A Broken Country And It’s Heartbroken Citizens -By Ike Willie-Nwobu

Ten minutes and the president was done. Ten minutes. That was all the time it took for the commander-in-chief of Nigeria’s armed forces to offer his condolences, comfort, and assurances to families of the victims of the Palm Sunday attacks in Anguwan Rukuba, which killed about twenty-six people and left many more injured.

In a poignant diagnosis of one of Nigeria’s many paralyses, the president had noted that there was no light at the airport, backgrounding his brevity.

Even if the president had spent the next month in Plateau State consoling the bereaved families, he would not have been able to breach the boundaries of the land of the dead to return the dead to life, but in a week marked by unfathomable pain and bottomless grief, symbolism was supposed to matter more during the visit.
If it was a political rally that the president went to, he would not have been in such a hurry to leave. He would have taken his sweet time. He would have moved into the heart of Jos, the state capital, to address his teeming supporters and soak in their thunderous applause. Yet, in the face of deadly attacks and the indescribable heartbreak of families, the president could not even offer an entire state the sobering symbolism of the patient traveler—like the Good Samaritan in the Bible who stopped by the wounded traveler, pouring oil and wine over their wounds.

As security in Nigeria has gone out the window, cast away by terrorism, shocking government incompetence, and a combination of ethno-religious factors, Plateau State has become a battleground for the forces torn between salvaging what is left of Nigeria and hastening its demise. For more than two decades now, the state has been a theater of bloodshed, with the endless burials of victims bespeaking the interment of the country itself.

It was only In January that Caleb Mutfwang, the Plateau State Governor, who was elected on the platform of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2023, defected to the All Progressives Congress. His motive was seemingly to align the state with the center. Yet, if the long-suffering people of the state needed any proof that beyond cheap, self-serving political gains, aligning with the center would in no way make their problems central to their lives and security central to the government’s plan, it was provided in the nauseating nonchalance of the president and the deafening reverberation of his empty words during the visit.
There is no longer any doubt about it. Nigeria is a broken country full of heartbroken citizens. No part of the country is secure. Every part of the country is prone to the insatiable bloodlust of rampaging terrorists who can spring attacks on any part of the country at any time.

Sadly, in the face of what has gradually morphed into an existential crisis, the government appears to have other priorities. With 2027 waiting at the corner and weighing heavily on the national mood, Nigeria’s decision-makers have allowed inanities to compete with securing Nigerian lives and properties.

Nigerians have become a besieged people, and the incompetence of their leaders has become just as deadly to them as the weapons of the many criminals enjoying a field day.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com