The Nigerian civil society has been through a traumatic experience in the last four years. Already shocked and outraged by the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the civil society has been further manipulated and humiliated by the successors of the Babangida regime whose nightmarish transition to civil rule was ab initio programmed to fail. Four years after General Abacha and his team emerged - as they claim - to save Nigeria from disintegration, the nation still teeters on the edge of a precipice, but the voices of dissent in the civil society have been effectively neutralised, the opposition  has been rendered largely impotent, and the entire population now lies prostrate. Four years after taking over the reins of power, the Abacha regime has come full circle. The operators should be given full credit for overcoming so masterfully with the use of brute force, the initial crisis of credibility and legitimacy that dogged them at home, and the demonstration of an uncompromising diplomatic bravado in the international community. The regime now appears to occupy such high moral latitudes that many people today do not seem to see anything wrong with General Abacha handing over power to himself, come October 1998, for as they say, he has done so well in the last four years. Some even say that he is the best thing to have happened to Nigeria.

What in 1995 some critics called the "area boy diplomacy" of this regime has paid off in large measure. Though the economy remains comatose as a result of continued mismanagement of the enormous human and material resources of the land, and also due to the impact of the limited sanctions imposed by some Western Governments and Non-Governmental Agencies, and the loss of necessary foreign investment because of the unconducive socio-political environment, the Abacha regime has succeeded in gaining a manner of acceptability both at home and abroad. The huge financial resources invested on propaganda within and outside Nigeria appears to have yielded more dividend than the patrons ever expected. For example, led by France, the European Union seems to have abandoned its earlier tough posturing on democracy in Nigeria. During their last meeting in Edinburgh, members of the Commonwealth of Nations began to double-speak on the case of Nigeria. As for the rating of the regime within the Organisation of African Unity and the Economic Community of West Africa, one can say that this is a most glorious moment for the Nigerian military dictatorship.

Yet we know that all has not been well in the land. Since 1993 Nigerians have not known peace, unless of course the peace of the graveyard. Our land has been constituted into one big prison yard where no one is free, those chained inside the cells as well as those who think they are outside. When judged by contemporary standards of human dignity, nobility, civility, or when evaluated in terms of the rights and freedoms celebrated by modern societies, today's Nigerians could be described as a people held hostage in their own homeland by an occupation force. The entire civil society has been thoroughly militarized. Gun totting security operatives in full combat uniform are all over the place, ensuring that the conquered citizens are adequately intimidated and mesmerized. They erect check points and mount road blocks at every point on our highways, and they often point their loaded guns menacingly at on-coming vehicles, thus treating all road users like vicious beasts that need to be hunted and hounded down. They do this daily with hellish bravado. Siren blarring security vehicles carrying gun-totting uniformed men could be seen daily buldozing their way through the traffic jam in our major towns and cities, in war-time combat fashion, and no one dares raise an eye brow.

The regime has effectively utilized the instruments of state coercion to ensure the success of its totalitarian agenda. It has played on the primitive instincts of the people for greed and avarice. It has also capitalised on the mutual distrust, tension and antipathy among the disparage ethnic groups in the land. Thus the force has put to very profitable use the proverbial "divide and rule" dynamic, upon which every form of dictatorship through the ages has been built and sustained. The result is that over the last four years, while the regime and its noisy apologists have become more stable and comfortable, the rest of the elite class have become more disintegrated and disillusioned and the impoverished masses on their part have been literally pushed to the edge of despair. They watch in utter helplessness as their autochthonous conquerors progressively penetrate and neutralise the various elements of the civil society that should otherwise guarantee some checks and balances - the judiciary, the academia, the labour unions, the public media and the revered institution of traditional rulers.

Today concerted efforts are even being made to neutralise and render prostrate the prophetic voices in the various religious bodies. If given the chance, our rulers would vet the sermons of bishops and priests before they preach to their congregations, since in the last few years, some of those sermons have tended to contain "subversive" materials capable of unsettling the patriotic and peace-loving citizens who would rather pay daily solidarity visits to, and stage rallies in support of their messianic leaders. Indeed recent events in the country indicate that there are elements within the regime who believe that there are too many dissident and unpatriotic elements in the leadership of the Nigerian Church, who irresponsibly utilize the pulpit for subversive activities. In the bid to exercise total control over the mind of Nigerians they may want to establish their own seminaries and theological colleges to train patriotic and peace-loving priests and pastors who would heed the call of Jesus to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's by faithfully leading the people in prayer for the country and its leaders, rather than dabbling into politics and challenging the status quo.

For these people, religion is useful only as long as it serves as the opium of the people. Any attempt therefore to interpret the tenets of religion and utilize them as an instrument for social transformation is an abuse that must be promptly corrected.

They have been years eaten by the locust, these last four years, for while the professional praise singers and shameless sycophants are often smiling to the banks and daily celebrating their loot in the display of ill-gotten wealth and the flaunting of chieftaincy titles and numerous merit awards, the victims have been the long-suffering Nigerian masses who have been insulted, used and abused for the umpteenth time. Some of our experts say that because of the wonderful policies put in place by the present administration, spiralling inflation has been checked, and that the economy is actually doing well. But the practical indications in the market place and in the life of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians tell a different story. Many industries and business ventures have had to fold up or at least scale down on staff strength in line with the low level of production occasioned by the widespread distress in the economic sector.

Thousands of honest professionals, including heads of families have lost their source of livelihood. Young graduates with fantastic qualifications roam the streets of our country with no hope of ever securing employment under the present dispensation.  Many young people have dropped out of school, while those who remain in school are often pursuing their studies under the most awkward circumstances of academic and socio-economic deprivation. We see thousands of school age and pre-school age children daily on our highways, struggling to stay alive by hawking sundry wares. Those at the very bottom of the social ladder can often be seen scavenging for food. They compete with vultures and rodents in rummaging for sour food and rotten fruits in the mountains of neglected garbage heaps that line up our towns and cities. Many of our country men and women die everyday of malnutrition and such ailments as malaria, pneumonia and typhoid fever. True, poverty in our land, in terms of depth and breadth, has in the last few years assumed the moral equivalence of war. From north to south, and from east to west, what we find scattered all over the landscape are images of war. And this is in large measure a fall-out of the political impasse. The youths have almost lost the sense of a homeland, and in frustration and desperation they take to crime, drugs, and violent cult activities.

The last four years have been for most Nigerians years eaten by the locust. The generality of Nigerians seem to have been plagued by collective amnesia and corporate myopia. They seem to be living in the here and now, forgetting the historical antecedents of today's political drama, and lacking any clear vision as to where we are heading for. For thinking Nigerians the years have been truly turbulent times. Those who champion the cause of justice, who raise a voice of dissent at the triumph of mediocrity, and those who raise an alarm at the institutionalization of violence, are regularly intimidated, harassed and coerced into submission or beaten to a retreat. Mere survival has become an uphill task for the remnant few who wish to live by the principles truth, justice, civility and human dignity. In an environment of rampant sycophancy that has been orchestrated to an extent that tantamount to idolatry, those who believe in the pursuit of lasting values and principles are like aliens with no resident permit. Indeed what place has the man or woman of principles in a land of duplicity, where compromise is king? What chances of survival have saints and scholars at a time when corruption is clothed in purple and adorned with gold? How does the dreamer dream his or her dreams in the midst of a generation that is plagued by collective amnesia and corporate myopia?

The distress of the moment perhaps has done greater damage to the Nigerian psyche than many realise. One can readily see the economic, political and social dimensions of our nation's distress, but the negative transformation of the Nigerian psyche in the last few years has been subliminal and silent, but nevertheless progressive and phenomenal. The unwholesome psyche manifests itself in the widespread apathy, helplessness, and hopelessness which we witness today. Apparently overcome by mental exhaustion or fatigue, many Nigerians are too weak to keep their dreams, too hungry to hold on to their principles, and too blind to see beyond the madness of the moment. So they adjust their lives to the prevalent injustice, they join the bandwagon that make falsehood a way of life, they lend their voices to the chorus of confusion, they contribute their talents towards oiling the machinery of misinformation, they enlist in the ever increasing army of sycophants and boot-lickers, they embrace the culture of death and subscribe to all forms of violence, both conventional and novel. The result of all these on the national landscape is the glorification of mediocrity, the institutionalisation of corruption, the banishment of truth, honesty, fairness and hard work, and the progressive degeneration or decay of the moral fibre of society.

Today in the Nigerian civil society, there is an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness even among the most highly placed Nigerians, save for the few in government. From retired generals of the armed forces to politicians and diplomats of international repute, from top class business executives to world acclaimed intellectuals, and from revered religious prelates to jurists with impeccable credentials, there is an all-pervading sense of defeat. That is why after another four years of transition, and less than a year to the 1998 presidential elections and what is supposed to be the full installation of participatory democracy, no Nigerian politician of repute has indicated any intention to contest the presidential election, believing as people allege that the presidency is not vacant, and that declaring one's ambition for the presidency under these circumstances is a suicidal bid. The general feeling seems to be that as a people we have been conquered, and we have reached the stage where only God can save Nigeria.

The events of the last four years have brought to the fore certain embarrassing truths about the Nigerian civil society, and particularly the Nigerian political class. What we have come to discover to our discomfiture is that the attention span of the generality of Nigerians is very short indeed. It now seems clear that we as a people are not yet capable of sustaining a struggle for any length of time before we get exhausted, discouraged or frustrated. Also the civil society in Nigeria does not seem to have any powerful individuals of national recognition with the required charism, sense of sacrifice and sense of mission and purpose that will be capable of taking the people through the lean years of oppression and persecution, towards eventual liberation. One wonders in fact if compromise, cowardice, duplicity and double-speak are not the common denominator among the Nigerian political or civil elite. Are there any fundamental values, principles and ideologies that serve as the theoretical framework and the driving force for the struggle for freedom in Nigeria?

The last four years seem to have exposed much more than any other time in the Nigerian political history the immaturity, the lack of commitment, and the absence of courage of the political class who are hardly able to stand up for anything. Also the last four years have revealed the lie in our claim to having one nation with one destiny. The truth that confronts us today is that ours is a corporate entity with a most fragile and tenuous bond of unity. The present military administration and their civilian collaborators know these truths only too well, and they have made much capital out of them. Perhaps they are right after all, those who have made up their minds to "sit don look", believing that "only God can save Nigeria. But the question is: will he save Nigeria without Nigerians?