2005 is here. Nigeria is still her old self. Nothing positive has happened. We are rather progressing in decadence. Nigeria on the morn of 2005 is still a dangerously tragic place beyond comprehension and compare. As a name she is still totally meaningless. As a nation, she is still aridly and superlatively dysfunctional. As a country, she is still a boiling vortex and cesspool of platonic hatred, mutual suspicion and congenital nepotism. As a polity, she has not ceased to be a mere geographic expression. As a society, she now more than ever, is heterogeneous conglomeration of strange bedfellows; the worst anti-progressive forces ever to agglomerate at one place, at the same time.

This country, embosoming an amorphous collage of ethnic federations and a mosaic of cultures, possesses in its core, the seeds of greatness. It is a great country in the most proximate potency. But in actuality, it is a sad tale of liberalized poverty; a boiling cesspool of dissensions; a wrecked social construct presently on the highroad to implosion. It is now a construct that murders its saints with brutal relish and canonizes it rogues. This is a nation that patronizes its institutions with absolute dereliction and unconcern, unless some cheap, instantaneous gratification flows there from. This is a country that sings the praises of her thieves and rapists, while genuine greatness receives the rugged tribute of unconcern and abandonment

At the threshold of a new year, she still makes a national pastime of brutalizing its offspring, cannibalising itself and liberalizing spiritual, material and intellectual poverty. She is now a country owned and ran by psychiatric patients, mentally challenged buffoons, and congenitally chronic nincompoops. The population of honourable men is fast receding, as this mental asylum keeps recruiting members from the fringes of integrity. Having oscillated and been passed in alternating relay rhythm between a brigade of military brigands and a consortium of civilian thieves, she has been bludgeoned beyond recognition. Her future has been mortgaged and compromised to frustration.

In 2005, Nigerians are still groaning under the clutches and thraldom of strangulating poverty. They are still bearing their broken hopes and scuttled aspirations. They are still burdened by a nebulous, uncertain and hopeless future. The Nigerian political space is now an amphitheatre of obscenity and corruption governed by a Machiavellic Ogre, and an essential arena for the convocation of thieves and gangsters. NEPA as the Power generating and distribution authority is still generating darkness across the land, despite the billions already sunk to revive this comatose and epileptic behemoth, from its congenital inefficiency. Consequent on this luxurious disability, industries are dead starved of power; hence they desiccate, die and haemorrhage their workers into the already bulging and exploding unemployment market. Nightlife is non-existent in Nigeria, as NEPA, the Police and armed robbers have constituted themselves into the unholy trinity that have conspired to deny Nigerians of any nightlife. Despite NEPA classic inefficiency, the Nigerian people are still being arm twisted to pay NEPA for generating more darkness than light. NITEL as the domestic telephone carrier is still dysfunctional and seems to have atrophied in dysfunctionality. Capitalising on this gross abdication of its statutory responsibility, the mobile telephone companies are still making stupendously immoral profits, ripping off Nigerians with their sometimes epileptic services, coupled with higher prices compared against the income per capita in the country. We are yet to hear that the political class have ceased embezzling public funds. We are equally yet to see any decisive action against corruption and executive recklessness of the PDP government. The thugs in Anambra State are still spoiling for war, while the PDP is still busy baptising and re-baptising crimes as "family affairs". Ogbe has resigned his office after he and Obasanjo gave Nigerians a peep into the pathologically obscene depravity and crime conglomerate known as PDP. They have now undressed the rottenness they both presided over for what it is; namely an ideologically deficient conglomeration of political undertakers, gangsters and fraudsters; very busy pretending to be ruling by popular will. Chris Ubah is yet to go to jail. He is still threatening Ngige with fire and brimstone, if the Anambra treasury is not emptied into his private coffers, in recompense for his helping to rig Anambra gubernatorial elections in Ngige and ObasanjoÂ’s favour. Obasanjo is yet to lift the unofficial "presidential protection" that he seemed to have granted treasonable felons. Ngige is still in office in Anambra State. Some of the small fries that executed the kidnapping a sitting governor are dead, while the sharks that masterminded it still sit and decide the fate of Nigeria over mounds of Pounded foo-foo and egusi soup. The plan to sack Ogbe has been actualized as Obasanjo adopts more of the dictatorial tactics of Sanni Abacha.

  The NFA is still a chessboard for murky politicking by incompetent men, whose stock in trade is turning national victories into international embarrassments. The Sports Ministers and the Board of the NFA are still in place after the Falcon match-bonus saga in South Africa. No one has resigned over that show of shame. Resignation and honour seems to be foreign to Nigerian incompetent administrators. None has been sacked. The cabal holding Nigeria to a ransom seems to discountenance that.   Our refineries are still not working. Its continued dormancy is good business for the faceless cartel of profiteers, hell bent on embezzling Nigeria out of existence. The Deregulation mantra that has been the signature tune of the ObasanjoÂ’s government, has failed to give Nigerians a better deal.   South East roads are still epicentres of potholes; as well as a perfect testament to, and manifestation of the callous recklessness of the ObasanjoÂ’s government. The Niger Bridge at Onitsha is still shaking and creaking under the weight of old age, while Minister of Works, Ogunlewe is still broadcasting his festival of denials; trading wooden excuses, on why South East roads are still like the outback of hell.   Life is still so very cheap in Nigeria, as armed robbery seems to have defied every known solution. The Police are yet to stop extorting bribes and "roger" from innocent road users. Torture is still deployed by our security agencies as a method of obtaining information. NEEDs and SEEDs are yet to revive our economy, which is really in coma. Unemployment is still rife. Per capita income has not risen in years. The money realised from crude oil windfall has still not reflected on the faces of Nigerians. How can there be any improvement, when Obasanjo is yet to believe that poverty exists in Nigeria. Obasanjo remains an absentee president. He is unaware of the level of poverty, hunger and anger that has enveloped the country he claims to be ruling. He is busy fighting off anybody who dared criticise his excesses for him to concentrate on governance.     The military thieves are still clamouring to be given an opportunity to restart their stealing conglomerate once more, come 2007. The Oputa panel report is still gathering dust in Obasanjo's office; unreleased and unimplemented.   These and many more are still in currency in Nigeria in 2005. Yet Nigerians are still watching like stone-figures frozen in time. No action has ever risen to greet the excesses of those in power, from any sector of the Nigerian populace. The tiny pocket of voices raised is laced most times with ethnic, selfish and sectional interests. No unanimous consensus has ever arisen to challenge the rapacious plunder of Nigeria from the majority of the citizens, whose lives are directly impacted by government's excesses. The question then is: why are Nigerians so very silent over their oppression? Are we endowed with an infinite propensity to endure evil and to eat shit from every useless politician and military brigand? Can Nigerians ever stand up for their rights?  Can we ever say "Never Again"?

The dynamics of natureÂ’s logic leans heavily on, and licenses the construction, that only the captive is favourably disposed and well equipped by his circumstance, to effect the cancellation of his captivity. The slave master of every oppressive construct, is most unfortunately, not similarly disposed. He is ontologically compromised by his vested interest, which subsists on oppression. The economics of self-preservation renders it suicidal, for a slave master to favour, or campaign for the dismantling of those structures that conduce to captivity and oppression. His livelihood and subsistence derives and thrives on the subsistence of that inhuman edifice. He would self-destruct, were he to adopt a stance, which challenges the continued existence of this unholy source of his livelihood.  Oppression funnels not only profit his way. It shovels it in spade loads into his avaricious pockets. To this end, the fountains of his sordid gains, will freeze unto extinction, and the rivers of his profit will cease to flow, if he is to self-destruct, by championing the collapse of the edifice that oils his interests. Shakespeare recognized the validity of this stand, when in Act ... Scene of Julius Caesar, he wrote: “Every bondman in his own hand, bears the power to cancel his captivity”  (Julius Caesar Act 1 Scene 111). In lieu of  this end, no slave master has ever won a  prize for benevolence.

 In this regard, therefore, the onus is on the oppressed, to rise up against their oppressors; and resolve never to take or entertain oppression any more. It is a moral burden as well as a bounden duty imposed on them, by the injustice of their circumstance. They are bound in good conscience and natural justice to discharge this burden of resisting oppressive evil. It is a duty they owe not only to themselves, but equally to nature and to natureÂ’s God. Thomas Jefferson would readily agree with us here, because, for him, „disobedience to tyranny is obedience to God“. That is why the only way to cancel the oppression of Nigerians by the elitists, selfish leadership and political class, is for the people of Nigeria to rise in unison against this dysfunctional, incompetent and avaricious establishment of political undertakers, presently bestriding her embrace.
 
The Jews may have at some point in their history, misunderstood this political theology . They were, at some point, through a very complex dynamic of their social and historical experience, softened into abandoning self-defence and going silently to Hitler’s crematoria, where human wickedness was undressed to them in variegated forms. But in modern times, they seem to have recovered this political theology. Self preservation, or what Baruch de Spinoza identified as „Connatus essendi“ commands it. It is unethical and immoral to abandon oneself to the harm and evil machinations of those whose delight lies in your extermination.
 
After the Shaoh, the Jews seemed to have  risen like the phoenix out of HitlerÂ’s furnace of evil, to take a stand against every armada of hate and xenophobia that was, and would ever be arrayed against their collective existence and survival as a people. They reduced it into a phrase of two words: Never Again!
 
“Never again” summarily articulated and embosomed the chequered history of their victim-hood, suffering, persecution and xenophobic pogrom, which constituted the historical furniture of Jewish experience, since the days of their sojourn and exile in Egypt. „Never again“ reminds them of the Diasporic dimension of their suffering since AD 70, when the Roman Legion, under Titus sacked Jerusalem, laying the city to waste and abandoning the temple in ruins. It etches in their collective memory, the fact that  they have had occasions to sit down and weep, „by the rivers of so many Babylons“, prior to Titus. It equally brings home to them, that they have been variously forced across the centuries to „sing their Lord Song on so many strange lands“ strange shores, and strange beaches. „Never again“  really marked the end of their acquiescent aloofness, in the face of  murderous enemies.
 
Titus drove the Jews out of the sacred confines of Jerusalem. He drove them into a Diaspora of uncertainties, where they were destined to encounter raw hatred, genocidal elimination and the worst possible contrivance that human wickedness is capable.
 
From the Russian coastal city of Odessa to Latvia; from Warschau to Liddice; from Berlin to Frankfurt; from Paris to Marseille, and to almost all of the then known world, the Jewish Diaspora multiplicated. Their unique religious expression, faith and notorious entrepreneurialism confluenced in an uncanny solution, to brew and attract for them an unparalleled wine of xenophobia and envy. They suffered persecution. They were murdered in droves by states and governments simply for been Jews.
 
Pharonic Egypt commenced an eugenic murder of Jewish male babies. Titus crucified over half of the standing Jewish men, after the fall of Jerusalem to his legions. Jerusalem and surrounding woods could not meet the unprecedented demand for woods pursuant to Titus‘ blueprint of eliminating Jewish manhood, by crucifixion. The Inquisition and witch-hunts of medieval Europe did not spare them. Many Jews fell to the consolidated ignorance, fears and wickedness of neurotics and religious fanatics, who killed Jews with brutal relish. The killing of Jews never ceased as history ate up the centuries. This was the background that prepared the apogee of Jew-phobia embodied and exemplified in Hitler, in the 20th century  Europe.
 
Adolf Hitler took a cue from where his  forebears stopped. He designed a blueprint to wipe out the whole European Jewry, from the face of the earth. His was not only to kill every Jew, but also to embezzle their memory and erase the fact that Jews ever existed in Europe.
 
First he convoked a jamboree of „biblioclasm“ off Jewish books, or works authored by Jews, in celebrated bonfires across Germany. He followed it up with destruction and desecration of the eternal memories interred in Jewish cemeteries; using the tombstones in sundry construction across the Reich. His and the murderous zealotry of his lieutenants did not stop there. The Jews were not only murdered in cold blood and in droves across the concentration camps. They were cremated for good measure, and their memories reduce to ashes and cinders; thus were they eternally denied of a simple marker to record the fact, that they passed this way.
 
That was the Holocaust. That was the Shaoh! It was unparalleled in Jewish and human history! It called for an uncommon response since it was an uncommon occurrence.
 
In 1945, Germany stood down in defeat. From the ashes of war and destruction, rose the fact that Adolf Hitler was the greatest enfleshment of evil in the 20th century. As the clouds cleared, the world came to know that a butcher of man was butchered in recompense for his crimes; the man who incinerated Jews for fun, was himself incinerated at his orders. Thus began his first journey to a richly deserved unrest borne on the wings of the fiery pains of incineration. The Jews who survived this inglorious and unprecedented assault on their collective survival, came together, and swore in their sorrow: Never Again!!. Never again, would any son or daughter of the Jewish race, enter anybodyÂ’s crematorium, gently like a lamb of sacrifice! Never again would a Jew anywhere suffer discrimination gladly on account of his race. Never again will the Jewish people plead for their lives or bow subserviently to any tyrant in plea for their lives!
 
Never again!. Never again!
 
This collective resolve of a historically brutalized people, crystallized into their National Anthem. This is to serve as an eternal reminder to them, of the oath they took in their sorrow, anger and revulsion, at the depth of evil that men are ready to inflict on them.
 
Never again!
 
Though the plight of Nigerians can never challenge comparison with what the Jews suffered, but oppression anywhere, should attract the kind of revulsion and resolve akin to „Never again“ of the Jews. But this in the African context seems to be a pipe dream condemned to unrealisation. Nigerians nay African seems to have this infinite propensity to endure evil. They pose a postural unconcern as evil, bad government, corruption and  keptocracy ravage their land. No country in Africa has ever risen to say „Never Again“ to oppression, bad governance, kleptocracy or corruption. The only time an African nation tried that was in Biafra. And that experiment was rudely crushed by the forces of prejudice.
 
Nigeria and Nigerians suffered a collective decimation unparalleled in her history at the hands of military brigand who have ruled her for the most of part of her life as an independent nation. Nigerians suffered at the hands of her leaders, the kind of social decimation and collective psychological trauma that could well pass for the Nigerian version of the Shaoh or Holocaust . The military constituted itself into a board of buccaneers, or what Basil Davidson rightly described as pirates in power, to decimate, bludgeon, pillage and plunder Nigeria, like only a committee of robber barons would.
 
Under the military, decency was thrown to the dogs. Human rights took flight from our shores. Sergeants and Non-commissioned officers became the new Lords of the Manor, while the Military officers and their civilian collaborators went for the jugular of the nation. Nigeria like an impaled animal haemorrhaged the life-blood of her posterity, into the sea of military avarice. Under the military, our institutions and structures were so debauched, as corruption became liberalized.
 
These are generalized summaries. Particular examples would bear us out.
 
Under the governments of Buhari-Idiagbon,(31st December 1983-27th August, 1985) Nigerians woke up to the operation of draconian decrees which took immediate and retroactive effects, to murder people against all canons of decency, natural justice, good conscience and equity; and to lock up others without rhyme or reason. Bartholomew Owoh was tied to the stake and shot for a crime which he allegedly committed before the laws that condemned him to death, came into effect, and to which he would have ordinarily served six months in jail at conviction. As Buhari-Idiagbon treasonably sacked our constitution, past misdemeanours were retroactively re-engineered to become capital offences. Many civilian governors, were hounded, arraigned before Kangaroo courts, and other quasi-judicial contraptions that were simply mockeries of justice, and severely punished. Journalists were bridled and offloaded to detention centres that doubled as torture centres, without trials. While the Generals and officers carved Nigeria up to their various avaricious tastes and jurisdictions, the illiterate rank and file assumed jurisdiction in any area they could carve out for themselves with horse-whips and the force of arms. Nigeria overnight became a society under siege. The army boys behaved so much like drunken sailors that are hell-bent on scuttling our ship of state. Many innocent Nigerians fell to these excesses. Those who are connected to the men in power manipulated their positions to assert their power and gain advantages over their fellow citizens, who fell out of favour with them. Trading and currying military favours replaced efficiency and just remuneration in public service. Nigeria commenced her decadent decomposition from that moment on. Then began what one writer beautiful describes as the epoch of impunity.
 
Buhari-IdiagbonÂ’s era was paradise or is simply the juvenile antics of spoilt kids compared to his coup plotting successors; Babangida and Abacha. Babanigda came to office touting populist policies and covering the ontological crookedness of his political blueprint, with a toothy smile that hoodwinked so many. He ended up wrecking Nigeria and sending many Nigerians to their deaths in the course of his plunder of Nigeria. Nigeria deteriorated. Babangida and his wife reigned. Excesses of the government leaked to Nigerians daily. Glory Okon died in connection with a story identifying her as a drug courier for BabangidaÂ’s wife. Dele Giwa was parcel-bombed out of existence for daring to investigate the story. Even soliloquising on the Nigeria situation under him became a ground for arrest without trial. The judiciary became corrupted and bended as a tool for targeting the opponents of IBBÂ’s excesses. SAP came in to destroy Nigerians and their purchasing power. Protests were mercilessly crushed by IBB and his henchmen. Hailu Akilu and Togun became gods with power of life and death over many Nigerians as they ran the SSS like a fiefdom. The Police joined the fray of being a tool in the hands of executive recklessness. Torture became the means of determining the guilt of a suspect. Many suspects never survived the police custody as many of them were murdered in cold blood by Policemen. Any judicial inquiries in relation to death of innocent Nigerians through police excess were administratively frustrated, with the active connivance of the judiciary in many cases. Many Judicial officers and Judges became rubber stamps and mouth pieces of the military government. Okoro-Idogu and Benedict Okadigbo come to mind here. The last bastion of hope for the common man became irredeemably shattered. The courts that were supposed to be the citadel of justice, metamorphosed into a tower of corruption. Babangida dealt with Nigeria. Stole her blind and repositioned her for further plunder by his comrade-in-loot, General Sanni Abacha.
 
Abacha overtook all other thieves ever to rule Nigeria in impunity and ruthlessness. He ran Nigeria like NapoleonÂ’s animal farm, until her expired atop imported prostitutes. His family constituted a stealing conglomerate that ensured that many Nigerians and their posterity, will patronize the garbage dumps for their daily bread, for years to come. Abacha not only wrecked Nigeria. She killed her dreams and aspirations. When death came calling him, Abubakar took over only to squeeze the final financial juices off Nigeria before handing over to an Obasanjo, whom providence rescued from Abacha deadly excesses.
 
Obasanjo came and promised to ameliorate the situation and give Nigerians a new lease of life. But as the days went by, Nigerians began to realise that Obasanjo reached his point of executive incompetence years ago. He neither knew the way out of NigeriaÂ’s problems nor had he the will to get Nigerians out of their predicament. He ruled like a stubborn stooge. Nigeria kept her inglorious decent into anarchy and corruption. The government became a major participant in the comedy designed to rip Nigeria asunder. The rest is still playing out before us.
 
But despite all these, Nigerians have never collectively risen to cancel their captivity to these inglorious elites and politicians, who have been plundering their commonwealth. They have been watching in postural unconcern, like spectators at a dull game. Despite the fact that Nigeria keeps sliding into decay daily, Nigerian maintain stone silence and watch their land going from bad to worse. No word, no voice is heard in condemnation of the situation of things. All those who are speaking out against the terrible situation are stationed in foreign capitals, outside the immediate vicinity of  the decadence.
 
One begins to wonder the level of impunity that will get Nigerians to rise and shake off the shackles of their oppression. We have reached the nadir of decadence on so many occasions in Nigeria. Yet Nigerians are  yet to rise and say a collective and resounding „No“ to the reign of impunity in our land. What other level do we need to slide to for Nigerians to realise that it lies on them to rise and cancel their captivity to the purveyors of impunity that call themselves leaders.? What kind of education did we get that laid us prostrate, before the onslaught of leadership-orchestrated impunity? No leader in the Western world would last more than 24 hours in office, were the kind of revelations made by Obasanjo in relation to his role in the Ubah-Ngige affair, to be made of them, or under their watch. Examples are so many as to defy enumeration. Nixon resigned due to his role in the Watergate scandal. The Monica Lewinsky scandal nearly cost William Jefferson Clinton, his presidency. The Ukrainian rose against the electoral manipulation engineered by Viktor Yanukovic against Vickor Yushchenko, and stood their ground until the corrupt establishment stood down. When will Nigerians like the Jews say „Never Again“ to their rape and plunder by Obasanjo and his henchmen. When will we say Never again to the pretenders who want power for the polarized insularity of their selfish interests? When?

Robot  # 1 | 13.01.2005 00:00

Link to the article is here

Guest  # 2 | 24.10.2005 21:09

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh null