December 6, 2008
My dear brothers and sisters, compatriots,
I have waited patiently and can now say that the moment is ripe to share some critical concerns about the state of the nation. Please listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. To paraphrase a wise dictum, those who fail to heed the lessons of history are bound to repeat its mistakes. As you probably are aware, this nation of ours has been drifting aimlessly – others will consider it stranded in the middle of nowhere – for the past one and a half years. This is a long time in the life of a nation, especially one that is facing so many daunting challenges of underdevelopment.
I don’t intend to be discourteous, but let me begin by saying that our beloved president, Umaru Yar’Adua and his lackluster regime are constituting themselves into veritable nightmares for the average Nigerian. And since our competent, if occasionally mischievous Central Bank governor, Prof. Soludo, has said so, our region, Arewa, is perhaps the poorest and the most backward place in the whole of Nigeria. What this means in simple turenchi is that, although we may not be the most indigent, an aggregate of complex sociological factors makes it in such a way that bad and visionless leadership like the type our country has been afflicted with, thanks to the wholesale rigging of the 2007 elections by the ex-tyrant, Obasanjo and his PDP, is bound to adversely affect our people most. We cannot afford to be complacent in the face of the present and continuing danger posed by the increasingly paranoid and intolerant Yar’Adua government. Put differently, the president’s illegitimacy and abdication arguably do hurt the North more than any other region. It is unconscionable to continue to blindly support those whose idea of politics is the illegal acquisition of power for power’s sake. We must learn to tell ourselves bitter truths. That is the only way this part of the country and Nigeria in general can sincerely hope to transcend the painfully dismal circumstances that we find ourselves in today.
You see, their current proselytizing posture notwithstanding, during much of the previous regime of Olusegun Obasanjo, what used to be called Kabiyesi press because of its deferent relationship with the ex-dictator’s eight-year misrule, did play a cheerleading role and thus refused to transparently cover the excesses and failures of the Obasanjo tyranny. That journalistic irresponsibility on the part of key segments of the southern press in particular no doubt contributed in no small measure in the bastardization of our democratic project. One useful lesson here is that total or even partial monopoly of the media is bad. Our people must learn from past mistakes or omissions and not repeat the errors that have brought us to this sorry pass. That is one reason why all progressive voices of the North and beyond should rise and tell our “servant-leader” that he is on a very slippery course with his hounding and harassment of the national media, both local and in the diaspora.
The unwarranted assault on the management and staff of the Abuja newspaper called Leadership has been particularly savage in its scope and magnitude. Both the SSS and the police have taken turns to detain, intimidate and basically disrupt the day-to-day operations of the media outfit. The sins of Leadership? The partly erroneous publication of a report on the health-related administrative difficulties of Mr. President for which the paper promptly tendered an apology. Although Yar’Adua has finally sued Leadership for alleged defamation, his repressive tactics remain a terrible source of worry. The cowardly resort on his part to coercive measures that seem designed to financially ruin one of the foremost media organs of the country must be seen as quite unfortunate indeed. This war that is being waged against Leadership (and before it, Elendu-reports.com, Channels TV and AIT), is increasingly assuming the contours of an anti-intellectualism campaign with serious economic, social and political ramifications. Only the ultra-conservative status quo voices of the region and elsewhere will condone the illegal onslaught by a regime that is noisily laying claim to the mantra of due process and the rule of law. Yar’Adua and his grey eminence should know that this is a war they cannot possibly hope to win. They should start by calling the SSS hounds led by one Afakriya Gadzama to order.
It is also worth mentioning a profoundly sinister dimension of the anti-media discourse emanating from Aso Rock. “There is no truth in the entire report and the lies on which it hangs are so easy to disprove that the only reasonable conclusion is that the publishers of the newspapers ran the report in furtherance of their reprehensible efforts to embarrass the President and destabilize his Administration…”. This kind of reckless outburst seeking to equate a press report with an imaginary destabilization plot should be condemned as unbecoming. It requires reminding also that it is dangerous to consider Yar’Adua’s personal dislikes as being tantamount to our national interests. Historically, such nonsensical claims by an incompetent and undemocratic regime have often been a pretext for greater repression. As Yar’Adua’s illegitimacy albatross weighs heavily on his frail shoulders of reaction, what is being revealed is a power-hungry individual whose desperation is helping dismantle a carefully nurtured façade that can no longer conceal the man’s duplicity.
Significantly, Yar’Adua and the paralysis of which he is an embodiment have to be seen as constituting a symptom of a much wider malaise. It is a worrying statement of the state of anomie being felt all over the country but perhaps more acutely in the North than elsewhere. That said, one must hasten to add that the incumbent president symbolizes a special aspect of the rampant malaise, namely, the ineffectual national political elite whose northern manifestation has historically been the subject of questionable scrutiny on the part of sectarian champions and biased pundits alike. This kind of stereotypical representation of the North’s political elite in particular has invariably led to an indolent and unacceptable stigmatization of the region and its peoples.
It was Alhaji Dokubo Asari, a self-styled Niger-Delta activist who, not long ago, did launch a blistering, if essentially illiterate verbal attack against the North and its key political figures. In that diatribe, he sought to portray the people of the area as barbarians and unproductive parasites ever so eagerly waiting to gorge on the windfall accruing from the sale of oil-related resources of the Niger-Delta. What the likes of Dokubo have consistently failed to say is that the real parasites within the Nigerian polity can be found in all zones of the country, in varying degrees, to be sure. They mainly belong to the sleazy political class. It is a confederacy of corrupt and sedentary ex-military men, carpetbaggers of every hue and provenance, the fossils calling themselves traditional rulers, high profile hustlers and con men as well as election riggers and their allies in the private sector and the nation’s civil service. Yes, the North has a fair share of the Babangidas, the Abachas and the Yar’Aduas. We challenge others to name (and shame) their own bacchants. These are the true tormentors of the masses. They are a sharp and depressing contrast to the hard-working majority whose productive spirit is viciously being thwarted by the predatory elements in power. Nevertheless, as I keep saying to my people, some of the most unpatriotic elements in the country today are to be found in the North. Nowadays, the average northern politician or “big man”, it would seem, is as spineless and as morally challenged as any local tin god elsewhere. Opportunistic and devious to the core, the northern ‘shagba or’ (that is ‘big oga’ in Tiv) is a personification of hypocrisy and other turpitudes, much like his southern counterpart. As a Northerner with deep social and emotional affinities to the region and Nigeria in general, one feels particularly saddened that this grim situation, instead of improving, is actually getting worse. We are daily being confronted with the selfishness and lack of redeeming values on the part of the northern pols. Those within the PDP are such obvious basket cases that there is no point dwelling on them here.
These days, a reactionary wing of the ANPP whose elected representatives are mainly from the North has perfected the art of turncoat politics with a single-minded and sadistic desire for primitive wealth accumulation. Their brazen truancy and vacuity do call for an appropriate riposte on the part of the victims of their mindless conduct. Not long ago, a former ANPP governor from one of the impoverished rural states in the North revealed publicly how he spent over a billion naira of the state’s allocation on Obasanjo’s failed ‘third term’ scam. Unbelievably, this did not lead to any public outcry against the reprobate. In Kano, Maiduguri, Zamfara, Bauchi, etc., the depressing tales of profligacy and misgovernance associated with unscrupulous ANPP pols are all too familiar now. There is also this renegade - a despicable old man who goes by the name of Ume-Ezeoke. The scallywag parades himself as the chairman of the party but his nauseating schemes reveal him more as a greedy and insouciant hatchet man in the service of his PDP handlers who seem bent on thwarting the blossoming of a viable democratic alternative. Yet, the Ume-Ezeoke nuisance is a footnote that the ANPP’s more credible wing led by General Buhari can afford to ignore. What one cannot ignore, though, is the unabashed treachery of some of the party’s elected men at both the state and federal levels. The indecent antics of these apostates have acquired a banal character that leaves nobody in doubt whatsoever as to their profound disdain for the people they claim to serve. That the so-called ANPP governors and senators in particular have become such a huge disappointment should serve as a lesson to Buhari and his followers across the country. If they must remain within the ANPP, Buhari and his supporters should work toward wrestling the control of the party from the sleazy and unprincipled bunch whose dalliance with the PDP can only lead to further misery for the citizenry.
In conclusion, let me say this: Media monopoly, total or quasi-total, as has been historically enjoyed by the South, is not advised for any polity. That is one reason why the savage and short-sighted scorched earth campaign the Yar’Adua regime is waging against the Leadership group of newspapers must be condemned as both reckless and irresponsible. It is high time the masses started seeing the likes of UMYA, Babangida, Yerima and their confederates for what they truly are. Enlightened self-interest demands so. So also does Allah. The folklore seeking to portray Yar’Adua’s tainted ascendancy as an act of God should be dismissed as both fallacious and heretical.
New York
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