NIGERIA AT 57: STILL AT THE BATTLEGROUND FOR SURVIVAL by SHABA Mafu.

credit Gallery.

Nigeria got her independence from the British colonialists on the 1^st of October, 1960. The country is one of the African countries that had suffered terrible underdevelopment occasioned by the experience of the Atlantic slave trade, then colonialism and now domesticated slavery caused by the avarice and incurable corruption of the leaders. By October 1, 2017, Nigeria would be fifty-seven years old since it gained its political independence.

As known, Nigeria is a heterogeneous society with over 250 ethnic tribes. In spite of this, the country is munched into an uncomfortable entity with a unitary system of government which is falsely and deceptively touted by the politicians as a federal structure. Nigeria operates a capital-intensive bi-cameral legislative structure where large chunks of money are been ‘legitimately’ siphoned with hair-raising amount of salaries and allowances, with the consequent and consistent impoverishment of the hopeless poor.. At the legislative sessions, several law-makers do not attend their plenary, yet collect all the sitting allowances, salaries and other emoluments at their designated periods running into millions of Naira. On some occasions during their plenary, more time is given to frivolities such as in the cases that the Chairman of Nigerian Customs, Colonel Hamed Ali (Rtd), must put on his customs uniform before appearing before the Senate Council, or that of Ibrahim Magu (the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) should not be confirmed for reasons that are rather more of their personal grudges than of legal disqualification. More so, the reasons adduced so far for these are naturally and obviously unconvincing enough to the Executives and the public. The representatives also supported frivolities such as the support given to Senator Dino Melaye who is currently having a running battle with his constituency who wants his recall, for their loss of confidence in him. The Senate has assured him of their support without an objective assessment to such a weighty issue. This is a display of political immaturity, monumental corruption and emotionalism, and outright insult to the electorates.

Nigeria had suffered more of domesticated slavery and impoverishment from most of the so-called elected officers who of a truth are unrepentant rogues and who don’t want to get caught. When caught, they put up a fight to ensure that the country burns and they burn along with it. The appointed public officers are sometimes worse. They cash in on the rare opportunity to steal, embezzle and commit all types of economic and financial atrocities unbecoming of public officers. In the days of Alhaji Shehu Usman Shagari the first Executive President of Nigeria, Alhaji Umaru Dikko was an alleged celebrated rogue who ravished the economy being the Minister of Transportation. In the era of Dr. Good Jonathan the immediate past President, Mrs. Diezani Allison Madueke and Alhaji Dasuki were great “mentors” in terms of being cankerworms of alleged corruption. They are allegedly corrupt to the heavens. Besides these, we had a very weak leadership at the top echelon of Nigerian government. Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who I personally campaigned for prior to the 2011 general elections, presided over one of the most corrupt governments in Nigeria. He was personally a good man but was such a weak ruler, who gave seamless opportunities for those working under him to plunder the nation to the hades.

There are tribes branded as major and minor tribes in Nigeria. The country does not know that this is a major sickness it is ignorantly suffering from. The major so-called tribes are the Hausa, the Ibos and the Yoruba. Among these three, only two tribes rotate the presidency since 1966 before the civil war, except Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who hails from Bayelsa ( from a minority region) State. He contested and won the 2011 elections.  He was seriously battled by a few elements from the North who ensured that Jonathan could not contest an election.. It took the intervention of the Civil Society Organizations in the country that stood up to the occasion to normalize the situation. The Ibos had never tasted the presidency again after the civil war. The highest position this tribe (one of the main tribes) had ever attained is either being the Vice President (who has no defined constitutional responsibilities), or the Senate President. This is one of the major causes of the agitations of the South-Eastern people calling for secession in the name of Biafra.

The mammoth corruption of the politicians of the Northern extraction and the deliberate decimation of the academic opportunities of majority of the youths from that North leads to the consistent manufacturing of the street urchins popularly called the almajiris. These youths are not sick in any form. They are not cheated by nature. Their lives are just deliberately strangulated by the few corrupt elites of the North. These urchins who have eventually constituted nuisance and security risk to the entire nation felt that this corruption is a derivative from the teachings of the Western education. As a fall-out of their first-grade ignorance and darkened understanding, they formed the deadly secessionist movement called the boko haram (which means western education is sacrilegious).  The corruption in Nigeria is the root cause of all the agitations in Nigeria. The corrupt northern elites are the remote causes of the boko harams.

Corruption is so endemic in Nigeria that the corrupt have sold their consciences for the ephemeral benefits they could get from it. For instance, when the former president Jonathan voted out some money to buy weapons to fight the boko harams who massacred the innocent and further impoverished the citizens of the North-eastern extraction, the former National Security Adviser to the then government, Ahaji Ibrahim Dasuki allegedly embezzled the money and allowed a free-flow of human blood in the North. There was also a time that the former Minister of Finance, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, and the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi warned that country was at the verge of recession, yet, without a strike in her conscience the then Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Alison Madueke, went ahead and allegedly stole the country blind; while her very state of Origin (Bayelsa State) still gropes in a disgusting state of underdevelopment.

The unfortunate thing about this all is that while the present government headed by President Muhammed Buhari is fighting by all means to tackle the remote cause of underdevelopment, his efforts are obviously been sabotaged by same elements of pro-corruption. On the other hand, some of the agitators like Mazi Nnamdu Kanu of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) who have genuine cause to protest are doing so in a very wrong way. Kanu, with those who have the same mindset with him, only exercises his hatred for the Northerners and uses IPOB to front his disdain for them. The Easterners who did not vote for All Progressives Congress because Buhari, is from the north feels the best way to embarrass the government is to attempt to declare secession through IPOB at the time when the entire nation is genuinely clamouring for restructuring. It must be noted that President Buhari and the ruling APC are not the remote and the principal cause of the marginalization and the underdevelopment of the South-East region of the country. The past governors and political gladiators of this geo-political extraction ought to be held squarely accountable for their mess and deprivations.

Nigeria has issues at hand which must be faced decisively. It is possible to develop and stabilize the country if the issue of corruption is decisively tackled at all levels of governance. The corruption in the power sector that has always thrown us into perpetual darkness, the corruption in the education sector that resulted in incessant strikes, the corruption-induced infrastructural decadence, the corruption in the oil industry, all resulted in the continuous underdevelopment of this country up to this very moment.

Until the this present government and the successive ones make anti-corruption as their MAJOR priority in their government, the country will continue to crawl while other countries will either be flying or at the verge of their take-off. There is a serious need for the re-orientation of the citizenry and the restructuring of the entire country so as to glide away from this stupendous decadence.

Nevertheless, I wish my blessed country, a happy 57^th Independence Anniversary on October 1, 2017.

THE KINDERGARTEN FIGHT BETWEEN AMERICA AND NORTH KOREA by SHABA Mafu.

The display of childishness in verbal vituperation between the two world leaders leaves a lot to be desired. I am not interested in going into the nitty-gritty of whatever may have occasioned their venomous utterances. It is highly disdainful to the ordinary citizens the manners the President of America, Mr. Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un .have demonstrated their unrestrained anger against each other ‘on behalf of their respective countries’.

North- Korean has been building up armaments including nuclear weapons that can wreak considerable havoc to the entire world if left unchecked. America which has constituted itself as the world Police, on its part, has been very uncomfortable with this development for obvious reasons. Amongst these reasons is the fear of competition from an emerging super power which can contest and contend the supremacy or superiority of alms-build-up against the unipolar system of the world hinged on America. America has always wanted to dominate the world in its show of superiority on almost all ramifications of existence. The fear of losing or maintaining this status has left it with altercations with several countries. This fear undeniably resulted in the cold war between America and Russia for a very long time. The bid to maintain superiority militarily, economically and ideologically also accounted in the ultimate collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Communism, which is an anathema to the capitalist-drenched America equally precipitated the long standing and deadly feud between America and the small but powerful Cuba. Cuba under their ‘Emperor’, late Fidel Castrol bluffed America for attempting to sway it to embrace capitalism. Despite America’s strangulating sanctions and diplomatic severance with Cuba for a long time, Cuba maintained its economic ideology and in their uncompromising belief of communism against the America’s touted capitalism. To worsen things for America, Cuba refused to democratize on America’s dictates and tacit supervision. Until recently the relationship between America and Cuba was frosty, comfortably compared with the relationship of that of the cat and rat. In my own analysis, despite the purported contemporary cordial relationship between these former enemies, their relationship may eventually end up like that of the he-goat and the coco-yam, if Cuba is not circumspect and sagacious enough in dealing with the mighty America.

The aggression of America against Iraq in the days of Sadam Hussein defies description. Sadam Hussein, the then leader of Iraq was accused of building the capability to invent nuclear weapons. Of course, he was out-rightly alleged to constitute serious threats to the international community and capable of supporting terrorists in destroying the world. He was allegedly framed up and executed by American snipers. But investigations later revealed that the victim did not actually possess such capability.

In the continued unsolicited policing of the world, America dealt a ruthless blow against Afghanistan shortly after the demise of the infamous Osama Bin Laden who was alleged to have bombed the Twin Towers (America’s defence arsenal) on September 11, 2001. What a wonderful Bomber and an Executioner Osama was! The country was alleged to shield or even out-rightly support enemy aggression of God’s own country.  A full-fledged war was declared against the country and though America claimed victory in its own terms, Afghanistan has not recovered from the destabilization vested on it by America’s intrusion and invasion. The country is worse off compared to its pre-American intervention days.

Libya was not spared in America’s campaign against its enemies or sympathizers of its enemy. Libya was summarily holed up with the culminating effect of the execution of its celebrated god and leader in Misrata. Maumar Gaddafi was also accused of being a terrorist who no longer has right to his life. His government was overthrown and his life terminated. It will take years for Libya to recover from this alleged covet onslaught by America and its crusaders of change.

Presently, it is the turn of North Korea. America has accused North Korea of not only stockpiling nuclear weapons but have been consistently testing them, defying the order of United Nations. The global Police has even further stated that the tests of the weapons by North Korea threatens the peace and cooperate existence of not only America but its allies and it will not fold its arms to watch the obduracy of the Korean Leader. But in his characteristic obstinacy, the Korean leader responded to Donald Trump that he is not in any way moved by America’s threat. He therefore threatened to test the hydrogen bomb very soon in the pacific ocean.

In an uncontrollable outburst of rage, the American Leader while addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week threatened to destroy the entire country of North Korea and topple the government of Kim.

  “Trump referred to North Korean leader Kim Jung Un as “rocket man,” and described him as being on “a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” He also threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the US finds itself “forced to defend itself or its allies.” (culled from Vox).

 Trump further warned that America has the wherewithal to carry out the threat. In response, the Korean Leader called the statement of the American leader as the “rantings of a mad dog’ who is “mentally deranged”..

Methinks that as leaders, there must be decorum in expression even in the midst of pressure and anger. There must be justice and equity in dealing with our perceived or real enemies. If America is to destroy the whole of North Korea as a country, what moral justification does Trump have to do that? How does he explain the impending massacre to the innocent children and women, and even men in North Korea, who may not actually know the reason for the grudges or may even know but are obviously helpless? How will an average North-Korean view America and her citizens whose Leader unnecessarily threatened their cooperate existence? I have personally rated American high as a country who releases succor to the suffering especially in war-torn countries or those ravaged by natural disasters. But why all these vituperation from a World Leader like Donald Trump to prove his superiority over an enemy by threatening a large-scale catastrophe on both the 'guilty and the innocent'?

Just like a typical garage boy too, the North-Korean leader responded to Trump’s statements and called them the “ranting of a mad dog”. How do these leaders want the ordinary man on the street to view them: as leaders, or as kindergartens fighting on the street for a mere meal of chocolate. I begin to picture that if Donald Trump and Kim were close to each other physically, they would have been engaged in fisticuffs which may be beamed worldwide on the global satellite. Can such clips be viewed by children even in real Kindergarten classes without sending disdainful messages to the psyche of these children?

I urge leaders to exercise caution and restraint in their verbal expressions of their emotions and reduce the level of threats and palpable devastation. The United Nations should do its best in ensuring world peace even though the fact remains that America remains its heaviest financial contributor.  There should be more maturity in handling international affairs, after all President Donald Trump and his counterpart Kim Jong are not kids in the kindergarten classes. Diplomacy, dialogue, and at the worst, necessary and reasonable sanctions should be deployed in amicably resolving issues especially those of international magnitude such as this.

NIGERIA’S EXIT FROM RECESSION, A POLITICAL OR ECONOMIC RUSE? By SHABA Mafu.

Photo credit (Zorah/Flickr). Image of famine in Somalia.

Not long after the All Progressives Congress (APC) party defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 general elections, the country was thrown into different and deep troubles. Among the most biting of the troubles was the economic recession the country sank into. The defeated party quickly cashed on this economic challenge of the nation by accusing the ruling party of its cluelessness and having economic amateurs as members of the Economic team. They boasted that in the administration of the defeated PDP, it had a renowned economic team and technocrats headed and coordinated by Dr. Okonjo Iweala, a renowned Economist of the World Bank Standard. But the party also quickly forgot that the defeated government presided over one of the most corrupt era in the history of Nigeria.

The corruption and impunity could be objectively stated that they were the remote causes of the recession that the economy suffered under the APC government. The impunity was so high that the former president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan boldly defended the corruptness of his government by saying that “stealing is not corruption”. The government of the PDP had a pedigree for corruption with the former Minister of Petroleum under the same regime, Mrs. Diezanni Allison Madueke, is now a point of reference, and can conveniently be referred to in a Doctoral thesis as a case study for her historic corruption as alleged by the Economic and Financial Commission (EFCC). This is not to talk of the Dasuki-Gate where the money meant to buy the weapons to fight the Boko-harams was shared among the committee of thieves under the PDP government.

The economic recession of this present government took a toll on Nigerians.  The economy was almost flat. Many Nigerians especially in the financial and manufacturing sectors lost their jobs. Many companies either folded up or relocated outside the country. The depletion of the value of the nation’s currency led to the high cost of food and other essential commodities. This escalated the poverty-level of the already depressed people of Nigeria. The recession also compressed and constrained the spending level of the affluent. The level of poverty was further compounded with many jobless and unemployed dependants feasting avariciously on the pittance paid to the lucky but definitely under-employed breadwinners. Some people committed suicide, while several others attempted the supreme escapist-device to forestall their hopelessness and irredeemable agony. Crimes reverberated as a mechanism by the criminals to cushion the effects of the recession. Kidnapping became the order of the day as it became extremely lucrative to the extent that some people organized self-kidnapping.

In the midst of these entire prevailing situations that cannot be exhaustively scripted here, the government had promised at several times that the economy will bounce out of recession. Those promises were rather esoteric and hypothetical. Suddenly, like a thunderbolt from the blues, the Office of the Bureau of Statistics announced that Nigeria was out of recession. It quickly added that no one should rejoice prematurely because the impact will take long before being felt by the ordinary Nigerians.  It said that announcement of the end of the recession was not a political statement but rather because the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country has actually improved successively over the quarters in the year 2017.

The recession will only end when the unemployed are gainfully employed. There will be no recession when the prices of food and other essential commodities are affordable by the common man on the street. It is when men desist from crime as a panacea to the crushing effect of a highly deflated economy, only then can we say there is no recession. Recession can’t end in favour of an international economic theory scripted on papers when Nigerians go begging for fortunes or are at the mercy of the ever-malevolent employers of labour. It is only the poor that can actually announce the end of Nigeria’s recession, and not the government; except the government wants it just for political reason.

WHY THERE CAN’T BE A REVOLUTION IN NIGERIA by SHABA Mafu

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culled from images of the French Revolution.

Revolution can be defined as a total overhauling or effecting a complete paradigm shift of a political system or type of government to a new one by peaceful or violent means. Revolution carries with it fundamental changes in the socio-economic and political spheres of a country when its process is ultimately consummated. Revolutionaries are often regarded as dissidents by the government and its supporters in the course of their action.  Until such a revolution succeeds and the old system overthrown, it is only then they would be branded as revolutionaries. A revolution is different from the conventional and the common phenomenon of ‘change’ when certain changes are effected in a new political dispensation. This is always accompanied with some degrees of self-centeredness, and not for the general sweeping good of the oppressed and the downtrodden as denoted by the spirit of true revolutions. An example of ‘change’ is a military coup, where a clique of some soldiers, possibly because of their personal dissatisfaction on how the government is run decides to effect a political change. Erroneously, most changes are regarded as revolutions. This concept is often wrongly interpreted.

Revolution can also be defined as a “a calculated overthrow of an existing political order using as much force as possible to effect or to bring about radical changes in the society”..

Revolution as a concept has been defined by many other writers of which we will just look at some of them.

S.P. Huntington considers revolution “as a rapid, fundamental and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society”

Neumann further looks at it as ”a sweeping fundamental change in the dominant myth of a social order”.

According to T.S. Khun, political revolutions occur because the parties to revolution differ about the institutional matrix within which political change is to be achieved and evaluated.”

Another writer, Hanna Arendt defines modern concept of revolution as “revolution is extricately bound up within the notion that the course of history suddenly begins new, that an entirely new story never known or told before is about to unfold”.

In a broader view, revolution can be described as “a passage of or a transition from one epoch to another. In the form of the transformation of an entire epoch, the revolution occurs when a class of men sees no other way out of the misery, than a revolution.

From studies, successful revolutions predicated their successes on the altar of violence – an overt force coordinated to overthrow an existing order so as to institute a new and more accommodating political system with sweeping general acceptance. This method of violence is given a further clarification by Henry Biemen who commented that revolution “carries overtones of “violating” and we often use violence to refer to “ultimate force”.  The state against which a revolution is staged is described by Max Weber as having the “exclusive source of the right to use violence – all other individuals or associations may use it only to the degree permitted by the authorities.

While violence remains a major means of executing a revolution, for a revolution to actually be one, it must incorporate the use of intellectuals who through their writings persuade and mobilize the target audience being the oppressed or the masses for the prosecution of the revolution.  This is why revolutions have sweeping effects on the majority of the citizens, especially the dissatisfied ones.

WHY THERE CAN’T BE A REVOLUTION IN NIGERIA.

One of the major factors that aid successful revolutions of the masses is predicated on the homogeneity of the affected society, driving a common cause and course in the bid to entrench a new socio-political order. Nigeria is a highly fragmented and segmented society with about 250 (two hundred and fifty) different ethnic groups scattered all about the six geo-political zones of the country. The segmentation is a direct reflection of the forced marriage of strange bedfellows who were wedded under the colonial authorities. The six geo-political zones are actually a conglomeration of the regions of the three main irreconcilable regions of the country - the North, East and West. In all ramifications, there is no single common identity, both in terms of origin and existence, of these regions. It is pertinent to note that these regions sometimes are on one another’s throats, possibly at the least provocations. One may have lost count of how many Easterners and westerners were killed in the North by avoidable violence.  But because of the bitter acrimony, there appears to be no love lost for one another. The Easterners and the Westerners too do not have good records for each other. Due to this factor, it will be extremely difficult or near impossible to mobilize these seriously fragmented entities to form a common front to stage a revolution.

To further corroborate this, at a time when the Niger Delta protested to the federal government over their environmental degradation, marginalization and deprivation under the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), other parts of the country, especially the Northern part read political meanings to it. They felt that their agitations were not genuine enough, and that they were only interested in crippling the administration of Late Musa Yar’Adua, who was the President of the country from the northern extraction. On that premise, a revolution which is of a wider dimension and acceptability could not have been possible under such circumstance.  Similarly, in 1993, a free and fair election was conducted in Nigeria, which was annulled by the government of General Ibrahim Babangida. The annulment generated a nation-wide political upheaval. But in the course of the protests, the other two regions- the East and North opted out and left only the West -  the Yorubas to battle the federal government all alone. This was because the acclaimed winner of that election was a Yoruba man. Revolutions need a working synergy amongst groups to succeed. If left dispersed, then the concept of revolution would only hinge on the level of dreams and illusion in Nigeria.

Furthermore, there is no ideology to draw the sympathy and attention of the suffering public and to sway them to join in the revolution. Simply put, there is ideological barrenness in the land. Amongst the civil rights groups, the Labour Unions, and Rights activists, there is none that could come up with real ideological pursuit to mobilize the masses for a revolution. The only two people who could be given such accolades was late Fela Anikulopo Kuti; and late Gani Fawehinmi, though they carried revolutionary minds wherever they went, the government did  everything to emasculate them and thwart their visions headlong. In the Cuban revolution, one could observe clearly that at the end of the revolution process, there was a clear departure from the old system of the Americans usurping the economic fortunes of the country and an attempt to subtly introduce capitalism, to a novel concept of the a political ideology – Communism. There was a clear cut definition of an ideology to be pursued. Nigerians, even if they have revolutionaries at all, they lack a persuasive ideology that can cause a revolution.

The problem of lack of political ideology is further compounded by the apathy and lackadaisical attitude of the Nigerian masses who believed that nothing positive can ever come out of Nigeria, not to talk more of a revolution. This languid disposition of Nigerians has contributed in no small measure of Nigeria’s inability to organize a revolution. On this premise, if anyone clamours for a revolution would end up in making mockery of himself, because of the level of general apathy in the public domain.

Religious factors can be considered as a factor that will dampen any revolution fire ignited by the revolutionaries. It appears that the leaders have studied that Nigerians are highly religious set of people. Even as the situation presents itself for revolution, the leaders quickly collaborate with the religious bodies, to explore the gullibity of the adherents, by whipping up the doctrine of godly subordination and subservience to the authorities instituted by God. The government depends on these religious institutions to brainwash Nigerians by reclusing to the activities of religious organizations.

In Nigeria, one cannot actually say, that there is class antagonism. Even if there was, the oppressed or the have-nots have come to accept their fates and naturally remains subservient to the haves. Several occasions have presented themselves for the have-nots to protest their oppressions, but they appear to have conformed to the status quo of the avoidable sufferings. For instance, during the fuel crises, it is common knowledge that the failed deals between the government and the elite businessmen, result in untold hardship on the suffering populace, yet no one raises an eyebrow against such obnoxious deeds.

 In this docile state of Nigerians, revolution cannot be possible, at least for now. When we combine all the aforementioned factors, one can safely say that Nigeria indeed is not ripe for a revolution, even though the circumstances that would warrant a revolution in Nigeria are overripe.

REFERENCES:

1.Remi Anifowose: Violence and Politics in Nigeria. Sam Iroanusi page. pp I-3.

2/ EV Watters,” Power and Violence”. APSR (June, 1964) pp 350-360

3/Journal of Political Science, University of Ilorin, 1998, pp 9-11.

4.Tell Magazine, April 6, 2009.

5.Civil-Military Relations. Theory and Military Effectiveness, by Suzzanne C. Nieson

Ph.D student at the Harvard University (Her dissertation).