Whoever has gone through the surgical procedure of tooth extraction will be familiar with one of the basic explanations the dentist give to you before the tooth extraction process begins. The dentist will likely explain thus, ‘ You will be given a local anesthetic around the region of tooth to be extracted. However, the usual traumatic pains associated with the process may be gone you will still be able to sense pressure.’ I have a feeling pressure has to do with our sense of touch, I am no physician I can’t give further details. This means you can circumvent the immediate agony but the pains may soon resurface once the drugs wear off if you do not take another drug before the local anaesthesia wears off. This mode which I call the “pressure but no pain” mode is what a lot of Nigerians switch to, by default, once they are bombarded with daily myriads of problems that confront the nation. People mentally change to the “pressure but no pain” mode as a temporary panacea to the deluge of heart-rending and traumatic problems struggling to snuff life out of the country and will not let go off her strangulation by the jugulars. They hold on to the “ pressure but no pain” mode so long as it affects none of theirs. Once they do not feel the pain they can manage the pressure.
Tooth extraction (Credit: http://www.shutterstock.com)
When Boko-Haram strikes in the north and you live in southern part of Nigeria, you are not budged because you feel the pressure but not the pain. When 40 students are killed in Damaturu by modern day, unexplainable, barbaric savages, and none of the victims happen to be a sibling or either close or distant relative, you hesitate for a while then move on because you feel the pressure and not the pain. When ASUU goes on strike for a quarter of a year, you feign concern albeit momentarily and move on since you can afford to send your kids abroad for a decent education. You feel the pressure but not the pain. When hundreds die daily on our terrible roads while travelling on long distance routes along the length and breadth of the country, you scream that why should they travel such long distances on Nigerian roads thereby taking avoidable risks. You are not really bothered because you can afford to fly. You feel the pressure not the pain. And when breadwinners and scions of notable families die in plane crash, you mutter to yourself , “Na rich people dey die for aeroplane, I no even get money for flight ticket sef ”. You feel the pressure not the pain. When people that are not fellow adherents of your beliefs are besieged with ailments that ordinarily would have been treated if the health system worked perfectly, you blame them for lack of faith in your God who cures all diseases. You feel the pressure not the pain.
In the midst of all these happenings, one thing isn’t readily clear to you. Pain isn’t entirely a bad thing. It is one of the signals the body use to inform you that something is wrong with a part of the body. No true physician treats symptoms of a disease without finding a way to deal with the disease causing pathogen or try to tackle the source of the ailment, be it pathological or psychosomatic. Pain may be a warning of a greater doom to come if urgent concrete and reasonable steps are not taken. Pain relief drugs or analgesic are stop gap measures to the threat we face in the body system. It is the same with the nation, “No pain but pressure” is just a way to make your sanity thrive in the midst of the chaos. It is far from a permanent solution. That ephemeral defence will disappear when misfortunes that are avoidable if we had a working government, comes knocking on your door. Did I hear you say ‘God Forbid ? ‘
Time it was, that I believed so much in the lofty heights this nation could achieve. In fact I once blogged about childhood dreams for my nation here. But If i must be frank with you, lately, I have been having second thoughts about these dreams. In retrospect, I sometimes believe I suffered from what the character called Saleem referred to as ‘the disease called optimism’ in Salman Rushdie’s book titled Midnight’s children. I have been affected with that ailment for so long, I think I am just recuperating. I am taking the healing process seriously. I must balance this overdose of optimism with a healthy dose of realism. I have given myself a target time , where there will be signs that it will be well with the nation. I have shifted that target more than the number of times Vision 2000 that later became vision 2010 and have had other versions of disguised pseudonyms thereafter. It takes almost eternity to develop courage to hope in the country. Just when you think you have developed a healthy dose of optimism to battle what it has to offer, it comes up either with a scary story of wanton cold blood killings or witch-hunting of a whistle blower who leaked the story of a minister that approved N225 million for the purchase of 2 bulletproof BMW cars while her ministry was responsible for the death of precious souls and narrowly escaped two air mishaps recently. Some of the heartrending events it shoves down your throat are from the downright unimaginable to the absolutely incredible.
Map of Nigeria (Image credit: http://www.world-gazette.com)
I am not even done with what people go through daily in the country that sits on where the trigger stays if you consider the African map as a deformed pistol. Probably that is why it is such a politically charged country. I dont know. A few months ago, I walked into one of the Federal Medical Centres in Lagos to see a young boy, possibly in his late twenties, pleading with a nurse in the Accident and Emergency ward to accept his mum for admission. His eyes were deep red, face looked weary, trousers were folded a little above the ankle, he kept begging, “Madam I beg of you, just give her a space, I do not mind getting a bed from anywhere else …”. The nurse looked at him with empathy and explained to him that the hospital had exceeded the number of patients they are supposed to take into the ward and tried to further explain the health implications of not keeping to the recommended space between patients. The boy explained to her that if they were sent back home that would be the fifth hospital they will be rejected from due to lack of bedspace to admit the mum. The faucet that held his tears back suddenly gave way and they obeyed gravity as they strolled down his cheeks. He turned and faced no one in particular as he screamed “God why? Why? Where should we go to now? “, he asked rhetorically. I wondered silently where I stood, the implication of coming to the hospital with an ailment only to return few days later for a treatment of another that was contracted within the hospital premises. I felt the pressure but I cannot pretend the pain I felt was anywhere close to his. It also occurred to me that I once discussed with a Pakistani friend of mine who believes Nigeria shares similar problems with his home country. He gave me an example of a working country; that his father in-law once had liver transplant in the United Kingdom and the cost was borne by the NHS at no extra cost. In fact, before he was discharged, an advance team was sent to his home to ensure that the sanitary conditions of the home were satisfactory before he was sent home. The Pakistani guy concluded that democracy run in both countries have succeeded in making a small percentage of the country richer while the greater percentage lives in abject poverty.
I remember, it was about the same time that Asari Dokubo was threatening fire and brimstone in the north. He said that war will be ineluctable if President Jonathan does not return to Aso Rock by 2015. Professor Ango Abdullahi was firing salvos from the north that presidency is must come to the north by the same year and President Goodluck should be ready to leave the Aso Rock or the nation should brace up for full scale war. Such times, I sit down and wonder what exactly it means to be in war. I mean we are all surrounded by tell tale signals of war. What do you tell the parents of about 40 students that were hurriedly dispatched to the great beyond due to no fault of theirs? What do you tell the family of approximately 10,000 that have lost their family members to the menace called Boko-Haram between 2001 and 2013 according to Wikipedia estimates? What logical explanation can we give to console those whose loved ones were massacred in Ombatse, Nassarawa and Benni-Sheikh killings. Truth is we are not at war but to some of these bereaved families they have not only experienced some of the things those in full scale war experience. A lot of them have even suffered more than what some lucky ones may suffer in the advent of war. Families gone, house razed, source of livelihood gone with the wind, future generations wiped out of the surface of the earth. If you think all the cities on the surface of the earth were bombarded during the World wars, then you need to think again. The whole of Nigerian geographical landmass does not need to be boiling before we know we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Our skies are not safe and our roads aren’t any better either. I recently spent 2 hours on a particular spot on Benin-Ore road . The road pavement had failed and the gully on the road was almost becoming a crater. The other lane was totally condemned. That was a journey that was supposed to last four hours from Benin to Lagos.
I will conclude by referring to Salman Rushdie’s novel again, I mean Midnight’s Children. Towards the end of the book, the lead character coined a word to add to the list of the possible surgical excision that can be done to the human body. To the list of hysterectomy, lubectomy, vasectomy , adenectomy, bursectomy, cystectomy and many others he added another word he called “Sperectomy”, which he referred to as the draining out of hope. If I still have an iota of hope in this project called Nigeria becoming better in my lifetime , it is fast draining out. This country is fast taking it out from me without any form of anaesthesia.
I am off to buy fuel for my generator , I have not seen electricity from PHCN in this house for four days.
– I tweet as @shimoshi1
shimoshi1 