In God’s name, our citizens must act fast. Our country is bleeding. The signs are everywhere. There is no other way to put it. Across our country, from the dusty villages of Zamfara and Borno to the streets of Lagos and Abuja, there is no mistaking the fact that our country is on the brink of collapse, while faith in Tinubu’s government has completely disappeared. A government that promised renewed hope is now renewing fear and despair. A country once full of energy and ambition is now shrinking in on itself to hide from terrorists and bandits, threatening fire and brimstone. They are making good the promise of hell. The threat to our country’s existence is no longer hypothetical. It is real, it is present and it is growing more dangerous by the day.
In the northern parts of our country, over 60 villages have fallen under the control of terrorists. In Borno, Boko Haram has resurged with deadly confidence, reclaiming spaces previously liberated by the military. Chibok, for example, which has been captured one hundred and eleven times, has now been taken over. Yet again. New extremist groups have emerged in the north central, enforcing Sharia in communities through sheer brutality. They now dictate how people dress, speak, and pray. A certain citizen, Lanlege Adewale, who was abducted and later had his left hand amputated, was left with a message on his release: this is a jihad. The jihadists mean business. Local authorities are helpless. In some places, they have simply vanished.
In Abuja, the federal capital, kidnappers operate without resistance. They raid homes, block intra-city roads, and snatch citizens. Abuja is now afraid of itself, even in daylight. In southern parts of the country, especially in the South-East, South West, and South-South, kidnapping has become a booming enterprise. Criminal syndicates now operate with near impunity. Entire towns live under quiet sieges. What are the governors doing? Some are visiting the homes of their political opponents with bulldozers. They are on missions of political vendettas. Clap for them. These are not isolated incidents. They represent a steady, frightening erosion of the state’s authority on the one hand; and with respect to the governors, it represents executive rascality and overreach on the other hand. Citizens no longer look to the police or military for protection. Across our country, the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of fear. This level of insecurity would challenge even the most capable government. Unfortunately, our country does not currently have one. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in office for nearly two years, has yet to present a clear national security strategy. His administration responds to crises with silence or vague reassurances. There is no evidence that his government understands the scale of the challenge. There is even less evidence that it is doing anything meaningful to stop it.
Meanwhile, citizens are battling not just insecurity, but hunger. The removal of fuel subsidies in mid-2023 was poorly planned and even more poorly implemented. The government gave no warning. There was no phased approach. There were no effective safety nets. Almost overnight, the cost of transportation tripled. The price of food soared. Small businesses shut down. Unemployment rose. Citizens who were already poor became poorer. Those who were already managing to survive fell into poverty. Hunger is now the scarlet letter, with apologies to Nathaniel Hawthorne, citizens wear around their necks. A bag of rice now costs what some civil servants earn in a month. Children are being pulled out of school so they can work and help feed their families. The elderly are begging on the streets. Citizens are surviving, not living.
The situation is worse in the rural areas. Farmers cannot go to their farms because of fear of attacks. A few days ago, Fulani bandits turned up in Odame, a nearby community to my place of provenance, South Ibie, forcing helpless villagers to release a video with the simple message: Save Our Souls. In many places, bandits and terrorists have taken over farmlands, demanding levies and killing those who refuse to pay. Agricultural production has dropped. The country now imports what it once grew in abundance.
In the face of all this, our political elites remain detached. Government officials continue to enjoy lavish lifestyles. They travel abroad, receive allowances, and attend endless meetings with little to show. When they are not ferrying foreign paramours and scarlet ladies to satisfy their libidinous cravings, they are turning governance into pornhubs, and into “the libido for the ugly”, to borrow from the late American journalist and essayist, Henry Louis Mencken. There is no sense of urgency. No empathy. No leadership. When citizens protest, they are accused of being unpatriotic. When journalists ask tough questions, they are called disgruntled elements. This government has become increasingly defensive, even as it fails to deliver on its promises. The result is a growing loss of public trust. The people no longer believe in elections. Many feel that their votes do not count. Truly, votes do not count. The judiciary has not helped matters. Controversial court judgments on electoral disputes have left many citizens feeling that to secure justice from the court is akin to fetching water from the stone. “Selectocracy”, as my good friend, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, aptly describes it in his newly released book, ‘The Selectocrate: When Judges Topple the People’, is now the fundamental objective and directive principle of state policy. Citizens have been reduced to spectators in a democracy that functions only in name. Faith in democracy is shrinking.
The security agencies are overstretched. The police are underpaid and under-equipped. The military is deployed everywhere, from the forests of Zamfara to the streets of the South-East, and exhausted. In some cities, like Benin City, the military now chases Yahoo-Yahoo fraudsters. The State Security Service seems more focused on monitoring critics than dismantling terrorist networks. Citizens have lost confidence in the very institutions meant to protect them. This is not a sustainable state of affairs. A country cannot function when citizens live in constant fear and hunger. A country cannot survive when its citizens are afraid to move freely, when they cannot afford food, when they no longer believe in their government. It cannot survive when its democratic institutions are routinely and deliberately undermined.
And yet, despite everything, our country is not beyond saving. The resilience of our citizens remains one of its most remarkable traits. But, resilience must not become a curse. Citizens must not suffer endlessly in the name of endurance. True, our country has millions of hardworking, intelligent, and determined citizens; and a large youth population with energy and ideas, with belief in justice, in fairness, and in progress. But belief alone will not fix what is broken. They deserve justice. They deserve security. They deserve a country. A country that works. They deserve a future. The political class must come to terms with the hard truth: business as usual is no longer sustainable, nor acceptable. The patience of citizens, once deep and enduring, is wearing thin. Their options are shrinking by the day. Trust in institutions is evaporating. If leadership continues to flounder, to deflect, or to ignore the clear and present danger, the urgency of now, something else will inevitably rise to fill the growing vacuum. And history teaches this: what emerges in the absence of responsible leadership is rarely democratic, seldom peaceful, and almost never lawful.
The time to act is now.
There is, still, the hope of redemption. The possibility of saving our country becomes real, not abstract, when citizens begin to reject the comfort of cynicism and the paralysis of apathy. It begins when they rise from passive spectatorship to active participation in the difficult, and necessary struggle to rescue a country already hurtling toward the abyss. This hope is not anchored in slogans or hashtags, but in deliberate, sustained civic engagement. Citizens must organise, register to vote, show up at the ballot box and defend the ballots; and hold their leaders to account, not just with outrage, but with structure and resolve. They must begin to prepare for leadership. Not on Twitter, but in ward meetings, at local councils, in state assemblies, and, in time, in the national arena. Only then can redemption move from a longing to a lived reality.
Our country has been pushed to the edge before, but this moment carries a different weight. It feels more dangerous, more fragile, more urgent than anything in recent memory. The warning lights are no longer blinking. They are blazing. The clock is ticking, not metaphorically but in real time, and with every hour lost to denial, our country inches closer to the point of no return. Citizens, living through the crisis of existence that demands sober reckoning, can no longer afford the luxury of indifference. The handwriting is not just on the wall, it is scrawled across the streets, bus stops, markets, schools, and homes. They must act. To quote Marx, “every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes”. They must begin the step of real movement of saving their country than waiting endlessly for the dozen Renewed Hope programmes of the see-nothing and do-nothing President Tinubu and his lackeys that will never come.
In God’s name, we have a country to save. And we must strive to save it with courage, with truth and with the conviction that the country we dream of is still possible. If we fail, the next generation may not inherit a country but a graveyard of broken dreams.
God forbid, did I hear you say, dear reader?