JAMB questions

In the dusty lexicon of Nigerian street parlance, a JAMB question is not merely a difficult riddle. It is the kind of question that makes your brain perspire. It is the sort of query that would send a professor of thermodynamics back to primary school, the kind that only a rocket scientist with the cunning of a desert fox can unravel. But in the treacherous savannah of Nigerian politics, a JAMB question is something far more sinister. It is a question that, if asked, could get your house razed by midnight arsonists. It is a question that, if answered honestly, could see you disowned by your own village square. This is the cross that any Nigerian politician who is not riding the broom or shaking the hands of the ruling cabal must carry. If you are that lonely man or woman throwing your hat into the ring without the backbone of powerful allies—without access to the federal feeding bottle—then you must be prepared to face the JAMB questions. And like Mahatma Gandhi said, a leader is a candle that burns itself to light the way for others. The question is: are you ready to burn? Nigeria stands at a crossroads, and not the kind you see in an Arewa 24 melodrama. The world itself is reshaping its spine. The old empire is coughing blood. New alliances are forming in the dust of the Sahara and the boardrooms of Beijing. By geography, we straddle the belly of West Africa. By demography, we are a young, loud, hungry nation of nearly 230 million souls. By economy, we are the giant that refuses to wake. By political clout, we are the big brother everyone watches nervously. No country in Africa has as much raw potential as Nigeria. And no continent has as much future promise as Africa. Translation: the gods we have been begging for 66 years have finally answered. The stars have aligned. The very hand of nature has conspired to pull us out of Egypt—not just to the promised land, but to a throne among the pantheon of human legends. We prayed for a car, and God gave us a Rolls-Royce. But a Rolls-Royce, my people, is a demonic gas guzzler. It drinks fuel like a dying man drinks water. We wanted the best car. We got it. Now the question is: who will pay for the premium fuel? And what is the price? The price is martyrs. That is the first JAMB question. For 66 years, we have failed to produce a single Nigerian martyr for Nigeria. The first generation of our leaders—the Ahmadu Bellos, the Nnamdi Azikiwes, the Obafemi Awolowos, the Tafawa Balewas—they were good men. Very good men. But let us not deceive ourselves. They were ethnic champions. They fought hard, yes. They bled, yes. But they bled for their tribes dressed in national costumes. They were brilliant ethnic nationalists, not Nigerian nationalists. There sacrifices were a good place for Nigeria to start, but we have to shift gears to have a chance at the future staring back at us. The second JAMB question, the real killer, is this: can a politician from any of our major tribes—Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba—armed with either a Bible or a Qur’an, stand up against the centripetal politics of religion and ethnicity and still survive? In Nigeria, you need your primary base as a springboard. Your kinsmen must lift you on their shoulders before you can speak to the nation. But if you tell your own people that their immediate interest—perhaps a subsidy that feeds their pockets, or a religious appointment that swells their pride—must be sacrificed for the collective interest of Nigeria, they will tear you down before the sun sets. Here is the unbearable truth: the collective interest of Nigeria is almost always against the immediate interest of Muslims, or Christians, or the North, or the South-East, or the South-South. A policy that stops the bleeding of the treasury will hurt the contractor who is your cousin. A law that opens up competition will kill the monopoly that feeds your church or mosque committee. The long-term gain is clear, but we are a myopic people. We are immature. We want the Rolls-Royce, but we refuse to buy the fuel. So how does a politician do it? How does an Igbo Christian governor tell Ndigbo that the next president should come from the North for the sake of national stability? How does a Hausa Muslim senator tell his emirate that subsidy removal is the only path to prosperity, even as bread prices fly to the moon? How does a Yoruba progressive tell his own elite that restructuring means they must surrender Lagos’ internally generated revenue to the centre? These, my ogas at the top, are JAMB questions. And it gets worse. The world is watching. Africa is rising, and Nigeria is the gatekeeper. If we fail to produce martyrs now—men and women willing to burn like candles, willing to lose elections, lose friends, lose their very lives—then the aligned stars will drift apart. The throne we see in the distance will go to another nation. Indonesia. Brazil. Even Rwanda, that tiny, disciplined phoenix. We will be left with our grand Rolls-Royce parked in a pothole-ridden driveway, its tyres stolen, its engine cold. With no petrol in its tank. The danger is not just in answering these questions. The danger is in asking them aloud. Because the moment you ask, “Why must the South produce the next president?” or “Why should Lagos not pay this levy?” or “Why must Christians accept this sharia-influenced policy?”—you have drawn a line in the sand. And on the other side of that line are the wolves of bigotry and jingoism, hungry for your flesh. But here is the final JAMB question, the one that should keep you awake in your Maiduguri or Nnewi room at 3 a.m.: if it cannot be done—if no politician can transcend his own blood and altar—then should we simply give up the glory? Should we return to Egypt? A big shame. A crying shame. We have the land. We have the oil. We have the youth. We have the diaspora. We have the intellect. What we lack is the candle. The one fool who is wise enough to burn. The one fox who is human enough to care. Until that martyr rises, Nigeria will remain a JAMB question without an answer sheet. And the invigilator—history—is already pacing, looking at his wristwatch. Time is running out. JAMB is almost over