It is that time of the year again for our ritual roadside assessment of the state of the nation from the perspective of the common folk.
It is the last quarter of the year, that time of the year when nearly every Nigerian household takes stock of their fortunes in the year that is about to elapse. Above all, it is the first year and half of a new government. After one year of honeymoon, the new Tinubu government will soon run out of excuses on the promises it made to the electorate during the election campaigns early last year. It is time to ask again: "How Country?"
The "How country?" test is my ancient method of measuring the mood and state of the nation hardly ever fails. It is at once a casual greeting as well as reaching out to neighbours in normal Nigerian street parlance. It is just a simple greeting cast in the mould of a universal non- committal question: "How Country?" You throw it casually at people you encounter at the roadside, in barbers' shops, in the drive way of the super market as you walk in. You don't expect any in- depth answers.
All you usually get is a reflex response. The respondents hardly have time to reflect on their answers. But it quite often gives you a quick snapshot of the way things are in the country on the go. It is a sort of everyman's instant state of the union address on the go. No partisanship. No colourful choreographed answers. Just straight from the hips knee jerk instant response. The answers you get reflect everything from the misery index, the state of security, the ease of finding work , paying your bills or just getting by on a daily basis. Most importantly, the answers are a measure of how ordinary people are faring and how they generally view the prospects of our commonwealth.
'How country?' hovers between bad English and pidgin, dangling between serious enquiry and a casual perfunctory greeting. You therefore mostly get answers in mostly hybrid lingo as well. In normal times, you get: "We dey!". In times of political turmoil, you are likely to get: "Country bend small!". In times of economic hardship, you are likely to get: "We dey manage!" When economic hardship joins political confusion and uncertainty, you get: "God dey our side".
It has always worked for me in journalism as an illicit public opinion sampling technique. It is at once a way of expressing cordiality and fellow feeling, a reaffirmation of shared feelings as members of a national community of feelings. What irks me probably pains you. What pains me gnaws at your innermost feelings. Thrown at a troubled soul, the question suggests that perhaps there is someone out there who shares your pains or feels your hurt even without your telling them.
But in the end, "How country?" becomes a way of restating that we are partakers in a community of feelings, caring about each other in a common patrimony whose state of health resonates in our individual circumstances and can be measured in our spontaneous responses to casual greetings. Our private states come shinning through our spontaneous responses to simple greetings.
As compatriots, we share something intangible, a common concern for the state of the nation and the state of the state that presides over us all. The state of things comes to us in the simple things of life that make life worth living. How easy is it to get to work? How adequate is the minimum wage to get us to and from work? How affordable is junior's school fees? Do we have enough to share a cup of garri or rice for the neighbour next door?
Deploying the 'how country?' informality, I usually use a crude sampling method to get a rough idea of the state of the nation or the feelings of ordinary citizens. This is something that neither my training in the humane letters, social sciences or media studies specifically taught me.
On a given day, I would throw the friendly greeting/question at a cross section of ordinary strangers irrespective of class, ethnicity, circumstance or countenance. By the end of the day, I am likely to have greeted a cross section of fellow countrymen and women ranging from my gate man, cook, steward, secretary, driver, managers, policemen at the checkpoint, labourers at a building site or my customer, the woman who roasts corn or unripe plantain (year in, year out) at the roadside on my way from work.
When I come home in the evening and in the quiet of my privacy, I would recall and rewind from the barometer of memory the findings of the day. I get a rough idea of the way things are at least from the eyes and gut responses of ordinary people, uncoloured by partisanship, self interest and the arrogance of position.
On the guiding question of "how country?", the answer you get at any given times has kept changing with successive regimes. Most times, however, it is a function of what policies touch the people where it matters most. Let us take the contrast between a past administration and the present one for illustration.
Under an elected Obasanjo presidency, the introduction of the GSM cellphone revolution gripped the public imagination. The new technology suddenly put a lot of power in the hands of the masses. Ordinary people in the villages, in the farms, in the markets, simple artisans and the army of youth on campuses and street corners suddenly found themselves armed with this powerful tool of communication and infinite possibility. Nothing like it had happened previously. Added to it was a policy of financial inclusion through the banking consolidation and the popularization of the stock market. Market women and simple traders in the markets were encouraged to measure their net worth not just in the quantum of cash under their mattresses or in their bank accounts.
More common people began to operate bank accounts and to invest in shares and the bond market. Telecommunications and banking expansion provided the two growth sectors under Mr. Obasanjo with infinite multiplier effects that sucked up a sizeable percentage of the unemployed. Apart from sporadic and isolated disturbances such as Odi, Shagamu and Zaki Biam which were decisively put down with a level of ferocity that offended the human rights community.
These incidents did not however graduate into nationwide insecurity. Nor did they douse the momentum of economic upliftment that swept the nation and put smiles on the faces of ordinary people. If you asked most of the people in the bus stop crowd then: 'How Country?', the resounding answer was most likely : "We dey kampe!" or they simply showed you their new cell phone with pride and a smile. This was a reaffirmation of confidence in national stability and the abilities of the national leadership of the time and the possibility of hope in the horizon.
Fast forward to the period between 2015 and the end of the Buhari administration. The prospect of a Buhari return to power as an elected president brought mixed reactions. There was the resurrection of all sorts of populist myths in the popular imagination. The man was a disciplinarian, would punish corrupt people and erect honest people as role models. Buhari's appeal was essentially retrospective.
When the hour came for the famed man of steel to unleash his magic, the nation met with a solid silence of an eerie silence. He was either perennially away on sick leave or touring the world. In the face of grinding national headaches, he was aloof and indifferent. His officials literally too orders from themselves as minimal accountability took flight. The rich were free to multiply their wealth while the poor multiplied in numbers. The man divided the country. He embraced his kith and kin and left the rest of us to find our way. In the end, a nation that had looked forward to Buhari for some salvation could no longer wait for him to retire to Daura.
Barely five years into the return to the Buhari myth, Nigerians knew better. In a video clip that was then doing the viral rounds in the social media, the newly elected Buhari was heard bragging, fortuitously, that Nigerians would sooner than later know the difference his return to power would make. By the time Buhari was handing over power to Mr. Tinubu, most Nigerian had become speechless in consternation as hardship and mis-governance joined forces to create a nation that looked forward to change in whatever guise. By the end of the Buhari administration, the most popular response to "How country?" was solid indifference or stony silence.
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Now a year and half into the Tinubu administration, only very few can find the courage to ask anyone: "How country?" Practically all the indices of daily living have jumped through the roof. Gasoline, electricity, food prices, rents, school fees, cost of medicines, air fares, transport fares etc. The cost of everything has jumped through the roof. Taxes have piled upon levies; tariffs have been heaped on hidden charges all for services that are hardly ever rendered.
To worsen the matter, an overwhelming majority of ordinary Nigerians have delivered the unanimous verdict that the Tinubu government is not good hence a nationwide protest a month ago against bad government. An indifferent executive has joined forces with a most cavalier legislature to run riot with state resources with multiple budgets dedicated to spending on sundry items of luxury and waste ranging from mansions to luxury SUVs, jets and ,some say. even yachts and lavish unnecessary junkets with overloaded delegations.
In the present circumstances, it has become hard to even pose the casual question: "How country?" The answers are benumbing. They range from 'which country?' to a studied long sigh and silence of the cemetery. When you throw "How country?" at common folk these days, you would be lucky to get a response. They just look at you, shake their heads and move on. At other times, you could get a loud sigh followed by a look that suggests that you are probably an alien or a retort question: "Which country?"
It all takes us back to Chinua Achebe's last moment memoir: There Was Once a Country. The question meets yet a bigger question: When again shall we have a country?
