Date Published: 03/04/10

A Nation without a Heart By Uche Ohia

Last week, a national Newspaper in Nigeria published on it’s front page a very nauseating and distressful photograph. In living colour and graphic details, the picture showed a commercial bus of the type known as “luxury bus” popular with traders of South Eastern Nigeria. The vehicle was parked by the roadside on a motorway and beside it, along a short stretch of the tarred road, was a most grisly and sordid sight: freshly mutilated human bodies lying in grotesque positions. Some had their heads crushed while some had parts of their bodies severed. Ordinarily, it looked like the scene of a ghastly road accident but the actual story as contained in the report pointed to a more horrendous incident.

The shocking story is best told in the newspapers own chilling words: “The driver of the luxury bus above was waylaid along the Benin – Lagos expressway at 4pm on Tuesday. After the passengers were robbed, the hoodlums ordered that those without money should lie on the road and at gun point they ordered the bus driver to run over them. The result was this carnage of horrendous proportion that saw human bodies severed, mutilated and desecrated. Whither Nigeria”. That was the Leadership Newspaper of February 26, 2010.

If any image or story could convey the depth of depravity and bestiality to which we have sunk as a people and as a nation, this one did. The same way a nation gets the leadership it deserves seems to be the way it begets it’s criminals. That is the only way to explain how Nigeria seems to be breeding a new generation of the most vicious and brutal criminals completely devoid of human feelings. What sort of psyche would induce men risking their lives to rob innocent commuters to decide that the ones that have no money should be put to death? How could men supposedly induced to engage in crime by hopeless deprivation turn so violently against those with whom they should ordinarily empathize?

Even in the jungle, animals have an unwritten code of conduct. No animal kills for fun. No animal kills it’s kind except by accident or in an extreme case. An animal only kills another for food, to secure it’s territory or to secure it’s own life. No animal exhibits the sort of heartlessness or mindless savagery that human beings often put on display in this country.

Psychologists need to ascertain the social, economic, political or other factors that are turning some Nigerians into a specie worse than beasts. Nigeria’s criminal class are exhibiting tendencies that point to an underlying personality disorder or obdurate grouse with the system. Nigerian robbers often kill, rape, maim and brutalize other citizens. Not to have money or property of value when robbers come on their nocturnal visits is like passing a death sentence on oneself.

Nigerian kidnappers do not believe in any cause like their mates in other climes. They kill half a dozen men to kidnap one. A victim could be killed even after ransom has been paid. They show no respect or sympathy for age: neither the toddler nor the senior citizen is spared. Some victims do not survive the trauma even after being released. South eastern Nigeria is witnessing a return to the era of the slave trade. Some men now see others as little more than merchandise whose worth is calculated only in terms of what they can fetch.

Nigerian policemen that excel during foreign operations are viewed at home with understandable ambivalence. The propensity of some bad eggs among them to ensure that the image of the entire police force remains perpetually sullied is limitless. They turn check points to toll gates, charge money for bail, and engage in an assortment of untoward activities. Allegations of extra judicial killings are rife. All these make it difficult for the populace to truly appreciate the laudable efforts which the force makes to keep the nation safe and secure. Regardless, to the average Nigerian, the police are proof that Nigeria is a nation without a heart.

As the charges against them in various courts have shown, Nigeria’s most eminent and respected criminals in high places plunder the public till or otherwise betray the trust reposed in them. The mind-boggling volumes of money which they are accused of laundering (or stealing) raise doubts about their sanity and make evident their loss of confidence in the ability of the system to secure their future and that of their children. Unbridled acquisitive tendencies of the men and women of the day in this day and age serve as a reminder the affinity between some citizens and primitive man.

Yet, rather than the prison yard where citizens with itchy fingers and other vermin that threaten society are sequestrated, executive thieves and other white collar criminals strut around vaingloriously and exhibit their loot and vulgar acquisitions without remorse. Thanks to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) which has managed to arraign some of the suspected wolves in sheep’s clothing even if most of the cases continue to linger without end. The rapacious inclination of people who should be role models has a negative impact on the moral fabric of any society. Such impunity in a country where majority live in penury, more than anything else, projects the nation as one without a heart.

Gradually, President Umar Yar’Adua, a good man, has assumed the image of the invisible man or some extra-terrestrial being. It is weird. His domestic and official handlers have done anything and everything to muddy his image in negation of the axiom “wise men leave power before power leaves them”. Now, the goodwill and sympathy which he had amassed in his gradualist administration have gone into deficit. As YarÁdua remains incommunicado in the Presidential villa, his shadow continues to loom in the background. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has still not been able to see the President 7 days after his undignified return from Saudi Arabia goes on trying to show that there is no power vacuum. Everyone continues to pretend that all is well. No one wants to rock the boat. But the manifest lack of confidence between the President and the Vice President goes to the heart of the problem. We are the object of global jibes. We are seen as a nation without a heart and this has nothing to do with YarÁdua’s health condition. 

A nation without a heart is a nation out of control. It is a callous nation in which the people and their welfare count for little. A nation without a heart is a nation imperiled by the selfish ambitions of a few privileged citizens - a nation in which no one truly cares for the nation. This gory luxury bus incident should shock anyone that still has any humanity left in them. Government must show greater concern for the citizens of this beleaguered nation. It needs to restore the confidence of the populace or risk their fury. No nation should be seen as one without a heart because, ultimately, in a nation without a heart, no one is safe. uchebush@yahoo.com; 0805 1090 050