Till the wheels fall off 

UZO DIRIBE

Uzo Diribe is a retired California school administrator, graphic artist, and designer, and resides in the US, and Nigeria. He was formerly a lecturer in veterinary surgery at the University of Nigeria. He can be reached via comment@businessamlive.com 

I started drafting this article sometime in February 2024, while in Enugu. Some upgrades were going on in my house and had gone on for weeks longer than the agreed time for the project to be concluded.

I was losing patience with the contractor and my environment — chiefly electricity, which had increasingly gotten worse than spotty. The generators ran incessantly, and whenever they took a break, one was sweating like a horse, and my frustration grew; not just with the chore of running out every other day to buy PMS [Premium Motor Spirit] but with the constant noise. It was also the harmattan season and dust was everywhere in the house, partly due to the windows staying open often when there was no electrical power, and the dust from the upgrades going on downstairs. 

I started writing about my frustrations with a country I love and have invested in as a lecturer at UNN [The University of Nigeria] before immigrating to the US, and later, as an economic, and professional resource. 

I returned to the US in mid-March 2024 and had no urge to complete the essay. Since I retired from active employment almost five years ago, I have not read any books – all my reading has been mostly emails, a handful of articles here and there shared across social circles, and some I run into on my own. 

This past Christmas, my daughter gifted me Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, “The Message.” I could not wait to read it following the rave reviews and commentaries, especially Tony Dokoupil’s “hard to watch” interview on CBS. I am not here to review the book because I will not have the words to do justice to the book in depth and how it not only “haunts” you but charges you to write-about injustice around you. That prompted me to dust up my article and finish it almost one year after I started.

I am a “till the wheels fall off” kind of guy, I think. I usually do not jump ship because the going is not good – well that is true for most things that confront me in life. For over thirty years I have effectively maintained both presence and residence in both Nigeria and the US after I immigrated in 1990. I will not waste your time telling you why I immigrated, and why with all the US has afforded and provided for me, I continue to find myself in Nigeria every year for a couple of weeks or months.

I have an affinity for this place, not just because my umbilical cord was buried in the earth of Ihe-Achi, but because it molded me – the Nigeria of my birth guaranteed me that I would be an asset and a good citizen wherever I found myself within and outside of its borders. Well, [that] Nigeria has been gone for decades, and what is left of it is a heap of corruption, inefficiency, graft, insecurity, decay, and trash mixed in with a hodgepodge of brilliant youngmen and women trying so hard not to get sucked into the landfill.

As I write this piece, beads of sweat from my forehead continue to drop on the screen of my tablet as a reminder of the unceasingly, painful existence of the average Nigerian, a victim of both systemic oppression and cowardice. Nigeria is INCAPABLE of generating electric power, building, or maintaining roads, providing pipe-borne water, healthcare, security, education, or anything for that matter that is a necessity for human existence. If nature did not spontaneously generate oxygen, all Nigerians without the financial resources to buy it would have been dead, because the government (elected, selected, or enforced) would be incapable of generating oxygen.

In Enugu where I spend quite some time, the list of things in complete decay grows by the day. Where roads were paved, a growing number have since degenerated, and there are potholes everywhere pleading to be filled. The rest of the city where roads are unpaved, buildings, foliage, and anything stationary are covered in brown dust much of every part of those subdivisions. The provision of running water to the populace is like going to Mars – an impossibility! Meanwhile, the citizenry continues to build new houses, mansions, and estates at a fever pitch, because it is “premium or nothing.” Go figure…. Over the past couple of years, each year I return things have gotten worse and Icannot but wonder how this all ends and what must give. Is the wheel going to completely come off? I am not indicting the current government of Enugu State that has been in power for a short time because this is also what they inherited. What they do with it and about it will be for all to see and judge.

The Nigerian political class is a disgrace. They are bereft of ideas and are a club of kleptomaniacs, drunk with the symbols of their ill-gotten gains — insatiable, both in their acquisitions and adulation. The masses, through decades of suffering, have brains that have become mush and are resigned to their fate and suffering since even their votes on the ballot have been sold or stolen too. “How much is money”? Is this about inadequate funds to meet the societal needs of a burgeoning populace, or the “insatiety”of a“soul-less” political class that will stop at nothing to drain the treasury or engage in self-dealing, or at best push self-supporting meaningless projects? 

As the beads of sweat continue to stream down my face, I ask, “For how long” will the people endure this injustice of no power, no roads, no hospitals, no schools, no jobs, and no humanity? Like some Nigerians in the diaspora, I am in a sense lucky that I come and go, but I am bothered to the depths of my soul that this is wrong. Many of us have become fatigued by the endless donations to Town and School Associations, for disjointed pet projects that make little dent at problems that require serious development planning, laws, budgeting, funding, execution, and management. In some communities in Igbo land, the government has shown no presence and abdicated their development roles to these associations.

I am still hopeful that the deliberations of different consultation groups, think tanks like The New Nigeria Project for Good Governance, pressure groups, etc., will lead to inspired leadership and followership much sooner than later while we still have a country. We must as a people choose to tackle the menace of corruption in our public and corporate life. We must embrace a system of government that inspires trust among all Nigerians while a serious look must be taken by consultative assemblies and the legislature at the so-called presidential system of government that we “manufactured.” It is expensive, wasteful, and lends itself to abuse and massive corruption in a state without checks and balances. 

We have lost our way, and until we retrace our steps back to where and when we lost it, we remain ill-equipped to address the monumental problems that face us in education, technology, health care, transportation, agriculture, security, governance, and our global image. I am still all in, till the wheels fall off I guess, or “Jesus, take the wheel.”

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