-By Abdul Mahmud
There was a country blessed with every gift a nation could desire and cursed with rulers who mistook noise for wisdom. Rivers ran wide across the land and the soil promised abundance while the rulers spoke loudly and the land waited quietly. They called themselves rulers. The citizens called them knobheads. Every word they uttered seemed certain, every gesture grand, yet the roads broke beneath their feet, the schools cracked before their eyes, and the hospitals whispered the failure of their care as the country moved perpetually backwards. For many years the affairs of the country fell into the hands of rulers who believed power was proof of intelligence. They mistook authority for knowledge. They occupied high offices that demanded imagination and discipline, though many had neither.
A knobhead, the citizens said, is a ruler who bangs his fist on the table and calls it policy. He mistakes noise for thinking. He believes that the screaming of commands is the same as the work of leadership. In this country, the knobheads ruled in circles. When problems appeared, they did not study them. They attacked them with speeches. When the economy faltered, they formed committees and praised themselves for forming them. When citizens complained, they answered with threats or silence.
The roads told the real story.
In a country where public wealth was counted in billions of oil revenue, many roads resembled abandoned paths. Potholes opened like wounds in the earth. A journey that should take an hour took days. Drivers cursed. Traders watched their goods spoil in traffic. Children jostled along sidewalks that crumbled beneath them. The knobheads drove past these roads in long convoys, their sirens clearing the way from problems they had created. The hospitals also spoke. Some stood as mere consulting clinics. Others as quiet monuments of neglect. Beds were scarce. Equipment was broken. Doctors worked with courage in conditions that mocked their profession. Nurses carried trays with tired hands. Families waited hours for medicines that never arrived. In private conversations, the rulers promised improvements. In public, they praised progress that no one could see. When illness struck, the knobheads travelled abroad for treatment, leaving behind the hospitals they claimed to have repaired. Schools suffered the same fate. Classrooms cracked under the weight of indifference. Teachers struggled to hold the attention of children who deserved far more than chalk and blackboards. Young citizens finished their education with certificates that opened no doors.
The knobheads spoke of youth empowerment at conferences while graduates roamed the streets in search of work.
In time, the citizens learned to read the language of knobheads. A new project announced with great ceremony meant the old one had failed. Speeches about sacrifices meant that the citizens would pay the price. A promise of reform meant the same habits continued under a different name.
The knobheads loved the theatre of governance. They loved the sound of applause. They organised grand events where ribbons were cut and cameras flashed. They built arches of celebration around half-finished projects. They spoke with confidence about the future while the present crumbled around them.
A country of great potential became one of practised performances. In the markets, the traders watched these performances with a mix of patience and disbelief. They understood something the knobheads did not. Running a stall requires attention. Running a farm requires planning. Running a transport business requires discipline. Ordinary citizens managed these tasks every day with skill and care. They counted their money. They carried baskets of yams, tomatoes, and onions. They haggled over prices. They mended tools. They worked when the sun rose and rested when it set. They wondered why their rulers could not manage their country with the same seriousness. Some defenders of the knobheads argued that leadership is difficult. They said the problems of the country were too large for any government to solve quickly. The citizens listened to these explanations and shook their heads. They knew that incompetence can’t be passed off as difficulty.
A storm may challenge a captain, though only the fool steers a ship toward the rocks and blames the sea.
As the years passed, the damage grew deeper. Industries closed. Power supply remained unreliable. Security faltered in towns and cities that once knew peace. Citizens who loved their country began to japa to distant lands. Skilled workers crossed borders. The knobheads responded with speeches about patriotism. They told the citizens to endure hardship in the name of national pride. The speeches sounded hollow to those who had endured enough.
The tragedy of the knobheads lay in their refusal to learn. Power surrounded them with praise and protected them from truth. Advisers told them what they wanted to hear. Loyalists applauded their worst decisions as the best invention after sliced bread. In such an environment, even a thoughtful person may lose his head. The knobheads lost theirs a long time ago. Still, the citizens endured. They voted when elections came. They debated in newspapers and on street corners. They raised their children with the hope that one generation might succeed where another had failed.
In quiet conversations, they asked the same question: how long can a country survive under the rule of knobheads?
The answer lies in the resilience of the citizens. A country ruled by knobheads can endure for years, even decades, but joy comes when citizens are bold to say: enough is enough.
The obsequious display of power by knobheads is a burden on a country. Authority without competence is a greater danger to public life. Any country that entrusts its destiny to knobheads should not be surprised when underdevelopment replaces development, power moves through it like a shadow, heavy and blind, careless about the impacts of its movements on ordinary citizens while the roads remain broken, schools remain empty, and hospitals echo the long absence of care.
This is how you know a country ruled by knobheads: they sit in high offices, their hands on papers they scarcely read, eyes on applause they don’t deserve, decisions made with noise and commands issued with immediate effect while farmers work the land, teachers teach without books, traders keep their stalls open, pupils learn patience from classrooms that have forgotten them, and hapless citizens either carry their lives through markets, through long journeys, and through days of waiting for the end of their miseries that will not come, or watch convoys of knobheads that flash past them and the ceremonies of banners that follow.
The citizens move neither forward nor backwards with their lives while always measuring and renewing hope against the steady grind of survival in a country ruled by knobheads who persist in their woeful rulership, oblivious that they write themselves as jokes and cautionary tales, stories of folly and betrayal that the present generation will recount to the future, once enough becomes more than enough!