It is OVER: No condition is
‘In the last eight years, the best men and
women for most jobs in all the strategic sectors of Nigeria, are not only from
the North, they are Muslims... The Inspector General of Police, Minister of Police Affairs, Chairman and Secretary of Police Trust Fund, Chief
of Army Staff, DGs of SSS and NIA,
Defense Minister, Chief of Navy, CGs of Customs Service, Immigration and
Prisons, Minister of Communications,
Vice Chairman/CEO of NCC, DGs of NITDA;
NCAA and FAAN; Ministers of Aviation, and
Transportation(after Amechi), MD of NPA, DG of NIMASA, Minister of Petroleum
Resources, Group CEO of NNPC, Attorney General, Chairman of EFCC and DG Financial
Intelligence Unit, Minister of FCT, Executive
Secretary of the FCDA and more than 90% of Heads of Departments and CEOs of FCT agencies, Chairman and
Secretary of the Federal Character Commission, Minister of Power, CEO of
TCN Chairman and the MD of Rural Electrification Agency, are all Muslims from the North.( NASS
Leadership; Who is on Nigeria’s side?. Martins Oloja, Sunday Guardian,
21/5/23, Back Page). He was writing about the 10th
Assembly and the efforts to Northernise its leadership by some ‘patriotic’
Nigerians. I will still write about the 8 years of PMB, one of these days but
today, I just want to pay a deserving tribute to him. And my best tribute is to
reproduce an article titled All
men are equal…,published in The Guardian of
31/5/17. That was 6 years ago, when we were still having a good
time under the taciturn former general. By that time, the Niger Republic dimension
and the Kastinarisation of everything had not yet become worrisome. Here is the 2017 article
If I had been around about 70 years ago when
George Orwell wrote The Animal Farm, I would have advised him to
title it: ‘The change that was not’! Most of us know about George
Orwell’s animals and their utopian farm and so, a brief review would do. It was
all about a grand plan by animals to do away with parasitic humans and manage
their farm for their own benefit and thus creating a world that would be better
in all dimensions. They succeeded in taking over the ownership and management
of the farm based on seven inviolable principles bordering on their
distinctiveness, hatred for everything human, and equality of all. However,
things got worse rather than better as a new set of overlords emerged from
amongst them, subjected them to overbearing dictatorship, denied them of their
liberty and left them hungry, angry,
pauperized and voiceless and eventually discarded all the sacred
principles of the revolution. The animal farm was characterised by the
following figures and realities: Squealer was the Minister of Information;
propaganda, confusion and the only truth from him may probably be his name (did
I mention anybody’s name?). His areas of expertise were rumour mongering,
creating something out of nothing and deliberate obfuscation of the truth. Scapegoatism was elevated to a fundamental
policy of state and everything was blamed on Snowball decades after he had left
the farm. There was hero worshipping in which Napoleon awarded all honours to
himself, where everything was due to his ingenuity and he was supported by
attack-dogs enforcing government policies, which made it impossible to say
truth to power. Meetings and discussions were banned; the ignorance and
gullibility of the animals were manipulated and the government went back to
policies, which it had stoutly resisted, and there was a mischievous
deconstruction of the past.
Another key issue in the farm was the manipulation of all the rules to suit the desires of the selfish leadership. Thus, to the principle ‘that no animal shall kill another’, was added ‘without a reason’; and to the other that ‘animal shall not sleep in beds’, was added ‘with bedsheets’ and so on. But the last straw that broke the camel’s back was when their fundamental principle that all animals are equal was modified to read all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. That was the end of the farm as it was designed. The utopian republic ended and that was the end of the book. I have read the Animal farm several times and every time I read it, I got more and more in love with it, especially with the writer’s ability to see and create the future.
At
his inauguration two years ago (2015), PMB made one resounding statement, which
was the only quotable quote from that ceremony: ‘I belong to nobody and I
belong to everybody’. I interpreted that statement to be the equivalent
to the 'all animals are equal' declaration in the animal farm and I
expected that the era of the brazen lopsided appointments, policies and
programmes was over. I had thought that our dear president had repented from
his days at PTF, when the North, and particularly his political zone, had
70-100 per cent of most of the projects, supervised by consultants chosen
because of relationships. Two years down the line, I do not believe so again.
Let’s
start from two recent related events that were treated differently by the
government, which belongs to no one. The Islamic Movement of Nigeria has been
boldly protesting the continued detention of their leader (El Zakzaky) for the
past 17 months. They also protested last week and all was well; nothing
happened. IPOB also protested the same last week and hell was let loose as
truckloads of them were arrested across the country. Is the freedom of assembly
and expression of opinion for all of us or is it for some of us? I started from
there because this is something that just happened. Everybody is aware of the
lopsided nature of PMBs security and strategic appointments since 2015 and the
constitution of his kitchen cabinet where the national dishes are
prepared and served. This time, it was not just a Northern affair, it
was not even a Kastina affair; it was about Daura and all sorts of blood
relationships.
Of
course, it was misleading for our president to claim that he belonged (s) to no
one when he is the grand-patron of the Myetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association
of Nigeria. I believe that he is even a member (directly or by proxy) because
the key assets he declared were cattle. That is why in the past two years,
there has been a declaration, more in action than words, that cows are
more important than humans in Nigeria and that the breeders have power
of life and death over other Nigerians. One only needs to go through the news
to see how herdsmen brazenly wreak havoc in the South, East and West and
non-core North (Benue et al). All we have heard are very funny stories
including that the herdsmen terrorists are foreign invaders, how an offence
against any Fulani is a debt that must be repaid, and how some of them were
sought outside our shores and paid/begged to kill no more. Whether it was in
Agatu or Nimbo, the security outfits just acted as if nothing happened and our
PMB who belonged to everybody could not utter any word though he would quickly
commiserate with other Nations even when two chickens died in a road accident!
When
it comes to cattle hustlers, the case is different. The action is decisive and
clinical and yet we are told that all men are equal. The other day, the Niger
police command recovered 28 cows from Kamache Village Forest and on 4/5/17,
Justice Majebi of Kogi High Court sentenced two murderous cattle rustlers
(Jauro and Sanni), to death by hanging. That was good enough but how many
herdsmen have been arrested and tried, not to think of being punished? What you
see is a rather a very laughable situation in which Benue State CP, Bashir
Makama, who watched while Fulani terrorists masquerading as herdsmen turned
Benue people into refugees in their own land, had the boldness to declare that
the governor Samuel Ortom could not banish Fulani herdsmen from the state, and
that was just after another bout of herdsmen brutality in a state where
herdsmen now control 12 of the 23 LGAs.
Sometimes
ago, Okorocha’s convoy was blocked in the heart of Owerri (7/5/16) by a band of
herdsmen and their priceless cattle. You know what would have happened if it
were ordinary civilians that blocked that road. Not long ago, soldiers killed a
pupil while trying to rescue some herdsmen in Benue State. On 10/5/17, herdsmen
attacked travelers on the Abuja-Keffi expressway and the following day, four
policemen were killed by the same Fulani herdsmen in Abraka, in Delta State.
Our people say that the person oppressing a widow does so boldly because
he knows where the husband has gone and that a person sent to steal by
his father does so with all boldness. The herdsmen are behaving with the
impudence of a person dealing with the widow or the son stealing with his
father’s backing!
But
even if we leave the herdsmen out of this nauseating equation, there are
thousand and one variables forcing us to wonder whether indeed all Nigerians
are equal. In the last police recruitment, Kano State had a haul of 396
constables while Bayelsa was lucky to get 72; the same Bayelsa that despite the
extant provisions has only seven LGAs. In the last DSS recruitment, Northwest got 165, (while PMBs Kastina State had 51), the entire Southeast had 44 slots
and South-South, 42. The cut-off marks for the so-called unity schools this
year’s was 139 for Anambra, 131 for Ogun and 4 for Zamfara. And these are candidates
who will write the same WASC/JAMB and face the same labour market. I also
remember the recent Ife crises, a clear case of two-fighting in
which only one was arrested and the swiftness with which the arrests were
concluded and the IGP’s declaration that crime has no tribe.
In
effect, when PMB declared that he belonged to nobody, he raised my hopes and
expectations. Unfortunately, within the first day in office, he had rubbished
that declaration. The end of Animal Farm came when Napoleon and his cohorts
brazenly declared that some animals are more equal than others. It has been
arrogantly shown to us that some Nigerians are more equal than others; than
even the cattle are more important that the people. I hope that does not mark
the end of the real-life Nigerian farm. This is the end of that 2017 article.
For PMB, as it was in the beginning, it got
worse at the end. But one thing is certain; I am GLAD that I survived these 8 Buharistic
years, the worst, macro-wise, in my 65+ years on earth. The badness of Buhari years was
caused by unparalleled incompetence, mindboggling corruption, nepotism and parochialism of Guinness-Book-of-Records
proportions, concern for self, friends and relations(+ those in Niger
Republic), bitterness towards fellow
Nigerians, especially the dot-people and an I don’t give a
damn paradigm.
To
celebrate his exit, I harkened to the above public announcement,
queued for some hours and received this certificate of survival.
I stayed longer on the queue because I refused to settle those who wanted to
make last cash under the outgoing regime. Even Nigeria as a country deserves
the certificate, for remaining a country ( far from being a nation!) after these disastrous PMB years!
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