CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST

By Akin Ojumu

Birds of the same feather flock together. Entrenched powers will do anything to hang on to power. They’ll go to any length to secure their stranglehold on the necks of the citizens. This is the case with the civilian dictators ruling most of Africa, particularly West Africa.

The saber-rattling ECOWAS leaders pushing to go to war with the Nigerien coup plotters aren’t doing so because they care about the sufferings of the people of Niger Republic. What concerns them is not the extreme poverty or the country’s security and humanitarian situation. The miserably shortened lifespan and disease plagued lifetime don’t bother them one bit.

These out of touch civilian dictators are only concerned about themselves and their hold to power. With multiple military coup d’état in Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, they can see the handwriting on the wall. Sensing it’ll soon be their turn, i.e., “Emilokan,” their cage is rattled, and they’ve caught the shivers. An eerie sense of foreboding has permeated their fortified strongholds. They are peeing in their diapers, knowing a military putsch is coming their way too. 

Their bashful threat of use of force in Niger is motivated by nothing but fear. It’s the heightened sense of self-preservation and their animalistic instincts to protect their own interests at any cost that’s responsible for their mad rush into a military intervention in Niger Republic, a country where 80 percent of its land area is covered by the Sahara Desert, and which is 37 percent larger than Nigeria. 

By signaling to go to war to dislodge the Nigerien coup plotters and reinstate their fellow civilian dictator to power, they are hoping to dissuade their own restless military from following the example of their comrades in the Sahel. It’s a desperate cease-and-desist flare they are sending to their own armed forces.

But guess what? They are sorely mistaken. Que Sera, Sera! What will be, will certainly be. The train has already left the station. The levee is broken, expect to be drowned in the coming deluge. Corrupt and bad leadership are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

The parasites may succeed in temporarily delaying what’s coming, they can’t stop it from happening; it’s inevitable. You can’t turn the lives of your citizens into a daily misery for so long and expect them not to make yours miserable at the slightest opportunity they get.