Those whom the gods will destroy

Aljazeera, for many of us, became an oasis of some level of objectivity.  In the last Israeli-Palestinian one-sided war, it was only Aljazeera that had a reporter in the areas of Gaza that was pounded with cluster bombs and white phosphorus (chemical weapon).  Israel will not allow any other reporter, the Red Cross or UN […]

Aljazeera, for many of us, became an oasis of some level of objectivity.  In the last Israeli-Palestinian one-sided war, it was only Aljazeera that had a reporter in the areas of Gaza that was pounded with cluster bombs and white phosphorus (chemical weapon).  Israel will not allow any other reporter, the Red Cross or UN supplies into Gaza, the aim being to black-out the evils being perpetrated from world view. Same happened in 2006, though a few journalists had access to the ghastliness that Israel wrought on South Lebanon.  But it would appear that the bid to run away from skewed and western-biased reportage has ended in a mirage for many of the professionals. Or perhaps black Africans are not on their agenda.

I watched Senator Mantu express his frustration on this station a few weeks ago, in the aftermath of the latest Jos riot, and though I do not agree with Mantu’s kind of politics and his mentor Obasanjo’s crude nihilist style, I saw that Aljazeera had surprised him, as well as other right-thinking students of history and global politics.  I feared that some of CNN’s mercenaries may have infiltrated Aljazeera as well and that there seemed no escape from the all-conquering strategy of the Americans.

For it should be obvious to anyone who can lend himself to appreciating the bigger picture, that the Americans are working to the answer.  I pity those who run to the West seeking solution to Nigeria’s problems.  It’s like seeking advice from the enemy.  On the junction to my office, there is an advert from a church that urges people to come and pray against their enemies.  Most Nigerians believe their neighbours are their enemies, or someone in their families.  But they just cannot seem to appreciate that the ‘enemy’ phenomenon applies more on a country-to-country basis.  I believe seriously that the USA intelligentsia is working assiduously, without Obama’s express consent though, to ensure its prediction about Nigeria’s breakup by 2015 comes to pass.

I maintain that Nigeria cannot really tell how many of its crises start.  The country has operated a very loose structure from day one.  And there are precedents to show that foreigners can cause havoc in any country that is porous, or even more importantly, divided; just as Nigerians are today.  It’s worse when a people are readily biased and unobjective.  

The ‘hate’ that bubbles over from one Nigerian to the other, is ultimately a protest against those who have held us down as a people thus far.  Nigerians may be fighting each other now, but one day, we will face our real traducers.  And our real traducers are those powerful foreign countries who corrupt us and then turn around to accuse us of corruption, who look for every opportunity to sell arms and ammunitions to us, who have infiltrated our people and caused these havocs from time to time, who damage whatever cohesion we have by playing psychological games on our minds, who mock us when we reel from the trouble they have caused among us and who are working towards our disintegration as a people and perhaps ultimately, towards our classification as endangered species.

Add to this list, our corrupt politicians and greedy ‘corporatocrats’, who steal Nigerians’ monies and siphon abroad to make other countries rich, those Nigerians who are on the payroll of foreign countries to destroy Nigeria because of its vast resources and especially, those who claim to be ‘intellectuals’, whom we all look up to, but who are also agents of our captors.  

For the truth is that there is no problem Nigeria has that is too great to solve.  Most of these are sociological issues.  But here, we are mounting religious rostrums, castigating Islam while we buy up all the properties in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and every other Muslim country, castigating Christianity while we never tire of visiting the USA and UK.  What hypocrisy!  Does that not tell that we should deemphasize religion and sort out the social issues; that the only people who can solve these escalating problems are the same intellectuals who call for our split and throw up their arms in mock despair; that when the country splits up into how many thousands, we will have similar problems, after all Christians killed Christians in Ife/Modakeke, Aguleri/Umuleri and the recent events in Ebonyi State, just as Muslims kill Muslims too?  Why did Christians deny the penultimate Kuru-Jantar pogrom?  Are we engaged in Muslim/Christian propaganda wars or searching for real truths?  If they admitted and assuaged the other side, perhaps there won’t have been ‘reprisals’!

But to whom the gods will destroy, their hearts will first turn to stone. Let every ‘intellectual’, columnist, expert, analysts ‘educated class’ know that this is their failure.  And their refusal to heed the calls of humanity is leading us down the road of perdition.

But before we go into another civil war that we are earnestly yearning for, let me paint the scenario that will emerge.  France will move to support Biafra because they did so the last time.  The first objective is to sell arms, and hopefully to see if they can get a piece of the pie in Nigeria’s oil rich regions.  But France will be shoved aside very quickly by the USA, which already has a battleship stationed in Lagos.  The USA doesn’t care about the Igbos, their main concern is the vast oil and gas deposits which Nigeria in peace time under Yaradua, is almost handing over to China with his Petroleum Industry Bill.  

How nice will it be to get the oil and gas for free under the guise of ‘protecting’ the region!  The British will most likely settle for the West, by selling arms to Oodua republic and trying to secure crude oil deposits in Ilaje area.  The Chinese and Russians, whom Yar’adua has tried to benefit with oil and gas deals, will show ‘concern’ by selling arms to the North.  What a spectacle it will be, on CNN and BBC and on Aljazeera, our lost hope.  It will be said on that day, by analysts upon analysts, experts upon experts, how genetically retarded the black man is.  

And lest I forget, after the Aljazeera show about Nigeria’s hyped-up ‘barbarism’, the next show was about how the use of chemical weapons and nail bombs in Fallujah, Iraq has led to an epidemic of deformed births, after millions have been killed.  So, say, Aljazeera and correspondent Yvonne Ndege (ex-BBC), who stays in the comfort of Abuja to broadcast cynical and derogatory and even inciting reports about us; between Nigerians and Americans, who is more barbaric?  How would Yvonne feel if Nigerian reporters fanned embers between Kikuyus and Luos in her native Kenya?  Too bad, journalism has become the problem it purports to solve.