I am glued to the television one day to the mid-term elections in America tomorrow. As a political commentator and freelance consultant to the Democratic Party by choice, I have got to do that, and pay close attention.
I am glued to the television one day to the mid-term elections in America tomorrow. As a political commentator and freelance consultant to the Democratic Party by choice, I have got to do that, and pay close attention.
As I listen to predictions and analysis from the best pollsters in the business like Charles Cook and Michael Rottengerg and pundits like David Gergen, Paul Begala, James Carvel, Patrick Buchanan, George Will, Arianna Huffington, Chris Matthews,, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Madow, John King and many others, I cannot help but think about Nigeria, my ancestral home. I cannot but help wonder if the Nigerian politicians, leaders and followers alike would ever attain the same level of sophistication in my life time, to move Nigeria forward.
I know America has taken more than 232 years to be where she is today, and that Nigeria, 50 years after independence, still has a long way to go and that any comparison with America may be short-sighted and wrong. But when I remember little countries like Singapore, South Africa after years of Apartheid and even tiny countries like the State of Israel which was only founded in 1948, despite her long history as documented in the old and the new testament, I see some sense of urgency in complaining about Nigeria. My frustration becomes more intense when I remember our next door neighbor in Ghana whose citizens used to flock to Nigeria at one point looking for jobs as house maids, “obioma” or security guards and gate keepers. Because of some draconian steps taken by Jerry Rawlings and few of his colleagues, Ghana would appear to have turned the corner. Ghana seems to have broken out of the pack in the last decade or so and the rest is history. The civilized world reckons more with Ghana today than they do with Nigeria which is fast becoming a failed state. Nigeria has all but reached the proverbial crossroad as a nation. All indications I see point to that conclusion, sad to say.
I just returned from a workshop in Harvard University marking the golden Jubilee of Nigeria’s independence from Britain. The workshop pretty much drew the same conclusion that Nigeria had nothing to celebrate but retrogression and deep ethnic polarization and resentment among our people across the board. Many Nigerians are now seriously considering a break-up as a possible option for Nigeria if we are not going to move forward. Earlier on in June I attended a similar workshop organized by the Oodua Foundation at Temple University in Philadelphia where a cross section of the Yorubas in Diaspora have pretty much reached the same conclusion that the basis of the Nigerian unity as once argued by General Yakubu Gowon in a Freudian slip before the Biafran War, may have now proved to be a self-fulfilling prophesy on where we are headed as a nation.
The only glue holding the Nigeria together is crude oil. If the oil dries up tomorrow, forget it. Few people can be proud of Nigeria as a nation if there is nothing the nation is doing for them. JFK’s refrain that Americans should ask not what their country has done for them but what they have done for their country should be placed in its proper context.
Why for Goodness sake, would Americans be asking about what their country has done for them when they can see it without asking. If they hit their wall light comes on because there is no power failure. If they hit their wash hand basin or bathroom shower at their 92nd floor apartment in downtown Manhattan clean water gushes out without any problem. Why must they ask such a question when the ambulance and the Police arrive at the spot of an accident within minutes of the accident and when emergency treatment is offered to the victims without asking whether or not they have medical coverage.
My point is that a number of social services can be taken for granted by Americans. It therefore makes sense for Americans to not ask what their country has done for them because they can see it everywhere they go. You carry American passports to any country in Europe or anywhere around the world, you did not need a visa when JFK was President. In Nigeria it is not that obvious. When poverty and deprivation hit you anywhere you go in Nigeria starting from the Airport, the first question that comes to your mind is wonder what your country has done for you. When armed robbers send you notices they are coming and they come without fail with no Police presence to rescue or protect you, what do you do?
Most Nigerians myself included therefore immediately think of the place of our birth and our ethnicity and family before we think of the contraption called Nigeria which did not exist as we know it today until 1914 following the Amalgamation by Lord Lugard. We all qualified to be called Nigerians only because of our initial identification as a Yoruba man or as an Igbo man or an Hausa or Fulani man.
So Awolowo was damn right when he said he could not be a good Nigerian if he was not first and foremost a good Yoruba man The question is what came first, Was it the chicken or the egg? Was it Nigeria or the place where you or your parents were born that comes first? You cannot be too proud of a country which has done nothing for you. That is the bottom line unless you want to play politics. If our federal system is not working for us let us go con-federal, and if that too is not working for us, lets us go our separate ways. Didn't Pakistan break away from India and Eritrea from Ethiopia? Why must we remain in an unhappy marriage with Nigeria, if we are not all happy with it? It is a very legitimate question to ask.
Individuals like Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who identified more with the Nigerian nation than they did, with their place of birth or ethnicity are later day saints. If you shake them good or give them some hard time, they will recant like Azikiwe did when he ran back to the East to ask Eyo Ita to step aside for him to become Premier. He did pretty much the same thing when he was one of the first Igbos to pitch his tent or cross over to the Federal side during the Biafran war. Zik was able to play both all sides because he spoke Igbo as fluently as Okoko Ndem, Yoruba as fluently as a Samuel Ladoke Akintola and Hausa as a Dan Maraya. Not every Nigerian leader was blessed to do that. When you are bi-lingual and tri-lingual it becomes far much easier for you to feign to be a nationalist because the Hausas will warm over to you, if you speak their language and the Yoruba or the Igbos will do the same because of the power of language.
I can tell you that part of the reason Zik was so easily accepted among the Yorubas was because of that advantage. Zik once told my grandfather, Deji Afunbiowo in a joke he shared with him that he liked everything but disliked “Arekereke” meaning double dealing in Yoruba. He also spoke in Yoruba knowing fully well that my grandfather could not read or write. That made a huge impression on my grand father and he loved Zik for that. Zik was so good at using that advantage in dazzling his audiences as a politician. Awolowo could not do that, and so was the Sardauna or Tafawa Balewa for all his years in Lagos as Prime Minister. Playing the nationalist game was not enough. Nigerians need security of their life and property and “freedom for all and life more abundant” like Awolowo used to say.
There was a bomb explosion close to the Eagle Plaza in Abuja where Nigerian leaders and foreign leaders from all over the world were busy celebrating Nigeria’s 50th year of Independence in one of the most expensive celebrations ever staged by our country. Less than two weeks after that event, 13 containers of assorted weapons of mass destruction were making their way thru Apapa Wharf in Lagos few months before the 2011 elections. It has been rumored thru the grapevine that those shipments might just have been going thru Lagos on their way to the Hamas in Lebanon.
The mere fact that the shippers would pick Nigeria as a halfway house for those weapons to meander their ways to the radical elements of Hamas in the Middle East should send some chills down the spines of Nigerians who fully understand the dangers Nigeria faces with such a porous security. Such a development could complicate our relations with the West led by the United States and the tiny but powerful State of Israel.
I went to do a Master’s degree in clinical Psychology on a half scholarship/fellowship offered to me by the Karl Ichan Foundation from 1991 to 1993 all because of my interest to get to know the Jews better and what makes them tick as a people. I had a choice to do the program at Columbia or Fordham but I chose the Yeshiva Jewish University of New York and the choice has paid off big time. You don’t mess with the Jews as a people because they are all over the world, and they have something going for them that few other nations around the world can boast of. You could be fighting God if you are fighting them and that is a war you can never win.
Once upon a time the state of Israel with only 3 million population at home and triple that number outside, were surrounded by 150 million Arabs. The Arabs fought several Wars with Israel including the 6 day war led by the great Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Guess who always came on top in all of those wars? It was the State of Israel by miracle because when you are fighting Israel you are fighting the United States and all her allies around the world. Nigeria already has enough internal problems of her own to grapple with. Getting caught in the crossfire of Middle East politics and endless wars would definitely be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back for Nigeria. That is something Nigeria should run away from like a poison, because if we get entangled in the cobweb of those wars and intrigues we are in big trouble.
That is only a side issue I want to address in this article. The real issue is that Nigeria is getting deeper and deeper into this cul-de-sac of political hopelessness as we face another election circle in Nigeria and as we face the problems of returning to power the same political party that has driven the Nigerian nation into a ditch so to speak. We ought to be looking for ways and means to dig Nigeria out, and we are asking the same PDP that drove the truck into the ditch, to be the one to dig her out. Why could we not just learn a lesson or borrow a script from the Americans from whom we have plagiarized our so-called presidential system which is doing us no good at all because our country does not obey all the rules needed make the system work.
Two years ago, a black candidate the least expected to win a presidential election was suddenly swept into power in the greatest country in the world. It is something nobody has predicted could ever happen in our life time, but it did, pretty much like the second coming of Jesus in a Tsunami of an election and a tidal wave that changed America forever. We suddenly wake up finding the first black couple in American history, taking over the Lincoln bed room with two little black kids playing around a Limousine or an SUV parked in the driveway of the White House.
The development naturally blew our minds just like it did to Brad Paisley, the country music idol in his latest blockbuster track titled, “I don’t know what to call it” Brad Paisley had said “it blew his mind to suddenly find himself in so much wealth, with a sedan and an SUV parked in his drive way and two little kids playing around them. It blew his mind to know they all belong to him” By the same token, It blew the minds of American blacks and the minorities in particular, if not the whole world, to suddenly see a black President in the White House in 2008. My question here is to ask how did that happen? It happened because of Americans’ belief in a free and fair election which is the scenario that has paved the way for Obama’s surprise victory. Voting is the language of Democracy.
Nigerians and his leaders must understand that. There can be no Democracy if you don’t have a free choice to pick your leaders without let or hindrance. Nobody understands that better than American voters.
Two years later, the American voters are on the eve of another historic election when the majority are now serving notice to the Democrats to begin to sing their “Nunc Dimitis” tomorrow in preparation for 2012 presidential elections. That is the kind of notice Nigerian voters deserve to give to the PDP which raid and exploit Nigeria for more than 12 years by making it impossible to have a free and fair elections. They are busy re-circling the same old election riggers like Ayoka Adebayo who they claimed cannot be removed because she has an iron-clad contract with the Federal Government to serve out her 6 or 10 year contract, even if she is found guilty of murder on the job. Can you believe that? If President Jonathan truly believes in the rule of Law, Mrs. Ayoka should have been fired immediately the Appeal Court verdict was announced. What more could the Appeal Court have said about Mrs. Adebayo to get Mr. Jonathan’s attention. Mr. Jonathan’s failure to immediately act on the Appeal Court’s indictment of Mrs. Adebayo has damaged his credibility irredeemably as far as I am concerned.
You don’t hear of military coups in America and other civilized countries because every 2, or 4 or 6 years, the voters have a chance to throw out the bums who have not performed or who could not correctly read the priorities of the great majority of the American people and the voters. It was the Republicans that fit that description in 2008, tomorrow the Democrats are going to hear their own result when they lose the Lower House and their Speakership in a tidal wave. They could be close to losing the Senate in a major shake-up as well.
That is the kind of Tsunami Nigeria needs and until Attahiru Jega the new sheriff in town see his role as helping to make that happen, forget it. Nigeria is going to eventually break up and say “Unto your tents O Israel. That is what this article is all about.
The PDP has lost his credibility to continue to lead the nation. We badly need a change of leadership not just within the PDP. Jonathan’s performance is questionable to say the least. The nation’s security has been threatened and undermined two times already within a month quite apart from the several kidnappings taking place in Abia and all over Nigeria and all the religious riots in Jos and other northern cities. Those who say his performance has qualified him to run for president and be elected on the platform of the same PDP are day dreamers.
I don’t believe in that foolishness. Murtala Mohammed who ruled for only 200 days into Eternity performed a lot better than anything that Jonathan has done so far. Making promises is one thing and delivering on those promises is a different ball game. It is a long long way to Tipperary. Mr Goodluck still has a long way to go to earn the confidence of the Nigerian voters. We must all remember that he was a Vice President to one of the weakest Presidents Nigeria has ever had. I don’t see him as a miracle maker and I know he is joined in the hips with the PDP. There is no way he is going to perform any better than the PDP has performed in the last 12 years. If he produces more megawatts without electricity, he would still not be solving the problems of Nigeria. Let Nigerians try the opposition for a change. A country of 140 million peoples deserves a more purposeful leadership than the one we currently have in the PDP which is currently fighting itself to a standstill because there is no viable opposition to cut them down to size.
The Nigerian economy is currently in shambles. Unemployment is hitting the roof and Nigerians are digging into the garbage trash to look for food. Nigeria’s economy mainly depends on Oil and Gas. Agriculture is moribund in a country that should be flowing with milk and honey. The refineries are not working. Nigerians are consumers because we produce nothing. Network of roads and rail roads are nothing to write home about. The Banking industry is comatose with the likes of Cecilia Ibru stealing the nation dry and spending time in a Hospital ward in Victoria Island instead of languishing in jail. We are a nation waiting to implode or explode. Our educational standards have all but collapsed. The only area where Nigeria is making any progress is in Internet fraud thru the Yahoo boys and drug peddling and money laundering.
We are doing well with evangelization and the spreading of the gospel which has been infiltrated by fake prophets in all the nooks and corners of our country making it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Entertainment Industry or Nollywood is one area where Nigerians is doing pretty good, but the Government has to create a more conducive environment for the industry to grow by initiating good policies and regulating the Industry. It remains to be seen. however, if the various Governments are doing so right now.
Nigeria is therefore on the proverbial crossroad as we speak. In America, the pundits and the political commentators and pollsters are making predictions based on opinion polls and exit polling to determine who is most likely to win or lose based on probability theory. 9 out of 10 chances what they predict always come true. Just like weather forecasters in America will often accurately predict the weather. it is a different story in Nigeria. What you hear from Nigeria is occasional rain or occasional sunshine and you are pretty much left to draw your own conclusion. If you are having an outdoor party even during the rainy or dry season you may need the services of rain doctors to come to your rescue. This may sound like fiction to those of you who have left home a long time but it is the truth.
If you are contesting an election you may need a native doctor or a pastor or an evangelist to tell you if you have any chance of winning or losing. In a nation where a former State Governor like Dele Olumilua or a one-time Deputy Governor like Omoboriowo all claim to be full time Evangelists, you have your job cut out for you, if those are the people you have to consult in knowing if you are going to succeed or lose an election.
It is a different story in America. Pollsters like Charlie Cook and Rottenberg are so proficient in what they do, that they will tell you in advance what percentage of the vote you are most likely to receive based on probability theory. No so in Nigeria because we lie too much. No predictions based on information supplied by Nigerian voters would ever come true. Charlie Cook and Rottenberg line of business cannot be sustained in Nigeria because ballot switching and stuffing even by Deputy Governors who use their Police escorts and security details to offer them cover as they go from one polling booth to another snatching ballot boxes and replacing them with already stuffed boxes, is a very common in Nigeria. You look at the voter’s register in Ondo State, and you find fictitious names like Michael Tyson, Mohammed Ali, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. They add such names in the hope that nobody is going to pay attention. Mrs. Ayoka Adebayo saw a lot of those infractions in Ekiti and she just looked the other way because she was a paid agent of the PDP. Even though she claimed to be a born-again Christian, she could care less about correcting such anomalies.
The best she could do was to advise Kayode Fayemi to go to the Court if he was not satisfied. And when the poor boy went to Court and won, the shameless woman asked for a new posting to Ondo State to perpetuate another scam in 2011. Attahiru Jega is telling us he has no power to simply tell Goodluck Jonathan he cannot work with that kind of staff and Jonathan is saying his hands are tied because of the woman’s contract. Can you believe that?
This and other observations are part of the reasons Nigeria is on a crossroad today and why the workshop at Temple University last June and the one at Harvard University on October 2nd have pretty much come to the same conclusion that the end of Nigeria as one nation may be near. We certainly cannot wait another 50 years to see a change in Nigeria. Can we?
I rest my case.
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