For the love of country is still their sexiest lie. The curvaceous plague of coalition politics. Every desperado cops a feel – the scorned ministerial hopeful, the tamed party rebel, losers at the 2023 polls. All partake in the prurient rite.
They all identify as patriots, too. Thus, “We are doing this for country” becomes their arrant lie, the falsity that spurred failed presidential candidates from the People’s Democratic Party, Labour Party and the All Progressives Congress to mull a frantic coalition under the banner of the Social Democratic Party.
Politics, however, fades to melodrama where the dubious patriot misinterprets his role. In his struggle to usurp privileges and power, he inflicts misery on ordinary citizens, those whose predicament supposedly triggered his “patriotic zeal.”
This lie is native to the country; thus, this minute, the random youth pulses to their duplicitous love. Belligerent, cocksure and digitally-woke, social media is his brothel, the virtual bordello of his dreams, where pimps of strife and courtesans of the witless caress his furtive and manifest lusts.
A nation perishes when its youth become playthings in the hands of frantic demagogues—when the youth, like the proverbial sapling, bend away from the light of reason, they wither in the gloom of manipulation.
Today, the rabble of coalition groups wear the garb of patriotism and chant democracy’s demise. Their passion isn’t borne of love for the country but a loathing for the man at the helm. They do not seek a nobler republic; all they want is a piece of the pie.
Their outrage is nothing but a scorned man’s vendetta – think of them as sore losers who, having failed to capture the throne by ballots, now thirst for its overthrow by any means necessary. Nigeria’s youth must learn to shun their deception. They must resist the temptation to be led, blindfolded, into proxy wars where they serve as mere cannon fodder in a battle not their own.
The agents of discord are seasoned in this game—offering nothing but illusionary glory to the naïve. We saw it in Rivers State, where young men, seduced by promises of relevance, blew up the Trans-Niger pipeline in the heat of the tussle between Governor Sim Fubara and 27 lawmakers. Had the federal government and security agencies not moved swiftly to quell the uprising, both Rivers and Nigeria would have borne the brunt.
The political elites, however, sit ensconced in their fortresses, their sons and daughters untouched by the fire they lit. The script is old. The powerful always shield their own from the carnage they orchestrate. But elsewhere, the children of the poor—young men from forgotten alleys, girls from the margins of destitution—are recruited to be foot soldiers in a war that will never offer them recompense.
The tokens for this conscription vary. Some are handed cutlasses and clubs, anointed as political thugs to unleash mayhem. Others, educated yet unmoored, are armed with keyboards, reduced to intellectual mercenaries peddling half-truths and slander. They are promised a seat at the table, yet they never dine; they are led to believe they are warriors, yet they are mere pawns expendable in the schemes orchestrated by the grand puppeteers.
These agitators now decry Tinubu’s governance as the tombstone of democracy. They wail in choreographed despair, denouncing the emergency rule in Rivers as an apocalyptic omen. Yet, where was their voice when democracy was repeatedly desecrated as Fubara pulled down the state assembly and locked 27 lawmakers out? Why did their tongues fail them when injustice flourished under their preferred overlords in previous dispensations? It is not democracy they defend; it is their bruised ego, their shattered ambitions, and impotence in the absence of power.
Some have grown so drunk on their hatred that they subtly call for the military’s return—an invitation triggered by their personal vendetta against the incumbent government. They mask their desperation in righteous indignation, gaslighting the nation into believing that anarchy is a purgative for Nigeria’s ills. Yet history stands as an unrelenting witness—anarchy does not heal; it devours.
The Nigerian Civil War bequeathed generations of broken men and women, ghosts of a nation scarred by its own folly. The wreckage remains a testament to the truth that war is never fought by the powerful but by the expendable, those who, like lambs, are herded into the slaughterhouse while their masters sip from goblets in safety.
This pattern is neither new nor unique. Throughout history, the poor have been conditioned to serve as pawns in conflicts choreographed by the elite. The promise of glory, of escape from economic despair, of relevance in an indifferent society, is dangled before them like bait. Read Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front or Jones’s From Here to Eternity—the stories of young men lured into wars that had nothing to do with them, only to return disillusioned, discarded like broken marionettes once their usefulness expired. The same fate awaits every Nigerian youth who answers the call of these demagogues.
Nigeria is no stranger to the deceit of its political class. The landscape is littered with the wreckage of those who mistook empty promises for bridges to a better life. The press, academia, civil society—all have at one time or another served as willing accomplices, weaving grand narratives to prop up the ambitions of the powerful. Yet, as Arundhati Roy once asked, “Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you?” Who, indeed, controls the narrative?
A nation held captive by illusions cannot prosper. The bitter truth is that Nigeria’s elite do not war for the people; they war for themselves. When the poor riot, they die alone. Those who engage in misguided battles are discarded as soon as their usefulness expires. Their broken bodies and spirits litter the nation like the remnants of a storm that never should have been.
War, as Chris Hedges rightly notes, is always sold as a patriotic duty, wrapped in slogans of sacrifice, honor, and destiny. Yet up close, it is nothing but savagery—a cruel masquerade where the elite dictate, and the poor perish. It strips men of their dignity, reduces them to instruments of violence, and discards them as casualties when the dust settles. The horror of war is not in the battle cries of those who summon it; it is in the wails of mothers burying their sons, in the shattered dreams of those who once believed they fought for a noble cause, only to realize they were mere tools in a game they never understood.
If history has taught anything, it is that nations do not crumble from external forces alone, they are undone from within, by the willingness of their youth to be used, by their ignorance of the patterns that have ensnared generations before them. Nigeria stands at a precipice, and the youth must decide whether to leap into the abyss or step back from the brink.
Let those who clamor for war be the first to send their own sons and daughters to the battlefield. Let them, for once, sacrifice their own blood instead of the children of the impoverished. Let the Nigerian youth, weary of being pawns, demand better. Not through anarchy or destruction, but through a reclamation of their agency. It is time to scorn the charlatans, to rise not as foot soldiers in another man’s battle but as architects of a future where they are no longer expend
Credit: The Nation