| Nigeria, Why a Revolution Is Inevitable |
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| Written by Tony Ishiekwene | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 31 October 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Why a Revolution Is Inevitable Tony Ishiekwene Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable.-John F. Kennedy Nigeria and ordinary Nigerians are in serious trouble and the people know it but appear helpless to do anything about their leadership-made problems. But I do believe that sooner rather than later some form of revolution would be unleashed on the rampaging and ruthless leaders that have continued to decimate the Nigerian people and taking them for perpetual idiots. In particular the ruling (or ruining PDP) government that are now boasting of continuous ruling of Nigeria for the next 50-60 years through rigging and disenfranchisement of the people and unleashing more poverty and misery unto the majority of long suffering Nigerians, may not have a Nigerian of the dream to ruin, if they continue to use the likes of Prof Iwu’s (or is it Iwuruwuru they have aptly named him!) and a compromised Electoral commission to continue to steal elections and allocate ghost votes to shameless PDP “winners”. Ordinary Nigerians ( about 90% of the entire population) have been suffering untold hardships since the mid 1980s and have continued to tolerate all manner of charlatans holding forth as leaders both military dictators and since 1999, their civilian counterparts- civilian dictatorship! They have so institutionalised corruption to the extent that each succeeding government wants to beat the record of the past government’s corruption and greed index. The leadership have run down the Nigerian Airways, Nigerian Shipping line, The Nigerian Steel Mills in Ajaokuta and Aladja, Delta state using their stooges, as chairpersons of these government parastatals, in stealing and selling off all the assets and equipments of these organisations and nothing has happened by way of punishment or sanction to these thieves who caused misery to hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who became jobless by the excessive greed of a few, sending many to their early deaths. On a recent visit to my home town in Delta State, I saw relics of the Water Reservoir Tank situated in the primary School I went to from 1968 to 1973. As Little as I was then, I saw and played around the gushing waters from the reservoir all the days of my primary schooling at the then CMS primary School, now Emeni Primary School, Obiaruku. There were PublicTaps in various location across Obiaruku, in addition to the private ones by the few relatively rich people then. I come back from School and go to the public tap in my CMS compound or the one in Umuedede junction to fetch water for household needs and drinking as my daily chore then. By the 90s all the public taps had stopped running and only the private homes nearer the Water board office in Iku-Oshilim near Umeghe-Abraka had waters and by the 1999, when I went to Obiaruku, even these do not run any more. Today, the rich politicians, and there are quite a few of them from the Federal, State and local Government secretariat from Obiaruku, and other relatively comfortable private individuals in Obiaruku have to get their own private Borehole water while the poor and helpless ones have to go and fetch drinking and household use water from the river, risking Cholera and other water borne diseases. The irony of it all is that most of the public owned corporations and infrastructure were built when Nigeria had far less revenue in the 70s and 80s compared to the huge billions of dollars earned since the 1990s yet no upgrade or even maintenance of the old structures were made. The difference is that the leadership in recent times have been taken over by locusts of the worst calibre from the federal, state to the local government levels. People are just going into government to steal mind bugling cash and no question is asked. Whether in the Executive or legislative arms, the motive and plot is the same- rig yourself to power and go allocate many millions to yourself with the help of Alhaji Tukur of RMAFC, whose commission have been behaving as if Nigeria belong to the less than 2% political office holders, by comparing their remuneration with those of US office holders but cannot reason that Nigeria’s GDP per capita is less than a $1000 a year! And then when they get into government whether legislative or Executive steal as much as they can using shady and shadowy companies to garner contracts that will never be executed after been paid mobilisation fees and sometimes the whole contract sum. And so millions of Nigerian are plagued by troubling poverty and disease, mass unemployment of its able youth who have now become so helpless that young ladies have turned to selling their bodies both in Nigeria and abroad, whilst young men and women who cannot go into armed robbery or other criminal behaviour for survival are forced to find any means to leave the shores of Nigeria- many dying in the Sahara deserts and the ones who manage to get to Libya and Morocco die in ramshackle boats to use in trying to cross the sea unto Canary Island, Spain and Italy- all in desperation to seek a means of surviving the hell that the political elites have turned Nigeria into. And this happening 9 years after democracy was supposed to have taken root and the massive petro-dollar wealth that has accrued to the country in the last 8 years. The people have nothing to show for it. Education is in tartars; Health and health facilities are in shambles; Roads are dead traps as thousands of Nigerians are killed and maimed yearly in Road traffic accidents occasioned by lack of road maintenance. Yet a tiny minority of its political elite, current and recent past, wallow in shameless stolen riches and flaunt extravagance to the very face of the Nigerian people they have stolen blind. To be sure the band of “civilians” who succeeded the rapacious but retreating military dictatorship that ran rough-shod on Nigerians between 1985 and 1999, in the so-called democratic government of the third republic were really not democrats and do not know what democracy means. They were largely retired military officers or their cronies sponsored by these stupendously rich retired army Generals who stole and enrich themselves massively off the common wealth of Nigeria. The real democrats who fought the military were either still in exile, still weary and recovering from the dreary fight the military, as represented by Generals Babangida and Abacha, gave them, and unsure whether the military would honour their promise to hand over- remember IBB was never sincere about a hand-over to the civilian democracy-when the civilian arm of the military wing stole the 1999 election with their stooge General Obasanjo becoming the “elected” president. And in eight years of Obasanjo’s presidency, Nigerians have known more poverty and deprivation despite huge cache of petro-dollar billions earnings, unprecedented in the history of Nigeria as oil prices went astronomically through the roof in the last nine years. The tragedy of it all is that Nigerians should not suffer this pain if we had a modicum of fair - not even good- governance! Those who know nothing of what leadership is about steal their way to power at all levels and so there is no to check their excesses as the legislators are willing tools of the executive and a compromised “chop I chop business” called government. Young Nigerian graduates and the youth have become so helpless and hopeless that many want to get out of Nigeria by any means to any other country, any where in the world, after many years of fruitless search for employment that is drying up by the day as rent-seeking and stealing becomes the only available job but conered by the strongest criminal clique in the PDP Nigeria is fraudulent country, where there is no iota of justice by any stretch of imagination. Only dunces, integrity-deficient, half baked criminals and heartless people get into government at any level be it in military or civilian dictatorship as we have had since 1999, when Obasanjo was rigged in by the powers that be- the retreating, over-burdened and guilt-stricken military cabal to protect them from their atrocities against Nigerians in retirement. This civilian wing led by Obasanjo's PDP have since 1999 consolidated its stronghold such that successive elections in 2003 and 2007 got worse than the rigging that brought him to power. In 1999 there was an election, although it was rigged in some areas to make Obasanjo win. But the subsequent ones were just allocation of votes and the hounding out of PDP of the few credible people in that horrible party that is holding the entire country hostage. First you would not be selected to represent PDP at any level if you are not crooked or integrity-deficient. Then after the so called primaries, INEC, with instructions from PDP warlords, then impose you as the "winner" without any semblance of election by the people these s-elected leaders are supposed to represent. The people will come out on election days and there are no voting materials or where there , they are fake materials displayed for the unwary, whilst the originals are in the hands of local PDP "king makers" where all the thumb printing takes place. And the ordinary people are fooled all day queuing in the sun and rain while they have no voice or say in who represents them. The 2007 version was the worst ever, in the name of election anywhere in the world! Everyone parading themselves as elected leaders from Yar Adua as president to State governors, apart from Fashola of Lagos (the only state where Obasanjo allowed election to hold and the PDP lost!) to Senators and state assembly people and local government chairpersons and councilors are all impositions- civilian dictatorship. Former labour leader Adams Oshiomole aptly declared recently that those parading themselves as representatives of the people in the National Assembly are all crooks enjoying stolen mandates and therefore cannot give Nigerians an effective and relevant constitutional review. He was spot on and right on the money for that. A few nincompoops and ostrichs in the house, inclusing the speaker, Dimeji Bankole, shamelessly wanted to call the gentleman to question but lacked the moral fibre to do so because they knew the fiery labour leader was speaking the truth. The difference between the jesters and charlartans parading themselves as political leaders in Nigeria and the western world politicians is that the later will own up when caught in malfeasance and resign their positions honourably, but the Nigerian politician will continue to delude themselves, lying and indulging in self denials even when caught red-handed snatching and stuffing ballot boxes in their homes. Shame on the Nigerian so-called politicians! In 2007 “elections” only those selected by Obasanjo and his cabal have the licence “win elections” and then get into polticl offices and steal as much as they like and no question is asked- money meant for their constituencies are stolen with impunity and these monies are massive as huge oil revenues in the recent past has meant Nigeria was flowing with huge Petro-dollar funds. We have a so-called anti-corruption agency now manned by co-conspirator in the name of Farida Waziri. People had accused the EFCC headed by Nuhu Ribadu of selective prosecutions of the thieving elites, and rightly so if you ask me. But still there was some actions and fear in the land by the marauding poltical elites that Obasanjo may turn his EFCC lapdogs on them, so they were a bit careful, especially after the likes of Alamesiegha and IGP Balogun where disgraced and slammed with criminal records! But what do we have today under Umaru Yar ‘Adua’s watch? An EFCC that is totally castrated, with its head Farida Waziri colluding with the thieving ex-governors to lose their prosecution files, and an Attorney General and Minister for “injustice” Michael Andooaka helping the thieving ex governors to avoid prosecution and conviction both in Nigeria and in Europe where many of them are accused of stealing and money laundering. I think a mass revolution of some sorts across the nation is much over due as the people are not even given the chance to change things in periodic elections as it should be in a democracy. Each subsequent elections in Nigeria is worst than all preceding ones. The 2007 election holds the record of the worst ever fraud or charade which Iwu and Obasanjo dubbed an election in the history of elections world wide- It was marred by ballot box snatching, sheer vote allocations in places where election never took place and the killing and maiming of ordinary Nigerians who have come out to vote for candidates of their choice thinking that the evil PDP government of Olusegun Obasanjo wanted an election. The cabal running Nigeria holds all the aces, appointment and control of the electoral commission and of the agencies of violence- Police, SSS, Army etc which they can use to unleash terror on any voice of decent if monetary inducement don't work. However the people can revolt in many other ways to tell these vagabonds-in-power (apology to Fela) that they cannot continue to ride on them for fun in perpetuity. The minimum form of revolt should take place at the next election in 2011 if there will be any. Nigerians, irrespective of religious affiliations and wherever they are -North, South, East and Western Nigeria must insist on one-person-one-vote and to resist any imposition of anyone on them right from the presidency to the local government councilors. The people of Ukraine and Georgia did this is 2004 and succeeded in up-rooting all those imposed leaders who claimed to have “won” the elections including driving the then prime minister away from the government house, sacking of the fraudulent electoral head and reconstituting another one for a more credible elections, even in the face of military tanks and mortars, the people succeeded against the tyranny that they faced headlong. Again this is the very minimum that Nigerians would do to brake the heavy and needless yoke they are carrying. Tony Ishiekwene ( London, UK)
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Posted by Robot| 31.10.2008 05:49