On the Senator's Wall

Based on each and every of your recent posts here, one would be forgiven to believe that you have been and remain a "Business Person" as it clearly indicates on your profile. But that has not been the case for the better part of the last year and this one. You have been, in that time, an honourable member of what is the Presidential system of Government in Nigeria with three distinct but complementary arms namely the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, each acting as a check on the other two. 

So, if you think these views of yours reflects badly on one arm because by happenstance you are in the opposition and so, as commonsense will have it, you are inculpable with no qualms about responsibility for bringing about a difference in the lives of Nigerians, it is to be then believed that some sense is lacking about what roles members of the Assembly play in the making or breaking of a country as ours. 

If someone who belongs to the body charged with the responsibility of appropriating money for spending in a country and with the job of making laws that govern the nation (even laws that the President must adhere to) spends all his waking hours pointing fingers at everyone else but the person in the mirror, questions need to be asked about psychological balance and mental maturity somewhere. 

When an elected individual representing a federal constituency invested with the power to call for the impeachment and trial of federal officials accused of wrongdoing prefers the comfort of social media to the courage to walk the talk by making that call in the Red Chambers if truly those accused on this wall are liable, question marks of intent and objective should hang in the air around such an individual. 

In sum, the fact remains in these words: no one else out there from whom you seek shared posts, likes and comments has as much power as you do to make things different. In you is the constitutionally vested power to change the status quo. Your commonsense revolution will go into overdrive if you can match your infomercial antics on TV with some achieved legislation you personally pursue to make into laws that touch the lives of the average Joe on the streets. You will realise that you will no longer need to introduce yourself. The Nigerians you've touched with good laws will do that on your behalf. 

And should anyone contravene said laws, you will again find that you have the power to bring them to justice. Even if that person is the President himself. Impeach him. Since we are into ads, I'd leave you with this line from Peak Milk, "It's in you."

One More Apology In A Season Of Anomie

I want to write an apology. With a twist. It will not be on my behalf.

Rather, it will be on behalf of whoever it is that should have been tasked with the responsibility to apologise to those who felt the need to be Defenders of the 16-Year-Rule. For ease of use, let us apply D16YR to the collective as an abbreviation.

It may be justified to clarify the need for this apology. And worth it to do so as well.

The cabal, in the purest form of that term, largely responsible for the period under review recently put forward two salient issues. One was an "unreserved apology" for mistakes it made during the period. Finger-pointing of witch-hunting was the other.

(I'd go as far as saying that by persisting in pointing fingers at the others as being causative of some or most of your problems is indicative of an obdurate insistence in not internalising the outward confession of guilt and ipso facto renders the desired absolution anaemic. But I digress).

Yes. Back to subject of apology.

It shouldn't be hastily concluded that the dramatis personae, who accepted that some form of acceptance of culpability was necessary, are admitting they are directly or indirectly responsible for the decrepit malfeasance that has taken this government so much time to get its acts together. HOW ON EARTH!!!!!!

Any such admission will reverse the ditzy ebbtide of blame-throwing for which their ebullient spokesman has become accustomed. Far be it from them that they allow that happenstance be.

Therefore, the apology wasn't to claim ownership of steering the Nigerian ship well-nigh the Rubicon. Lai lai. Rather, it was to assuage the bruised egos of aggrieved party members. It may have come to the cabal's notice that some of the latter, feeling hard done and dealt with an unfair hand, may have craftily engineered a counter campaign that led to the unprecedented triumph of the opposition.

As results are being overturned across the country, this motley assortment of strange bedfellows, united only by a resolve to consolidate on their distasteful and corruptly-enriched nests, have been jolted to action. In their meticulous stratagem, the initial port of call is an apology. It is, for all intents and purposes, brilliant.

But, honest? I'd not be as generous to inveigh that it is. It stops short. There are those who hold a standard for honest apology. It goes through all the acts of being sorry and exhibiting resolve to desist likewise in future. That isn't what this is about. This concerns accepting the consequences of your errors.

Merely apologising doesn't cut it.

That brings me back to the earlier point of my digression. There were deeply grievous ills to the nation state as a result of the mistakes the cabal is apologising for. The damage to the country's status within and outside the continent is immeasurable. The pile of filth runs through every fibre of governance, public and private. There were monies drained from the Commonwealth that may never be recovered. The economy haemorrhaged. And the worst? People died. They are still dying.

During all these we were sold the dummy of ratings. World class economists were at the helm so what could go wrong? The obscene morassy foulness was buried under a sheen of a resplendent agenda while peanuts were unevenly redistributed to keep a hungry but characteristically otiose army of Defenders at work.

And now, what? A bodacious attempt at salvation with a piteous attempt at apology. And a whining about not having to pay for recognisable mistakes.

Short of going into how one was accused of expressions of hate when pointing out a fraction of the mistakes being owned now by the cabal, it is enough of the frontispiece to clearly place the backdrop in stark relief - why I think as a result of all these, there is one more apology to write.

The apology-penners must of needs apologise to the Defenders of the 16 Year-Rule. These were Nigerians who were adamantly beholden to the defense of the misdeeds of that bloc even to their besotted detriment. By night and day, they stood resolute, defiantly at war, vocally and otherwise, with any informed or ignorant critic of the period under review. They stoutly argued that given our circumstances, we were having the best time of our lives. For them, the mistake of today was the best president the country could ask for. And it was the height of stupidity to think otherwise.

Why, now, is it thought that this admirable patriotic soldiers aren't worthy of an apology? With the unquantifiable efforts they invested in maintaining the illusion of good governance? That is ungodly. In its mildest terms, it is inhumanely ingratiating to not express some or any sort of apologia to them that clearly states the cabal's regret at the wild geese pursuit of the D16YR.

It is for the sake of this gross oversight that I have taken it upon myself to say these heartfelt words. It is no mean feat to bring myself to this but I think it behooves on responsible citizens to do responsible acts. I don't take those previous attacks on my person, by those to whom I tender this apology, to heart. You were doing what you considered best at the time with the information available to you. And don't think you don't deserve this apology, please. Don't belittle yourself. You, a D16YR, deserve more.

I AM SORRY. For you.

Urgency Required

At first, guerrilla tactics of moving in and tearing places apart with bombs and moving out was the modus operandi. Then, they got emboldened enough to begin to take territories. They became a ground force. It changed to moving in convoys to attack, among other places, armed forces garrisons for weapons and big towns for supplies. They also took women and children for support staff.

When the then government got serious enough to do in six weeks what it shied from doing in six years, it decimated their numbers while taking back those territories which made them  a ground force. Pushed back and with little of the bravado to operate in the open and in convoys, they have returned to the hit and run antics of guerrilla warfare.

This unconventional fare cannot be defeated by conventional tact without the backing of matching military intelligence and strategy. The old hands that have been pussyfooting while thousands of innocent and helpless Nigerians have met their untimely deaths and violent loss of body parts must be made to face the music of their recalcitrance. A more hands-on category of military eggheads with the capacity for intelligence and strategy and collaborating with the MNJTF must begin to bring an end to this insurgency with urgency.

It is nothing more than is expected of this new dispensation. The attacks are becoming too much to stomach. Their daredevilry must be checkmated by the militaristic professionalism that our men in uniform are popular for.

Enough is enough.

Nigeria: Living in Denial

If you haven't decided to turn a blind eye to events(both remote and current) that question our continued existence as one country so that it doesn't give you hypertension, then at one point or another you may have been tempted to ask yourself, or ask one of your interlocutors a question something like this:

How did we get here?

Errmm, allow me to give you some (not even close to being exhaustive) of the answers to that - which I have couched under a blanket of deniability.

We got here in denial; denial of how divided we are pretending to be united, denial of how desperately necessary it is to look beyond tribal links, ethnic patronages and religious persuasions to choose charismatic leaders with the intellectual wherewithal and sterling qualities to bring about progress, denial of how bankrupt our moral and ethical cleavages have become, denial of what constitutes corruption and how it differs from stealing, denial of the fact that oil remains the oxygen of our economy and no (mis)calculated rebasing can change that, denial of the knowledge that whenever we've adopted (nay, copied and pasted) economic policies of the Bretton Woods Institutes without the prerequisite conditions necessary for them to apply smoothly here, we have failed miserably, denial that Okonjo-Iweala's pedigree may (underline "MAY") be adequate for a more robust economy rather than one at its nosediving watershed like ours, denial of the damage done to our collective psyche by the Prosperity Gospel preachers who junket the world in the comfort of their private jets leaving their faithful yet poverty-stricken worshippers to the fate of the cockroach in a meeting of chickens, denial of the dumbing of our intellect and burying of our reason by the modern day faith-only, God-of-prosperity indoctrination that will not allow us question our loss of rights and privileges, denial that summarily, government will gladly sacrifice the rest of us on the altars of their convenience and their luxurious excesses.

We are cannon fodder. It isn't pretty, but neither is the truth. Just as it remains factual that you cannot help someone in perpetual denial.

The Religious Opiate

The jingoism of religious worship today plays a terribly effectual role in the lackadaisical sentiment of the common Nigerian, who'd rather build a hole in the wall and relive his wailing there when pushed to the extreme than raise a finger to fight back. Our brothers and sisters are perpetually misled right from the duplicity of the titles for which the several conventions and crusades and vigils are convoked or publicised to the interpretation of the holy texts from whence they are re-indoctrinated.

They flock to these like bees to a comb. And why shouldn't they? It's the opium they need to numb the pain of their inured oppression and to evoke in them a high that temporarily relegates their worries to the shadows making them sated in the orgies of hallelujahs and amens. That'll do, until it's effects peter out, their issues crawl out of those shadows like ants from a disturbed woodwork and they need another infusion.

The cycle is self-sustaining. Your shouting yourself hoarse can't penetrate the spiritual coating nor the biblical defences erected by the preachments delivered to them ahead of time in expectations of your gratuitous assistance. It then reaches the point where you are called the name your intervention in their spirituality deserves. You are the devil.

If you don't give up then, you deserves what happens next to you as well.

Shameless Politicking and Mortgaged Tomorrows

The folklore of the "Brown Envelop" as a means of making possible what may be illegal, unjust or downright untenable under the law is well documented in the annals of Nigeria's history - at least from the maradonic days of the evil genius. The colour was not arbitrary nor was it accidental. It was a deliberate attempt at camouflaging its contents from the casual observer, as though it reduced the magnitude of the offence when it went unidentified and did not don the giver with a lawbreaker garb. (Although, there are a minority whom this ploy did not deceive and who could ingeniously fathom the amount contained in any brown envelop merely by glancing at the matter (i.e., weight and space) of the envelop and applying the time of day, multiplied by the status of the giver and divided by the status of the recipient).

However, all that is history.

Today, white envelopes have gained on their brown sisters as the need for concealment of what used to be deemed criminal has been sacrificed on the very same altar that witnessed the death of the collective moral codes. The dearth of a sense of right and wrong, occasioned by a stifling and deformation of the conscience has meant that crimes no longer need to be committed in the dark confines of obscurity. The fallout of the inability of the justice system to live up to it's billing has been the reality of our experience where the high and mighty get away with anything while the low and dirty get docked for petty lifting.

Small wonder multinationals are trooping into the country to invest and we think it is because Nigeria has become an investment hub. The lawlessness in operation here is an indication of a bleeding economy and the sharks of business cannot resist the temptation of a tasty meal. The result mostly tells itself in the statistic of the pool of local entrepreneurs knocked out of business as a consequence of a haemorrhagic economy while these companies gleefully smile, not to our banks, but to their country's banks. Mostly.

You would think with all these, Nigerians, you and I, would demand for change by the majority! Well, you would be quite honestly in error. The first course to the buffet that is the 2015 elections is proving to be a case in point to test this hypothetical averment and what are we seeing? The defrocking of the dubious politician.

For their selfish purposes, they have not allowed the fear of the revelations of their true intentions to deter them from contaminating the public space with the putrefaction of their naked ambitions. Rather, they have brazenly displayed such unadulterated selfishness at every instance from defections to institutionalised corrupt practices. It has been a free course in political selfish interest.

However, students who should reap the advantages of these gratis lessons, Nigerians who swear by their allegiances to one politician or the next, are not paying attention. Rather, they are allowing themselves to be distracted enough to miss the pain of the truth biting them in the butt.

Defections, especially the motives for them, ought to open their eyes to the insincerity of these political jobbers, but if only they are paying attention. It has come to the stage where it will be nigh impossible to convince these Nigerians of their gullibility even if such convincing were attempted by someone who came from the dead. The naïveté is numbing.

No doubt, some envelopes (white more than brown) would have secured their irrevocable fidelity but how much good will that do? Their weather-beaten faces at the jamboree-esque rallies that commemorate these defections look all scrawny, poverty-infested and hungry. Should any casualty be recorded and any of these "faceless" supporters loses their precious little lives, their political principals would not even hear of the loss nor consider it worth his time to shed a few crocodile tears at their passing.

Nonetheless, rather than search for lasting change, these Nigerians pocket temporal reprieves - that may not last the month - and go into exertions that leave them sicker than they were in the morning. And having sold their birthrights for a broth, they now endeavour to mortgage even the future of their own children and dependents.

I should stop here; it's nauseating.