Nigerians it seem are blessed with a very short memory and attention span, or they are perpetually condemned to be forever bambozzled and taken for an endless, crazy-circle ride by the horde of unscrupulous elements that bestride her embrace. This is more instructive when one reminisces over what has been the Nigerian socio-political experience since independence. This is to the effect that the Nigerian social firmament has become a gigantic factory for the recyling of thieves, bandits and political rapists. A few examples would suffice to highlight these assertions. Since 1960, the political orchestra may have changed so many times alternating between civilian and military versions of bucanners and wolves in sheep clothing. But the music has never changed, let alone the characters. It is the same inglorious characters and masquerades that have kept coming back as leaders, ministers, political appointees, ambassadors and ambassadresses, special advisers on ridiculous portfolios, governors, senators, MPs both at state, local government and Federal levels respectively. Shehu Shagari was a minister in a first republic riddled with arrant directionlessness. Nineteen years later, he rose to become the president of Nigeria, in an administration redolent of political puerility and primeval recklessness. Shagari, it seemed learnt his lessons well on how to be a stooge and a puppet. He was a part of the network of stooges controlled by the Sarduana from Sokoto in the first republic. In his own time, since old habits die hard, Umaru Dikko manipulated him like a piece of pliable plastercine. The huge economic drainpipe that was the Presidential Task force on rice headed by a minister of transportation, namely, Dikko, and his crazy abandonment of NigeriaÂÂ’s destiny to IMF technocrats in the Austerity Measure, ensured Nigeria‘s admittance into the halls of hardship; and remains an eternal footnote to polymorphous political neotony. Today he is an elder statesman. Jerry Gana `MAMSERed‘ and mass mobilized Nigerians into an emasculated acquiescence, that conduced to the unchallenged rapacious plunder of Nigeria that the Ibrahim BabangidaÂÂ’s regime was. This geography professor never saw anything wrong with serving in an administration that dribbled Nigeria into poverty. He never resigned his appointment in protest to the criminal excesses of that administration. He was there till it all came apart. When Obasanjo dropped his prisoners cuff-links to take up the scepter of power, this professor was recycled and engrafted into ObasanjoÂÂ’s regime as the wandering minstrel and image launderer, in its first outing. Today he is a special adviser in some outback office in Abuja where I believe he still has the presidentÂÂ’s ear. He is equally a PARTY CHIEFTAIN. That is in Nigeria. Elswhere, in a civilized democracy or social set up, irrelevance would have been the lot of people like him. I wonder how many people who served under Nixon during the Watergate dared raise their voices again in American politics or social questions and issues. Their parts, paths and implicit collusion or guilt by association led squarely to political suicide and social irrelevance. From dungeons like this, no mortal has ever escaped save in the Nigeria socio-political concourse. Nigerians seem to have forgotten this. Do we need talk about Obasanjo himself who is equally not free from entanglements with the past. Mother luck or historical accidents seems to have a way of smiling and swinging in his favour. MurtalaÂÂ’s untimely death in 1976 left him like a striker would be left with the ball and empty net, after the goalkeeper by commission or by omission, must have cleared off his line and out of the way. He accidentally became NigeriaÂÂ’s head of State. The story did not end there. He was reputed to have presided over a government that was so efficient in frittering away the oil boom proceeds after GowonsÂÂ’s uncensored rapacious misapplication of same. Rumours used to be rife (a la Fela) that Obj. And MKO are ITT( International Thief Thief) consequent on their percieved roles in the telecommunication saga of that acronym. And that OFN, which was supposed to be, Operation Feed the Nation and the funds mapped thereto later metamorphosed into Obasanjo Farms Nigeria. What a beautiful alliterative similarity. This prison-induced born-again, was the same man who advocated the deployment of JUJU in the fight against Apartheid, in an age of science and sciento-technical rationality. We really thank God for his conversion. In the national Assembly, we had men like Chuba Okadigbo; the Late Oyi. Chuba was the special adviser to a Shagari that conducted the orchestra which admitted Nigeria into the inglorious halls of near bankruptcy. A word about collective responsiblity is apposite here for us to understand the depth of ChubaÂÂ’s guilt and his qualification into the team of `recycleds‘. The public rightly and actually indicts a leader or a president for his failures because the buck ends at his desk. Save for that, his advisers are equally as or even more guilty than he is for his misdemeanors in the corridors of power. The only saving grace or exorcism for an adviser that craves to exonerate himself from the guilt, or absolve himself of the blames imposed on him by collective responsibility, is resignation. To run away from blames, an adviser should resign honourably, whenever his pieces of expert opinion or professional input is jettisoned for some other dalliance with mercenary interest. And in Nigerian history, I am yet to see any who has taken that honourable path. None of these retinue of advisers that each administration entertained has ever resigned, even when their incompetence is legendary and a diametric public knowlege. Chuba never resigned. He was there until they were all sacked in 83 by the military. He even contested for the presidency and later dove-tailed to the position of a running mate. He remained an iroko in Nigerian politics, and would have be canonized a political godfather or statesman save for his untimely demise. Idris Kuta, Tunde Ogbeha, Ike Nwachukwu; all have been there before, having served under one inglorious regime or the other. Today almost all these pastmasters who have not offered Nigeria any tonic for greatness in their various stewardships in the past, are now bearing placards of questionable patriotism, which is nothing but a cloak, under which boils a broth of enlightened selfish-interest and manipulative agenda. In the House of representatives, the public service, the economic and social sectors of our lives, it is these same old players that monopolize the turf. They may have changed their costumes, but their agenda has never changed. This is why Nigeria grows from bad to worse which each new administration. I am convinced that even if one surrounds the Pope with these kind of elements and calibre of characters, he would have been compelled to outdo Judas Iscariot, in his view of his master as a marketable commodity, to assuage his avaricious tastes. This is why I sympathise greatly with OBJ. Even if he has been exorcised of his entanglements with the past, even if he has had a perfect contrition for his past mistakes, and decides to make a difference this time around, he cannot. It may not be because he does not want to, but because his rebaptised vision may have been compromised by these unseen Liliputian ropes. And like Jonathan SwiftÂÂ’s Gulliver, the threads ran really around him as to make him lie prostrate. The legacy of the recycled banditry that pervades our socio-political mainstream today, must always rise to abort any attempt at dislodging them from their entrenched positions, which a good governance portends. If I nominate the above names as examples of what I am talking about, they are simply boys scouts in comparison to the person of IBB and his army of sycophantic godsons, that are presently battling to reengineer the emergence of this cankerworm on the Nigerian political terrain. I wonder why Nigerians keep mum, while feelers of an eventual IBB comeback are being peddled about. The shameless rogues that IBB created are now, individually and severally, opening their mouths too wide to tell us that this man has a patriotic blueprint, that would see Nigeria out of the woods where he left her. These were the crop of people who contemporaneously were responsible for running Nigeria aground in the sandbanks of deceit, corruption, and mediocrity. IBB and his horde of buccanners had a date with history when they were at the helm of affairs as pilots of this country. They squandered and sacrificed that opportunity at the slaughter slab of selfishness. They stole Nigeria blind. They raped the common weal. They disembowelled our aspirations as a people. They destroyed the middle class which would have constituted a veritable bastion of opposition against their excesses.They bequeathed us a legacy of shame, poverty and institutional decay. Now they turn around to ask us for a second chance. They want a second chance, perhaps to auction off Nigeria to the highest biddert this time around. Many of these choristers that sang in the symphony of kleptocracy that saw Nigeria on her knees today, are behind some of the false contraptions we now call political parties and ethnic organizations dotting our landscape today. Some they bankroll with the money stolen from the rest of us. Others they contribute their voices, which is nothing but some mean spirited, egocentric, scurrilous and interest propel falsetto, meant to nibble away at our collective memories and whitewash their notorious reputations. They want a comeback, but they cannot do that effectively with the image the presently bear. They want a cosmetic surgery that would have them bouncing back into reckoning. IBB is presently being recreated in the media with the skin grafts of messianic proportions. But Nigerians cannot be deceived. We cannot be deceived because, while in power, Babangida made the greatest profession of executive incompetence, when he confessed that, the Nigerian economy has defied any known solution. One honestly wonders what other blueprint that he can muster to salvage a Nigeria he gave up on, while in power. I make bold to say that IBB and his cronies did Nigeria in, and paved the way for her further bastardization by his friend and brother in crime, Abacha. The $12.4 Billion Dollar, 1991 Gulf War oil windfall is yet to be satisfactorily accounted for by this man. Yet he wants to run Nigeria again. What credentials has he to show.? It seems Nigerians have forgotten so easily that this was a man, who ran a government which made it a religious duty to deplete our external reserves on frivolities, bribe, blackmail or settle any voice raise in opposition to his excesses, grant executive fiat to corruption and made a god out of graft, greed and monumental deceit; hence his legendary maradonic dribbling skills. In his government, policy somersault and the fine art of fiddling were all instruments of statecraft and policy formulation. Machiavelli was his god and he idolatorously patronized and worshipped him in all things to the detriment of Nigeria and Nigerians. To his eternal discredit, corruption became legalized under his watch. One must equally not forget that these very same characters who under various pseudonyms and masks, are touting IBB today as our New engineered Saviour, were the same wandering minstrels that drummed AbachaÂÂ’s praises to high heavens, even while Nigerians were groaning under the strangulating jackboot of a military megalomaniac. They are yet to have a Daniel kanu who could be more attrociously vociferous in his assault on our auditory nerves. Kanu one must remember, had the audacious effrontery to tell Nigerians that Abacha was the greatest blessing the gods ever bestowed on Nigeria and that he and his debauched team, would render Nigeria ungovernable if Abacha wasnÂÂ’t handed a free ticket to a transformative metamorphosis from a military goggled wrecker to a civilian one. But the blessings of the gods as we have come to witness, only came in disguise. Praise the Lord. These men are few of the major examples. Nigerians seems to have forgotten. There are so many other low level rogues that have succeeded in re-inserting themselves undetected into our body politic, waiting for a chance to perfect the regime they started. Some of them are military and past politicians that stole the allocations of their states, or even ministers that scrubbed their ministerial treasuries clean. Many of them are today touted as godfathers and political bigwigs. They can afford to be that. Why wouldnÂÂ’t they? With the weight of the money they flecced off our pauperized frames, they can afford to give us crumbs to gain our accolades. Principally because, the resolve of many of us has been compromised by the the systematic regime of deprivation so skillfully perpetrated on us by their rapacious plunder. They have so weakened us as to tie us like Pavlovian dogs to their control. It seems today that the only thing it takes to bounce into political reckoning in Nigeria, is to rob a state or embezzle a government establishment blind, and bambozzle one‘s way into a political office, or sponsors some hapless serfs to some vital positions; killing off a few obstinate opponents in the process; Voila! A new political heavyweight or godfather is born. This is why a Chris Uba can rise up without trepidation to kidnap a sitting governor and the whole apparatus of state is cowed into silence and even employed as an accessory to the crime. Tomorrow, if the status quo subsists, you would see some Nigerians who would project him to vie for the presidency, as the best thing to happen to us. I think he is really the `best‘ of the worst. 2007 is just a few miles down the corner and Nigerians seem to have forgotten that no good thief has a good conscience. But I am of the opinion that we are all well aware that some of them who are not yet bold enough to be brazen in their bid to steal into reckoning by the force of the money they stole from us, stealthly bore holes in our socio-political fabric to guage our feelings. By so doing they try to chart ways with which to navigate around the icebergs of infamy that they created while in office. My warning to IBB and these other recycled bandits is in line with that of Matthew Hassan Kukah: Nigerians may be cowards, but they are not stupid. These were men who destroyed our today, mortgaged our tomorrow and auctioned off our collective interests and holdings to their private fronts. Today they sit as board directors in many banks and companies that formerly bore our collective name and imprint. As if that is not enough, they are presenting themselves in new garbs as messiahs that will save us from our woes. I wonder what IBB forgot in Aso rock that he is itching to go back to redress. It may be that his stock of loot has gone down and he needs to replenish it, who knows?. The facts are crystal clear. Someone who hadnÂÂ’t the checks and balances of a democratic set up to contend with; who enjoyed absolute power as a military dictator was unable to take a shot at immortality by installing himself through his acts into the patheons of greatness. I wonder what that person can achieve in a situation that is akin to a Babel of opinions, views and ideas, that obtains in a democracy. IBB and some others of his ilk may have the constitutional right to vie for any elective post in Nigeria quite alright. But they lack the moral right to do that. This is even more painful when one realises that all they left behind under their various watches was a trail of administrative incompetence, roguery, reckless misappropiration and gross irresponsiblity. In his heydays, IBB made a notorious hobby out of banning and unbanning whoever displeases his fancy. He should be given a taste of that pill he so generously dispensed. He should be banned for life from raising his voice, and from contesting in any elective process in Nigeria. I think this man should be taken to court and tried for all the crimes he committed against the Nigerian people. Were the weight of his ill-gotten wealth and legal technicalities to render this impossible, he should be arraigned before the court of public opinion and sentenced to a life of ignominy and public opprobrium. Fellow countrymen. A thief is a thief even if he changes dresses. The leopard can never forgo his spots. It is etched in a goat‘s genetic blueprint to eat yams. The legendary and stupendous nature of these menÂÂ’s propensity to rip off the Nigerian treasury is an area biotechnologists and Genetic engineers should explore, to let us know whether there exists a gene responsible for reckless roguery and monumental thievery. Their action bespeaks of an extraordinary, nay a congenital proclivity to steal or what some psychotherapists prefer to call kleptomania. To this end, If a military thief transforms himself into a civilian, then what happens to the thief? I believe that all it requires for a dog to go back to its vomit is time. Just like all it will take a stammerer to pronounce his surname is time. As for pronouncing it correctly, that is certain. Many of these thieves whose sources of wealth cannot be traced to anything legitimate or legal, are supposed to be cooling off their heels in some Supermax prison facility, with some life-jail sentences hanging on their necks. But they are very busy walking the streets and gracing the political klieglights and social concourse with their inglorious presence. These men should bury their heads in shame for raping their fatherland. They should forever quit the public stage in eternal penance for their incestuous crimes. They have nothing more to offer us. They should contemplate a hike to an island of irrelevance, where they should embark on a self-imposed penance to propitiate the gods of our land for the abomination of desolation that they welcomed into our sacred temples . No amount of sweet-scented saccharine demagoguery or attempt at an ethnic orchestrated detergent of image laundry would wash their maladrous crimes off historyÂÂ’s face. Only a perfect restitution of what they stole from us will soften our pain and give succour to our battered collective frame as a nation. Their crime is a dastard one. Even If would forgive a man for raping a woman, I cannot forgive a man who raped his mother. That is an abomination of superlative proportions. Nigerians may forget, but history will never forgive. 2007 is around the corner. Beware brothers. The thieves are coming back. Emmanuel Franklyne OgbunwezehFrankfurt,Germany.
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Posted by Robot| 13.11.2005 14:26