It used to be that, like all normal human beings, ordinary Nigerians chafed at policies that choked and squeezed the life out of them, and leaders feared for and strategised over the anticipated forceful pushback of citizens in response to anti-people policies. That dynamic has died in the last eight years.
Sadomasochism, that is, pleasure in inflicting pain on others and oneself, is the new cool currency in Nigeria. Leaders are unashamed sadists (i.e., people who derive contentment from seeing others writhe in pain), and the followers are unthinking, self-immolating masochists (i.e., they obtain joy from the suffering inflicted on them by leaders, which is encapsulated in the current sterile canard that “it gets worse before it gets better,” which I’ve heard government officials utter in defence of boneheaded policies since the 1980s).
There is nowhere in the world where the destructive forces of sadism and masochism reinforce each and stroke each other’s passions with as…
