The calamities 'greed' has caused this world cannot be quantify by any figure imaginable. Greed is behind many of the tragic events that have occurred in our turbulent world, from Iraq to Somali; from South Africa to Uganda and from Abuja to the Niger-Delta.It is thinly veiled and masked with other human beastial tendencies.In whatever and whichever human activity and venture you undertake the introduction of greed has the infectious effect of turning friends to enemies, brothers and sisters to fiends,parents and children to arch-rivals and citizens of a country to belligerents.
Money or property that if shared with transparency will ordinarily go round and make everyone to be happy with his portion will have the opposite effects of rancour, bitterness, enemity and on occasions the ultimate prize, death once greed is introduced. Consider a deal that was affectionately done from its inception, continuance and conclusion but when it was time for the spoils to be distributed the 'greed' factor was introduced...many unresolved deaths in Nigeria are the outcome of greed. You wonder why a promising man, woman or friend has met with an untimely death or calamity but if the truth be told, his or her fate was dictated by greed; trying to play God when honesty and modesty would have promoted an enduring co-existence.
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We celebrated 10 years of democracy on the 29th of May 2009 in Nigeria. In the absence of greed, these past ten years would have been glorious years for all Nigerians. But one man would rather hoard and arrogate to himself and family members and those yet unborn, resources meant for all of us. How can you explain General Babaginda having a 400 bed-roomed edifice in Minna if it is not insatiable greed! How can you explain the Esama of Benin owning almost half of the GRA in Benin-City and the whole of Okada Town if not for greed! How can Ibori possess so much for just a short period of governing a state! I hear some say it is hard work and development. It should be development if it was a housing scheme meant for the public but those lands and developments are now and forever appropriated for the Babaginda and Igbinedion dynasties.
These are just two examples at the tip of the iceberg. Remove the greeds of successive governors who have ruled the Niger-Delta States in the past ten years and there will be no militancy in that region today. Those governors have undiluted blood of the innocents in their hands. Blood of militants and of our soldiers; blood of children and of the aged; those who kept their insatiable greeds at the forefront to cause confusion and make the resolutions of the core-problems of Niger- Deltans unrealiasable. They are devoid of conscience and parade the country with guts and the feeling of immortality.
The labours of our 'heroes' past have all died in vain. As the futile operations to eradicate militancy in the Niger-Delta progress I weep for the fallen soldiers and their dependants in particular. The greed of those that are supposed to provide the much needed funds for equipment and allowances to boost morale have rather intervened to put the officers and men in danger and as we have witnessed deaths have resulted. The attempt by victims of the greed of our Officers to highlight and redress their predicaments by demonstrating was met by Court Marshalling and 27 of our soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment. This is the year 2009.These 'heroes' kept the peace in other countries of the world and suffered all sorts of deprivations and dangers. For any out there who is courageous to state that these are associated with the job they chose to do let me debunk that notion by asserting and stating that the DEAF soldier cases have be on in the Republic of Ireland for ages now.
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These are men and officers who chose to be soldiers. They were sent on peace keeping missions all over the world specifically to Lebanon, Chad, Kosovo and Liberia. Many developed hearing problems as a result of exposure to sounds of artillery guns notwithstanding mufflers provided to ameliorate the effects. Many of the victims have received compensations in the region of millions of euro from the Defence Forces and the Irish government. If the sueing of the Defence Forces is not an act of insubordination and 'treason' as we will be made to believe in Nigeria then tell me what is an act of insubordination! The issue of withholding the allowances of athletes by officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria and other sport federations have been strongly condemned and agitated against by me in the past and we succeeded to retrieve our allowances after demonstrating. We were not given life jail sentences for rightly fighting for our rights.
The greedy officers who withheld the allowances of these officers and men should be at the receiving end of justice NOT these ' heroes'.
What about the cruelty of the Police to their fallen men and women! We are not referring here to the alleged billions of naira of Police funds meant for equipment and various projects to upgrade the Police force to a modern one that were the subject of the trial of the ex-IGP,Salami. I am referring to the Insurance fund from which widows and widowers and indeed dependants of fallen Policemen and women who died or got seriously injured or disabled in the line of duty [notably from armed robbers], are to get compensation. THE FUND HAS BEEN the subject of an enquiry by the EFCC while the potential beneficiaries suffer in penuries and dependencies. This probe is occasioned by the greed of some person or persons.
It is a very demeaning, nauseating and provocating fact of our miserable lives in Nigeria that the government of the day is by the greedy and not for the needy as their insatiable quest for lucre and acquisition of wealth have blinded them to all reasons and hence one can hear from those who should know better an unguarded and reckless remark that 20 million Niger-Deltan lives can be sacrificed in order to make 100 million other Nigerians happy! Can one equate the life of a Nigerian with a barrel of oil? Yes ,we can unfortunately, as that is the conclusion one is inclined to draw from the misguided and erratic utterances and double-speak coming from Abuja and the Arewa Consultative Forum.[to be continued].
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