October 1 used to be one of the busiest days in Nigeria, especially in Port Harcourt. Prior to the celebration of a truly nonexistent unity one usually descried the green and white shirts, shoes, mufflers, and hand bands. Boutiques in Rivers State, for the entire week preceding the waste of time called celebration, would display these colourful items to the fancy of passers-by, and of course window shopping used to be the order of the day. These events were rampant because of the absence of the needed consciousness in Nigerians.
Radio Biafra, London, under the media activism of Director Nnamdi Kanu (who is either dead or under captivity), stung many a Nigerian to consciousness. It had been an unnecessarily protracted slumber. We had been wasting our precious and productive time on celebrations that signified nothing. My informants told me about a young man that stood at the centre of Port Harcourt-Aba Expressway with placard that bore the inscription, " Nigeria is not Working. Which Way Nigeria? " Yes, that was the kind of celebration we had in Nigeria on the "almighty" 1st of October. Horrible! Unbelievable! Everyone that moved around town said the same thing about Nigeria, to wit: "Abeg make we break up. Haba! Our mumu don do."
I asked a young man I met this morning why he did not appear in the national colours like he always did in the past and got a shocking response. He asked me whether those years he appeared in green and white there were invasions of any part of Nigeria and killing of unarmed humans. Wow! Something has happened to the consciousness of Nigerians. People have stopped EXISTING and started LIVING. It is no longer about Nigeria now; it about the pervading consciousness of various nationals held captive by Nigerians in Nigeria. A lot of nationals wish to be freed from this dungeon, and you cannot blame them because they live in fear of the known: potential invasion of their lands by Fulani and killing of innocents. If anything bad happens to this contraption, people should blame those that invaded the East. What the East needed from the handlers of Nigeria were inclusion in politics, development of their region, commencement of work on the second Niger Bridge etc and not military invasion of their peaceful land.
It is true that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu said a lot about Nigeria, but what we should ask ourselves is whether he was right or wrong. Kanu, the real prophet of our time, mustered the grotesque courage to speak the ne'er unspeakable, which made him a superman amongst men. The world has very few people of Kanu's spiritual, academic, and social stance. Is it not unfortunate that we had this rare breed and lost him? I say "lost" because his whereabouts has remained beyond our ken since the avoidable vicious invasion of his apartment by the military. Do we always have to kill the best brains in Nigeria? When we kill the best will Fulani herdsmen be the ones to lead us? Will they lead us by invading lands, raping women, maiming and unleashing all manners of havocs? What manner of leadership would that be? Nigeria just keeps eliminating sound minds and eggheads, leaving behind mediocre, stooges, cronies and sidekicks. Too bad! We are, by our deleterious actions, creating the Hobbesian State of Nature. Wither Nigeria! Other countries find a way to manage their best brains, but we invade and kill ours, especially when these targets of our viciousness are instruments of truth. May God help us all! We have clamped down on this superman called Kanu, but we are the ones licking our wounds, nationally and internationally. A man never dies whose ideas live on. Kanu, an uncommon inhabitant of this precarious enclave, may have been killed, but he lives on in all the imprisoned nationals in Britain's concoction called Nigeria. Nigeria remains Lugard's fabrication. Nigerians should ask themselves this pertinent question: "For how long shall we continue to feign ignorance of our obvious disunity?" And every time these political administrators undermine the wishes of the people, they show their incompetence.
Let us note this: NO POLITICAL ADMINISTRATOR HAS RIGHT TO SPEAK FOR THE PEOPLE ON ISSUES THAT BOTHER ON SELF-DETERMINISM. Politicians are supposed managers (looters in Nigeria) of state properties, not the VOICE of the people. President Buhari is one person that does not know that he is actually the people's servant. Each time he says "Our Unity is not negotiable," he starts the negotiation all over. Hahaha! Education means everything to every country. Retaining a minister that lies as if his life depends on it is a sign that Nigeria has not started. Nigeria exemplifies Claude Ake's postulation about the unavailability of developmental strides in Africa.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is one man that lived very well yesterday. His sermons received apropos responsorial from the inhabitants of Nigeria on October 1, 2017. Nationals in Nigeria, big and small, mourned in lieu of celebrating Nigeria. A friend told me that Nigeria is just a name given to British toy. Well, I know pretty well that Nigeria is not an independent entity. Independence is derived from the people. A situation where few people that are servile to the colonial master think they can speak for the entire people is, at best, an attempt to lessen the powers of the colonial master, but not attainment of independence. Few people always think they can speak for all, without the needed representative power. This is one mistake Nigerians keep making. President Buhari, having been ousted once, having contested in civvies and lost several times, now thinks he can speak for the same Nigeria he has divvied up into unmathematical 5% and 97%. When will Nigerians start asking their president who constitute his audience: the 5%ers or 97%ers. He is the real cause of the present problems. He is the one that sent Independence Day celebration on exile. The celebration, irrespective of how fake it is, started to nosedive after 2015. Buhari and his Fulani mercenaries may have succeeded in killing Nnamdi Kanu, but an emerging nation that is recognized by the Organization of Emerging African States (OEAS) is imminent.
If nothing tells one that the sun is setting in Nigeria to rise in the Land of the Rising Sun, the strange gloom and quietness that greeted the supposed celebration does so loudly. We have killed those that would have given pomp and glamour to the day. Perhaps we expected their ghosts to occupy the various stadia lined up for the stage-managed occasion. I have relocated, mentally, to the emerging nation. I must escape this dark cloud that is in the offing. I see a Divine Hand drawing the curtains on this contraption that should never have been. I see the spirits of those killed waging a very formidable war against their killers. I, Russell Idatoru Bluejack, will not be one of those on the receiving end of this attack. I am a national of the emerging nation and proudly so.. It is well with us all. Heaven is tired of seeing our tears and hearing our cry. Liberation has come. Thanks be to the Almighty God in heaven. My warm regards to every lover of true freedom. Let us continue to pray that our hero, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, is alive. Even if he has been unlawfully killed for speaking the truth, are we not entitled to his body? Kanu is truly a saviour. May God bless his family richly. Amen and Amen.
Russell Idatoru Bluejack is a thinker, revolutionary writer, university tutor, and socio-economic and political analyst that writes from the creeks in the coastal part of Biafraland.