MY DEAR Achebe, forgive me that this is coming a little late. The Trouble With Nigeria that you wrote about has become ineffably freakish and causing amnesia that I almost forgot your Remembrance Day.
Even when I remembered it the evening before the day, I couldn’t write you any epitaph immediately, because my head and heart were spinning with the abnormal set of circumstances in our country today.
In Nigeria today, the only people that are not poor and hungry are corrupt citizens. Well, now we can no longer say the common man has no hope, because majority of common people have turned kidnappers and ‘yahoo’ male and female, and are ‘making it’. The only people without hope are honest people.
The Nigeria you lamented about its anomalous leadership in your time was a eutopia compared to what we live in today. In today’s Nigeria, chicken eggs are hatching scorpions, and fresh water valleys flow vinegar and botulinum toxin.
Oh! Dear Achebe, you didn’t know how to speak Idoma, if not, I would simply tell you that Nigerians, especially their leaders, today are odomiwowo. It describes them perfectly. Peter Otulu who was fond of using the word to describe unprincipled and toxic people is there with you in the community of the dead. Therefore, find him so that he can explain to you better what odomiwowo means.
However, the representation of odomiwowo is roughly one who completely lacks principles and being toxic. Because most Nigerian leaders and their followers have cracked brains like loose walls, every toxic element gets in and makes them behave like patients in Ward One at the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH).
I was told the dead were in a spirit world where they could see and hear things that happen in the world of the living. Did you hear what happened here few days ago? A man suspended his wife for six months and immediately appointed his side-chick as an administrator of the house. That may not amuse you as the approval given to the suspension by his children, especially by the illegitimate children who usually assemble in the village square.
Oh! Beloved Achebe, there are so many Okonkwos in Nigeria nowadays, and they are treating us as Ekemefunas. We are treated like abominable citizens in our own country. Each day, we are taken to the Evil Forest to be executed by hunger and poverty. They have blocked all the rivers that flow fresh water to communities of the underprivileged, and have also polluted their air with all kinds of turpitude.
Achebe, the unprecedented hunger and poverty in the land, together with the infernal leadership, have enfeebled me so much that I lack energy to write as much to you as I used to. After all, they say you can see for yourself from there the kind of country we are in right now.
Seriously, I am sapped and hungry to write more. I am debilitated and, therefore don’t have the mental burliness to say more, if not, I should tell you about an accusation of harassment of a she-goat by a he-goat, which has now resulted to a suspension of the she-goat from the farm house. But, like I said, I am enervated to retail the news properly right now.
In Nigeria today, the only people that are not poor and hungry are corrupt citizens. Well, now we can no longer say the common man has no hope, because majority of common people have turned kidnappers and ‘yahoo’ male and female, and are ‘making it’. The only people without hope are honest people.
Achebe, happy are you that you are no longer here. Your country, Nigeria, has become a real estate of perdition. Our faces are full with stretch marks made by the miseries caused by facinorous leadership.
Achebe, they say the dead are closer to the gods than the living. Please, help me ask them if Nigerians will ever wear true smiles in their faces. Many of us are trying to do everything that brings greatness, but the Nigerian society keeps retrograding into peccancy. Take me, for example: I am a scholar, but not a scorer. Not that I can’t score, but the rules are made against us by the deceit and the corruption of our leaders.
Seriously, I am sapped and hungry to write more. I am debilitated and, therefore don’t have the mental burliness to say more, if not, I should tell you about an accusation of harassment of a she-goat by a he-goat, which has now resulted to a suspension of the she-goat from the farm house. But, like I said, I am enervated to retail the news properly right now.
Anyway, did you hear anything from USA, your former home? The leadership storm in that country right now could water down its glory.
Olohy (PhD), a social critic, writes from Keffi, Nasarawa State, and can be reached via ej.olohiuj@gmail.com
