Vacancy!!!-The near Banana Republic of Nigeria and the 36 federating Kingdoms plus Abuja, wishes to announce to the general public the recruitment of the Inspector General of Police.
Qualification: No Igbo Need Apply ‘NINA’
Venue: Frankenstein House, Aso Rock, Abuja
Time: African Time (AT)
Signed By: President, Mr. Dull Dodo Yar´Liar
NINA is originally native to the American employment literature of the bygone eras. NINA means ‘No Irish Need Apply.’ Let me play with and corrupt the original NINA to now mean ‘No Igbo Need Apply’
This write-up is purposive upon encouraging both present and future leaders in Nigeria to include NINA in their advertisements for future Inspector Generals of Police if an Igbo man or woman is not made the Inspector General of Police after Mike Okiro might have stepped aside. It has become very difficult for me to use the word, retirement, since speculations are making the rounds that Mike Okiro is gunning to extend his retirement. It seems as if there is something badly wrong with those named ‘Mike.’ There’s the other one Mike Aondokaa. It’s just by a hair’s breath that Maurice Iwu´s parent missed naming him Mike Iwu. It would have added up if our corrupt governors do change of name and henceforward be called Mike as their first names: for example, Mike Saraki, Mike Orji Kalu &co.&co. Obasanjo, Atiku, Yar´Dua, IBB and co. are already big Mikes judging by the way they pimp corruption Halliburton-style. We’ve plenty more Mikes as journalist craving land in Abuja do or die, twisting news to endanger the public and doctoring Ya´Dua´s photo to make it lager than live when all that glitters isn’t gold. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel for other Mikes. I’ve a thoroughbred and decent friend named Mike.
Like already aforesaid, NINA is a catchphrase derogation to mean “No Irish Need Apply.” This segregationist watchword frequented most advertisement for job vacancies during the era of the grandfather of onetime U.S. president John .F. Kennedy. Protestant Americans of that bygone era hated Irish Catholic with an icy ruthless passion. Each time Protestants who were in the multitude then in the U.S.A advertised vacancies for employments they boldly wrote: “NINA” signalling to all Irish that they should steer clear from applying for those employment vacancies. The Kennedy family are Irish Catholic Americans. His grandparents went through hard hustle to get any employment in the then segregationist America as per the NINA religious segregationist jingo written on every, billboard, newspapers and signboards that advertised vacancies.
There is every need for Nigerian government to consider affixing the acronym NINA or ‘No Igbo Need Apply’ to all ads intended for the recruitment of the Inspector General of Police in the future. This way, Igbo people who might want to enlist for the position of the IG, would’ve saved the time, money and energy on chasing the wild goose that is not there. I hope the president consider NINA after Mike Okiro must have gone with the corruption wind. With the way Okiro is stepping up lobby to extend his retirement, hopes for would-be Igbo IG gets dimmer.
I read that Mike Okiro´s wife lead the POWA (Police Officers Wives) to condole the president recently in Abuja at the loss of a family member. This act of shameless hustle to extend retirement date of the IG with devilish simplicity is awful in the negative. This shameless act of a husband and wife going all the hog to doctor husband’s retirement date is begging the president and Senate to review Nigeria’s work ethics. Someone is being paid for less or no work at all. In Europe, U.S.A, Okiri would’ve been asked to interview a psychiatrist for contemplating extending his retirement age on bended knees. In saner society where people work hard for every cent, they look forward to retire with great relief and excitement. In reverse to the Okiro deviancy, people fake ailment and hoax doctors to write an early retirement for them so that they can go and enjoy their lives while they’re still young. And there is Okiri kowtowing for his retirement to be extended! Something is not adding up here.
It’s sad that the normalcy of denying the Igbos the IG post has crept for too long. This misnomer should not occur in a country like Nigeria where political and institutional positions are doled out via regional and ethic quota divides and zoning system plus PPD´s own wayward rotational patronage programme.
What exactly is this diabolical hatred that has trended the fashion of refusing some region the IG post in Nigeria? For the Kennedys, it was religious bias. Could the Igbo people’s own have been maginalisation arising from, that remaining two Wazobian tribes that have held leadership sway since independence sees the Igbo as conquered people as per the civil war and hence they’re excluded from certain powerful positions? I am not pursuing this particular question further.
I’d have been settling if past leaders who made it impossible for Igbo persons to become IG clear the air and announce to the world why this has been so in a country where position zoning is a Federal addiction. In saner society where positions are given out to officeholders as per decency devoid of corruption and or ethnicity, none would be raising so much hell out of petty and trifling issue how certain positions have dodged certain regions in the same country.
NINA is NINA no matter where it happens or whatever circumstances that powers it. I can imagine John .F. Kennedy saying from his grave that: (those who make NINA possible in one part of the world make fairplay impossible worldwide.)
Aside from the NINA yoke, the Igbo people and the Kennedys have so many things in common. Risk-taking is one thing that synced both together. The Kennedys are risk takers, which has made them succeed abundantly and also brought so much mishap and bad luck to them. Social scientist and aficionados on human behaviour who studied the ‘Kennedy Curse” and others, opined that those who take more risk are bound to be on top of the game and are most likely to suffer heaviest defeat should things go the other way round. Sample opinion of Nigerians and ask who are the most successful folks in Nigeria as a collective? Do another opinion poll to know which folks are more in jail and facing death sentences abroad. There is correlation. It sucks when people only count your gains and get jealous without considering your losses.
I feel like saying that this article is fictional before madam Information Minister lash out on me as a Diaspora badmouther or before I’m accused of ethnicity and insensibility. Feigning fiction is the smartest way to dissuade being dragged to court. Dan Brown, after writing Da Vinci Code, gave his book away as fiction even when most of what he said was true. It’s fact, like he said that, the Catholic Church murdered tens of thousands of innocent women on fake witch-hunt indictments. Had he not fictionalised his book, churns of court cases from the Vatican and others who were wounded in his book could’ve raced Dan Brown to the bottom. The hip hop musician Nas, had, after he wrote and sang the song: “If I Rule The Word,“ cleverly written that it was fictional before the FIB and CIA come and arrest him for planning to overthrow the government of U.S.A. and the United Nation.
I need to get out of here before I start sounding like one of Snoop Doggy Dog’s friend. The rapper Snoop sang about one of his friends he sang of as: (“having more story than a highway patrol”. What Snoop didn’t realise is that the Nigerian Police highway patrol policemen are not the ones that has more story in Nigeria: it is the hunters. Legends have it that hunters in Nigeria have more stories to tell than normal conventional people. There have been stories of hunters who have seen animals turn to humans and human beings turning into animal.
Since about two years that Yar´Dua has steered our statecraft we’ve seen one delusion being heaped upon another illusion. The more we look forward to progress and development the less we see.
Conclusively, future government should for modesty sake put NINA in their advertisements for IG recruitment if an Igbo man or woman did not clinch the IG job after Okiro must have stepped aside like IBB.
S. Njokede writes from The European Union
[email protected]
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