It was a roll coasting day for me, this Sept. 25. The rain fronting as falling iron bars threatening to make me its prisoner, but there is the freedom of the sun, the lord of the day to set me out and herald me to all the Applauses from all corners
… You will call them victories, too many victories in so many fronts to be joyous about… but in reality they are little, small small things that soonest pale into insignificant/s…
Our minds blindly object to seeing these small small things for what theyvreal are… Ephemerals. Nothing more. They are fill-in/s for the emptiness of our existence that is daily wasting and waning out daily.
What else is a birthday if not a clocking out of lives into the sordid or warmful embrace into the clutches of death. The fear that we certainly will be no more come one day.
That come one September 25, and there on… I will be no more. There you have it. Death, dying…the inevitability to become nothing.
This is why we hold on to this Ephemerals so called victories, ….the only means by we have learnt to build the inner strength in us to keep us going, for the Self. Call it family, friends, colleagues, religion, we sort of keep ourselves busy on nothing. To allow us ignore everything around us, to ignore that which determines who we can really become.
Unknown to us, we ignore ourselves to our own collective peril, unwilling to ask questions. Unwilling to question existence? And by so doing we surrender to just wait for anything to happen, hands up in the air that we are completely helpless.
But are we? Are we really helpless? Incapable of doing anything about our conditions? Can we at home, at work, in the groups we form and choose to associate with others, ignore and be not bothered as to how our affairs are managed. Take a look all round us, it will amount to a crime to celebrate…not with the growing immortal fact of our mortality.
Of too many colleagues, friends with bowl in hand or critical health conditions, another indicator of paralyses that plagues our country and that we are queued up to take turn on that list. Of young people so confirmed before our eyes to no future whatsoever. Of our schools, shutting people and young people out to not attend them.
Of fees that all of us from working class background cannot afford. Of country with the same damned ruling class, regime after regime, imposing the same failed Neoliberal capitalist policies of deregulation on all of us.
And the effrontery of the lies over and over again that things will get better. Na lie it will never. Tell me why the hell did we die, go to prison to hit and hate Babangida and the entire dark era of military dictatorship, if not for the very falsehood of a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that sank the ship to the bottom. And then this Fourth Republic!
Pleases and please, Obasanjo 8 years, the same man, who wrote a letter pleading for SAP with human face. Crawl back to the same IMF and World Bank. This is why Nigeria is prostrate. From N167 and just less than 16 months to N1,100 plus and higher as you move further away from where tankers lift fuel from port.
Yes, you heard me right. Tankers. Port. Not pipelines. And now the new drama. Dangote versus Oil Barons. Please don’t bother to take any side. It is all a game. The conditionality that Dangote must be more expensive than imported fuel is a guise to making more profit. Make your own and we shall continue with our subsidy. Na lie. Subsidy is gone. It never existed. It is the same ruling class, who use it to share our resources and enrich themselves.
This is our country. Taken over by Abikus. Yes, Soyinka’s Abiku…boldly telling us that they will continue to go and come, call them Obasanjo, Buhari, Emilokan to the same consequence of failure at governance and mortally continue to make Nigeria a country that cannot stand or begin to happen.
This is birthday for me is just another day, just any other day… What it really should be ..is to take stock. Where do you belong. Are you a clog. Do you act to hold others down or stay out of everything. Or you are on the other side with those, who hold this country down.
Yes, you have a job. But too many people don’t . You with a job, don’t you see your death or okay euphemism your “future” in pensioners all round you. 30, 35 years of working and at the end na nothing nothing.
“This is how this country be”… And we know for sure it is getting worse. In reality we have long passed gone beyond WORST. For me …there is just nothing to celebrate as citizens given continuous drift into the abyss of the country….if anything !This country is a cemetery! Not that we cannot see it. And until we see it for what it is we cannot begin to find the courage to deal with it!
This for me …is yes, mesef …I must give myself…some level of hope. For it is this little hopes, yes I called them Ephemerals as well that enable us to continue to go on. For some it is a drink with friends, or serving the illusion of a Supreme deity.
But me it is Struggle, Solidarity & Socialism. Yes Revolution through the instrument of Marxism. Yes organising the Working class. This is why we can’t ignore the trade unions.
We can’t be members of trade union, knowing that the country fails us as citizens ignore not act to halt and prevent the same thing happening to us in our own union. So this opportunity to start all over again.
To mend fence, to get it right is the only joker we can ever hold onto to rescue the country… The working class remains our way to the future. Forget nationalism it is another version of poison. Tell me, what has the philosophy of Emi lo Kan done to change our fortunes. The truth our existence is determined by economics! How wealth is produced and managed and for what purpose.
As long as, it is for profit making, which is what drives Nigeria today as oppose to meeting our needs. We shall continue to languish in the woods. In the dead darkness of the forest groop.
So yes, we must continue hold on to this little little things that life makes possible. Family, work and as well as worry what we do with these advantages that life and fortunes smiles on us.
For it is Struggle and Revolution to the death. Through Marxism and Struggle. Through literature, poetry & Music…and particular that this September 25, rounded up my day on two lovely note to join others to demand for freedom for protesters in #EndBadGovernance in August to be set free.
For the ten undergoing treason trial to be set free. Drop the charges. For Daniel Akande to be set free. For all those illegal detained to be set free.
And lucky me, I found the time to see my Mummy, and to say Thank you… Daddy is 31 years gone. But he deserves all of his Thank you as well. For sure this for me is the only reason to want to be alive ….to keep at everything good I am still learning to do.
To instruct to teach to challenge life all around me…. To not give up on themselves, yes we CAN, not Obama kind of we can, to chase power for the Self…but struggle for power for the working class…to have governance be for our needs.
This is my way of saying thank you. All those too many, with salute out on me, the special shout outs messages, on social media from colleagues, friends, trade unionists, socialists home and from across the globe, family and relatives …
Thanks, for all of these… But nothing else is greater than to become co-dreamers and working at the possibility for a new reality for country and universe. Thanks.
Aj. Dagga Tolar
