Our love for impunity stinks by Abdulrazaq Hamzat

Evidences after evidence has proven that, most Nigerians love impunity committed by their friends, their tribal people, their religious circle and political affiliates.

No matter how unjust such impunity is, they will always find a way to defend and justify it.

However, majority Nigerians disgust impunity done by people not in their good circle, be it ethnic, regional or political.

Their reason for hating such impunity is not because they hate impunity or sympathize with the victim, but because they want to cast the perpetrator in dark light for whatever reason.

Two important events that happened this week reconfirm some opinions that claimed that Nigerians are not really ready to have a better country.

Once again, we held tight our chains and declare our love for impunity, without feeling any sense of responsibility or remorse.

Few days ago, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) conducted an election to chose new sets of leaders.

An election, which was supposed to hold last Saturday, after all student senators had converged in Abuja on Friday was prevented from holding as scheduled, due to mindless impunity by special interest called stakeholders.

Not minding that students, who came from all across the country had planned their stay and finances and staying beyond the planned date would automatically affect their well being.

The election scheduled to hold on Saturday was eventually held yesterday, when many of the students had already gone back to their respective states without participating in the election.

Many came to do their duty as genuine student leaders, but had to travel back without getting it done due to impunity by others

To my understanding, this was a deliberate plot to decide the outcome of the election against the genuinely popular candidates, who may have no resources to sustain their delegates.

But this is not the major point I am making. The election was concluded and a winner was announced.

Unfortunately, apart from the structural deficiency already identified earlier, inflation of delegates were also identified by almost all the candidates.

The number of votes were reported to be more than the delegates.

How can this happen?

The point I am making here is that, when some of the candidates were pointing out these impunity from a supposed student election, the response of the majority of the people were surprising.

I read many comments under some candidate posts online, when the Candidates were complaining about the situation and most people were merely urging them to accept it like that, without saying anything about the impunity or calling for more strict measure to avoid similar incidences in the future.

Anyone who complain about the faulty process is described with all sorts of abusive language.

I read some of the comments and shoke my head in disbelief. This could not be the same Nigerians claiming to want a better country.

My question is, how will the system ever improve, when we love impunity and praise it's perpetrators?

On one hand, we claim to want a better country, but on the other hand, we support those things destroying the country.

Just as I was battling with the NANS situation, another drama broke out in Ekiti state, in which the police teargassed the governor and others.

Similar impunity was reported 4 years ago, before we asked for change.

However rather than improve our public conduct and act better 4 years later, we are still the same people, doing the same things that are destroying our country and ridiculing us before the global community.

Most surprisingly, most people who condemned similar act 4 years ago are now defending the act, because it was done by a government they support and those who justified the same acts 4 years ago are those condemning it today.

By this incidents, we have proven again that we are not genuinely against those things that are destroying this country. We would only be against it, if it is done by people we do not support.

The same thing we condemned yesterday, we would support today if it is done by those we like and support.

This is a perfect double standard scenario that leaves us with no position on impunity, and with such attitude, it is obvious that we are not in anyway ready for a better country.

The few people truly working for a better Nigeria will end up frustrated, unless they abandon the struggle all together or join the system and move on.

This realization truly hurts me and our love for impunity stinks.