100 DAYS OF BAD LUCK
THE EXECUTIVE WARS: Two old and retired generals who had held ‘executive’ power were abusing each other the other day. Many were calling them to sheath sword. They should be allowed to fight to the finish. After all, One is the product of the Other, Nigeria’s current situation is the product of the One. These […]
THE EXECUTIVE WARS: Two old and retired generals who had held ‘executive’ power were abusing each other the other day. Many were calling them to sheath sword. They should be allowed to fight to the finish. After all, One is the product of the Other, Nigeria’s current situation is the product of the One. These two did more to this country than what Al Qa’ida did to America on September 11, 2001; more than what America did to Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; more than what Japan did to the Asian nations it occupied during the Second World War. Add to that the recent Al Mustapha Song and the Single Term proposal, and you have a perfect mix. Bad luck!
THE LEGISLATURE WARS: One old retired general must have arrived the gates of senility for him to continue insisting a certain legislative position ‘belongs’ to his side of the country. Perhaps he thinks we are in the Second and Final Term of the Presidency he imposed on us back in 2007. This old general installed the Lead Persons in both 2007 and 2011, as he himself was imposed on us by his now ‘new’ Enemy. So he shouldn’t sulk on the side; let him return the position he took away from others and retrieve the legislative position he so covets. (His party’s affair? Yes, the word ‘affair’ cropped up among the insinuations of One Old General against the Other). Bad luck!
THE JUDICIARY WARS: Sadly, a good case in the judiciary between a retired Chief and a suspended President is being reduced to ethnic jingoism. A judicial crusader and jihadist for justice for the Nigerian opposition is being reduced to a tribal champion. Some in a certain geo-political zone (where incidentally the subject doesn’t even hail from) want to claim him as their own. Same damage they did to the ‘presumed’ winner of the 1993 elections, who was more loved in Kano State (which rejected its own son for theirs) than in the whole of their land combined (where Kano’s son got almost nil votes). (Similar ethnic shenanigans are being employed by some foreign-loving Nigerian ethnic group in the matter of termination of contracts of about ten academics of the American University in Nigeria, Yola, who happen to be mostly from that ethnic group.) Bad luck!
JOS AGAIN: With all the military presence in Jos, with all the men and materiel at the Rukuba Barracks, how could anyone explain how Christian youths were able to surround thousands of Muslims at Eid Ground on Rukuba Road and kill and maim and burn with impunity! The ‘security forces’ were overwhelmed! Indeed! As for the Muslims, where are your divine injunctions of ‘wa a’iddu…’ and ‘fa’tadu…’? No one should just sit down and wait to be massacred; nothing would be done to the perpetrators. Remember Zonkwa: despite all the brazen pictures of the killers and all the evidences of burnt and mutilated bodies, no one has yet been charged to court for the massacre. And neither will anyone be for the Jos Eid Massacre. And it is time for the rebellious Izala to remember ‘man shazza…’ and for the Sultan to note that blood is thicker than the Crescent of the Moon. Bad luck!
UN HOUSE: What condemnable precision! What ignoble sophistication! What blameworthy expertise! The highly sophisticated Boko Haram has done it again, and again! We all thought that, after the Police Headquarters attack, choice places like the Three Arms Zone and the Diplomatic Areas (such as the UN House) would be much safer! Alas! The other day, it took your Columnist eight solid hours to reach Abuja from Kano, a journey of four hours. Hours of checks out of Kano, into Kaduna, out of Kaduna, into Abuja. Meanwhile, it is reported in some newspapers that the Boko Haram leaders are away for Umrah, Lesser Hajj (presumably flying out of our airports) and they have been speaking to journalists. Have they registered their SIM cards? Bad luck!
PRAYERS (AND SERVICES) IN BARRACKS: We hear that ‘civilian Muslims living outside military barracks all over the country have been banned from entering barracks for Eid and Friday prayers’ for fear of insecurity. All well. Except that we have not yet heard a similar ban for Christians living outside the barracks that also come in for Christmas and Sunday services. This is a country of Federated Characteristics, and we are not unaware of a certain Lydia who was apprehended for attempting to set fire to a church in Bauchi, or the Christian women apparently being held for Bauchi Mammy Market attack (both of which would have definitely been blamed on Muslims otherwise). We are waiting, Federal Character Commission! Bad luck!
ABUJA-LOKOJA ROAD: The death toll continues on the Abuja to Lokoja Road. Recent news has it that ‘contractors for three of the four sections of the road reconstruction have remobilised to site’ and they are waiting for the remaining contractor. What does this tell us? That all four contractors have abandoned the work before. SubhanalLah! Why? The Government has refused to fund the project because most Top Government ‘flies’ over, not ‘plies’ on, the road. (Funding has also been withheld for Kano to Maiduguri Road, perhaps the second most death-prone road, and which for some years has not even been budgeted for). Bad luck!
STILL ON CAPITAL PROJECTS: Related to this, have you not noticed the daily adverts for ‘Capital Projects’ (including procurement of Anti-Virus software) placed by Federal MDAs? This is September and the bids may be opened in October. Last Quarter of the Year. Ninety Days. So our Capital Projects for 2011 may be deCapitated, or else may continue to hide in the pipeline. (Remember when Niger Delta Militants were asked why they vandalised pipelines? They were said to have said: ‘Gofment dey tell us say una development dey in the pipeline; na ‘im we dey burst pipeline make we find where our development go hide!’). Bad luck!
RECOGNITION OF LIBYAN REBELS: Nigeria, ‘Mother of Africa’, ‘recognised’ the rebel Libyan Transitional National Council ahead of the African Union. Whatever his faults and idiosyncrasies, Gaddafi was (is) a friend of Africa. Now that the ‘new’ Government has started rounding up black people (Nigeria happens to have the world’s largest concentration of black people) and now that most of the rump Gaddafi security apparatuses, guns and all, are just across Nigeria’s border (in Niger Republic), what better time than now to derecognise the former rebels and await African Union directive. (The other day, some Nigerians were apprehended on the Nigeria-Niger Republic Border on way to Libya, en route Europe. When reminded of the war in Libya, they were said to have privately retorted: ‘Better Libya at war than Nigeria at peace!’) Bad luck!
And one of our heroes, retired Group Captain Usman Jibrin, just died. May Allah have mercy on his soul.
And if all these are not enough evidences of bad luck, show me good luck!