#Reflections

Nigerians’ dry oceans

By Busuyi mekusi

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Nigerians’ dry oceans Nature is rich in many ways, with animals and humans being beneficiaries of so many other natural constituents. The order in nature is also profoundly territorial, just as mammals negotiate and disruptively appropriate available spaces for inscription. This is without saying that the tangles human beings get involved in for selfish ownership and control are needless. Marital and political interlopers are not scarce in Nigeria reckoning.

Oceans are remarkable for the delineation they naturally do between continents in the world. Apart from the five oceans, large bodies of water separating the continents, that fit into this, ocean could also be an immense expanse or any vast space cum quantity without apparent limits. Oceans are not given to dryness, but seas, lakes and rivers are susceptible to recession. Paradoxically, however, oceans in Nigeria and of Nigerians are usually dry, leaving behind huge deprivation, sorrows, tears and blood. Dry oceans is, therefore, used in this case to typify the apparent limitless quantity of resources and vast space that Nigeria is endowed with, but have become an albatross to the citizens, due to the inept and corruptive tendencies of the ruling class.      

 In an attempt to rationalise the irresponsible administration of Nigeria’s resources by successive leaders, people would jocularly acknowledge the abundance of extraordinarily resourceful citizens and natural endowment, but administered by characteristically disastrous political leaders. Whereas some similarly trace this incongruity to the act of God who they felt did not want nations to benefit from both profitable human and natural resources, particularly good leadership, it is patently true that the accident in leadership in Africa was caused by so many things,  central to which was the disruption that made it difficult for the continent to rise from her own inadequacies, and nurture her civilisation, with time, intuition and necessity nudging the people towards enhanced growth and humanity.  

Interestingly, the story of Nigeria, at this time, collocates with the material content of the song by David Bartholome entitled “Ocean Dry”, as reproduced below:

Love’s my flavour, takes some climbing

But I keep going down, down, down, down

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I was just a climber with the biggest fall

But I kept going down, down, down, down

Love is mystery, is the climbing all?

I’m going down, down, down, down

I was just climbing on top (of a mountain)

Hey Speedo, how do you keep this ocean dry and not my eyes?

Speedo, how do you keep this ocean dry and not my eyes?

Cause I am swinging my fee-fingers

Crying and weeping eyes

Sooth my fingers and keep this from happening.

Nigeria multiple dry oceans have repeatedly left the masses battered, emasculated and dehydrated. The country is blessed with oceans of crude oil, from the Niger Delta to the Kolmani River borderline between Gombe and Bauchi States, and recently from Kogi to Nasarawa, but the country is so backward-looking that her crude is first exported for refining and then brought back with huge costs to rob helpless users. While Worldometer posited that Nigeria holds 37,070 billion barrels of proven oil reserves as of 2016, ranking 10th in the world, another report indicated that the country’s oil reserves was 36.89  billion barrels in 2021, and ranked 11th in the world.

This is as the best rip-off by executive robbers is the payment of controversial fuel subsidy, which has produced emergency billionaires. Another pitiable sequence in executive butchery is the pillaging of crude oil, with accusing fingers being pointed at security agencies, highly-placed politicians and government officials as well as criminally-minded greedy foreign collaborators. While the oil wells on the high seas are richly voluble, the returns they should bring to national coffers keep drying.

The oceans of gas deposit and condensates are massively limitless in Nigeria, with irresponsible gas flaring defining the limited sense in governance. Nigeria could have deployed her gas very creatively to enhance her epileptic power generation and distribution, for the purpose of recalibrating the productive sector, but the consumerism of the elites would not allow them see beyond their craze for foreign goods and services. The struggling masses are also patently affected by both the scarce and costly nature of cooking gas, due to the profligacy of the ruling class that has often left the vessels dry and the limited volume available almost priced out of the reach of the people. This is happening at a time when most dwellers in the urban communities have migrated to the use of cooking gas, as against the former reliance on kerosene or firewood/coal, the use of the latter that has been attributed to certain diseases.

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The Nigeria oceans have also dried that citizens laboriously search for water for domestic use, particularly during dry season. Whereas most state governments have since abandoned the provision of potable water to the people, a few of them that ‘politically’ make pipe-borne water available to the citizens make a sing-sung of the ‘feat’, and use the abysmally low ratio to score political points.

Reading about the historiography of how public infrastructures collapsed in Nigeria, and the water-pipes got dry in Ola Rotimi’s Hopes of the Living Dead, would ordinarily draw condemnation to the intuitive playwright for being ‘a prophet of doom’, but a second thought would, however, underscore the presaging tendencies of a work of art. Nature seems to have also conspired against the people as deep waters are not always accessible, due to geographical configurations, thereby forcing them to rely on shallow wells that quickly get dry, during the transitional period between rainy and dry seasons.

The biting fuel scarcity coming few days to the general elections is simply indicative of failed leadership, and pointedly suggestive of the inability of the people to govern themselves without pains. Curiously, the presidential candidate of the ruling APC, Bola Tinubu, amidst rumours that he is not being wholly supported by PMB and the Aso Rock mafias, recently at a campaign rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State, derided those he termed saboteurs that were desperate to stop the elections from holding, and deny him the seat of the president through the precipitation of fuel scarcity and redesign of three naira notes.

Notwithstanding the confidence of victory exuded by Tinubu at this occasion, it was strange that the APC would constitute itself to an opposition with self. By and large, this also showed that members of the political class are going down/4, just like the voice in Batholome’s song. This was more so as Tinubu and Atiku went down/4 dangerously by calling each other a thief and a drug baron. We hope electorate are taking note!

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Nigerians, whether home or abroad, are in love with their country. They keep climbing to get out of the woods and attain some heights in citizenship decency, but keep falling like climbers with great fall as found in Batholome’s song, going down/4. The Nigeria thieving political class keeps the oceans of democratic dividends, infrastructures and opportunities dry, leaving the eyes of commoners wet, as they cry and weep endlessly over the scarcity of basic things, as they die both in droves and by instalments. Tinubu’s attritions against enemies within his party that he alleged were committed to undermining his chances of emerging the president of Nigeria gives fillip to the possibility of a popular conspiracy theory of the rich and privileged Nigerians against the lowly, who they like to pauperise, subjugate and commodify through vote buying.

Undoubtedly, Nigerians are too weak to resist their oppressors, lurked in intricate labyrinths of dispossession. They are too docile to contemplate a revolt against the status quo. They would not contemplate a revolution, not to talk of Tinubu’s prescriptive ‘superior revolution’. They could be deceived again with unrealistic political promises that would deliver political seats to politicians who would turn a monster as soon as they seize the spectre of power. As it would be difficult to get the ring off the finger of a wicked priest, the possibility of political recall is almost alien to Nigeria democratic experience.

As Nigerians’ oceans get dry, one is frightened by the many young people that dance the last dance very prematurely, as I join many others to mourn the transition of a dear friend and school mate during the MA programme at the University of Ibadan, Dapo Adekunle, who crossed to the other side, without saying goodbye! Why must we keep going down, when climbing is most desirable? Vote wisely!

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Nigerians’ dry oceans

When prayers are unanswered…

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