Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
When the so-called high and mighty politicians drive past the sprawling slums, the deserted farmlands, the dilapidated schools, the crumbling hospitals, and the hopeless faces of the unemployed youth, do they, for a fleeting moment, question their own humanity?
When they bask in their self-constructed glories, in convoys that resemble mobile fortresses, do they reflect on the millions trekking miles for a bucket of water or a morsel of food?
When they sit in air-conditioned chambers, crafting laws for their personal aggrandisement, do they ever hear the silent, thunderous screams of the marginalised whose backs have been broken by poverty?
When they make hollow promises during election campaigns, dancing clumsily in staged “solidarity” with the people, do they realise they are mocking the very pain they helped create?
When they manipulate the judiciary and the electoral umpire, exchanging justice for filthy lucre, do they ponder the day when the scales shall tilt, and no fortress, no bulletproof vest, no offshore account will save them from the fury of a people betrayed?
When they embezzle funds meant for hospitals, condemning thousands to early graves from treatable diseases, do they, in their fleeting moments of insomnia, hear the cries of the dead?
When they loot education budgets, leaving children in roofless classrooms, learning with broken chairs and borrowed dreams, do they ever wonder if they have murdered the future itself?
When they weaponise religion and ethnicity, sowing seeds of hatred and bloodshed, just to cling to power, do they consider that history will one day spit their names into oblivion?
When they cheer the depreciation of the naira and boast of GDP figures that never touch the lives of ordinary people, do they ask themselves who they are truly serving?
When they sponsor thugs to maim and kill during elections, treating human life as collateral damage in their power games, do they believe that their own blood will never be required in payment?
When they siphon funds meant for pensions, leaving aged citizens to die in penury after decades of service, do they recognise that they have assassinated honour itself?
When they criminalise dissent, gagging the media, arresting protesters, and branding the truth as treason, do they remember that tyranny, no matter how well disguised, always ends in disgrace?
When they pretend to fight corruption by parading petty thieves while cuddling the grand looters, do they think the people are blind to their hypocrisy?
When they tax the poor to death while giving tax holidays to billionaires, do they realize they are digging a grave wide enough to swallow themselves?
When they hand out rice and noodles during elections in exchange for four years of misery, do they not know they are buying ephemeral loyalty at the cost of enduring curses?
When they mortgage the nation’s future with mindless borrowing, leaving generations unborn shackled by debt, do they ever pause to ask: what legacy shall we leave behind?
When they dance and celebrate in foreign lands while their citizens drown in the Mediterranean, die in desert sands, or rot in refugee camps, do they comprehend the enormity of their betrayal?
When they inflate contracts, build roads that wash away with the first rain, commission hospitals without equipment, and unveil “completed” projects that exist only on paper, do they realise that posterity keeps a ledger with an unerring pen?
When they surround themselves with praise-singers, sycophants, and spin doctors, insulating themselves from reality, do they understand they are erecting castles of sand on the shores of time?
When they invoke God’s name in every deceitful pronouncement, calling divine judgment upon their falsehoods, do they believe the heavens are as gullible as their rented crowds?
When they conspire with foreign interests, auctioning national sovereignty for personal gain, do they see themselves as traitors or as merchants of national shame?
When they hoard palliatives meant for the suffering masses, unlocking them only during election seasons, do they think that history shall be kind to them?
When they turn security outfits into personal militias, using them to silence opponents and perpetuate fear, do they consider that fear is a fire that consumes even its masters?
When they abandon the rural communities, leaving them to bandits, hunger, and hopelessness, do they reckon that the rot they ignore today will one day infect the palaces they build?
When they make constitutional amendments that tighten their grip on power while loosening the people’s hold on their own destiny, do they realize that no iron grip can restrain a people who have chosen to rise?
When they reduce governance to theatrical displays, commissioning streetlights and boreholes with red carpets and fanfare, do they not perceive the ridiculousness of their charade?
When they criminalise the poverty they have created, bulldozing the homes of the destitute without providing alternatives, do they grasp the cruelty of compounding oppression with humiliation?
When they raise taxes to fund their obscene lifestyles while offering nothing in return, do they remember that taxation without representation once triggered revolutions?
When they scoff at calls for restructuring, fiscal federalism, and devolution of powers, preferring to keep a broken system intact for their selfish advantage, do they realise they are sitting atop a powder keg?
When they weaponise hunger, knowing a starving man cannot think of freedom, do they not comprehend that hunger itself is a revolutionary fire that needs no matchstick to ignite?
When they view the people not as citizens but as subjects, pawns to be moved at will, are they blind to the fact that even pawns can rise in fury and topple kings?
When they spend more on their own comfort than on healthcare, education, or infrastructure, do they realise that palaces built on the graves of the poor are monuments to shame?
When they rig elections with the audacity of armed robbers, brazenly subverting the people’s will, do they understand that stolen mandates are poisoned chalices?
When they preach peace without justice, unity without equity, and patriotism without participation, do they think mere slogans can mend broken hearts and wounded souls?
When they raise religious banners while acting like devils, do they recognise that no amount of hypocritical piety can wash away the stench of their iniquities?
When they celebrate Independence Day with pomp and ceremony while the majority remain shackled in economic slavery, do they not hear the mocking laughter of history?
When they disdain the diaspora, mocking Nigerians abroad even as they seek medical care, education, and investments from the same, do they see their own cognitive dissonance?
When they ignore brain drain while celebrating brain death in governance, do they not understand that nations are built by minds, not by sycophancy?
When they treat public office as a personal inheritance, recycling the same faces from grandfather to grandson, do they realise they are bottling up the volcanic rage of a silenced generation?
When they deploy police and military might to suppress legitimate protests but go limp before terrorists and bandits, do they not see that they are nurturing the seeds of national collapse?
When they measure progress by the number of flyovers and shopping malls while ignoring human development indices, do they comprehend the difference between glitter and gold?
When they brand every critic an enemy of the state, do they not know that constructive dissent is the oxygen of democracy?
When they manipulate the educational system to churn out unemployable graduates, do they ponder the future of a nation whose youth are lost in the wilderness of hopelessness?
When they monopolise opportunities for their children, sending them to Ivy League schools while others rot in collapsed universities, do they not see that the volcano of resentment is simmering?
When they orchestrate media narratives, weaponising fake news and propaganda to brainwash the masses, do they remember that truth, though buried, is a seed that always germinates?
When they refuse to invest in local industries, preferring imported luxuries over homegrown innovation, do they realise they are auctioning the nation’s future for fleeting pleasure?
When they convert political parties into personal empires, stifling internal democracy, do they understand they are breeding political instability that will one day consume them?
When they manipulate census figures, electoral rolls, and national statistics for parochial interests, do they recognise that lies have short legs?
When they turn the civil service into a retirement home for political cronies instead of a merit-driven institution, do they ponder the cost of mediocrity?
When they worship foreign validation, celebrating every foreign award while ignoring local suffering, do they not know that dignity cannot be imported?
When they take international loans in the people’s name but siphon them into private pockets, leaving behind only the debt, do they realise that accountability, though delayed, is inevitable?
When they turn national honours into bazaar items, distributing them like party souvenirs, do they realise they are cheapening the very idea of excellence?
When they ignore the warnings of history, believing themselves invincible, do they not know that pride goeth before destruction?
When they strut about with delusions of grandeur, do they realise that history has a ruthless memory and that monuments to vanity are always built on the ruins of forgotten empires?
When they neglect the environment, allowing oil spills, deforestation, and urban decay to flourish unchecked, do they understand they are sentencing future generations to a barren wasteland?
When they read reports of Nigeria being the poverty capital of the world, do they feel a pang of shame or a surge of indifference?
When they wake up each day, cloaked in stolen wealth and counterfeit prestige, do they ever, even for a moment, tremble at the thought of posterity’s judgment?
History has its eyes wide open.
Posterity keeps meticulous records.
Time, though patient, is an unforgiving judge.
The questions stand. The answers , or their absence , will echo across generations.
The Narrative Force continues….….
Aare Amerijoye DOT .B
Director General
The Narrative Force.
