‘Last week, the Finance Minister, Olawele Edun
frontally accused the defunct PMB regime of criminal printing of about N23trn.
Northern Senators on Saturday alleged a criminal infusion of N3trn into the
2024 budget by powerful ghosts in Abuja. On Friday, in one Northern state, a
judge sentenced two kidnapers to death by hanging but quickly undermined
himself with an advice to the felons to seek pardon from the executive ‘since
no life was lost in the process of kidnapping’ On Thursday , bandits abducted
287 students in Kaduna. On Saturday, bandits invaded a Zamfara school and stole
15 students. Before the school abductions, the senior brothers of bandits, Boko
Haram, had kidnapped over 400 displaced persons in Borno. In Benue and Plateau,
the murderous campaign against helpless people is one without ceasing.
From desert to the coast, agonising
cries of existential woes rend the air. What we have is chaos pro-max’!!! (
Lasisi Olagunju, Adesina and Nigeria’s fatal abductions, Tribune,11/3/24). He
must have berthed his column before a
group of Bandits PLC ( quoted in
the Criminal Entrepreneurship
Exchange)audaciously demanded N40trn, 11 Hilux vans, and 150 Motorcycles to
appease their gods so that they would release some Kaduna kidnapees ! This is in a country where the Federal
Budget, padded or not, and to be funded mostly by borrowing and taxing the life
out of the people, is between N23 and N28
trn! Another group, more considerate
than the first, has demanded for N1bn within 20 days or they would kill all the
students effortlessly abducted. I don’t
blame them. They would have
consulted their financial consultants and considered the current exchange and inflation rates before fixing these
amounts! The students’ loan programme. Courageously announced in June 2023 and
the launch of which had been rescheduled
1001 times, has just been postponed indefinitely and is being restructured (
and probably padded)by the National
Assembly just as Senator Ningi has been suspended for accusing the hollowed
chambers of padding. Wale Edun ,
has just appointed his company as the advisors for government foreign bond
issue and the 4th relative of Bisi Akande has just been appointed
into this government. And inflation is doing a 100-meters race in the country.
So, how can the son of man leave this grievous, grim and distressing situation in Nigeria to dwell on trouble in South Africa? Well, in an academic forum where I belong, anybody who says anything critical of the BATified government is termed a tribalist, even when some of those with contrary spirits are full-blooded amalakites! In that platform, my default mode now is to CLAP for anything and everything done by the government. Somebody has also accused me of acute BATfobia and another had acused me of being Jeremiah-ic in my writings, always painting doom-full pictures about Nigeria! I therefore decided to redeem myself by taking another sabbatical from Nigerian matters for a while. Whether I will succeed in doing so and for how long is another matter. But let me start today.
Trouble in
paradise( TIP) is the title of a film and a music. The
film premiered in 1932 was about a plan by a gentleman thief and a beautiful
pick-pocket lady to cojoin and con a beautiful perfumier. Somewhere along the
line, things went awry. TIP thus denotes a situation when things go wrong were
or when they are expected to be the
other way round. The musical version of
TIP was released by D Allen in 1980.
This was the one I was used to in my younger days and it conveys the same
message as the film version. In effect, I am saying that trouble is thickening in South Africa,( my
people call it just ‘South’), where our
people have gone in search of greener pastures; where they have gone to kill deadbody
in the high seas (Hammar Limitlessly). It does not mean that all has
been calm in the land of Mandela; it means that a recrudescence of murderous rage against foreigners( read
Nigerians, even when Nigerians do not constitute up to 10% of immigrants in
that country) is in the offing.
Sometimes in February
2024, I came across a nerve-wrecking
video, spewing deadly threats against foreigners for economically castrating the ‘natives’. Unlike here where we leave
everything to God, the people, who are apparently misguided, decided to take
their fate in their hands, and declared Operation Dudula, which
turned into a political party with xenophobic paradigm. Their core agenda is to
deal with immigrants whom they blame for the poverty, poor healthcare,
homelessness and unemployment, and indeed, everything evil in the land. They
adopt a scientific process that involves
identifying these immigrants,
legal or illegal, their addresses and their businesses and then ‘finish
them’. Dudula means to ‘force out’ or to ‘knock down’.
In the process, they usurp the functions of the police and immigration authority!
I say that they are misguided because the foreigners were not and are not
responsible for their economic woes. It is just like Nigerians who will
not acquire carpentry, electrical,
masonry skills turning around to blame craftsmen from our neighbouring countries for
rendering them jobless and poor. In S/Africa, immigrants are willing to work
longer and for lower wages than
nationals. Operation Dudula was formed in 2020 and was later registered as a political party and plans to contest the 2024 election, which has raised the tempo of
their xenophobic dynamics. If our people there had been subjected to all sorts
of unofficial oppression and suppression, you can then imagine what it would
look like when a political party makes it their manifesto.
After watching this chilling video with their
concrete threats against immigrants, I put a call through two of my
acquaintances there and they assured me that they were safe. I them
‘commissioned’ an anonymous consultant to give me a clear picture of what’s
going on. He described it as a sad and complex situation, strategically
x-rayed it and outlined the unfortunate
combination of circumstances that led to this:
1.The borders have been
porous since the collapse of apartheid. The Mbeki presidency had a very pan
African world view and was accommodating of Zimbabwean nationals that account
for the largest proportion of illegals (no thanks to his quiet diplomacy when
that once beautiful country was imploding under Mugabe’s gerontocracy and
misguided and poorly implemented land reform policies)
2. Immigrants are by
nature more daring, more pushful and more desperate than locals . The small
provision stores (called spazas) was one of the bedrocks of the local black
township economy. It is now in the firm grip of a combination of Ethiopian and
Somalian cartel . ( pretty much like Igbo traders in northern Nigeria).
3. A generation of
African professionals especially those that came in in the 1st 15yrs ( the
golden Mandela /Mbeki era) made a remarkable success of their lives and
careers.
4. There is a massive
drugs problem and most Nigerian immigrants are considered ( and it is largely
true) drug dealers except they are clear cut professionals like medical
personnel , lecturers , accountants etc. Most unfortunately the majority of
diaspora town unions have been effectively “captured” by immensely wealthy individuals of questionable
means of income and it explains the endless feuds and bloody shootings you read about involving the likes of Bishop
Ozobulu etc
5. The Zuma ‘wasted’
years coincided with a meltdown in the economy , increased state corruption,
massive youth unemployment and inflation.
For a citizenry used to
state welfare (almost half of black South Africans receive one form of monthly
financial allowance from the state ) all the above has led to massive
resentment. Human nature sometimes thrives on ‘scapegoatism’ and
you guessed right in this case - THE FOREIGNER.
That was his analysis. With Operation Dudula
transforming into a political party and campaigning OPENLY against foreigners,
it is obvious that 2024 will be hot for our people in South Africa. Most of the
foreigners there are from Zimbabwe, Somali, Ethiopia, India ( they are the ones that have taken over the
retail trade in Nigeria) but when the come comes to become, our
people are the most vulnerable targets.
Abike Dabiri should please advise ou people to beware of the dangers
ahead. I hope she does not
categorise Nigerians in South
Africa by their tribes, divide them into saints and sinners, and address them
separately! I also hope that we act
earlier, rather than the fire-brigade approach last time, when we were save by
the magnanimity and patriotism of Allen Onyema and air-Peace.
Dudula Operative
Returnees the other time
I had wanted to argue
that this scenario is common in Nigeria.
People from certain areas are everyday asked to ‘go home’, prevented from
voting, their business areas always targeted for environmental cleansing and receive a more highhanded treatment whenever they run foul of the law. On 12/3/24, Justice Inyang Edem Ekwo of FHC Abuja threw out a suite by the
Coalition of Northern Groups led by Nastura Shariff, Balarabe Rufa’I, Abdul-Aziz
Sulaiman and Aminu Adam, seeking to expel Nd’Igbo from Nigeria.
Last week also, the Young Nigerian Rights
Organisation, (YNRO), has raised an alarm over the massive influx of illegal immigrants from Mali, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Chad,
Burkina Faso, Guinea, Algeria, and other African countries into Delta State. A
group of Okoro traders had also demonstrated against the incessant kidnapping
of their wives in Kogi state. Why the criminal entrepreneurs find their wives
the most attractive targets, the Son of Man cannot fathom.
‘Protestants’: YNRO Activists and Okoro Traders
However, I will not go in this line of argument or
discuss these issues because I have decided to leave Nigeria alone… at
least for today.
-
“Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur..” -Jodi Levine
Entrepreneurship in Practice: Cases, Challenges and Lessons By IK, MUO PHD is now available on Amazon, since 14/5/21. Click here to view Available for order +2348033026625 | Delivery: Worldwide
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