UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE

by Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

If before the end of this year it becomes clear that the sterling performance of Dr. Dora Akunyili as Director General of the National Agency For Food, Drug Administration And Control (NAFDAC) has been completely erased from the people’s mind and rudely replaced with the clearly odious role she now plays as the ebullient head of President Yar’Adua’s misinformation machinery, she would have no one to blame but herself. And it would be very sad indeed. No doubt, the costly, but naïve decision she took to become the image-maker of a passive and rudderless regime must, without fail, exact an even costlier price. 

Never a one to miss an excellent opportunity to strike when the head is still on the block, Mohammed Haruna has stepped forward with the strange theory that the indisputable and widely acclaimed success of Dr. Akunyili in her determined battle against fake and substandard products may have been unduly exaggerated. “The problem with propaganda is that it almost always leads to self-deception. Akunyili may have succeeded possibly well beyond her wildest  imagination in turning NAFDAC into a well-known brand, but the reality of food and drug administration in the country is that her success has been more of image than substance,” wrote Mr. Mohammed in a March 4, 2009 column. He did not stop there: “The fact is that contrary to the image that NAFDAC under Akunyili has virtually eliminated the phenomena of fake drugs and drug abuse both have hardly experienced any significant decline. In spite of all her efforts, the open and illegal drug markets in the country including the three most notorious ones at Onitsha, Kano and Aba, have never really gone out of business. So also have those who openly hawk prescription drugs on our streets”, Mohammed declared.

                                                                     
Dora Akunyili:Attempting The Impossible?
                  

A few months ago, before Akunyili accepted to work for the very unpopular Yar’Adua regime as Information Minister, Mohammed, despite his sterling reputation in matters of this nature, would have thought twice before launching such an unfair broadside, but now, who would want to fight for a once widely-admired Dora who, for reasons that can only be less-than edifying, has chosen to hasten her self-immolation with her own hands?

As DG of NAFDAC, Akunyili was regularly celebrated in my newspaper column even though I have never met her.  The same way, most Nigerians who had loved her, prayed fervently for her and had pleaded with her to resist the temptation to soil her shinning reputation by accepting to become the spokesperson of this clearly bankrupt regime, did not know her personally.  And they would regard as gratuitous insult Mohammed Haruna’s suggestion that they may have been hypnotized by Akunyili’s successful propaganda and media hype.

No matter how revolting we may find Akunyili’s present engagement, we cannot in all honesty deny that she did quality work, as NAFDAC DG, to restore the people’s confidence in drugs and beverages circulated in
Nigeria. So, solid was her work that as not a few Nigerians entered shops and confidently bought fruit juice or other beverages, and left with full assurances that their livers would still be intact after they had consumed them, they gratefully remembered Akunyili and thanked God for her life. As a baby suffered from jaundice, and the mother rushed to a nearby chemist shop and purchased the antibiotic prescribed by the doctor, and the drug saved the baby instead of killing him or her, that mother, depending on how informed she was, more often than not, would remember Akunyili. As drug manufacturing firms which were almost forced out of business (many multi-national drug companies actually closed shop and left the country) because their products were being indiscriminately counterfeited returned en masse and began smiling to the banks with their millions and billions instead of singing tales of woes, they remembered Akunyili, and thanked God for such a rare gift. To most Nigerians, Akunyili meant the return of sanity in a society overrun and made unsafe by heartless counterfeiters; the safeguarding of many lives which would have been lost because of the desperation of some devilish souls to rake in blood-stained millions at the expense of precious lives.

As I read recently the Daily Trust web copy of Mohammed’s March 4 article and saw the comments posted by readers, it dawned on me that Akunyili’s lower descent may even happen faster than I had feared.  But then, it has always been evident that the first thing a public officer acquires in Nigeria is thick skin. That is why the very damaging allegation by one of Mohammed’s readers (which Daily Trust allowed to be posted) may not even bother Akunyili. That may also explain why she is most stubbornly going on with her overly exasperating re-branding campaign despite widespread agreement among the citizenry that it is nothing but a useless and wasteful exercise.  

I have heard that when people enter government they tend to be willingly ignorant and blind in order to survive for too long there. Else, how can somebody with Dr. Akunyili’s intelligence, training, exposure and endowments wake up one morning and convince herself that by attacking my phones daily with the very uninspiring slogan: “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation,” she will succeed in intimidating me into suddenly forgetting all the indescribable pains tormenting me in this country as a result of the abysmal failure of leadership and character on the part of our rulers, and start grinning from ear to ear? Does a country become great simply because some fellow stood in some cosy office in Abuja and attacked my phones with silly slogans he or she does not even believe?  What do these people really take us for? A population of empty-headed fools? Now, if a father who had wasted his money on wine and women, and, consequently, starved his family sore, suddenly woke up one morning and started reciting: “My Family: Healthy, Well-fed!” won’t his wife and neighbours think he has gone crazy? How can such a useless slogan better the lot of the family he had irresponsibly neglected? How would that secure him the love and cooperation of his family members and make them to stop seeing him as an irresponsible and failed family head?

I seriously think that this is becoming too ridiculous! There is a disgusting penchant in Nigerian leaders to always throw money at problems and expect a magic to happen – a clearly lazy, insincere man’s option that would always be rewarded with resounding failure.  We always want to seek a shot-cut to glory by seeking to purchase a good image. How can any nation hope to re-brand itself in a vacuum, with practically nothing to showcase? Will the potential tourist or investor simply start rushing down to Nigeria because of one meaningless slogan when the verdict of Country Risk Analysts about this same country remains alarming? Why this indecent haste to re-brand? Why not Yar’Adua now set a realistic date to achieve uninterrupted power supply in Nigeria, for instance, and when that has been achieved, use it as a milestone to anchor a re-branding campaign?

To clearly underline the fact that the rest of the world is unimpressed by our infantile campaign of misinformation, Nigeria was recently excluded from the G20 Summit of world leaders which it had before now attended as merely an observer. What it means then is that even as an observer, the global community is sick and tired of enduring the unprofitable company of this perennially sick baby. And when this happened, Yar’Adua mourned in Abuja: “I must say that today is a sad day for me. And I think it should be for all Nigerians, when 20 leaders of the leading countries in the world are meeting and Nigeria is not there. This is something we need to reflect upon,” he cried.

Well, I can only hope that Yar’Adua and his unwieldy crowd will truly reflect upon this, and tell themselves that even if a G40 Summit is holding tomorrow, Nigeria may still be excluded, even if we sink billions to re-brand and re-brand and re-brand.  Somebody should please tell Akunyili what I think she already knows too well, namely, that when a room is horribly messed up with the indiscriminate droppings of a very reckless dog, what you must do is to bend down and carefully wash the place with an active detergent.  Only then would you get back the fresh, pleasant air that makes a room worth inhabiting. But if you take the unhealthy short cut of spraying the dog-shit with heavy dose of deodorant, then you will get a putrid scent that will make the room more repelling than ever before.  Indeed, it is time to discard this unprofitable and ridiculous exercise and roll up the sleeves to work to move Nigeria forward.  Without any re-branding campaign to hoodwink anyone, companies are closing shop here, and relocating to Ghana. Yar’Adua and Akunyili can also reflect on this. A good market, they say, sells itself.

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www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Gradually, President Yar’Adua’s health condition is becoming an item for very debilitating blackmail. And it seems to be working effectively!

Just wonder aloud why the president of such a critically sick and sinking country cannot allow himself to be roused from crippling inertia to seek with clear vision, focus and vigour the nation’s healing and revival, and the next accusation that would be laid at your doorstep is: “Oh, there you go again, making fun of the president because of his ill-health.”

And so political correctness now dictates that we all enlist in the confused choir of incurably naïve optimists who seem to derive peculiar animation from continually chorusing the hope that a heavy truck trapped in the middle of a collapsing bridge, because its driver was having a good, refreshing nap, would not soon disappear into the deep waters even though the bridge is already down and about to be washed away.

I think this is sad and most unfortunate.

Now, why would somebody make fun of anyone because he or she is sick? Can the person accurately predict what the state of his or her own health would be tomorrow? I think what most people are trying to say is that there are too many sick persons in the country and Mr. Yar’Adua just happens to be one of them. What we owe all of them are our sincere sympathies, prayers, and help if we are in a position to offer any. But there is definitely no justification for turning anyone’s personal health challenges into a national burden. In other words,
Nigeria cannot continue to just sit still, fold its hands and do nothing in the face of threatening devastating global economic crises on the unpardonable excuse that its president is sick – as if there are no capable and healthy persons in the country?

For goodness sake, this state of inertia has gone on for too long. If the president is not sick, let him wake up, think, roll out his plans and work? And if he is, and unable to perform, as seems to be the case, let him excuse himself from the throne, instead of holding everyone else to ransom. I am quite sure that not many people would object to Nigeria undertaking to pay the president’s medical bills for life, as compensation for the “invaluable sacrifice,” if he decides today to let go and retire to the serenity of his family house in Katsina.

But will the leeches and parasites feeding fat on his incompetence and the nation’s carcasses allow him to make up his mind?

For a nation as badly run as Nigeria is, where decisions and actions that determine the direction and future of the country are mostly inspired by acute selfishness, Yar’Adua would never lack a formidable army of self-serving loyalists hailing his special capacity to sleep through the worst crises, as we are witnessing at the moment. It is not impossible, too, that a President Umar Musa Yar’Adua may reappear in Abuja in 2011. I think that should not shock anyone who has been watching the course of events in the nation’s political horizon for the past few months. This is one nation where people are continually drinking and eating poison with utmost relish, and yet wanting to live; yes, a country where people continue to assure and reassure themselves that no matter how long they keep stabbing their nation and drinking its blood, they would still wake up every other morning to see it standing on its feet and flourishing.

Well, all these acts of self-delusion would in no distant time be forced to evaporate by the grim realities that would soon dawn on this nation. For so long now, Nigeria has remained the best example of how a richly endowed country could look like in the absence of any of form of government. People who found themselves at the seat power merely looted the treasury pale and retired at the expiration of their tenures to enjoy their unearned wealth. So long as there was still oil pumping out crispy dollars for the next regime to loot and put away in coded accounts abroad, no one complained; and no one was asked to give account. Only those foolish enough to die, like Gen Sani Abacha, were branded corrupt, and their loot diligently looted.

And so, at a time world leaders are spending sleepless nights with their economic managers and experts, devising ways to save their nations from the looming global economic calamity, we, in this ungoverned entity called Nigeria are busy debating about our president’s vacation, which, if we must be sincere to ourselves, he has enjoyed with little or no interruptions since May 29, 2007. I once heard that the motto of an association of pensioners was: “Rest Is Sweet After Labour.”

Pray, what has Yar’Adua done since the two years he has encumbered the ground in Abuja to warrant his disturbing the nation’s peace with tiresome talk about vacation? Which responsible and responsive president would allow himself to be caught dropping the slightest hint about a vacation at time oil prices, his country’s   sole revenue earner, was crashing from near $145 to about $30? The earthquake in the nation’s stock market is an economic tsunami that ought to have kept any president alert and worried, but our own man could not just be bothered. He would rather go on vacation, even as major multi-national companies are closing shops in Nigeria, and relocating to functional countries like Ghana, causing countless Nigerians to be dumped in the unemployment market. Mind you, Nigeria remains the biggest market for these companies; they produce in Ghana and sell in Nigeria. What an unlucky nation.

Despite Yar’Adua’s repeated promise to declare a state of emergency in the power sector, power supply has worsened beyond what anyone would have imagined was possible in a nation ruled by a human being. I doubt if there is any community in Nigeria today where anyone can walk to a public tap, fetch healthy water and confidently drink it. Indeed, no one with the means to afford alternatives in Ghana, Cameroon or any of our tiny neighbours, takes the risk of enlisting his children in Nigerian schools any more. I challenge Yar’Adua or any governor to prove that his children are in Nigerian public universities – where many public official had attended.  Nigeria’s health institutions are only patronized by those willing to take a risk with their lives, because they are too poor to fly out for medical treatment; not even the president of Nigeria receives treatment in Nigerian hospitals.

But the worst is yet on the way, in fact, very close to the door.

By the time the devastating effect of President Barack Obama’s New Energy Policy reaches home to us here in Nigeria, there is no doubt that the price of oil may go down to 50 cents. At that time, there won’t even be enough public fund to steal. Maybe, then, and only then, would Nigerians be forced by very unbearable conditions to seek authentic leaders, people with a mind and clear ideas to move society forward, and not a horde of bankrupt creatures occupying offices where they are not even qualified to be cleansers. Today, we are complaining about the rise of violent crime in Nigeria. By that time, it would degenerate to almost an open war.

And until then, some vacuous fellows can still afford the luxury of campaigning for a Second or even Third for Yar’Adua, so he could stay back to “continue the good work he is doing.” What a nation!  

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 scruples2006@yahoo.com 
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

As Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof Dora Akunyili captured the admiration and great respect of most Nigerians due to her selfless, determined and very successful battle against fake and substandard drugs and their vile merchants, who, in their most ungodly desperation to make huge profits, succeeded so well in dispatching not a few Nigerians to their early graves. Everybody loved her, sang her praises, wished her well, and prayed for her, except, perhaps, the murderous fake drugs manufacturers and distributors, who saw her as the unshakable obstacle to their most devilish trade. So solid and widespread were her popularity and acceptance that some people began to urge her to run for presidency.  

 
Dr. Dora Akunyili

Akunyili was regularly celebrated in this column. In my most recent piece on her entitled, “The Meaning of Dora Akunyili,” I said: Each time you confidently purchase a drug, fruit juice or any other consumable and go away with full assurance that your liver would still be intact after you have taken it, you should not fail to remember Akunyili and be grateful to God for her life. Akunyili means the return of sanity in a society overrun and made unsafe by heartless counterfeiters; she means the safeguarding of many lives which would have since been lost because some devilish souls were looking for blood money… Akunyili could simply have accepted the blood-stained billions [the fake drugs merchants] were all too willing to give her and allowed them to unleash their lethal products on all of us, but she chose to safeguard lives.  And by that decision, she may have saved you, your beloved mother, father, wife, uncle, precious, tender children and friends.

In
Nigeria today, most people would not hesitate to classify any drug or beverage without a NAFDAC Registration Number as killer poison. And that’s because Nigerians believed everything Akunyili told them. The NAFDAC number on any product clearly represented Akunyili’s assurance to Nigerians that that particular drug or beverage was safe for human consumption. And because it was said by Akunyili whom they had learnt to believe without reservations, they usually accepted it without any fears. But, unfortunately, all these may recede into the dark recesses of a distant past given the acceptance by Prof Dora Akunyili last week to serve as the Information and Communication Minister in the very bankrupt and shriveled regime of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua.  

Indeed, only one reason may have informed Akunyili’s appointment. The Yar’Adua regime only wanted to exploit the enormous admiration and goodwill she enjoyed from Nigerians to shore up its badly battered image. But by accepting to serve as Information Minister in a regime like Yar’Adua’s which by the very nature of its constitution represents a huge lie built and sustained on a foundation of undiluted, poorly, unintelligently concocted lies, Akunyili is, no doubt, overdrawing from the public trust, admiration and goodwill that had overwhelmingly flooded her the moment she began to excel as NAFDAC boss.  It even looks like Akunyili herself is already catching the lying bug, going by the brazenness with which she made the outrageous and overly obscene claim last week that her appointment was divine.   

Now, because I still love and respect Akunyili, my sincere question to her today is: Are you very sure this is really what you want to do? Is it really worth it? What value would your job as the image-maker of a critically unfocused and purposeless regime add to Nigeria? Indeed, I find it very difficult to believe that a person with Akunyili’s intimidating reputation would just wake up one day and decide to allow everything good, noble, edifying and lovely about her to flow down the drain just like that simply because she wants to be in government. Why would she see a clear tragedy and embrace it with beaming smiles?  Now, just how Akunyili would sell the overly unattractive Yar’Adua regime is what beats many of her admirers? What new lie would Akunyili tell us about a regime utterly disgusted Nigerians have, for very good reasons, already written off as irredeemable and a never-do-well? What would she say are the set targets of this regime? What are the timeframes for the realization of those targets?  What exactly is one redeeming point of the Yar’Adua? Television and other media adverts for its totally colourless and bankrupt Seven Point Agenda have gulped incredibly huge funds, but if one may dare ask: at what stage of implementation can anyone place any of the items on the Seven Point nonsense? This regime has done nothing but inundate Nigerians with countless empty promises, bored and over-sickened everyone with overdose of talk-talk and lie-lie. Talk, is cheap. If it was possible, the Yar’Adua regime would have felled countless Irokos with the lying tongues of its countless false prophets.

Nigeria, it’s now very clear, is too sick to be left in the hands of a critically overwhelmed and ever-groping president who is evidently unsure of his next move and grappling with snail-speed some ill-digested ideas he is not even sure would work. So, what would Akunyili tell Nigerians to make them see this regime differently from how it really is? Now, assuming Yar’Adua disappears tomorrow for ‘prolonged sessions of prayers’ in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of some German specialist hospital, and instructs Akunyili to keep feeding us with the most exasperatingly infantile lie that he is in a mosque somewhere in the city praying hard for solutions to  Nigeria’s ever-mounting problems, how would she manage that? Has it occurred to her that from now on, she would be the very ugly and overly revolting face of this very unpopular and irredeemable regime, and that whatever disgust and resentment Nigerians had reserved for the directionless and unproductive regime would automatically be transferred to her each time she emerged to feed the nation with a new set of lies? Now, is Dora very sure this is what she really bargained for after all these years of selfless service to the nation as NAFDAC DG? Is this totally thankless job really what she wanted? 

Well, to be fair, I can appreciate Akunyili’s dilemma. We run a very lousy system where ministerial nominees are usually not informed before hand of the particular portfolio that would be assigned to them. Akunyili, no doubt, could not have imagined that Yar’Adua would eventually saddle her with such a messy job of bearing the horribly cracked Chief Megaphone of this failed and ugly regime and being soaked daily with the undiluted odium and resentment of overly disappointed Nigerians. Like many Nigerians, she may have thought she would be sent to the health sector where her competences would be deployed to the benefit of Nigerians. But, as we all know, the well-being of Nigerians is hardly the concern of this regime, which is so sad.

It is not too late in the day for Akunyili to sit down and quietly count the very high cost of this totally unrewarding misadventure. And one thing she should not lose sight of is that after sometime, when she would have become irredeemably odious to Nigerians and her voice very loathsome to everyone as a result of continuously doing the dirty of job of marketing this hard-sell called the Yar’Adua regime, she would be unceremoniously dumped to quietly nurse her deep credibility wounds alone at the refuse dump of thoroughly discredited yesterday people, while the regime move on with another willing sacrificial lamb. And that is why I ask Akunyili again: Are you really sure you want to do this messy job? Now, Dora, if the answer is NO, do not allow anyone intimidate you with the lie that you have fait accompli before you. You certainly don’t! So, no matter the blackmail they may dredge up (due to some entanglements they may have carefully arranged before now to entrap you), follow your heart, go ahead and call Yar’Adua’s bluff and bolt away. That’s your Hobson’s choice. 

scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Unless, this is merely another of those statements he usually makes to grab the headlines and circulate the misleading impression that some form of governance is going in Abuja, after which nothing more is ever heard about the matter again, last week’s call by President Umar Musa Yar’Adua on the National Assembly to expunge the irredeemably iniquitous Immunity Clause from the Nigerian Constitution, most surely, ranked, in my opinion, as the most significant thing the man had uttered since he assumed office in May 2007. The Immunity Clause gives statutory protection to the president, his deputy, governors and their deputies against arrests and prosecutions for any unlawful acts throughout their tenure of office. In other words, even if a governor or president empties the whole treasury into his pocket, the much anyone can do (since the  lawmakers are also in his pocket) is to wait patiently until he is out of office before he could be brought to book for such a hideous crime. The purpose of this  odious law, we are told, is to ensure that this  category of public officers are spared every distraction which their arrests and prosecutions could constitute, so they could devote their whole self and time to govern the people well.

But, as we have all sadly found out, this has become the most abused law in
Nigeria. The Immunity Clause may have been added with good intentions, but   given our bitter experiences with successive rulers, nothing now justifies its continued retention in our statute books.  Unfortunately, the governance of our hapless nation has been hijacked by a criminal class whose only mission in the various Government Houses is to loot the places dry. After they had stolen so much and stashed billions in coded accounts abroad, they would abscond once they leave office, and only return to the country to enjoy their filthy wealth after they had successfully used the billions they had stolen to install and sustain one of their own in power, so that no matter the national outcry against their boundless criminal accumulations while in office, the various anti-corruption agencies would endeavour to look the other way once their names are mentioned. “Corruption is endemic in this country,” President Yar’Adua said last week, “and there is no way this country can achieve its potential until and unless this evil is confronted promptly by all Nigerians, and one of the steps and measures that we may have to take in order to entrench this fight against corruption is to look at some of our laws. I today call for the abrogation of the constitutional provision of immunity for president, vice president, governors and deputy governors, and I want all Nigerians to join me in this call … this provision of immunity should be expunged from the Nigerian Constitution.”

With my whole I heart I endorse this most important call by the president. We have always been fed with such bunkum like how irresponsible and unpatriotic Nigerians would use countless frivolous petitions and lawsuits to “distract” the governors or the president from his determination to turn Nigeria into another paradise. And how instead of spending all the time “transforming” the state and delivering “democracy dividends,” he would be in one court or the other where he had been charged for corruption or other criminal activities. Please, spare all such trash for hare-brained fools. Since the immunity clause had protected these fellows from “distractions” what have they achieved? For eight years, 1999-2007, Nigeria enjoyed unprecedented prosperity from oil exports, which sold as high as $135. But despite the total absence of “distractions,” what did our rulers achieve? Nigeria is still battling with prehistoric darkness, with industries folding up and relocating to neighbouring countries, as a result of the total collapse of the power sector. Roads have remained impassable. The school and health systems have since packed up, and no one is even attempting to extend them the honour of an autopsy. Indeed, the immunity clause has only helped the heartless, thieving rulers to mindlessly steal without “distractions.” This just must stop! We require only one quarter of what was stolen by public officers in this country to turn it into another Europe. Imagine what this country of highly creative people would become if we had uninterrupted power supply? No nation where thieves are kings ever survives! The greatest hindrance to Nigeria’s development is CORRUPTION. No more, no less.

So, let the immunity clause go. If it only helps the governor or president to realize he is NOT some emperor to be worshipped, and that state funds are not his to squander the way he likes, that’s okay for now. Whoever thinks he would be unable to take the “distractions” from “frivolous petitions” can simply excuse himself from aspiring to become president or governor.  Maybe, after this, the  genuine servant-leaders, whose mission is to truly serve the people, would emerge to rescue this nation from the resilient criminal class that has held it to ransom for many years now. Every other nation seeks daily to transfer more power to its people to enable them hold leaders accountable, but in Nigeria, everything is done to render the people voiceless and powerless. I see the removal of this immunity clause as one effective way of returning power to the people. By the way, what is all this fetish about “distractions”? Anambra people still retain pleasant memories of the brief tenure of Chris Ngige as their governor, yet, only few people remember that Ngige did all he did to win the love of his people in the midst of a most savage fight against him by Aso Rock-empowered renegades.  So much for “distractions.”

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What is Gov Ohakim Afraid Of?

Mr. Ikedi Ohakim has said countless nice things and did a few things right since he happened in Owerri as Imo Governor, including tarring the road to my village in Umuaka halfway – something previous regimes could not even attempt despite profuse promises. And, although, many people on this side of civilisation recoiled at his suggestion the other day that treasury looters should be stoned (to death, I suppose), such an outburst, however, was construed by many as indicative of the governor’s deep revulsion for corruption. But just a few days after his historic statement, and President Yar’Adua had called for the abrogation of the obnoxious immunity clause, Ohakim thoroughly embarrassed his admirers and Imo citizens by becoming the first serving public officer (in less than twenty-four  hours or so) to voice his public disagreement with Yar’Adua on this issue. “I believe that there are many areas of the Constitution that require amendment to assist Nigeria in fulfilling its manifest destiny, and not the issue of corruption,” he told reporters in Kaduna. Indeed, given that corruption has since distinguished itself as the most destructive enemy of Nigeria’s development, Ohakim’s uncritical stand  certainly cost him countless friends, and placed a halo of doubt over his past media posturing on transparency in governance. Did he see the degrading comments his unedifying position attracted from enraged Nigerians on the internet? But why is Ohakim suddenly jittery? Is he scared of a past to which the removal of immunity clause might attract more discreet scrutiny or a present which when exposed by the removal of the immunity shield might look very scary? Or was he merely, characteristically, dropping another headline-grabbing bombshell? A sad day for Imo indeed!        

 scruples2006@yahoo.com
w.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Jos, the
Plateau State capital, has just concluded another wild celebration of raw barbarity and extreme savagery. Some barbarous creatures, who have laboured so hard to demonstrate so well that they have no place within the bounds of decent and civilized existence,  had hurriedly grabbed their knives, poisoned arrows and guns  and rushed into the streets to do the only thing they knew how to do so well, and derive immense pleasure and animation from, namely, killing and maiming. And before they could significantly assuage their unquenchable blood-thirst, some hundreds of mostly innocent women, children and men, have been cruelly slaughtered for no other reason than that they were unlucky enough to share the same environment with irredeemable savages.

But I blame it all on our lawless country, where people now believe they can just do anything that excites their warped minds and get away with it. But crime has no other definition known to civilized man and should attract no other treatment except commensurate punishment capable of deterring other potential criminals.  So long as human beings are aware that their nation’s laws are too weak and pitiably toothless, that they can always manage to escape the just rewards for all their misdeeds, no matter the magnitude, the incentive to commit even more heinous crimes would always be abundant.

Since the mass slaughter of human beings occurred in Jos more than a fortnight ago, we have been inundated with so many brands of the usual ‘politically correct’ shibboleths, with which we have always managed to delude ourselves that we are helping to find the ‘right and realistic’ solutions to the problem. Oh, we have this   very acrimonious “indigene/settler” problem in Jos North Local Government, we are told. And while the “indigenes” have vowed that they would never be ruled by “settlers,” the “settlers” on their   part are insisting that there is no way they would continue to be regarded as “settlers” in a land they have been living in for about a hundred years now. No, it was a PDP/ANPP matter, others insist. If one party had not out-rigged the other in the council elections, there would not have been any orgy of violence and wanton killing of human beings. So, to prevent any future mass slaughter of human beings in Jos, there must be dialogue to settle the indigene/settler rift, so they can coexist harmoniously and peacefully.  

Now, assuming one million dialogues and peace conferences do not succeed in bringing about peace between these two irreconcilable parties, what should the   country do? Fold its hands and continue to pray that nothing happens to inflame passions and offend habitual murderers perennially baying for blood and looking for the slightest reason to assuage their bloodlust?  No I don’t think so. In America today, the deep hatred and resentment some incurable racists and rednecks reserve for coloured people around them, including even their present president-elect, is far worse than can ever exist among the indigene/settler combatants in Jos North Local Government. But what makes the American experience different is that no matter the depth of anyone’s hatred for the other, such a one must school himself to appreciate the fact that the strong hands of the law would never spare anyone who dares to give murderous expression to his or her hatred. Once you decide to take another person’s life, you are already very sure of your very severe appointment with the law.

But in Nigeria, when people wake up and start killing their fellow human beings, instead of calling a crime by its real name and visiting it with the exact punishment it merits, we go ahead to dress it up in such self-serving phrases like “ethnic crises,” “religious crises” or even the complex term, “ethno-religious crises.”  And so, when some fellows rose up some  time ago, and   started slaughtering their fellow Nigerians because one obscure cartoonist in far away Denmark had published an illustration they found offensive, we quickly dubbed it “religious crises” and within a few weeks, the bereaved quietly buried their dead where they were able to find the corpses, mourned silently, cleaned tears from their eyes, nursed their pain and anguish, and everybody went about their normal businesses, waiting for the next opportunity for another mass murder to occur.  But if the government had put its foot on the ground, and insisted on having all those who participated in the killings, especially those who instigated them (which I believe they can fish out if they really want to), to taste the full wrath of the law, in future, some other people would think twice before embarking on the next killing expedition. Last Saturday, The Guardian published on its front-page the very revolting picture of many blood-thirsty youths described as “mercenaries” coming to Jos to help their like-minds to terminate more lives of people who may neither be members of the PDP nor ANPP. Now, have far have the security agents gone to establish the owner of the vehicles that were conveying them before they were intercepted? Who hired the vehicles? Who gathered those bands of young, eager killers, addressed them and sent them off to Jos to prosecute more barbarous killings? Were there no security men at all in the state from where they set off? Have their sponsors been identified, and how soon would their prosecution commence?

Already, the very hideous criminal act of mass murder of men, women and children in Jos has already been dubbed “religious/ethnic crises”, and another useless probe has also been set up to buy time, and let the bereaved forget their pain and anguish.  And the children who had been brutally orphaned and women cruelly widowed by the mindless killings would now be abandoned to eat their loaves of sorrow and bitter sufferings all alone. That is the nature of our country. I am not against dialogue. I am not against probes and reconciliation meetings, but we deceive ourselves if we continue to give the impression that dialogue and making people account for their hideous acts are mutually exclusive. Both must be allowed to play their separate roles in the peace and reconciliation process. Most of the people who participated in these killings may not be members of any political party.  In fact, many of them may not have voted in the contentious council elections. And majority of them may not even be able to say the difference between the ANPP and the PDP or the names of the different candidates. All they needed to go into the streets killing people like enraged demons were for somebody to gather them to one corner, give them an overdose of some delicacies, including burukutu, fire them with some hate-speeches against some people they have always been taught to regard as mortal enemies, and unleash them on society to wreak boundless violence. That is why even though we are being told that this was a PDP/ANPP war arising from the outcome of council elections, it soon came to be known as “ethno-religious” crises. If the Commissioner of Police in Jos says he is unable to fish out the people who instigated this mass killing of human beings, including some young corps members whose throats were slashed for no other offence than that they were unlucky enough to perform National Service in a part of the country where heartless killers are carefully bred and kept for wanton murderous acts and most irrational and savage destructions, then he is not qualified to occupy that post. Until this nation arrests and prosecutes the prominent criminals who instigate violence and bloodletting among the citizenry just to make a political point, these killings would remain a regular occurrence. And if we continue to treat this very serious matter with kid gloves, maybe, because it is only the poor and nobodies that usually die, one day, the killers would grow wilder and extend their murderous adventure beyond the high walls of the cosy quarters where the affluent, highly placed bloodsuckers hide to instigate the poor to kill themselves.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Please, could somebody be nice to this hapless nation and walk across to President Umar Musa Yar’Adua’s cosy castle in Aso Villa, where not a few believe he is still in bed enjoying a very refreshing midmorning sleep, wake him with a very gentle tap on his shoulder, and ask him what his reaction would likely be if he was suddenly roused from deep slumber with the tragic news that the Niger Bridge had collapsed, and with it many Nigerians and several vehicles, all plunged into the dark belly of the deep waters of the River Niger, thus spreading sorrow, pain and anguish everywhere? Would he just sigh, murmur barely audible things about being always disturbed with “these people’s endless troubles,” put his head back on his soft pillows, have Lady Turai tuck him up more comfortably in his made-in-Germany or Saudi Arabia blanket, and go back to sleep? 

And then, perhaps, after  a couple  of hours, he would wake up again, better refreshed and fairly alert, and ask to be reminded what was told him the other time (or was he even dreaming it?).

“No, Your Excellency, you were not dreaming. You were informed, Your Excellency, before you went back to sleep,    that the nation had been plunged into deep mourning, because the disaster long foretold which most people thought your regime had done nothing to avert (but we know that you were busy night and day drawing up elaborate plans for a lasting solution to it, instead of resorting to “quick-fix” options like your predecessors) has eventually exploded on the nation. Don’t mind the foolish bridge, Sir. It could not wait for another two years for Your Excellency’s well-crafted action-plan to be unfolded to give it the attention it deserved before deciding to embarrass this well-focused Administration with its stupid fall. Well, don’t allow that to bother you, Your Excellency. The only problem now is that   because no word had come from you since the past couple of hours when the tragedy struck, presidential spokespersons have been at a loss as to what to tell the nation, and mischief makers are already taking advantage of the situation to spread wicked rumours, which, as Your Excellency knows, we can’t be party to, because we are happily bound by Your Excellency’s dreaded Oath of Secrecy.”

“Tell the nation what? What do they want to hear from me, am I the one that pulled down the bridge? Please, where is Turai, I need my lunch. Eh-hhe-erm, gentlemen, you can please, excuse me.”

“One more thing, Your Excellency, Sir. Reports have just reached us that the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has just addressed a crowded world press conference at the foot of the collapsed bridge  and stated clearly that while they deeply regretted and mourned the loss of human lives in the monumental tragedy (which had occurred as a result of  Federal Government’s criminal neglect, nonchalance and utter callousness despite repeated clear warnings that the dilapidated bridge was caving in), they were, on the other hand, glad that the collapse of the bridge had at last, naturally, and without any sweat, carefully carved out for them the Federal Republic of Biafra they had long yearned for, as the vital link between their country and  Nigeria has now collapsed.” 

“Ehee? Did they really say that? Were the BBC and CNN at their press conference? Kai, these people! In fact, I had thought the collapse of the bridge  would effectively keep those restless Igbos at home and at least  solve Fashola’s population headache once and for all … but I never thought of this other angle… Now, as you can see, we now have a real emergency on our hands! Now you run! I say, run, go and gather State House correspondents immediately! Call in all foreign correspondents that you are able to reach immediately!  Tell them I am so heartbroken and in deep mourning because of the tragedy. You can even inform them that I fainted when I heard the news. No, no, don’t add that line. The Action Congress will capitalize on that now to revive the nonsense story about the state of my health. Just tell them I am deeply shocked and pained by the incident.  In fact, tell them that due to the effect of the tragic incident on me, I may have to travel to a Saudi or even German hospital to observe a three week intensive prayers on behalf of the nation, to get the inspiration to solve the present disaster and avert future ones in this country. Did I just say ‘hospital’? Ah, no! I mean mosque! And you, while I am away, remember you’re under a dreaded Oath of Secrecy, and if any funny rumours dare go out about me, you know the consequences… Finally, don’t forget to tell them that I would have personally addressed the nation immediately on the matter, but I am presently on phone with many world leaders calling in to commiserate with us on the tragedy. You never can’t tell, one or two of them may elect to donate some dollars to us to enable us manage the disaster.” 

“Your Excellency, any message to the bereaved families?”

“Oh, yes – the familiar line, I expect you to know that! Tell them I am with them, sharing this their moment of sorrow with all of them… Now, that’s okay, you may go now. Ah! My lunch is almost cold. No more questions, please. Let someone ask Goodluck to see me. He must to fly to
Onitsha immediately to inspect the extent of damage, commiserate with the families of the bereaved, and announce my decision to set up a Commission of Enquiry to probe the immediate and remote causes of the collapse. He has to go immediately before this MASSOB propaganda gains ground and spoils the day for everyone….Ehee, yes, Ojo, you are already here? You will have to cancel or readjust (whichever) your scheduled trip to Paris and go to Onitsha with Goodluck; there may be need for you  to deploy your ever confusing grammar to great advantage among the traders there….”

…. Well, thank God, the Niger Bridge, though now a death trap, is still standing there like a well-beaten warrior, still faithfully shouldering heavy vehicular and human traffic between Asaba and Onitsha. But experts are warning us that if nothing is urgently done, that bridge would soon cave in, and crash down before Christmas – the time many Easterners would pass through it to return to their villages to spend the season with their kit and kin at home.  What this means is that we have just less than two months to fix that bridge and save the nation the trauma of another tragedy. But from what we are seeing, the Federal Government is not behaving as if it is aware that a devastating tragedy is lurking at the corner, waiting to strike. Many people from virtually everywhere in the country use this bridge daily. Many more will use it this December and the New Year.

 Only few may have heard the chilling alarm raised over the state of the bridge. Some others may have heard, but what alternative do they have except the same death-trap, especially those whose daily pursuit for sources of livelihood must make them shuttle between the South-West, South-South, Onitsha and even the North? The Federal Government must do something immediately.

Repairs on the bridge would require total or partial closure. If that extends into the December/New Year period, the torment people would experience there would certainly cast this government in the mould of a heartless devil. In fact, not even the most dreaded Oath of Secrecy would save it from the fiercest contempt and grave alienation of many Nigerians who would just regard it as one huge calamity unleashed on Nigeria at these most perilous times to severely punish it. No doubt, the fund to rehabilitate the bridge is there, but does the willingness exist, Mr. President?

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scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Nigeria is terribly sick, and some say nigh unto death, but that, as everyone can see, is the least of the worries of Mr. Umar Musa Yar’Adua, the President Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo imposed on Nigerians for self-serving reasons. For now, what appears to be uppermost, in fact, the consuming desire of his heart, is how to effectively turn the Presidency into a dreadful secret cult, enveloped in very thick darkness and fear, where men and women walking with extreme trepidation are bound by a very scary oath, so that even if Government now is on perpetual recess or life-support, none of them would dare whisper it even to the hearing of their spouses.

Now, most people are familiar with the kind of fate that usually befalls anyone that intentionally or even mistakenly violates an oath. The consequences, I am told, are usually better imagined. And so it would be with those working with Yar’Adua. Now, with a taciturn ruler encumbering the ground up there, and habitual liars as his spokespersons, Nigerians, in their view, would be finally and completely shut off from the affairs of the Abuja regime, so that Mr. President can sleep easy in his secret, comfortable chambers, and put the problems of Nigeria very far from his mind, while his false prophets remain out there attempting to make us believe he is having sleepless nights drawing up marvellous plans for the nation’s revival. Poor souls.

By the way, what does Umar Yar’Adua have to hide in this age of greater openness and transparency in government business except his insufferable visionlessness, perennial groping for direction, double standards on the issue of corruption and rule of law, and, of course, his health situation which has consistently defied all his great labours and attempts to conceal it from Nigerians? But these are already well known to most Nigerians, so what is the use of all the efforts?

Maybe, it is possible that Mr. Yar’Adua is not even fully aware that in this InfoTech age, if a president, for instance, sneaks into a Saudi elite hospital to fix his failing health (since like all humans, he is not above falling sick) but chooses to tell his nation that he is in Mecca performing some religious devotions and occasionally playing squash during his spare time, for nearly three weeks, that it would not even require some squealing government official for the media to state exactly where he is and what he exactly he is doing there.

But should we really be wasting precious time on this clear trivia when there are innumerable ever worsening problems crying for urgent attention in this nation? Ours is a country where only tales of woes, failures and abject lack in the midst of plenty have become perpetual components   of public and private lives, so much so, that these are often narrated with what appears like utter relish to the disgust of decent human beings. For goodness sake, this is a richly endowed country which earns in a year what some of the countries our rulers are rushing to now to buy homes and relocate their children for quality education can never dream of earning in more than five years! My people have a proverb about the man in the middle of a very big and clean river, but who had to wash his hands with his own saliva. 

When you demand to know, for instance, why our so-called ‘international’ airport in Lagos is in such a horrible state, you would almost throw up watching our officials lamenting how they lack the resources to clear the overgrown grasses near the runway or fix the airconditioners to save foreign visitors and  Nigerians returning home from the forbidding heat that starts tormenting them from the very moment they step out of the aircraft into the tunnel that leads to the immigration and baggage collection points. The indecency of the whole place and the whole process can only induce nausea. Is this nation cursed or something? Things that would require very little effort to fix in Nigeria are just left like that and   watching full-grown men and women wringing their hands and explaining with irritatingly convoluted stories why those things are never fixed fills one with revulsion. Well, sometimes I don’t even blame them? From whom would they derive the requisite  inspiration? Certainly, not from the uninspiring characters behind the perennial clowning that passes for leadership in Abuja and the state capitals.

Like I said last week, it costs very little to lead a decent existence; it is only an issue of the mindset. Nigerian leaders just have zero taste for self esteem! I doubt if there is still any of them that would lose any sleep if those he is ruling encounter him one day and call him Common Thief and Wretched Failure to his face! So long as it does not pose any real threat to his re-election bid or efforts to further bloat his bank accounts, it’s okay. Hardly any of them is interested in the place history would allocate to him or her tomorrow so long as his determination to criminally enrich himself was suffering no obstructions. One only needs to observe at close quarters the mostly light-minded and totally characterless fellows that rule this nation to realize that indeed, this is a finished place. And the decay has become so deep and widespread that even some of those who would have attempted to do anything have become clearly overwhelmed and simply given up on the possibility of ever reclaiming this nation to respectability, decency and enduring prosperity. Many have gladly become part of the problem.

For a nation as terribly sick as Nigeria is, when exactly would its healing and reclamation commence? When would men with vision, mission, skill and verve come on board to commence the really arduous of work of reviving this nation? When will the rescue operation that would free this nation from the jaws of unyielding parasites and insatiable leeches with iron determination to suck it to death actually commence? Is anyone actually thinking about it? Can we say in all sincerity that the perennial groping for direction going on in Abuja in the name of governance is what a nation as sick as Nigeria urgently deserves now? In America today, despite the abundant good life and near-faultless infrastructure everywhere, passionate concerns about the economy have become quite deafening because their eyes are all on the future. But here today, just because some people are able to feed on the decaying body of this clearly dying nation, they feel unperturbed when concerns about the nation is raised. How blind can a people be?

No doubt, Mr. Yar’Adua and his cousin Goodluck Jonathan have since clearly demonstrated that they are incapable of performing even below average. As I look them each day groping around the seat of power, I weep for this nation, which seems always content to settle for its Tenth Eleven despite an array of stars God has blessed it with. Now, look at the duo today, and see if you would not readily agree with me that they present a perfect picture of two terribly flustered, overwhelmed and perspiring school boys stuck at a crossroads, unsure of the next step to take?  Neither of them can inspire any confidence. I am sure that deep down their hearts, they are quite aware that they lack the vision and energy to pull  this nation out of the woods. How long then can a sick and dying nation wait for these clearly overwhelmed and evidently blank duo?

The other the day, the SSS said they are investigating some reports that some “disgruntled persons” were  influencing a section of the media “to mount campaigns of calumny against the First Family and some top government functionaries with a view  to causing disaffection in the country.” Now one hopes that serious desperation and paranoia have not begun to creep into the psyche of this clearly overwhelmed regime? Is this an attempt by a regime at a crossroads to vent its profound frustrations on a hapless populace? Unfortunately, such ominous threats cannot stop Nigerians from demanding solid evidence of purpose-driven leadership from this regime. Where, for instance, is Yar’Adua’s action plan? What are his goals and targets?  What is the timeframe for each target? Is he still in his closet planning as his aides keep telling us? We have heard too much talk-talk and voluminous promises, when would he at least redeem just ONE promise? Indeed, this pitiably sick country urgently needs a healthy physician to save it but I am yet to see any in today’s Aso Rock.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com
ww.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

It was a normal news report, the type we are used to seeing regularly, but would, most likely, merely glance through before turning our attention to more ‘important’ matters. But when I saw this particular report, confined to a small corner of the newspaper, something about it spoke a very clear message to my heart.

Under the heading, “Cow Thief Bags 12yrs Jail,” the report said that an Oshogbo Magistrate Court presided over by Mrs. Ayo Ajeigbe had sentenced a certain Mr. Audu Mustapha to 12 years’ imprisonment for stealing a cow belonging to one Julie Idi. The estimated cost of the cow was N60, 000. The police had accused Mustapha of selling the cow and using the proceeds to purchase a small truck with which he conveyed ‘liberated’ cows to either where he sold them or hid them.

If Mustapha who had earlier served a jail term in Ilorin for a similar offence, does not have a powerful, well-connected godfather, especially, in the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), or other equally criminally powerful places where even heinous crimes and treated as “family affair” and simply swept under, he should, as you read this article now, be in one of our dilapidated and inhabitable prison houses in the country enduring the just recompense of his grave sin against the State, and dreaming about his young (and probably very beautiful) wife and their three tender children. Nothing can justify his hideous action. Even people poorer than he was had resisted the temptation to steal; he knew the dire consequences of his chosen career and still tarried in it, because, it had juicy promises of quick, undeserved wealth. Now, the excruciating day of reckoning is here, and he has no choice but to quietly savour the bitter reward of his criminal endeavours. I will only sympathise with his family if they were unaware that in order to put food on their table, Mustapha was cruelly dispossessing other people of their fat cows. This can only teach one lesson: when crime is punished, deterrence is instituted.

If that is always the end of all such cases, society would really be a better place for all of us. While up here, we, in an impressive show of self-righteousness, haul down condemnations on Mustapha with every scorn and unmitigated rage befitting a common criminal, more discerning people would rather view him as an unfortunate victim of a disastrous accident on his way to the exalted circle of the nation’s Elite Class. I suspect that he did not bother to study the rules of the game very carefully and so may have easily run foul of a very important law of the game, namely: Thou shall not be greedy. What this means is that if he had generously ‘settled’ all the OC’s at the checkpoint (Carry go, Sir!), or even ‘cleared’ with the DPO of all the police stations on his route, nothing would have ever taken him before the learned judge in Oshogbo, even if he had stolen a human being!

In fact, he would have been a free man today, doing his ‘honest’ business without let or hindrance, and even getting the opportunity once in a while to attend state banquets and shake the smooth, soft hands of the high and mighty, if he had allied himself with some very influential and ‘responsible’ party elder in his community, secured a Molete-kind of immunity, and regularly donated handsomely to help the ‘great party’ facilitate its ‘fraudslide’ victories.

The truth we all know today is that majority of all the people parading themselves as prominent Nigerians today climbed to the top through the Mustapha route or variants of it. At the risk of repeating myself, assuming Mustapha was not ‘interrupted’ this early in his career, and his business had thrived and he had been wise enough to invest his wealth in the installation of many of his colleagues in power, he would today be dinning with ‘distinguished, honourable’ lawmakers, governors, foreign and local diplomats and even the president, and being invited regularly to chair high profile events where brilliant lectures would be delivered on integrity, transparency, anti-corruption and good governance. But, while he would now languish in jail for twelve years for stealing a cow whose present cost was put at N60, 000, important convicts like Big Tafa and Governor-General Alams got a few months each for playing around with the nation’s billions. And many of their more daring colleagues in criminal accumulation are still out there throwing expensive parties and hobnobbing openly with the nation’s rulers.

Something, indeed, must be wrong with a nation that severely punishes small thieves and celebrates bigger criminals. One must be forgiven if one goes on to conclude that in Nigeria, what makes a small thief culpable is not the crime he has committed, but the poor background he operates from. In other words, he is a criminal, not because of his offence against the State, but because of his status in the society. That is why despite several very factual allegations of very grievous graft levelled against serving and former public officers, especially in the media, security agents do not even bother to investigate them – unless, perhaps, when the person so accused finds himself on the wrong side of power. Well, somebody should tell those in power that they are merely sowing the seeds of anarchy, because, when the law is only reserved for the ‘unconnected’ poor and the real and imagined enemies of those in power, that law may soon lose the power to contain the likely challenge that may come from those whom it has been used to unfairly oppress.

In 1999, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, whose farm had failed, was practically a poor man, and he did not hide it. One of his closest aides had told the nation that what the man had in his account was only N25, 000. But now, as former president, his Bells University and Secondary School is valued at billions of naira. There is also his now resuscitated and greatly improved multi-billion mega naira farm, a couple of other companies and sundry investments, a Presidential Library Project for which billions of naira were raised by “Presidential extortion”, and his famed bottomless pocket which has effectively crowned him one of the richest billionaires this side of the Atlantic. He has left office for more than a year now, yet no one can claim to have sniffed even the faintest resolve to make him explain the sources of his mysterious wealth, or how $16 billion heartlessly squandered in phoney power projects only plunged Nigerians into deeper, thicker darkness. Now, Mr. Liyel Imoke, Obasanjo’s Minster of Power, has just lost his immunity, having been sacked as Cross River Governor at the Tribunal, so what is delaying his arrest and questioning on how, under him and Obasanjo, the sum of $16 billion could only purchase the nation an impenetrable darkness?

As cases of suspected graft (and they are legion) are swept under, impunity is effectively entrenched. Influential Nigerians abound whose sources of boundless wealth are shrouded in very deep mysteries. Nigerians know many of them as Very Important Criminals (VIC), but the government and even the media celebrate them as ‘statesmen’ and ‘patriots’. Unlike Mustapha, they were able to avoid being caught until they amassed enough wealth to qualify for admission into Nigeria’s privileged, criminal class of untouchables. They are the same people that get National Honours and are appointed or ‘elected’ into highly exalted positions of power and influence, where as, depraved villains in public office, they characteristically deregulate and institutionalize stealing and political criminality.

What this goes to show is that in Nigeria, it is safer to be a successful criminal than a poor man. Successful criminals are either in power or its corridors, or friends and associates of those in power. They are those set of ‘law-abiding’ citizens who are able to purchase and build palatial homes in ‘approved’ places.

But the poor are the confirmed criminals, always hounded and oppressed by the government, for being able to only afford to seek refuge in the slums, which governors, ever thumbing their noses at them, have already marked out for demolition and prompt allocation to the same criminal class. It is the honest poor that get arrested on the mere suspicion that their haggard, hungry look suggests they might be criminals, or even for such non-existent offences like ‘wandering’, and dumped and forgotten in detention camps for being unable to buy their freedom.

Yes, they are the same people that suffer most the consequences of bad roads (since they can’t afford to fly), power failure (they can’t afford healthy alternatives), insecurity and increases on the price of petroleum products, which in turn jack up prizes of goods and services. In Nigeria, where crime is class-defined, the poor and poverty has since been criminalized. The rich only get into trouble when they are on the wrong side of the power equation, and their ‘trials’ are celebrated to score some cheap point. If you don’t know this, then you don’t know anything about Nigeria.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com