December 3, 2008
Tonight, Jos yawns tiredly, satiated from the orgy of torrential killings and the frenzy of political war these last few days. But a military Governor in civilian clothing is angry and uncomfortable that the unstoppable “winning “of PDP machine is momentarily interrupted, sending the hungry lion briefly into unplanned recess.
He wants to inaugurate but those who know better at Abuja and understand National security from authentic reports warned him to stop. A static Country shakes uncertainly from its management inertia to a full current of bloody activity spewing blood and tissue like molten magma.
300 dead Nigerians, thousands injured and bloodied and tens of homes, cars churches and mosques in huge participation in the pyrotechnic activity around the busy streets of Jos. As traditional fault lines of tribe, religion, and personal animosity, inert for quite a while now suddenly becomes tools in the hands of political contestants and troublemakers, the Country threatens to fall apart from these dangerous centrifugal forces to further magnify the huge deficit in National unity. On the International scene, National instability has moved to reduce the Country’s bankability in a World economy in crisis. Investors at the best of times are hard to find and nobody goes to sink money in a war zone.
Settlers and aborigines, Christians and Muslims, Hausas and others have gotten their glasses improved for magnification of the differences in the colour of their prejudices. To your tents, Oh Israel is the latest cry in Jos. Fiery Imams and political pastors are once again in business. And the name of God is again pronounced loudly in vain covering up a noble attempt at redressing National wrong. The cause of this chaos is PDP criminal conduct to once again hijack the people’s mandate. But the rogues have successfully steered passions in the direction of religion and tribe.
The intricate relationship between political cause and fatalistic effect, the illogical difference between uneducated perceptions and factual reality and the Nigerian politician’s natural tendency to recklessly subject everything important to a Nations match in dangerous pursuit of hedonistic adventure is once again at issue in the latest field of slaughter. Here political criminals have rigged elections in order that they can appropriate the people’s resources and corner it to their family’s compound. But they ran out of luck as the people finally captured them for lynching. But like diabolic animals which these criminals are, their defeat has been corruptly misspelt to mean religious and ethnic conflict. And as if hypnotized, Mullahs and evangelists have been talking tough and mandating ignorant followers to wait for the next message. Fiction is confused for fact and ethnic origin has suddenly become a solution to hunger and the knowledgeable most times are too weak to reason. We must emphasise the message from Jos. Jos has just decided to stand up to rigging. PDP rigged elections again, as they have been accustomed to do. The people decided to take a stand of resistance, as they had not done since the 80s. But politicians have criminally clouded the waters dangerously in red colours. But Churches and pastors have died and Chief Imams have been burnt along with their mosques. Now where politics erred, how come the spiritual heavens pay the price? One great lesson to a Government of sensible leaders is simply that in the next calculations, particularly in 2011, politicians will surely factor the natural weaknesses of a faulty federation into the calculus of politics to make the next rigging costly and hopefully make the Country ungovernable by any illegally foisted administration.
LESSONS TO LEARN
Two clear signals have been rapidly flashed to Abuja. The first is that the 2011 elections will be highly contested through the barrels of the gun if the PDP does not change its ways. The second is that the comparative balance of coercive power between the state and trouble makers is closing quickly.
From reports coming from Jos it appears clear that PDP walked briskly without thinking into ambush. When they rigged the elections in 2007, people went home without a whimper. Obviously, the judiciary’s stature was overpowering from the landmark judgments it handed over to Obasanjo over the Atiku oppression. And because the rigging was so rough, the methods so amateurish and the trails of crime so marked, people simply walked home expecting justice if only they could wait for Obasanjo to wander into his farms and get lost within the thick bushes. And when the mayhem in Kenya happened over its elections, people boasted that their judiciary was more sophisticated than those native judges of East African. But steadily and repeatedly, the judiciary remained miles behind the hopes of its people and the learned Justices just couldn’t understand the sophistication of the citizens of their abused Country. The judges just started to mess up. And the aggrieved politicians started to device new strategies after finally putting an end to hoping and praying. But the PDP misread the situation, believing that they are in Government and therefore in power. They now started to cement rigging in traditional ways without devising new strategies to cover their crimes. All the elections overturned at the courts were reversed by rigging and terms of office of election riggers extended. Now the people disturbed, offended and angry simple decided to take a stand in Jos and build their defenses on the plateau. That is where we stand at the moment with over 300 killed and thousands maimed for life.
BALANCE OF POWER.
Men in position of power in retarded Countries often forget that there are two forces in competition in a social environment. The forces the society has built up for protection of all and the forces that individuals or groups can carve out for themselves along the lines of their interest. The greatness of Nations is defined by the sophistication of the National force the entire society has constructed for its collective protection and extension of their influence externally. A Nation’s greatness starts from the quality of justice it provides its most ordinary citizens.
And this starts from the fairness of its laws , the effectiveness of coercive forces it has set around these laws to give teeth to it, the patriotism of leadership it has elected to administer this coercive forces intelligently and sensibly and the elasticity that a legislature has provided for checking the mandate, feeding back the people who own it, and correcting and adjusting in accordance with the measurement of the peoples mood. From this grows National bonding, subservience to the flag and all other National sentiments. From these sentiments sprouts great army's and great arms. With the colonial or indeed the forces of military dictatorships, there is no reason to hope for common sense. And society adjusts to its predicament by building fortresses to withstand imposed brutality. It achieves this by engaging in mass strategy to criticize, demystify, fight and finally humiliate oppression out of their life. This Nigeria has successfully accomplished twice. In colonialism and military dictatorship. But in a democracy, trust is the cement between the people and those it legitimately appoints to execute its projects and those it elects to supervise its mandate. It is the responsibility of the people to appoint appropriate representatives and the duty of those appointed to build trust by assuring mandate owners of correct interpretation of their message. But in Nigeria, tragically, those exercising the peoples mandate are not those they chose. There is no basis for trust therefore, because the people do not recognize these fraudsters and the criminals do not respect the people. Ironically, these criminals are currently signing death warrants and stealing money with red biros usurping the powers of the State.
They know they are unsafe, therefore, they protect their family with hundreds of police mobile units which they move around in long convoys paid from the peoples purse. But Jos has decided to take a stand. It is therefore the responsibility of those intelligent among us to explain the complete text to the people as they have been confused by a language written by politicians in what looks like hieroglyphics. To let them know that Jos has nothing to do with the psalms, the hadith and that if WAZOBIA comes to mind, it must only be a medium of explanation and that the subject has nothing to do with the hatchets done to pretty faces through encryption of tribal markings. Jos is simply about PDP rigging elections again and the people saying finally that enough is just enough. Let us hope that this Government has gotten the message from Jos and that in 2011, private armies commanded by political war lords will set this Country on fire if PDP continues its “winning” ways.
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