The wages of dishonesty!
It has come to pass that President Goodluck has revealed his true colour as an opportunist but also a bumbler. In the week leading to the October 1st bomb blast, he had addressed some Nigerians living in USA, that they (the Nigerians) ‘should not be in a hurry to come back home, except they don’t […]
It has come to pass that President Goodluck has revealed his true colour as an opportunist but also a bumbler. In the week leading to the October 1st bomb blast, he had addressed some Nigerians living in USA, that they (the Nigerians) ‘should not be in a hurry to come back home, except they don’t have GENUINE business where they are living now’. I was shocked! Should a president not encourage all his people to converge and assist him? And what was that about ‘genuine’ business? Does the president know what living abroad is about? The glass ceilings? The open discrimination and distrust of Nigerians? The nuisance we have become? The profiling by the police and every other person?
But then the president had just finished denying that there was anything like ‘zoning’ in his party’s constitution. And in buttressing his fact, he had referred us all to the same section that states categorically that there shall be zoning of offices AT ALL LEVELS. How tactless? Coming at a time when all his supporters were thrashing about, trying to explain their apparent lack of integrity using different types of illogic – oh yes, there is zoning but Jonathan is using Yaradua’s term, yes there is zoning but incumbents have prerogative, yes there is zoning in PDP but let us allow the South South to be president after all they produce the country’s oil etc – the president’s statement that THERE WAS NO ZONING was another shocker. I saw the face of a confused liar on TV that day. How desperate can a man be?
Many absurd incidents have happened in our country in the past few weeks, which I have documented and will soon chronicle. But of course, the most bizarre and by far the saddest and the one with the gravest impact on our nationhood was the October 1st bomb blast. I see that incidence as a declaration of war on the sovereignty and the entity called Nigeria by whoever did it, be it MEND or whoever Jonathan ‘knew’. If not for the fact that Jonathan has revealed his apparent tardiness, if only he was a bit as smart as he was dishonest, this country would have been on fire today. The saving grace is that everyone has been able to see through his dishonesty and prejudices because he made a total fool of himself. In fact in the next few weeks and months, politicians being what they are, would start jumping ship by the droves as they abandon the Goodluck train. The bastard politicians never want to be caught in the cold!
The president revealed he is a tribalist and religious fanatic. In absolving his ‘people’, and claiming that MEND did not plant the bombs, he alienated every other Nigerian that was not from the Niger Delta. In claiming that what we had were ‘terrorists’, he sought to conjure the image of another Muslim/Christian conflict. In global language, a ‘terrorist’ is a forlorn Muslim with a beard. Indeed he succeeded remarkably as most Christians and southerners I’ve spoken with since then believe it was a job by Al Qaeda. Gbenga Aruleba of AIT had said the next day that someone saw two people dressed as ‘Arabs’ throwing the bombs. No one asked why they would dress like Arabs and make police job too easy.
In reaffirming his belief that a group came from ‘outside the country’ to plant the bombs, Jonathan sought to fan the embers of conflict that have always happened in northern Nigeria, whereby the Jos conflicts have been alleged to be fomented by foreigners from Niger Republic. Ditto for the Boko Haram crisis etc. I was appalled that a sitting president, through his express actions and statements, will want to set his own country on fire just to save his political ass! I would have thought that even if the president KNEW for sure that these were Islamists and Northerners, he should never have mentioned such a thing, just so that the country will not cavort into another nationwide orgy of violence!
But since then a lot has happened. Forget about Henry Okah’s interviews with Al Jazeera and even the Financial Times of London. What we cannot ignore in a hurry, is the fact that two days before the blasts, Yvonne Ndege of Al Jazeera had gone to the creeks to meet the MEND group. Some government officials have alleged that it was another staged meeting, just like the Obasanjo government did when for the first time, Jeff Koinange, another Kenyan, who worked for CNN had revealed to the world the sophistication of armed insurgency in the Niger Delta. In spite of government’s denial of the problem in the Obasanjo era, Yaradua’s amnesty saw the surrender of a vast amount of arms and ammunition in that region.
Yvonne revealed that she was one person who knew more than Jonathan about the Niger Delta, in spite of his claim that ‘no one can claim to know more than me’. She went into the creeks and met with the boys. The amount of sophisticated weapons we saw within two minutes, showed that this country is at war. The masked boys she spoke with were hefty and well-fed. They were not like those ones in the camp in Obubra. Perhaps more like the ones who now live permanently at Abuja’s poshest hotels since ‘they are now in government’? It is a frightening thing really, that since Jonathan’s government, these militants –practicing and retired – have totally infiltrated the nation’s very heart! And perhaps that is why they could successfully plan such an attack. Which way forward Nigeria?
Back to the creek, the boys did have a cogent point when their leader ‘RAMBO’ stated that ‘How can anyone come from nowhere and own an oil well in my backyard, when I don’t even have a cup of oil’? In that statement is captured what is wrong in the Niger Delta. Recently General T. Y. Danjuma said he sold two oil wells in the Niger Delta for $1billion and did not know what to do with the money. At least he was honest and he set up a foundation to give to the poor. If TY could own at least two oil wells, say, how many will Obasanjo have? Why has the Niger Delta been PRIVATISED? Why does the entire oil there NOT BELONG TO THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA rather than to useless politicians and their fraudulent Oyibo counterparts? Please get a computer with internet, go to www.youtube.com and search for MEND IN NIGERIA to see this video I am talking about. You will be scared!
Goodluck lost the presidency, thankfully, due to his own ineptitude, which was a product of his prejudices. One cannot be the president of this country with such tribal and religious baggage. The man even took a swipe at the southeast when he said the incidence is just like the ‘Kidnapping for money that goes on ESPECIALLY IN THE SOUTHEAST’ Ha! Ndigbo, your president thinks you are money mongers? Are you? The president of this country should be the most detribalised and religiously open-minded person of all of us. But this is what happens when a people sacrifice integrity, honour and gentlemanliness on the altar of expediency and prejudice. The best argument of the Goodluck crew has always been ‘Goodluck has a right to contest. We must show the North that this country is not a Caliphate!’ And Nigeria was headed straight for Armageddon!