For the past two months and weeks, the media space all over the world has been embroiled in the Covid 19 challenge and its attendant consequences. In Nigeria, as at press time yesterday night, there were over 31,323, Confirmed infected, 12,795, Recovered, and 709, Deaths. While the situation seems unabating, the reality has furthered dawned on us all that the elephant in the room must be addressed whether we like it or not.
However, from my standpoint, there are equally other elephants which had preceded COVID 19, whose seeds we sowed decades back and now here to hunt us and we seem to ponder where and how it all began and how it got so bad. Recent gory details and news on cult-related killing, kidnapping, rape, and banditry have reached a worrisome level that even our security agencies are overwhelmed. Without an iota of doubt, the Hobbesian in which we once theorized and philosophized is fast becoming a reality. Nigeria is at war with itself, the Nigerian youths are so far the executioners and also the victims. As a youth who finds this development disturbing, once in my state of pondering I came across the movie ‘Joker’, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, after watching the movie, my questions got answered. While the movie elicited mixed reviews on both positive and negative responses depending on what perspective you saw it, one thing which cannot be taken away from the movie is that, it provides a vivid satirical representation of what our Nigerian society has become today, how innocent youths who looked forward to living stable and comfortable lives but overtime were turned into monsters as a result of lack of employment, government apathy towards engaging the youths in providing capital for entrepreneurship and providing the needed environment so they can harness their strength into more creative, self-satisfaction and contribution to the society and nation.
Back in the 60s and up to the latter part of the 80s, we heard and read about how our present leaders and fathers who in the confines of their homes got letters of appointments even without application Several opportunities abounded and all that they needed was to choose between which job or business ventures suited their strengths and skill.
Today we have an army of youth who invade offices and establishment unannounced hoping to find as little as a Ten thousand Naira paying job yet they are turned down. They go home downcast and hoping to find solace wherever they can only to find out the society perceives them as lazy; to make matters worse they get comments like ‘See your mates are doing well’, ‘your problems are spiritual’, and ‘your village people are after you’ thrown at them. Here belies the making of the joker. While he deteriorates mentally, he becomes an object of ridicule to himself and the people around him. Then one day he realizes that the society is one in which the big fish eat the small fish to survive, therefore all is fair in love and war; Afterall, we hail our politicians who steal, kill, and destroy our tomorrow as heroes of democracy, and in the process of fast creative thinking, a vice of opportunity presents itself, and boom! The Joker takes his shot and we are shocked. Certainly, we must watch our creation. This movie of life must do a 360 and not 180, it must run its full course! What we refuse to accept is that the Joker lived with us all this while yet we didn’t pay attention to him, we thought that he was a clown with a mask, but at its end, everyone’s out there in masks and face paint, and yet it’s those of us watching who the clowns are.
What we are witnessing today is locational or geographical criminality. This is so because our youths, like every business venture, they start with a small capital which is readily available. For instance, if you have access to guns, you can resort to banditry and kidnapping, if you have laptops, there goes your yahoo boys, if you’ve got access to spirituality, there goes your ritual killer and rapist. We now have a geographical spread of an uneducated North who consists of a large population of youths who are into banditry under the guise of herdsmen and the South who consist of a large population who resort largely to cybercrimes, pipeline vandalism, militancy, cultism, armed robbery, and kidnapping. Whatever we are witnessing now is a far cry from what will happen in the coming months if the dangerous trend is not tackled from its root cause. I can assure you, it would dwarf the fear of COVID 19 from inside of us. The Jokers are here to stay and there is nothing we can do about it but watch our own creation. Are we well pleased?
