I still remember these words of my late father: no matter the strength of a man, he can still be wrestled down by two men of equal strengths. In other words, if a man cooks for a community, the food will be eaten without even a crumb left on the floor, while if the community cooks for the man, he will not make an eating dent on the mountainous food. So, the question is why is it that we allow our bankrupt, corrupt and visionless leaders to hold us hostage? My elementary headmaster told me that no matter the size of the thumb it will still fit into the nostril.
For sometimes now, I have been writing on the failures of leadership in Nigeria, thinking that we have men and women of conscience, who can wake up one day and have a rethink. There is no way leadership in Nigeria can change, because we tolerate all kinds of rubbish from those that usurp power in Nigeria through election rigging and violence; they are unconscionable lots, men and women of reprobate minds.
To me, the end is not important, but the means to the end. Those who enter leadership through fraud can never be clean in their utterances and actions. Anybody, who thinks that Umaru will be fair, clean and upbeat in getting things right and straight in Nigeria, is day dreaming. Yar’Adua did not win any election in Nigeria, his presidency is built on the sands of fraud, and he was imposed on all of us by Obasanjo. Maurice Iwu perfected it and the Supreme Court approved it and locked it with signet ring. Did Nigerians raise any eye brows on the worst election fraud ever committed in the shores of Africa and around the world? Buhari and Atiku, the two most upbeat fighters against that show of shame fought on, but some of their party members went through their backs and grabbed the juicy carrots dangled by Umaru, and that is Nigeria right there, cheap harlots.
Some of the reasons adduced by castrated Nigeria were: we wanted Obasanjo to go and leave the stage. (2) We wanted a smooth transition from one civilian government to the other. Damn Obasanjo and civilian transition. Who is Obasanjo when the 140 million Nigeria said no by that time, that we wanted nothing other than free and free election? Where was the spirit of June 12, 1993? During the pro-June 12 demonstration, I remember walking from Iyana Ipaja to Ojuelegba Roundabout making bonfire along the road. We dared the Babangida military tanks. The guerrilla journalism championed by Tempo newspaper gave us strength. I can still remember Jenkins Alumona; I think a history major and his team, rolling out how people like Adolphus Hitler were subdued by mere unwavering resolve of the people. Where were the spirits of NADECO after 2007 election debacle? How did the caliber of those who were behind the formation of NADECO disappeared in Nigeria like morning dew? Where was Prof. Ben Nwabueze?
Ibrahim Babangida, the wide-toothed evil genius beamed on the television, the scary movies of the civil war, but that did not deter most of us from matching on, in our minds that was the last opportunity to salvage our country from group of imbeciles. Babangida, in his desperate moved rented youths from Kano to demonstrate against the actualization of June 12, but the moment he tried to squelch our resolve for MKO to appropriate what was due to him, the more we matched on with our clamor for June 12. Greed and opportunists like Diya and his ilk robbed us the actualization of June 12. I remember Dee Sam Mbakwe shouting hoarse from the East of the Niger and Uncle Solomon Lar striding from the Plateau. Abraham Adesanya stood like a colossus while Anthony Enahoro was taller than Iroko tree. The military junta never saw anything like that before and there were cracks among them. Ibrahim Babangida stepped aside. MKO told us to keep the faith and Nigeria betrayed him, and he was killed without seeing the fruits of our faith.
The best opportunity we had to effect a change in the leadership structure in Nigeria was bungled. The best opportunity we had to stamp free and fair election was utterly lost and we will never see that opportunity again unless we resolve in 2011 that the spirit of June 12 will be summoned to Nigeria again in case Maurice Iwu and Umaru take us for granted again. Patrick Henry, one of the freedom fighters of America said “give me freedom or death”. The only freedom eluding Nigeria is the ability to elect who we want and the ability to recall or throw out who we don’t want through the process of political elections. We are prisoners in our own country and Sunny Okosuns asked who owns papa’s land. Can we summon the spirits of the Zulus and the Soweto to confront the evils in our papa’s land? Nigerians are not living; we are already dead, so why can we ask our oppressors to bury us in the arid region of the North, the grassland and the Savannahs of the Middle Belt, the thick forests of the South and the East and the mangroves of the creeks. My father said a man on the floor is no more afraid of falling again.
If Nigeria thinks that the gifts of freedom will come from our laid back and “Sidon de look” attitudes, we had better think twice, and we have then mortgaged our freedom and the future of the youths in the country. Most of our politicians unlike USA are not learned, they have no other profession other than creating spaces for stealing and they can do anything untidy to clinch and maintain those positions. How many of our politicians have lost political positions and return to Ivory Towers to teach or to an honest jobs? Most of them are stark illiterates and they know that the only livelihood is politics and causing troubles. Some of them, who taught in the universities before they become politicians, still refuse going back to the universities after they lost their positions, and that is why our campuses will never be enriched.
Some of the obstacles standing in our way to greatness are ethnic stratifications, selfishness, lack of honor and greed. Instead of turning our diversity to strengths, the former is destroying us. Umaru is not performing, the problems of Nigeria is swallowing him, but AREWA Consultative Forum, group of sheiks and emirs will swear with their souls and heart that Umaru is the best thing that has happened to Nigeria. During the Obasanjo regime, most of the fiercest criticisms came from the South West. Prof. Maurice Iwu is from my place, but I criticize him because Nigeria is greater than he. Until we start looking Nigeria as the centerpiece of everything; we will never make any progress. The Niger Delta question is consuming all us today because during the subsequent military rules, the thrusts of those jackboots were to stifle the owners of the resources, regarded them as slaves, and not worthy of even a crumb from the master’s table. We should blame the ruled and not the leaders. We are the problems in Nigeria.
Honest men and women are lacking in Nigeria. The practice now is older men, who are supposed to be the custodian of wisdom, now dance naked at the corridors of power. As far as their immediate families are taken care, the rest can go to hell. I always imagine every time that had the conditions of today reigned in the days of my university education, I couldn’t have made it to the university. Who could have bought the university admission for me, the son of a poor man? How would I have fed myself? Where would my parent scoop up the money? Throughout my one year at the University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt, the government of Rivers State almost fed us free before the school feeding program was abolished. We paid only N90 for accommodation a year and there was no day the light was not on as there was a standby generator to compliment NEPA.
The youths of today are ruined, their hopes deferred and their future sold to invisible customers. The leaders left with them the only option of enlisting into kidnapping, armed robbery and cults formations.
It is on record that Obasanjo did a devastating blow on education during his ignominious time, but what say Nigeria of Yar'Adua? In a nation that is progressive, Umaru is supposed to relinquish power by now, because the experience he had when he was the Governor of the sleepy Katsina State was not even enough to be the Chairman of Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State. Many careful observers have written that Obasanjo wanted to punish Nigeria by imposing Umaru on us because he was denied a third term slot.
We were told that Umaru was a former lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) and I still doubt it because some Nigerians can fabricate anything and get away with it. If he really taught at ABU, and he had all his degrees there, and his second in command, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan had all his degrees at University of Port Harcourt, then their lack of exposures to the universities in the developed nations, where universities are run excellently is having a negative effects on education in Nigeria. I can understand Obasanjo too, who had not the luxury of university education. What type of graduates will the universities churn out when the academic calendar is interrupted all the times without end?
Since we have docile citizens, some idiots will muster the audacity and the effrontery to assault our spaces of the need to (s)elect Umaru for a second term. Some will even tell us that Umaru is the only one that has answers to the ills of Nigeria. I have never seen a nation that is as shameless as Nigeria. Wait, Dora Akunyili will assault our sensibilities, fired by Aondoakaa, the worst Attorney General ever walked on the surface of the earth that Umaru has done well, therefore he needs another term. Their wish may come to pass since there is no opposition party in Nigeria, and the ruled have passive attitudes towards the direction where the country is going. What will Umaru do if all the workers’ unions, the civil society, the student body, the market women, the artisans join ASUU to ground the country; requesting for good governance, and not only acceding to ASUU’s demand? If they do this, believe me, the Soldiers, the Navy, the Air Force and the Police will join, because nobody is happy in the country. Let 2011 be the turning points to salvage Nigeria. We have been beaten many times and in 2011, we will collectively say no to election rigging and political WURUWURU with 1993 June 12-manner resolve.
Chukwuma Iwuanyanwu is the Executive Director, Harcourt Foundation, Los Angeles.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });