Heros from hell

‘There are times when one would want to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.’ – Mark Twain Times like this are inherently stressing and dejecting. One hardly know where to start! Is it from the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ whose expertise is better at killing than protecting? A Security Agency that rushed to court to say that it ceased the Passport of a ‘Boko Haram Sponsor’ but has no criminal prosecution of the accused pending in court? Boko Haram whose thirst for blood remains insatiable? The booming seasons of Kidnappers and Robbers? The President who heaps blame of insecurity on Governors? The Governors who say the President has no capacity to square up to challenges of governance? The rapid move and increase, from scores of dead per day to hundreds of dead per day? The World Bank’s Report on extreme poverty in Nigeria? Acute agitation and rationalization in government circle? The baby factory at Abeokuta? The Soka House of Horror in Ibadan? The habitual corruption and impunity that have destroyed every strategy for a future in Nigeria? Anxiety in the South and war in the North? Indeed, we on the eleventh mile of a dozen length monotonous journey! The oscillating wildness of these phenomena; the resistance to citizens’ efforts to make governments at all levels accept that there are problems; the feeble pressure, if any, to make rulers assume responsibilities without excuses and discharge duties without complaints are the real danger. The startling sense of tragic changes going on in Nigeria can not shock some of us. The new definitions of honesty, decency, duty, responsibility and leadership are mere reflections of the sweeping cloud into which values have receded. One of the saddest commentaries I have read in my life was the one by the BBC. It was tagged ‘How a thief almost became the Nigerian President.’ It was on a former Nigerian State Governor. Stole in Nigeria, jailed in London!. It was run after the former Governor was convicted of stealing and money laundering in the UK. It was a story with history of the former Governor’s pathological addiction to stealing, even before he achieved political prominence in Nigeria. the former Governor is in prison in the UK. Those worse than him are here with us. Thieves already in power or about to ascend. Ex–convicts and rogue Governors on their way to the Senate, a supposedly hallowed chamber, that is ghastly becoming an asylum for Governors who spent eight years looting their various states. Naked but not ashamed criminals who have done everything to circumvent and sabotage the various criminal charges hanging on their necks. I am sure if the London convicted former Governor had remained in Nigeria till today, if he does not become the President, he stands a good chance of becoming the Central Bank Governor. Since, the President does not agree that corruption is a severe problem in Nigeria, I suggest that he sends another convicted but pardoned ex- Governor, who is close to him to the UK as Nigeria’s High Commissioner. Then, I will believe him that corruption is not our problem, even though, I am sure U.K has a dictionary good enough to understand who a thief and corrupt persons are! Nothing short of good leadership driven governance can deliver this country from these arrays of problems and confusion the nation has been thrown into. Would that type of leadership spring up from self centered politicians whose horizon of drives start and end with themselves? Politician whose motivation for the acquisition of power is propelled by sheer avarice and reckless hedonism. With their decisional implosions, defection and infection, utterances and conduct, intolerance and greed, a dangerous mine is already laid for the emancipation of the people. In spite of their glaring selfishness and characteristically incompetence, people continue to surrender and submit themselves to their manipulative tactics. Their tools, often ethnic and religious politics, continue to hoodwink the people. Nigerians allow themselves to be used and abused by politicians who do not even know nor serve God, so long they appeal to sectarian sentiments. Of what use is a Paul who will run a policy that will make Peter, a fellow Christian too poor to send his children to school? What is the value of a Jubril that will not provide protection for a poor Kareem, a fellow Moslem? These actors that woodchuck people with religion do not even know God. Their belly is their god. Any Nigerian who succumbs to the lies of religion is gullible and indolent. Having Matthew, Joseph and Jonathan as names does not automatically make you a Christian; just as bearing Yusuf or Aminat does not mean you have the spirit of Islam. Nigeria needs leaders; leaders who will not steal their money, leaders who will make governments work for the people, leaders who will live above board; not rogues in Moslem’s or Christian’s garment. Not leaders who call and use the name of GOD in vain. So, the real threat to Nigeria’s emancipation are the godless actors who will do anything to grab power and the gullible and ignorant people, to whom religion has become an ‘opium’ according to Karl Marx. I am worried that we might not solve our problems the way we are going; unleashing sentiments, blackmails and falsehood! These are the astonishing arrays of our tragedies as a nation. After several years, as I once wrote ‘we have failed to outgrow the theory of our history. We have failed to emancipate onto the practice - space of common humanity. We are even waxing worse in this journey of infamy. Our rulers don’t give a damn that the divisions are getting frighteningly wider. The local clans and ethnic groups have taken away rationality from our thoughts.’ Every thought and action must pass through an ethnic and religious barometer. Political inclination has created its own quasi-thermometer to measure patriotism and loyalty. Interpretations of laws and values have assumed ethnic, religious and regional dimensions. Our rulers are running with these tricks and their demons keep on tormenting Nigerians. We are thoughtlessly running along, ignoring the real issues and losing the sight of solutions to our numerous maladies. Recently, at the venue of the Launch of the 'Soft Approach' to Counter Terrorism’ by the office of the National Security Adviser, I openly and categorically told the gathering in my response to the strategy, that the previous and the contemplated strategies focus too heavily on the perpetrators of crime and terrorism without a corresponding attention on those that create the fertile environment for terrorism. I emphatically declared that Nigeria might as well kiss peace goodbye if government and its strategy do not squarely and courageously address the twin- issues of Unjust Wealth and Unjust Poverty in our country. Unjust Wealth is the wealth corruptively acquired or undeservedly handed over to those who neither labour for it nor legitimately earned it. It will be idle to assume that the deprived, victims and sufferers of poor leadership, relentless oppression, deprivation, corruption and impunity will remain docile forever. Corruption has re- configured our identities just as impunity has redefined ethics and values in our society. Make no mistake; there is no downturn in the Nigerian economy. An economy that continues unabatedly to produce a few stage managed billionaires at the expense of an obnoxiously poor majority is an anarchy prone economy. One day, Nigerians will discover that many of them are enslaved not because they are poor. They are poor because they are enslaved. The recent response by the Minister of Finance and the ‘Coordinating Minister for the Economy’ to the rating of Nigeria by the World Bank as one of the few countries hosting the greatest number of the poorest people in the World is an allusion to the slave camp the poor are in. The Minister, in an attempt to explain the rating said, ‘that the main fact that many of the poorest people in the World are Nigerians does not mean that the country is poor.’ What manner of economy is the Minister coordinating if it is not about the people? An economy of a rich nation but poor people? With such an economic policy mind set, we can contextually understand the theory behind the neurotic violence that has made terror, kidnap, robbery, rustling, thuggery and other vices the tremors of our polity. All these vices, though they impact the poor most, especially the poorest among them; they are neither the creator nor the inventor! Their ‘Heroes’ created them! When Benjamin Franklin warned that ‘those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ He had the oppressed poor people of Nigeria in mind. He knew that there are people standing between them and their victory. They are their over celebrated ‘heroes!.’ ‘Heroes’ of Hell!