Anyone seen the movie/documentary “Age of Stupid”? Every time I think of Nigeria my mind zaps back to the film, which coincidentally was partly shot in Nigeria. The basic storyline is that someone sits in the devastated future (2055) and watches archive footage from 2008 and wonders why no one did anything to stop the calamity that befell mankind. As extreme as they may have characterized the central thesis of their flick, what draws immediate consideration is the point we always have the opportunity to change things and predetermine the course which we may take. But what always makes history is the fact that we do nothing until our writers have to laboriously record on the pages of our sad histories what grave mistakes we have always made.

We always have the chance to make things right when things go wrong. This is an ability and privilege given to all men wherever they may be. But when it comes to collective decision making, too many cooks will spoil the broth, therefore we entrust that ability to certain men to make choices on our behalf. Well, this is predicated on the hope that the ones we choose to make such decisions are truly them that represent the nearest possible values which we all cherish. So when the ship of State appears to hit high waters, and the terrain becomes rough, we trust that the captains on board will grab the wheels and twist and turn until we steer clear of danger. But when the boat is rocked, and our captains are shocked, I refer to this as “a plot of stupidity”.

For a while, I have refrained from writing about the utter mess going on in Nigeria because I cannot always make a clear case from a point of anger. I have tried to coat my emotions by creating punditry out of the myriad of commentaries on the matter. I have watched also as many Nigerians have managed the ongoing by mockery and mild jocosity, all in an effort to wade off the immense stress that such nonsense can mount on the human mind. From one case to another, Nigeria has featured severally in the international media as playing the case of the preposterously bizarre-like character that you can always find in plots of revenge seeking movies. While we are dealing with the bad public make up we have just been slapped with as a terrorist nation, we are busy generating bad breath internally as though an ugly face is not bad enough; it must be matched with foul odour from the inside.
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