Sometimes, one wonders whether we are living in a lawless society. And what may have happened to our humanity. That we longer place value on the sacredness of life is appealing.
However, all the indices of a failed state are stirring us in the face, yet the government at the centre lacks the fire power to stem the tide of events. Is it not true that we are just a step away from Hobbes’s state of anarchy where life is poor, nasty, brutish and short? We are no longer bemused by stories of insecurity, more so, when they seem to have attained the dimension of a second nature.
Or how else do we explain the avalanche of killings and kidnappings going on unabated in the North-West, North Central, North-East, not to mention South East. We have lost count of the dead in these places.
Not even the government is in position to track the records of terrorist activities across our landscape. Guess what, not even the President’s home state has been spared from a touch of banditry.
The truth is the government inadvertently created ungoverned spaces which are now safe haven for the business of banditry to thrive. To complete the circle of the nexus of ills, the Federal Government has insulated itself from governance and its people.
They distanced themselves from Nigerians. Government is no longer in government. Misrule is now a cliché in our country, Why? Things have fallen apart, and the centre can no longer hold. The nation is at the brink of collapse. The people no longer feel the presence of governance any more. Our roads and other infrastructure have continually been exposed to decay.
It is impossible to travel from one end of the country to another within a record time. The economy is totally comatose. It is in a state of stagflation, a term invented by Alan Greenspan, a first rate economist and one time president of federal reserves. It is that point in the economic curve where the economy is totally stagnant, while unemployment and inflation is at its peak.
Again, to add insult to injury, the country is neck deep in foreign debts. Kelvin Phillips, an American author, economist and political commentator gave us an unparalleled insight through his study of history, why nations fall as written in his book entitled American Theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil and borrowed money in the 21st century. In that explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens nations in the 21st century.
According to Kelvin Philips, “…natural resources, religious excesses, wars and burgeoning debt levels have been prominent causes of the downfall of the previous leading world economic powers…”
The nation cannot afford to abide with this unstructured “jankara” economic management system as well as the incoherent policy direction and its attendant policy summersaults of the present day saints, with due apologies to late Dr. Peter Adione- Egom, the jankara economist of the Guardian fame. •Peretu is a social commentator and political analyst