By Tare Raine, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
It is apparent that the Nigerian state is a mad house. A people that sit in the midst of plenty but use their own spittle to wash off the dirt and excrement on their bodies, thereby worsening their already sorry plight. I have sat down for over sixteen years as an adult citizen of this country and rode along with the madness that has characterized our polity. A madness that grows deeper as we age in our years, and as we increase in our ungainly habits.
It is apparent that the Nigerian state is a mad house. A people that sit in the midst of plenty but use their own spittle to wash off the dirt and excrement on their bodies, thereby worsening their already sorry plight. I have sat down for over sixteen years as an adult citizen of this country and rode along with the madness that has characterized our polity. A madness that grows deeper as we age in our years, and as we increase in our ungainly habits.
We have traumatized ourselves with the belief that tomorrow will be a better day and that our destinies are more different than that of the average street urchin. Our inane use of psycho babble has made our madness such that we have bettered a way for recycling accredited mad men, products of our insane system, to lead us time without number. Believe it the Nigerian is conscious of the fact that his leaders are a product of the same insane asylum that has produced him. A man or woman who wakes up day after day to the screams of buses along the maddening paths we call roads and the eternal absence of power and yet professes that the new day will be better than the last.
Our insanity is so apparent that the world has sadly mistaken it for happiness. That a madman laughs alone to himself on the streets does not mean that he is a fulfilled man, but alas we are lost, our mad laughter has caused our worldly neighbours to remark “oh how happy they are” Even as we eat from the dustbin of the world, wear the refuse of their left over clothes, riding around in the junk yard cars that are the hand me downs from the developed world and prance around with second hand ties, phone sets and other discarded paraphernalia of modernity. Oh what a sad day it is when a man looses sight of his nakedness. Alas like the king who wore no clothes we are a Nation of kings prancing around without our royal robes clad in the very nakedness that God himself sought to cover.
We see nothing to the thousands that plague the streets of Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Port Harcourt and every major town and city begging for alms; and yet we the insane princes prance around them handing them leftovers from our already rubbished belongings. We wake up in darkness, sleep in darkness, love the darkness, a nation in perpetual darkness. Silently, noisily, killing ourselves and our children with fumes worse than the nicotine fumes from the blackened lungs of our avowed chimneys. We brandy power generating sets that are supposed to carry a warning reading “THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF HEALTH WARNS THAT GENERATOR USERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG”. Madness when we all with our multiple degrees ignore basic health rules and surround our selves with machines that are slowly but surely killing us.
While we all roll around in the mire and filth of our chosen defilement. Our exalted princes dance around the corridors of power, not caring that their subjects madness is increasing by the day. A reflection of their own sickness. For we all are sick. Oblivious to this, they propose highfaluting economic and fiscal theories showing that they are truly are on a higher plane of madness, as all the symptoms of the malaise still persist but because they are caked with more spittle, filth and rubbish they feel that they are the sane ones when in fact we all are insane In their wisdom they all have become blind and foolish no different from the area boy in mushin, just more touched up.
When shall we bathe in the river placed within our land and wash away the grime. Awakening from this our madness is our primary task as a nation, nay it is secondary . acknowledging our madness is our first step to national redemption. Then we will see our nakedness for what it is. When shall we arise and take up the challenge to change our land? to end this scourge of darkness and needless use of candlelight? To end this hunger that pervades our land and this needles bellyaching believing that tomorrow will be better when we can make it today. When will our rulers realize that their filth gathering is blinding them to the fact that they are as mad as we who they rule. We must wake up from this madness and resist the lure to live a lie. We are not the happiest people on earth. If we believe this we are truly suffering from the madman’s dilemma.
Tare Raine
Our insanity is so apparent that the world has sadly mistaken it for happiness. That a madman laughs alone to himself on the streets does not mean that he is a fulfilled man, but alas we are lost, our mad laughter has caused our worldly neighbours to remark “oh how happy they are” Even as we eat from the dustbin of the world, wear the refuse of their left over clothes, riding around in the junk yard cars that are the hand me downs from the developed world and prance around with second hand ties, phone sets and other discarded paraphernalia of modernity. Oh what a sad day it is when a man looses sight of his nakedness. Alas like the king who wore no clothes we are a Nation of kings prancing around without our royal robes clad in the very nakedness that God himself sought to cover.
We see nothing to the thousands that plague the streets of Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Port Harcourt and every major town and city begging for alms; and yet we the insane princes prance around them handing them leftovers from our already rubbished belongings. We wake up in darkness, sleep in darkness, love the darkness, a nation in perpetual darkness. Silently, noisily, killing ourselves and our children with fumes worse than the nicotine fumes from the blackened lungs of our avowed chimneys. We brandy power generating sets that are supposed to carry a warning reading “THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF HEALTH WARNS THAT GENERATOR USERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG”. Madness when we all with our multiple degrees ignore basic health rules and surround our selves with machines that are slowly but surely killing us.
While we all roll around in the mire and filth of our chosen defilement. Our exalted princes dance around the corridors of power, not caring that their subjects madness is increasing by the day. A reflection of their own sickness. For we all are sick. Oblivious to this, they propose highfaluting economic and fiscal theories showing that they are truly are on a higher plane of madness, as all the symptoms of the malaise still persist but because they are caked with more spittle, filth and rubbish they feel that they are the sane ones when in fact we all are insane In their wisdom they all have become blind and foolish no different from the area boy in mushin, just more touched up.
When shall we bathe in the river placed within our land and wash away the grime. Awakening from this our madness is our primary task as a nation, nay it is secondary . acknowledging our madness is our first step to national redemption. Then we will see our nakedness for what it is. When shall we arise and take up the challenge to change our land? to end this scourge of darkness and needless use of candlelight? To end this hunger that pervades our land and this needles bellyaching believing that tomorrow will be better when we can make it today. When will our rulers realize that their filth gathering is blinding them to the fact that they are as mad as we who they rule. We must wake up from this madness and resist the lure to live a lie. We are not the happiest people on earth. If we believe this we are truly suffering from the madman’s dilemma.
Tare Raine
