For the love of country

Aliyu Musa

In less than a week from today Scotland would be holding a legally binding referendum on independence, which could see them opt out of the Union. In the run up the referendum politicians have abandoned the politics of extremes to forge a united front against a common enemy – collapse of the union. The threat is real; in a week’s time Scotland could become an independent nation, leaving in its trail a significantly weakened Britain. But Scotland, in the short-run, stands to lose more, economically. Big businesses have threatened to relocate headquarters to London and the Bank of England has warned that Scotland, even if allowed to continue to use the Pound Sterling, would need a large stash of the currency to operate independently.

Scotland is obviously at crossroads where it has little time to decide whether to proudly plunge into uncertainties, risks and increased costs as many opposed to the ‘Yes’ vote have warned, or abandon the bid through a ‘No’ vote and settle for more devolution, as former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested.

But the subject of this discourse is not the viability of an independent Scotland or otherwise. It is more about the Superordinate Goals that have united the leaders of the main political parties, which in turn translated into a healthy and purposeful campaign that has seen the ‘No’ support tower over the ‘Yes’ backing until very recently. And as more opinion polls suggest a neck and neck run this week, all three leaders skipped the PMQs at Westminster and shipped out to the heart of the battle, where they made more passionate appeals to voters, especially the undecided.

Prime Minister David Cameron, even with much less to lose than Labour’s Ed Milliband, placed country over and above party and warned that a split would leave him heartbroken. Fully mindful that Scotland is no Tories’ hotbed he drew voters’ consciousness to the irreversibility of the decision, unlike a general election, where they could give the Tories a kick at the end of five years if they were tired of them.

It did not matter whether, if Scotland were to walk away next week, it would mean a huge depletion of Labour’s numerical strength. It did not matter to Cameron that a ‘Yes’ vote could mean next general election would be a walkover for his party because it would be seen more as Labour’s failure, after spearheading the ‘No’ campaign. It, rather, mattered to him that it would be more of a collective failure if the Union were to split. This is patriotism personified.

Every war has its specific rules, probably inapplicable elsewhere. The situation in Britain sharply contrasts Nigeria’s because Britain, although with a desperate situation at hand, is not at war. Contrastingly, despite being in perpetual self denial, Nigeria is at war. Again, and more importantly, Britain is handling its battles with total patriotism from both its leaders and people; Nigeria is not and does not plan on that, at the minute.

Sunola Olumhese’s recent piece titled Why President Will Win in 2015 aptly captures the Nigerian situation: it is an abandoned project for which no one takes responsibility. And the people are happy with their situation despite its unpretentious crippling effects.

The current war with the Boko Haram insurgents has, like many previous cases, exposed our indifference to our plight and obstinate concurrence to our own enslavement. The rapidity with which towns and villages in the northeast crumble far outpaces our readiness (and even ability) to switch to reality and devise a strategy to defeat Boko Haram. And, embarrassingly too, we crave indulgence for the extremely complicit and make excuses for the notoriously indefensible, so long as the guilty are ‘our own’.

If Nigeria had been a different country we would focus on nothing but defeating the insurgency and our president and service chiefs would channel energy and resources towards that. No banners mocking the campaign to recover our girls that are gradually fading into history would be raised. And it would not take a Washington Post editorial to get our president to order the removal of the banners.

2015 is at the door, if we were some other people we would be strategising to render jobless politicians that have through their actions and inactions turned our country into such a huge object of laughter.

But we are Nigerians. We care less about us and much less about our country. Our politicians, including the opposition, are too busy worrying about themselves and much less about the country. And those in power are, curiously, strategising to come back to power irrespective of what happens. But what they are wrong about is the country could be too fragile for four more years of brazen mediocrity and mindless misrule.