By Palladium
If social media is a fair barometer of the proclivities of Nigerians, then their exultation over the detention of a Nigerian Air Force Hercules C-130 aircraft in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, on December 8 after a technical issue forced it to land is a sad reminder of the deterioration crisis faced by Nigeria. Some 11 crewmen were detained in addition to the aircraft. They were Nigerian sons, brothers and fathers on active national duty. But some Nigerians, perhaps taken in by the Burkinabe military leader, Ibrahim Traore’s months of propaganda, praised the junta, derided Nigeria, and concluded that the West African giant had been tamed by a mouse. They added that Nigeria was being ‘rightly punished’ for aiding and abetting France’s national interest and ‘ill-advisedly’ terminating the Benin Republic coup which tried to overthrow President Patrice Talon’s government. Left to the surly Nigerians, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of three military juntas in West Africa did right by delinking from France and jumping into bed with Russia. They see nothing wrong in substituting one Caucasian and exploitative master with a Slav antidemocratic and brutal master.
The problem is not the substitution that has taken place in the sub-region; the real problem is Nigerians’ lack of national identity and pride. To disparage their country in its hour of trial, to ridicule their men in arms simply because they dislike the administration of the day indicates how ignorant and insensitive politics of division has made them. They have no idea how Col. Traore is charming the Brukinabe like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, how he is repressing his people, how economic development has not been as impressive as propaganda has made it, and how unwinnable the anti-jihadist war has become. All the scornful Nigerians know is that they resent the government of the day, and any reverses it suffers, even if it reflects very poorly on the country, is deserved. They rejoiced over the detention of the craft and military personnel, believing the propaganda of the Burkinabe that the soldiers were on a war mission to Benin Republic through the back door. But what war? And was the coup not crushed the first day?
Nigeria’s political division is hardening irredeemably, and its people have no idea what nationalism means. The traditional media and social media commentators seem to think that until a man of their choosing is in office, no leader deserves their support. Have they by any chance heard of the expression credited to a US naval officer Stephen Decatur in 1816? He said: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” At the signing of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US, was believed to have said: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Given the highly visible marks of division tearing Nigeria apart, including the bloodletting triggered by banditry and insurgency, Nigerians seem already hanging separately. Worse, it does not even appear to them that they are well on the highway to Sudan or Somalia, an apocalyptic scenario they may lack the ingenuity to understand or confront, let alone escape.
