We are all damned stupid. Stupendously stupid. Stupid  to the point of stupor. Stinking stupid swine. That’s what we all are. Not  what we had always.been though. Not until 1979 anyway when this columnist cried out in the Nigerian Tribune that Nigeria harboured the largest  collection of stupid men and women in the world.

And that stupid sting had stayed with us ever since. I mean ever since some stupid men imposed some stupid men on all the stupid people of this  country in 1979. If you want to remember, it was that year that the leader  of the stupid men announced to the larger community of stupid men that the  best man would not be fit enough to lead the nation of Africa’s most  enlightened people. And the best man was rigged out of contest and was made  to bow at the feet of the cabal of stupid men.  

That idiocy which captured the body and soul of the nation has refused  to go, and I am told it will never go voluntarily.

You wonder how a nation can continue to stomach the horrible things that  assail it every day. How a people have become so helpless that they allow  themselves to be bedraggled by less than 3,000 heartless men. Those who hold  this country by the jugular are less than 3000 nationwide. All former  political [mis]rulers and their collaborators. And the present crop of day  light robbers who have infected Abuja with a plague.

  Every day, newspapers and television screens and radio airwaves are  awash with news of billions of Naira ‘missing’, ‘misappropriated’,  ‘embezzled’, ‘stolen’, and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, all of  us idiots merely leave our mouths ajar, mumble some curses at beer parlour  joints and resign ourselves to suffering unending.

    Roads were meant to be built, contracts were awarded, adequate fees  paid, and all we get in return are the death traps on Ibadan-Lagos  expressway, Lagos-Benin human body-parts supermarket, gorges on motor ways  across the land. In some cases whole vehicles are swallowed up by deep gaps  in the middle of the road.

  And how do the idiots who populate the country react? They rain curses  and move on. And their tormentors are grinning from ear to ear in their  ill-gotten military contraption called Hummer.

You see councillors who were mere truck pushers yesterday now donating  brand new jeeps to their wives or girl friends as birthday gifts and no  questions are asked. Why? In a nation of idiots, everything goes. Idiots all  over the world are known to be timid people. Nigerian brand of idiots are  worse than timid. They are zombies made worse by collective spell heaped on  them by the day-light robbers who have imposed themselves on them.

  But this nation had not always been like this. This had been a country  of brave men and women who fought the colonial masters to a standstill. This  was the country of Queen Amina. This was the land of Jaja of Opobo. This was  the territory of Bashorun Ogunmola Olodogbo-keri-keri. The land of Lisabi  Ogbongbo-akala. The land of Queen Orisamuro Eriwo . This was the country of  Herbert Macaulay. The land of Raji Abdllah . The land of Aminu Kano . This  was the country of Joseph Sarwuan Tarka. The land of Isaac Adaka Boro . The  land of fiery Josiah Olawoyin. This land produced the great Nnamdi Azikiwe.  The legendary Sir Ahmadu Bello came, saw and conquered. The *Kiniwun  Onibudo*, the *Olumoko*, *Agbola’ya bi aara* Obafemi Awolowo was a 
nationalist of this same country now overgrown with timid weeds.

Perhaps all of us idiots now suffering in inexplicable silence are waiting for the one-man suicide squad Tai Solarin, Bala Usman, Omorogie  Ohonbamu, Bros Kanmi Ishola Osobu, SLB Labanji Bolaji, Comrade Ola Oni, Comrade Niyi Oniororo, Wahab Goodluck, Pa Imoudu, Genius Ayodele Awojobi to  come from their current places of abode to free us from this suffocating  slavery on our soil.

It was in this country that the inimitable Fela Anikulapo Kuti carried  coffin to harass Obasanjo at Dodan Barracks. The same Fela carried loads of  ‘shit’ to block MKO Abiola’s house to protest ‘unfair treatment’ by Decca. Dr Beko Ransom Kuti led hundreds of thousands in protest to confront the  fierce military tanks of Abacha in protest against the annulment of June 12  elections.

Now the generation suffering the most are still waiting for Ebenezer  Babatope, Yemi Farounmbi, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Edwin Madunagu, Arthur Nwankwo,  Haroun Adamu, Tola Adeniyi, Rasheed Gbadamosi, our revered Dr Frederick Fasehun, our respected Gani Fawehimi [now late], literary icons Soyinka and Achebe….men  in their late sixties and mid seventies already shopping for travel agents  for the best ticket out of planet earth, to fight for them.

I should remind the people in their 20s and 30s that they are the ones whose present and future are being trampled upon. It is they, more than any  other idiots in the idiots’ country, that are having their lives and the  lives of their children ruined by the massive stealing going on in the  country today. And they should know that throughout history it is only  people under age 35 who initiate and lead revolutions.

We cannot refine our oil! How is a country the size of Nigeria with all her resources not able to  supply ordinary electricity to her citizens? Imagine the billions of Naira  lost daily because of lack of power. Imagine the number of industries that  have closed down. Imagine the multiplying effects of lack of electricity on  the nation’s security and social/economic well being. How is a country with  all God has given her unable to provide drinking water? Why should Nigeria fail in providing gainful employment to her teeming population? Why should  over 20 million children be out of school nationwide?

And yet all of us idiots watch in helpless resignation the men who led  us into this mess living in vulgar opulence, feeding fat on our stolen  money, sentencing our daughters to prostitution, and we do nothing.    This nonsense cannot continue.
Imprisonment is not the answer. Imprisonment did not work in Ghana . It  did not work in China . It did not solve the problem in Louis X1V’s France . It did not solve the problem in Russia before the Bolsheviks came with their  chopping axe. No, Romania did not yield to imprisonment. Ask them in  Ethiopia ; Meriam Mengistu led all to the chopping block.

If I am one of the 3,000 men who have brought Nigeria into this mess,  come for me today, take me to the Bar Beach and chop my head off. *[First published 25 May 2009*]

_The pen is the tongue of the hand,the silent utterer of words for the eyes...Henry Beecher_