Unpopular side with Thomas Oti
Email: thomasoti@qed.ng
When I was growing up, I heard a rolling stone gathers no moss a lot. I heard it so much it was annoying because I had no idea what it meant. But the song ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ grew on me steadily and almost too easily. I had no idea who sang it at the time but now I know it’s the Temptations. To understand what the phrase meant, I listened very well to the song and picked up bits and pieces of the lyrics and then better understood what it meant.
A rolling stone gathers no moss apparently. It rolls on and through. Nothing stands or stays in its path. It simply rolls on and on and on. No attachments. No associations. No nothing. It lives a free life. Anywhere it settles is fair by it. Anything it picks up along the way it loses just as quickly because it does not allow anything to stay or stick. It does not stay long enough anywhere to make ties that bind.
The average Nigerian politician is a rolling stone. Her loyalty is to the paymaster. Whoever that may be at any material moment. The only difference between the traditional politician in Nigeria is that anywhere she finds herself and decides to put her head down, she wouldn’t begin moving again until like the leech she is she has sucked the blood out of that part of the body and it has turned blue and yellow. Not convinced, look through Nigeria’s history at random and pick a non leechy politician out; I dare me.
The average Nigerian politician is wicked. Wickedly hungry. And as soon as she is opportune to be invited to the table to help manage the economy, she does what she knows how to do best; suck. And she doesn’t stop sucking even after the first coming. If she manages to come again and she usually ensures it, she sucks even more. The second sucking is usually even more deadly than the first. Knowing that day would soon break on this term, she would suck like her life depends on it. She swallows after sucking. Her “nothing must waste” philosophy is brutal. She doesn’t share.
But it’s not only about her. She had learnt from her masters and they taught her well. Whether it be corruption or stealing, padding or paddying, her teachers were pretty good and taught her well. She has come a long way and now in her prime, she cannot depart from what has been sometimes forced into her in the name of knowledge.
Nigeria’s problem is not political. It is not ethnic either. It is not systemic. It is not religious. It is not money. Neither is it economic or natural resources. It is partly leadership. But it is fully people. What is wrong with Nigeria is the same thing that is wrong with all nations; the people are crap. If you have a bad item, you do away with it. But if it is half good, half bad, you treat it with caution; lest the good suffer with the bad.
We should do away with all our leaders because they are all bad. But the leaders are a creation of the people. And not all the people are bad. To kill the leaders, you might as well kill the people; all of them.
But if we all kill ourselves, what happens to the land? Who will remain?
Nigeria’s problems do not have one solution. We didn’t evolve so badly only for our problems to be easily sorted out with one simplistic or complicated solution. Living exactly as we do is the only way we know. Adversity and poverty will both be with us for a while. Without them, we would be gross under-performers. We under everything right now. But imagine how bad we could be without the ginger of our collective foibles?
