As we are still living with the national paranoid delusions in its facets, we must always remind ourselves of possible words and actions of insights and maybe we can jointly look at the whole issue with concerted and concentrated efforts again.
According to Renee Grinnell, a popular online psychologist and mental health resources person: “A paranoid delusion is the fixed, false belief that one is being harmed or persecuted by a particular person or group of people. Paranoid delusions are known technically as a “persecutory delusion.” It involves the person’s belief that he or she is being conspired against, cheated, spied on, followed, poisoned or drugged, maliciously maligned, harassed, or obstructed in the pursuit of long-term goals.
Small slights may be exaggerated and become the focus of a delusional system with a person suffers from a paranoid delusion. The focus of the delusion is often on some injustice that must be remedied by legal action. The affected person may engage in repeated attempts to obtain satisfaction by appeal to the courts and other government agencies.
Individuals with paranoid delusions are often resentful and angry, and may even resort to violence against those they believe are hurting them or a loved one. Paranoid delusions are most often diagnosed in the context of schizophrenia. But they can also occur in non-psychotic disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, or the use of certain medications or street drugs. Example: A man refuses to affix his signature to anything, even something so trivial as a birthday card, because he fears the government is watching him and will use the evidence to track him down.”
To this extent, I am compelled to also do my own further research into the happenings within the Nigerian state and come out with similar situation from another perspective thus: Most times, the gait of drift is slow and measured. At times, those who understand the geography of its movement can transform into prophets, with the power to predict the ultimate graph of its descent. But a drift is a drift, a slow slide from the grip of sanity, down through the contours, the abyss of insanity. One feature of it is progressive from one end to the other. It has a spatio-temporal identity and is unique for subverting the very essence of where it begins its onward journey. The drift is a regression. A drift, however, may not descend beyond a level where it could be tamed. For a perspective people, immediately its rolling stone transits from its point of sanity, it is gripped with all the might, held by the neck down and heaved off its destructive course. It thus ceases a geometric slide which it begins and is made to return to its original docility of sanity. If the rolling stone doesn’t benefit from this rein, it tumbles down the mash-messy path, wriggles itself down the ladder and ends up with a deafening staccato. No calamity wreaks as much havoc as the calamitous crash-land of a drift. Then a phenomenon of sorrow and tears follows its occurrence. Once its beyond control, the larger environment(society) is at risk.
Our Nigerian society offers a very poignant study of the geography of a drift. Unlike in other societies where, backed up by a very strong and formidable statistical culture, you could view a drift from its point of departure and everyone would be agreed that a downward gravitation is afoot, our society is a Janus-faced example. As situation slides down hill, and maggots outdo one another wriggling their waists inside the conundrum of rot, an accustomed life stuck in a rut; and so, it is legitimated by so big a crowd that you wonder what the matter is. The other crowd, thin I must confess, de-legitimates it, but its voices are shrouded and muffled. The drift nevertheless rolls on, making as much noise as it could, sometimes making none, but most times, warning its perspective audience of its calamitous gravitation. Nevertheless, the negative multiplier effect is unpredictable, resulting in great wreck and unwarranted loss and damage. It is then, and only then, that our society bemoans and groans aloud in sorrow, tears and blood. But we all failed to address the issue when it started rearing its ugly head. We all looked the other way.Now that we are all arrested, after running and running, we have nowhere to hide again. We have all forgotten that only diligence sets a fine example and standard. Negligence pays a greater price as much. We often than not waited until when the drift becomes like the greatest trouble of Pythagoras which was that “the square root of 2 is irrational and therefore, cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers!” And so we become helpless when the whole thing becomes hopeless. Our nation, as it is presently, is berthing on the pedestal of juxtaposing of surreal and reality. What tomorrow holds for us remains a mental puzzle. A national dilemma of sort. We need to fast-track on the urgent solutions to our national security challenge, drifting state ‘dirigisme’ and the rapidly waning social orderliness.
Ayi Kwei Armah, the famous Ghanaian writer, puts the drift in perspective. In his book: “Two Thousand Season”, Armah wrote: “The drift is like a spring water flowing desert ward and such a spring water should know that its future is extinction.The desert never knows how to give, it takes; sucking life out of an otherwise life-filled spring water.” That’s the truth about the kinds of socioeconomic and political drift that we are challenged with today in our nation. The backward kind of drift – the retrogressive sort of.
Now, if we should view and analyse the socioeconomic and political problems confronting us as a nation, one will not be far away from the potency of my submission above: that our country is soaked in a dilemma. Are we to start from the Boko Haram onslaughts on the nation, so rampant in the North East and North West and now resorted to Declaration of a State of Emergency in three States of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa? What about the Fulani invasion of their host communities in the Mid- Belt and some northern parts of the South West? What about the kidnapping in the South East especially, and also in some parts of South South and South West? Can we forget the bombings of oil installations by militants and other sets of criminal conspirators and their cohorts going on in the South South region of our nation?
Where do we go from here? Who will bail out the nation as we are heading towards another General Elections in the country come 2015? Without being tagged a prophet of doom, I foresee another round of political assassinations and silent elimination of political opponents. For instance, in Year 2013, the Taraba State House Speaker die, and a week later, the bad news in the media as at this morning was that his Deputy also escape assassination attempt yesterday. Who and what killed the House Speaker a week earlier remain unknown and the new attempt defies all known solutions. In Year 2014 alone, Boko Haram has slaughtered more than 400 innocent souls including school students, poor villagers and of course, some of our military men defending our nation. Another Paranoid Delusion, so to say! What do we do to resolve the dilemmas facing our dear nation? My guess is as good as yours…
The first American President, George Carver Washington, once quipped, “Every political culture is the underlining reflection
of the people’s wishes and expressions. However, conscious efforts must be taken to note that political parties are like fire – which if enough vigilance is not taken, instead of warming will consume our nation!” Shall we then conclude that our political party system of “Winner Takes All” is the cause? But I strongly believe that our national political problem emanates from our choice of wrong type of leaders. For instance, if a sheep is to lead a thousand lions and a lion leading a thousand sheep; without any forensic and discerning mental exercise, it is glaring that the team where a lion leads a thousand sheep will better become more powerful and result-oriented than the other team where a sheep is leading a thousand lions. Nigeria, as its presently constituted, belongs to the team being led by a sheep. That is the Nigerian sociopolitical analogy.
– Segun Fadipe
