Nigerian Institute of Management, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.