I DREAM OF A NEW NIGERIA

Yesterday I read the book; Nigeria Delivered by Osha Joe. Osha is a young and budding Nigerian author who constantly thinks of the potential possibilities that await his countrymen if their leaders could just be a bit just and fair. The book is about the deliverance of the country from the claws of the political scoundrels that had pillaged her over the years. In the book, he describes the dream he had a few years ago.

In the first chapter of the book, Osha described an earthquake kind of shaking that spread across the length and breadth of the country. Everyone felt it deeply. The young and the old. The wise and the fool. The arrogant and the prudent. The proud and the humble. Those who care and those who don't. He writes, “There was a shaking of the cultural order. The political system was disentangled and reorganised. A new democracy was born. It happened in a manner unexplainable like a scene one experiences in a dream.

When it did happen, equality began to reign supreme everywhere. I saw justice was kissing peace on the street of Abuja, and honesty got married to honour in Lagos. The law and love were caressing in the bedrooms and boardrooms in Port Harcourt. When I got to Kano, knowledge and progress were having a friendly conversation.

I almost couldn’t believe what I saw. Then I woke up, and I realised I was in my one-room apartment in Warri in Delta State and power was out.” Because there was a power outage, and there was nothing he could do, he went back to sleep. The second dream was a continuation of and a confirmation of the first. And these are his exact words.

“When I went back to sleep, like the manner of all men, I did not know where I was. But after some time I felt I was been lifted into the sky. And then I was brought to the Lagos Ibadan Expressway suspended beneath the cloud of the sky. The thing that shocked me in that dream was that my eyes lost their perceptual limitation as the world was squeezed into my centre of vision. Everything far was brought close, things small were magnified and things fast were slowed. My left eye became a telescope and my right eye a microscope. I could see things far and small as clearly as I could see things slow and large and both like the fingers of my hands. What is special about the Lagos Ibadan Express Way is that that is where the headquarters of most of the big churches in Nigeria are. When I looked into the churches, I realised all of them were seized by youths and men of goodwill who had decided to take the country back from the religious pundits romancing political thieves. And these were preaching the message of love and care and kindness without any element of manipulation or greed. It was all about the love of and for neighbour and humanity. And every preacher was a scholar of history, philosophy, the spiritual books and every priest was clothed in love.

And when I looked towards Sokoto, I saw Islamic scholars digging into history, philosophy and the scholarship of love. There and then they began to invent again the very mathematics that is the basis of a new kind of civilisation. All the spirituality was philosophy driven by the love of and for humanity. No domination or subjugation of any kind. Everything was about compassion and love.

All these came to be because the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) shut the country down and demanded sanity from the previous political order. And this time the police force saw the need to band with the people. Even the military high-ranking officers let go of their political alliance and fought for the well-being of the run-of-the-mill fellows. The four retired generals and other top-five military principalities who were hitherto holding the country down in their wicked claws were placed under house arrest forever till death separated them from the coming glory. Another development that intrigued me was the evolution of political consciousness among market women in the cities and farmers in the villages. Town hall meetings dedicated to fabricating and sustaining the new order were held every month and everyone participated in the debate for the progress of the country. Men and women and youth had equal say in whatever was said. On social media, keyboard warriors fought the evil regime to a standstill. Twitter and tweets left the online ether and converge on the street. The metaverse and the universe became one. Offline married online and the power of the masses became mighty. There and then democracy came to be democratic.

Also, Nigerian hackers formed the faceless Naija Unknown. They brought down media outlets, and websites favourable to corrupt government officers. They hacked the bank accounts of fellows proven to have looted, embezzled and diverted public money and gave the money to charities and civil societies sympathetic to the vulnerable of the land. The evolution of the revolution was coming with the precision associated with the activities of secret cult members who have avowed allegiance to a superior order and power.

The difference was that it was so sacred and pure and the universal intention of the conspirators was the well-being of their neighbour. The law was, to love your neighbour as yourself.

While I walked the street, the music I heard was strange and delicious. The lyrics have changed from the veneration of sex-driven by unguided emotional clinging and cravings to protest and campaigns against hatred and all vices that are opposed to love and the life of live and let’s live. Even the skits on YouTube as I scrolled through my phone were no more about yahoo, sex, or money. They were about the deliverance of the country from the old order and the birth of the new one. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook were inundated with the message of hope and the triumph of justice and love. Everywhere was flooded with the shift of priority. Evangelists of the new order arose, and men went everywhere preaching the message of a Nigeria that should work and is working for all.

Professionals became professionals indeed. Engineers were designing impossible structures and vehicles of various forms for different environments and with different abilities. The roads were transparent, smooth and rough and they looked as if they are made of crystals of diamond. The architectures that sprang from the ground across the cities are otherworldly. The houses are palm trees in shape but taller and fatter. The palm leaves were verandas. Can you imagine living in a plantain leaf that looks like heaven? The slums no longer existed.

The universities became the very centre of global scientific and technological innovation, and the arts gave deeper meaning to life. The giant of Africa became the centre stage of the world and the very heaven of cravings. Nobody was talking so much about heaven anymore as it has become the very paradise for the rest of the world. The president travelled in a car that was produced beside my own house by my nephew who was in the second year of his undergraduate in mechanical engineering during a national contest in which universities had to contest for the prize. His name was Oshare. He and his friends in the electrical department won the prize. And the president rode that car for the four years he served. He didn't want to do a second tenure. “I would rather spend the rest of my life gardening and painting the flowers in my garden”, he said. At that time, people volunteered to serve in political positions because the offices are for servants... The very servants of the people. And the very bored of the land were they who find it appealing.

There was no tribe then. Only regions. And people were not poor whatsoever.”

This is what I read in the book; Nigeria Delivered by Osha Joe. Do you think Osha Joe was just dreaming or is this something that could happen in our lifetime?