This discourse was published some few months back by this medium in my Saturday column. It is updated and reproduced on popular demand to please, educate and inform readers.
Nigeria is going through its most painful trying period in human history courtesy of an abracadabra brand of government imposed by the Courts and piloted by expired politicians and their evil collaborators.
In a conventional setting, how can a responsible government appoint the likes of Sen. Goerge Akume as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF)? Or Kashim Shettima as a vice president who could not tame the excesses of riff raffs in the state he once governed? Remember Godswill Akpabio as minister for Niger Delta Affairs? Can we recall how he was slapped in the public by a woman he had wanted to romance? What of his several scandals lying with the Efcc? And today, he is the Senate President of Nigeria’s senate.
Facts on the scandals of embattled sacked CBN Governor, Godwin Emeifiele are surfacing from reports of the Special Investigator on the CBN and other Related Entities, Jim Obaze including a case of a presented forged letter of February 7th and 8th 2023, purportedly signed by former president Buhari to withdraw monies allegedly meant for payment to foreign election observation missions. One Yusufu Sabi’u Tunde, a onetime GSM recharge roadside vendor, mistakenly appointed a Special Assistant to former president Buhari, has a hand in the forgery.
With this expertise displayed in forensic auditing by Jim Obaze, he should proceed to investigate the federal ministry for environment and water resources with emphasis on the modus operandi of the river basins.
Nigeria is a country so unfortunate that celebrates dishonesty, fancy criminality and respect insincerity and deceit.
Criminals, rogues, vandals and hooligans in public offices are most times ‘worshipped’ and adorned as achievers while their sordid past is known in the public domain.
Public funds are wasted on flamboyant projects lacking positive impact on the lives of the people while the heartless and ungodly claimants are in public offices by authority. The situation in Nigeria is over ripe for a bloody revolution to post most of those public servants that reduced the status of other Nigerians to beggars and parasites to their ancestors who gave them poor trainings and upbringing.
AbdulHameed Aliyu stole NIRSAL with pride as if it was his birth right. Bello Maigari clean swept the treasury of National Lottery Trust Fund as if it is his Dukku family inheritance. He squandered N2.5billion internally generated revenue on fictitious services not within the mandate of the Fund and clownishly, started to praise sing the administration of President Tinubu Buhari for foolery.
Dr Yusufu Maina Bukar, a former lecturer in Yobe State University could not control his urge for sharp corrupt practices in the management of the National Agency for Greater Green Wall (NAGGW). Just within his two-year stay as the managing director, he suspiciously swindled N81.2billion taxpayer’s money on fictitious 21million trees he claimed to have procured and supplied to 11 states of the federation.
Where Yusufu’s trees exist, is best imagined than said but N81.2billion was blown-off on such a criminal claim. The rest is for the anti-corruption agencies to invite Yusufu Maina Bukar to defend his claim with facts not fiction. But if one may ask without sounding offensive, what was Yusufu Maina Bukar actually lecturing in the university? Was he lecturing on how to perfect corrupt practices in government or how to procure 21million non-existing trees at N81.2 billion? One needs to be told!
We have the former minister for power Olu Agunloye who served in the Obasanjo administration that was arrested by the Efcc for swindling Nigeria $6billions on the Mambila hydro-power project. With such characters In public service, it appears Hushpuppi, the renowned fraudster now serving jail sentence in the United States is more decent in character than the rogues.
One is not talking about Diezani Alli-son Madueke the grandmother of all thieves now battling for freedom in the United Kingdom Court as well as second stage of cancer.
You remember the Danjuma Gojes of this world? Dalhatu Bafarawas? Sambo Dasukis? Peter Odilis, Dikko Ndes of Custom Service, Tafa Baloguns of the Nigeria Police, Bode George and the other suspected criminals that stole Nigeria blind?
The star-prize winning criminal for 2023 is one kleptomaniac, Ahmed Idris. From a distance, the man wears the face of a Saint but a close look exposes him as Judas in reality that loves to end up in the bottom pit of hell.
As Accountant-General of the Federation, the rogue stole N109billion from the taxpayers account under his custody. The thief was confused after exposure and subsequent humiliation and disgrace. He hurriedly reached the ancient town of Daura for a traditional title to possibly restore his battered image. Ahmed forgot that he occupies a strategic position on the global list of criminals and shall forever be remembered as an itchy-fingered Accountant who abused the trust reposed in him by Nigerians. We shall never forget and forgive him for depriving us the judicious use of our commonwealth.
In fact, legendary heartless armed robbers and kidnappers the likes of ‘Dr’ Oyenusi, Rambo, Lawrence Anini, Osunbor, Buharin Daji, Dogo Gede and Evans deserve more respect than Ahmed Idris because theirs were attacks on few individuals not on all Nigerians as the case of Ahmed Idris and other thieves in the public service.
We are now aware of how the House of Representatives Committee Chairman on Environment, Isma’ila Haruna Dabo probing the monumental scandals in Ecological Fund, National Agency for Greater Green Wall (NAGGW) is resisting mounted pressure for compromise. In fact, reliably, one of the most hardened of the criminals under the probe had even reported him to about three state governors for their intervention that confirms the suspect as a certified thief that we all know for long.
In Nigeria, traditional titles are hurriedly bestowed on thieves and looters at a bargained price while their hangers-on are let loose on the streets shouting their praises and beating the drums for macabre dance to merely access stomach infrastructural palliatives, political appointments etc. The situation at hand calls for physical attacks to lead to a bloody revolution for better days.
Someday, death will definitely become something more than an unexplainable mystery to the crooks and the thieving ruling class. Every public officer will surely die; their family members too. Despite their inhumanity, they are human beings after all. They breathe and bleed just like we do. At their demise, they shall discover what manner of life they deserve in the hereafter. They shall find that money and position or rank they covet are useless after the last howl had fallen silent, at their funeral.
They shall learn that currency-activated prayers their clerics and clergies hoist above them will serve like raincoats under a blitz of cannon balls, at the end.
In the wake of their demise, how shall they be remembered? How do we remember men and women who summoned our joys to harness it with a sable bind? Shall we remember them with rage and rant? Shall we wish they burn in the earth, like splinters of wood fed into the hearth to spite the fire? Shall we wish that they lie in plagued repose low down with the worm and ant at the bottom pit of hell?
How shall we be remembered? How shall posterity remember the ones who perfected art of letting their voices trail off in confusion at decision time? What will our children think of our desperation to keep the worst of our kind in power? What pantheons or dungeons shall we inhabit in the annals of Nigerian citizenship?
The troubles of Nigeria are unwieldy like a storm. By our pervasions, we impregnate and corrupt history and civilization over 60 years old. Great evil lies in you and me, and by our perpetuation of it, we make history the way of the diabolic that decapitated his new born to satisfy his hunger pangs.
Too many threads of heedlessness, woven of gluttony and lust, of racism and fear, inequality and blind hate of the stranger, form in our souls, a thick network.
Yesterday, we suffered violence and bloodshed by militants and Niger Delta Avengers in our creeks, down the Niger Delta. Today, we are suffering violence and bloodshed from Boko Haram terrorists, bandits, Eastern Security Network (ESN), Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and our thieving unrepentant masquerades as leaders.
Every day, we suffer greater violence and bloodbath from murderous and incompetent ruling class. The most remarkable characteristic of the Nigerian ruling class, according to Prof. itse Sagay, “is its complete and total insensitivity to public outcry and outrage over the percentage of our resources that members appropriate to themselves for their own consumption”.
Sagay, in his lecture on “Good Governance and Enforcement of Law and Order” at the Nigerian Institute of Management’s 2013 Management Day, lamented that while Nigerian Senators and members of the House of Representatives earned $1.7million and $1.4million respectively per annum, but still some diverted budgeted constituency projects meant to develop their constituencies and the N100million given as constituency allowance.
American Senators and British Parliamentarians earn $174,000 and 65, 738 pounds sterling respectively per annum but churn out better and commendable outputs than their Nigerian contemporaries.
Yet, income per capita in the US and UK is $46,350 and $35,468, respectively. The figure has grown more outrageously overtime. Simply put, Nigerian legislators pay themselves the highest salaries of all legislators in the world, even though their country is amongst the least developed by any standard in the whole world. It is in Nigeria that portable water in most federal constituencies is gold. There is glaring failure of service delivery in most federal constituencies yet their representatives are the highest paid in the world. Not only that even those constituency projects inserted in yearly budgets are not spared by the thieving and gluttonous lawmakers and their collaborators. The projects are either monetized in connivance with the ministries concerned or with the greedy contractor if any at all. The constituencies are denied the projects. In few cases, the projects are diverted to other constituencies for political gain or not executed but certified as completed and paid.
If carefully investigated, such sleaze funds are channeled to purchase of properties at choice areas of Maitama, Asokoro, Gwarinpa, Lugbe, Wuse II, Guzape, Katampe, Apo and Life camp within the FCT and across other Nigerian states.
More worrisome is the government’s inequitable distribution of benefits and punishments meted out to people from different classes and professions, along with the asymmetrical distribution of respect and dignity. Eventually, you get the feeling that some people don’t count and never expected to count in the Nigerian State.
In the wake of violence and bloodshed by successive terrorist groups, mostly constituted by youths in the country, the president, governors and legislators simmer in frustration and moral outrage. Jumping on to the bandwagon of these elected representatives’ deceitfulness and officialese, monarchs, clerics, newspaper columnists and other bastions of the society pay lip service to the degeneration of the Nigerian Youth and State.
It is hardly astonishing that the government and cohorts resort to explanations of criminality, a feral underclass, and dysfunctional parenting. These are easier explanations for which the government does not need to accept responsibility. However, a careful assessment of the situation reveals that a greater percentage of the culprits are motivated by artificially created poverty, illiteracy, dysfunctional parenting, unemployment and inequality induced by unfair government policies, insensitivity and oppression by the thieving dictatorial ruling class and their cohorts.
But such cruelties foisted by the most insidious ruling class, do not justify the descent of the Nigerian youth into barbarism or bloodthirstiness of any kind – but we choose to be savages anyway. Insensitivity and bloodlust enjoy sweet repose in the psyche of the Nigerian youth thus habituating them to all manners of savagery and triviality.
Hence it wasn’t surprising to see the youth, the media and deprived and shortchanged members of the public descending on failed public office holders at any given opportunity as violently as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man, over their inability to provide what is expected of them in service delivery. We have witnessed several of such drama series in villages and cities. We encourage such reprisal actions to send signals to the other rogues in hiding with fortified defense.
Several politicians and celebrities cash in on the madness and don their branded campaign T-shirts to major public events in pitiful desperation to replenish their dwindling acclaim for business as usual.
If the Nigerian people, particularly the youth, can be so coordinated and methodical in their perpetuation of such madness, “good natured” ridicule and hate, would it not do Nigeria immense good to have us unite in more coordinated and disciplined revolt against the oppression and cruelties of the thieving ruling class that have bastardized the system to their nefarious advantage?
We are past the novelty of coordinated mockery and moral outrage. The most powerful indignation we can express exceeds the pages of acerbic newspaper columns and social media; it subsists in latent courage and will we haven’t yet summoned the courage to express.
Until we mature in grace and learn to apply ourselves to passionate pursuits for the love of the good, our pains shall run amok where we seek ease and bliss, always. It’s a matter of choice; to which system of thought should we commit out lives to? Is there anything in our norms worth saving? Shall we define the Nigerian dream in the language of humanity? Shall we begin to officiate for posterity’s sake? Shall we begin to affect the honesty and decency to which we pay lip service? Shall we choose the right candidates and vote them in at general elections or allow those failures another shot? I mean those genuinely qualified by every standard including mental tests and intelligence laced with exposure and perseverance.
It is about time we refine the subtleties that make the Nigerian dream the fantasy of thieves, looters and blinkered murderers, the better for us and generations yet unborn. A surprise assessment visit to federal constituencies across Nigeria may cause the sudden ‘death’ of several patriots. Most constituency projects are not executed but certified as executed and paid. ICPC and other anti-corruption bodies need to wake up. Nigeria we Hail Thee!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
