By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

DO we have a country? It may sound trite, but the answers to the question may be the key to who we are, and where we are. Any answers?

We have a President. Is that not very important? Is that importance not why we start dedicating all resources to elections? By 2024, professionals in the business of politics were already discussing 2027, 2031, and 2035 is getting into the radar. We are all about politics.

Our national focus is on the next election. National development plans, if we chance on them, are skewed and twisted with projects diligently driven to nothingness.

Think about it. Give it some time.

What makes us a people? If we are no longer "one nation bound by freedom, peace and unity", what are we?

Do equity, justice, fairness still matter in how Nigeria deals with Nigerians?

Why are Nigerians increasingly becoming "indigenes" of their State of origin than "citizens" of Nigeria?

Who are citizens of Nigeria? Are there benefits, responsibilities, obligations that are attached to being a Nigerian? Are resources distributed in line with us being Nigerians?

In what ways is Nigeria working for some Nigerians or all Nigerians?

Who care about Nigerians, and the future of our nation? Why should they care?

Nigeria is receding with unprecedented speed. The leadership is aloof, casual, inattentive, indifferent, cold, lethargic, apathetic - except when boasting about its invisible achievements summed up in its pathetic understanding of leadership.

We have suffered. What we are currently going through is different. The President is proud to be the purveyor of that difference that is steeped in indifference.

Our people are buffeted by anger, hunger, diseases, divisiveness, insecurity, and consequences of the arrogant waste of resources we borrow. The resulting poverty does not discriminate between regions and religions.

Nigerians have become so divided that we dwell on debating irrelevances - who started Nollywood, who pronounces words better, who cooks better, who will never be President, who has stolen more. We are all like characters in Nkem Nwankwo's 1975 satirical novel, My Mercedes Is Bigger Than Yours, which explores corruption, materialism, and societal issues as themes.

We thoughtless threw our country away in 2015. We dashed it to those who see us as less than nothing. We were driven into a dim close by leaders who toy with lives.

Nigerians do not need a peripatetic President who even when at home behaves worse than Nero the famed Roman Emperor who had more concerns for his violin than a burning Rome.

Our first duty is to recover our burning country. The anger is submarined.

Finally . . .

PRIME Minister KP Sharma Oli of Nepal on Sunday, 6 September 2025, mocked youth protesters, on their planned agitation in the capital, Kathmandu, against corruption and nepotism. Less than 48 hours after, Oli had become former Prime Minister, parts of Kathmandu, including parliament building, and government offices had been burnt. Government officials were resigning, fleeing the country, some badly brutalised. Nepalis were expressing their anger over hardship, unemployment, lifestyle of families of serving and former government officials and a ban on social platforms that did not register and submit to government vetting of their contents. The social media ban has been lifted. Hundreds were enjoyed in the protests and at least 31 people died. Any lessons for Nigerian leaders? None. We had #EndSARS in 2021. Younger people protested, 56 died from security agencies' excessive use of force. Police brutality which was the focus of the #EndSARS protests is worse, by far today, than four years ago.

GOVERNOR Charles Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State has centred his re-election bid on low points. He has said nothing about his government's environmental enforcement agents whose crass crudity and extreme cruelty have resulted in deaths, the most recent being last week in Onitsha. Escalating insecurity in Anambra is less important to Soludo than "fake" certificates. Soludo should report the matter to the Independent National Electoral Commission, and file a suit. Lying under oath is a criminal offence. In the 2019 Bayelsa governorship election, the All Progressives Congress won the election, but the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party candidate because APC deputy governorship candidate had inconsistencies in his certificates.

FLOODS are ravaging many parts of the country. There could be more. The proposed five buffer dams to manage Rivers Benue and Niger that over-flow when excess water from Cameroun's Ladgo Dam is released, remain proposals 43 years after the Ladgo Dam was completed.

MILLIONS of out-of-school children are still statistics useful for conference papers and do not bother governments with neither care or concern about the present or future. Nigeria's 18.3m out-of-school children is the highest in the world. If those 18.3m children had their own country, it would be the 26th most populous of Africa's 54 countries ahead of Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Rwanda, among others.

KEBBI State Governor Dr Nasir Idris on Thursday suspended the State's Commissioner for Health Yunusa Isma’il, according to a statement by the Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Yakubu Bala Tafida. "The Executive Governor has instructed the suspended Commissioner for Health to justify why further sanctions should not be applied, having disregarded the mandate entrusted to him,” the statement added.

Hassan Mai-Waya Kangiwa, a journalist, was detained after posting a video showing the poor conditions at Kangiwa General Hospital. The damaging footage that was widely-circulated on social media, depicted patients lying on bare metal beds without mattresses. Public outrage dripped through the comments.

“In this hospital, there are many things wrong and very frustrating. They claim to be providing healthcare services, yet the reality tells a different story. Imagine an elderly man lying on a sickbed with no mattress, no bedsheet, and no pillow - just the bare iron frame. It is deeply upsetting and unacceptable,” a narrator in the video said.

SPEAKER of the House of Representatives Alhaji Tajudeen Idris raised alarms, at the opening of the 11th West African Association of Public Accounts Committees, WAAPAC, conference in Abuja, over President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s borrowings. "Major borrowing proposals should be subject to public hearings, and simplified debt reports must be made available to the general public," he said of Nigeria's foreign debts that have hit 54 per cent of GDP. The recommended threshold is 35-40 per cent of GDP. Alhaji Idris' hypocrisy is pitiful. As Speaker of the House, did he not know about the loans?

DEPARTMENT of State Services, DSS, is dabbling into weightless issues while bandits and terrorists keep the land unsafe. Why should DSS be the complainant against Omoyele Sowore in a matter between him and the President? Is this matter more important to DSS than the Attorney-General of the Federation? DSS is also claiming credit for negotiations that ended a strike in the oil sector. DSS is the new Federal Ministry of Labour. The most important tip to follow is perhaps the President's happiness. He is too busy working and vacationing to bother about minor issues.

COUNTDOWN to the President's return should commence. With discounts for day of arrival and departure, a public holiday, and weekends, the President could be back on 19 September; a weekend follows. Days after, the President would address the United Nations in New York. Should he not just wing over from Paris to New York instead of Paris-Abuja-New York?

THOSE opposed to Mrs. Remi Tinubu, the President's wife, raising funds for the completion of the abandoned National Library headquarters in Abuja, should down their arms. The project, a proper reflection of our poor regard for knowledge, has been at the same stage of incompletion for more than 20 years. The move to complete the library should be welcome even if it comes with the provision that the facility would be named after the First Lady thus - Her Excellency, First Lady of Nigeria, Very Distinguished Triple Sen Oluremi Tinubu (CON) National Library of Nigeria.

•Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues.