By
Dr. Austin Orette
“We have nothing to fear except fear
itself “FDR
The All Progressives Congress (APC)
primary election was an exercise on how to control the people with fear. The
party primaries yielded significant victories for political heavyweights
alongside massive upsets for several incumbents.
In a democratic exercise that was
supposed to be peaceful, there was gun fire, mayhem and murder. As usual, the
police will not investigate these assaults on citizens because lawlessness is
their insignia and this is also a telescope of the most powerful weapon of
incumbent politicians of the APC stripe.
Fear is their weapon and they will
deploy it for the harvest of power. They have nothing to show for the high
office they hold. Fear has always been the weapon of dictators and outlaws.
This is also the weapon the kidnappers have used effectively in Nigeria without
any hindrance despite the overwhelming electronic signatures and footprints.
The Colonial masters used it. The military used it and threw the country into a
civil war that we are still grappling with. They made Nigeria a fear-based
society. Fear based existence is a mechanical existence that makes every
citizen interaction adversarial. This is who we are now. We have become a
people with contracted dreams and limited aspiration. Our limited dreams take
us everywhere but here.
Any kind of leadership that induces
this kind of behavioral changes must be voted out to save our republic. This is
what patriotism demands. We have a duty to vote out this bunch of leaders who
have no understanding of constitutional order and a democratic society. They
perambulate like peacocks and want us to consider their irrational drivels as
law of the land.
After many years of civilian
administrations, you will expect that those who rule will abide by the laws and
govern with reason. Not so fast. The people in power today were the acolyte of
the military cadre that ruled and destroyed Nigeria. They have adopted military
tactics to force obedience. Damn the law and damn civility. Nigerian leaders
are yet to come across a situation they cannot resolve without violence and
intimidation. The citizen must be made to be afraid, very afraid and pliable.
Keep him hungry and he will always be afraid. There is no law they cannot break
in order to physically maim or kill a citizen who is not in tandem with obeying
before the complaint format of governing.
If you close your eyes and listen to
the way some of these politicians talk, you will think they got their position
through a military coup. They use sirens to drive citizens from roads they did
not construct, and they have thugs on their payrolls. They use the army and the
police to harass citizens during the day and use their thugs to harass them at
night. This is Nigeria where fear has been distilled to render the citizen
impotent and unreasonable.
Activities in most cities come to a
halt at about 5pm, because the citizens have become very afraid of the dark.
The Night now belongs to the kidnappers, robbers and thugs. This anatomy of
fear envelops the whole nation that everyone is distrustful of each other. This
atmosphere has created a situation where we think the worst of each other, and
we become easy to offend and manipulate.
Without a little nudge, we become
participants in orgy of hatred for anyone who does not share the perimeter of
our thoughts. The defensive actions we take in response to these fears clouds
our judgement and out of proportion to the point of irrationality.
How do you explain a burglary proof
in the window of the fifth floor of a building? Who is that robber who will
come at 2 am with a ladder to climb into the window of the fifth floor and
descend with his loot? That is the irrationality of fear.
There was a time in Nigeria when
criminals were afraid of the citizens. At this time of writing, Nigerians are
afraid of the criminals. The fear is so morbid that a lynching mob assembles
immediately to kill a hungry person who stole a loaf of bread. No one has
empathy for anyone anymore. That is how a society dies.
We are too afraid to come to
rational judgement. How do we deal with ourselves when we have just taken the
life of someone who needed our help? In the same breath, we celebrate leaders
who made these conditions happen. These contradictions push us into a state of
mass psychosis as we cannot rationalize these behaviors.
Fear has made our society afraid of
human compassion. Whether we know it or not, we have become dogs in Ivan
pavlov’s experiment where our reactions become instinctual, and rationality is
held in abeyance. We begin to equate the ability to induce fear as the strength
of politicians and we use the ability to hurt or kill people as ennobling.
Sooner or later, we surrender the society we love to the psychopaths amongst
us. They will mimic our civility and make laws that will set the criminals free
and imprison the innocents. This is what guarantees the silence of the masses
in the presence of overwhelming criminality.
A person was killed during a primary
election. No one is talking because they have been enclosed in a cocoon of
fear. These fears keep us divided. As long as we are afraid of something, the
mediocre leaders are empowered. The fear is their oxygen. A village is wiped
out by marauding soldiers, and my governor pays a courtesy call to the
president. Dead voters are of no use to him as long as those alive are still
afraid. The leaders who enable this kind of atmosphere should never be
entrusted with power. They are the problem and we should vote them out.
We must wake up and remember that
even though the road to Samaria was very bad, there was a Good Samaritan who
chose love over fear and saved someone he did not know.
Fear is a limiting factor that stops
the growth of a people. People who are afraid cannot dream and be creative. We
must get rid of these fears because fearful people cannot be free. This fear
precludes us from knowing each other and doing business with each other in a
terrain that lacks legal safeguards.
These leaders who love power without
any sense of responsibility must be voted out of power. They have used their
limited vision to put our people in bondage of ignorance, disease and poverty.
We are obligated to reclaim our
humanity. Voting them out will remove the blanket of fear that has stifled the
energy and productivity of the Nigerian youth. We must remove this fear that
has programmed us not to be kind to each other. We must make them answerable to
us. This is what the 2027 election is all about. They must be held accountable
for the decay in our society.
Austin
Orette Writes From Owhelogbo In Isoko North Local Government Area
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