Nigeria Content Online

Tomorrow
will be the 12th day of June two thousand and ten. It will be just
another day. You will observe that the sun will rise from the East in
the morning like all other days. The traffic on your way to work won’t
be any lighter. You will still see that checkpoint and that skinny
policeman who has made himself a tollgate. The beggars at the street
junction won’t look any different. There begging bowls will be no
different from today. I suspect that at this time tomorrow, there will
be no power. . I suspect that right now, your generator is even getting
in the way of your comprehension. It will just be another day in our
country. The air will smell the same.

But take time off to read the dailies. They will
all be screaming with similar headlines. They will talk about a day
gone, of a time past, of a paradise lost. They will scream with
memoirs, with pictures, with tales: Tales of a lost mandate, of a lost
opportunity, of a failure of reasoning, of the ill fate of a man and a
people and indeed their failure to learn from the past.

It’s June 12. The political editors are jumping
over each other. It’s a good day for maximum sales. Who gets the best
feature out? Who paints the best gloomy picture, a seventeen-year-old
picture, a reminder of what’s been called our best shot, a sad recall
of what could have been? It’s like our Good Friday without the eventual
Easter. A commemoration. A memorial.

For some it’s now an obsession. Like a religious
feast, marked year in year out with rallies and paid advertorials; with
outlandish interviews that progressively twist history; with press
conferences and Television talk shows by people who were either victors
or villains of the day but who all claim today to be democrats and who
wave their democratic credentials in our faces. The credentials are
made of party identity cards and stolen naira.

One of them, the most notorious of all by many
estimates recently experienced a brain wave. He not only has become so
democratic that he fancies ruling the nation again, he also think we
should, as a nation immortalise the Man the day is about. The Man, his
friend who he robbed and who like Brutus he stabbed in the back and
disappeared, claiming to be stepping aside. But he ran off to the
hilltop mansion he built with our common wealth to hibernate for a
while.

And there are those who have ridden on the back of
this day to many political victories. What did they do while in office?
They stole their bit and left us the ghost of the day. Now, they are
not sure on which part of the divide they stand. They are scared we
don’t trust them any more so today they jump into our faces again with
eloquent speeches about democracy, about how they had been persecuted
for standing behind the Man and the Mandate.

It’s June 12 again and nothing has changed. The
Political uncertainty seems even more obvious today. Flip further down
the pages of the daily and it becomes apparent that in all the talking
about 1993 the same things are being said today. The constitution
review is dragging on. There is no electoral Act. We have no voters
register. Even INEC is not sure about holding elections as scheduled.
There is indeed no schedule neither are there modalities.

Doesn’t it feel like we are in rewind mode? Like
déjà vu? Like a widening gyre? Don’t you feel the emptiness? Don’t you
see the same expression on their faces, the same deception in their
words? Aren’t we tired of the noise and the much ado about the day?
Aren’t we now bored sick of it all?

There is probably still no electric power where
you are and the generator is dying out. The potholes on the road are
getting wider, the shame and despair deeper. Poverty is still at 70%
and unemployment is weighing heavily down on us.

Tomorrow will be the same as today and yes, the sun will certainly
set in the west like on all other days. But perhaps what is different
today, is that there is a yearning like never before among our people
world over for change, and it is our duty to maintain that pressure in
what ever way we can, adding our voice to public discourse, joining a
political party, registering to vote, getting others to get involved
until the desired change comes.