Nigerians, I hail you

29 years already

I wrote a blog exactly a year ago and ended it with the paragraph below without telling that other story. I do not this blog would be the space for it either, it would probably go into my story, if I get the inspiration, motivation and will to take it beyond the chapters I have already written.

On the 30^th of December 1990, I left Nigeria, on Nigeria Airways flight WT808 running almost 3 hours behind schedule. I had £15 in my pocket and a future ahead of me. That is another story.

Blog - My last 4 weeks in Nigeria, 28 years ago (The business angle)

I wonder why I commemorate the 30^th of December, it has been 29 years since I left Nigeria, it is strange that if work commitments had not necessitated my travel to South Africa in 2015, I would never have set foot in Africa since I left.

Gone but not done

Like I would normally protest on Twitter, my having left Nigeria that long ago has not meant a disengagement from the country of my forebears. I cherish and guard my Nigerian heritage jealously as much I try to be informed and well acquainted with issues and events therein.

The contention with parents, relations, and friends is whether I can be persuaded to return for a visit. I have not convinced myself of the sense of security, safety, or comfort that this would afford me. Until I can get that sorted in my head, I can categorically say, it is not on my agenda.

Blog - Nigeria: You'll keep hearing from us in the diaspora

The retiree then

We can only hope that the man who has negotiated for himself the best retirement package of his generation and peers soon moves on to a sort of retirement home. Our witness of his first regime in the 1980s is what ushered in the Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the annulment of the 1993 elections and then Sani Abacha.

Whatever his plans were then appeared to be a systematic regimentation of Nigeria towards a North Korean style of socialist control of not just the systems but the minds of the people. Whilst we were not barred from leaving the country, the message was we shouldn’t. It is without a doubt that Muhammadu Buhari has some animus towards Nigerians based abroad, maybe because much as we can criticise him, we are beyond his junta-inspired grasp. [See the blog below.]

Blog - Nigeria: President Buhari, get to work and honestly, shut up!

The retiree now

Meanwhile with his 1980s mindset, he rules the roost, retired of ideas, policy or direction much as we can recount that after he exited national politics he was involved in no activity until he rekindled his entitlement to leadership that he fought for thrice before winning. The people beguiled with the spectre of integrity that doesn’t appear to radiate beyond the man.

Now, he lives in the best residence gets the best medical attention in London that flounces off to at a whim, flies in a presidential jet arriving in countries where all courtesies to a head of state are a diplomatic necessity whilst the country teeters on the edge of incomprehensibility, the youth unable to adequately plan a future in their country of birth, they are leaving if they can.

Nigerians, I hail you

Yet, I must commend those who have found ways to thrive in that environment, but there is another wave of the Exodus like those of my generation who left about 3 decades ago and they are not planning on returning.

In my view, you can make a success of your life anywhere in the world if you have the drive, the ambition, the skills, and the sheer determination, by God, we have spunk. Many leave Nigeria and get to live their best lives. I just hope we have enough people left to really take the country forward, even those of us who have left, pray constantly for a better Nigeria.

Nigeria: Is the Senate bribing the military?

Golden parachutes all round

Sometimes, it is just not clear whether the Nigerian legislature has any clue about their purpose and the function they are to serve in Nigerian democracy.

Recently, they approved a bumper state pension [1] for former military Heads of State and their families having previously resisted [2] the granting of that emolument to them some time ago.

Now, there might be probable cause for offering a stipend to those who have ruled the country either by the will of the people or by the sheer force of guns.

Reservations on rewards

However, it is important that having ruled Nigeria there should be standards of review that allow for a scrutiny in posterity of those tenures with some basis for considering if those regimes have served Nigeria well or not. For instance, whilst General Sani Abacha did run the country down as a despot, it would atrocious to reward his descendants with largesse for his maladministration.

At a time when it has been proven [3] that he and his family plundered the country to multiples of billions of dollars stashed away in foreign banks and most notable of which is the case that his son brought to retain stolen billions in Switzerland having pain the Nigerian treasury almost in a billion dollars in restitution, this is certainly the wrong message to send to every Nigerian with or without the means to seize power.

Whilst I am not aiming to create a report card of past military regimes, it goes without saying that the politicisation of the military has not served Nigeria well and such governments have not engendered development, peace or prosperity for the country.

A contradiction in terms

It smacks of incredulity that the chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media can aver that this is no invitation for a military takeover of government and it is laughable that he offers that the Senate would resist any would-be coup plotter.

I am left flummoxed by this statement, “We are not sending any wrong message, the message we are sending actually is rather a strong message that assumption of political power by force of arms is anachronistic, undemocratic, out-modelled. It is out of fashion and I think that it is something that will even make anybody attempting it to look stupid and out of place.”

There are truths to the part about the assumption of power but contextually, the looking stupid and out of place calls for a clean mirror in front of that speaker.

Accountability confers legitimacy

There are democracies where the clout of the Senate might carry more than a warning to those who might be inclined to overthrow a representative democracy.

The sovereignty of Nigeria should and must belong to the people, but this only derives from the people not being disenfranchised when they exercise universal suffrage through free and fair elections and from their representatives being truly accountable to the people throughout their terms rather than just at times of electioneering.

It is debatable that Nigeria’s democracy is representative and accountable which infers the Senate may not have the underpinning and force of legitimacy to prevent a military takeover or become the engine for revolution or insurrection that leads to the people to deny prospective military rulers the usurpation of power.

Pensions already exist for legitimate service

Obviously, military personnel who have ended up leading the country have also risen to the top ranks of the military forces in which they have been commissioned and a pension is already accruing to them for that military role, it would be belabouring the point that many also had their hands in the till when they were in charge; there is absolutely no need for the extra pay for adding an unlawful political dimension to their military service.

If anything, this sends the wrong message to our democracy, to our people and to those who might think the military route to power could be a shortcut to ensuring a good retirement package when past ones professionally useful years.

The offer to the families simply fosters that class of louts and miscreants who as spouses and brood have shown little exemplary conduct in their hubris and hedonistic tendencies, projecting megalomania well beyond that which the principals in power ever dared to exercise.

Looks like bribery to me

In what can be seen as an abject waste of parliamentary time and priorities, if as the chairman says, “that the new law did not provide any new special benefits to all the intended beneficiaries, as they were already enjoying pension.”

If the intended beneficiaries already have a pension and there are no new special benefits, why is a law being promulgated to give the same people the same thing?

Maybe the act of the Senate is to deepen the nation’s democracy but that cannot be achieved by paying off the military and bribing a rival politicised structure of the military into ineffectiveness – what deepens democracy is accountability, responsibility, leadership and a modicum of common-sense.

I dare say, with this announcement, all those four qualities appear to be lacking in the Nigerian Senate and that is quite unfortunate.

Source

[1] » Ex-Heads of State Pension: Senate warns coup plotters::Vanguard (Nigeria)

[2] allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Senators Kick Against Remuneration for Ex-Military Rulers

[3] BBC News | AFRICA | Banks freeze more Abacha millions

M'aider! M'aider! Mayday! Regime Change coming to you!

Talking to each other must help

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if leaders of the world in areas of dispute, disagreement and discord; beyond their mediators and negotiators decided to have a direct heart-to-heart talk about the issues and tried that last diplomatic effort to seek resolution.

For example, if Mr George W. Bush had ever chatted to Saddam Hussein, would Iraq have been a better place?

It is utterly unconscionable that there is a feeling that if problem regimes meet with world leaders, they give those problem leaders legitimacy.

Well, I beg to differ, if that area of dispute would lead to sending young men and women to their deaths in the defence of the realm, then mediation is not complete till that area of human interaction is exhausted.

Bully-boy Yankie rhetoric

Just before the Iraqi war, the United States adopted a megaphone diplomacy stance of proxy brickbats. They did so much to undermine and denigrate legitimate negotiating organisations and reticent countries with the bully pulpit of a “them and us” rhetoric.

The IAEA, NATO, the UN and Old Europe got such a tongue lashing, but I recall no time when any attempt was made to see reason between the opposing parties.

Now, with the Iranian Nuclear Crisis, we see all the clamour and anxiety of the United States and its spokespeople in contrast to less frantic moves of the United Nations, Europe and the IAEA who seem to be pushed aside when their conclusions are not aligning with that of United States.

I do appreciate the fact that we in the world might not want a Nuclear Iran and we could a lot to stop the enrichment of Uranium to the extent that it might be used in weapons, however, it is impossible to suggest that they must not have that knowledge as Mr Bush says.

Iran really has not broken any laws or treaties rather, they have been remiss in engaging in activities that they have failed to reveal to the IAEA; as if, the US would reveal the extent of their developments to the selfsame IAEA.

Scientists do not stagnate, once they are on to something they are relentless in the pursuit of a breakthrough – that insatiable quest cannot be contained by barking from afar.

I would rather they had the knowledge we all know about than for them to find other novel ways that put them out of reach of our science. For, example, no one seems to have cottoned on how they powered the fastest under-water missile a few months ago.

Assumptions are just not good enough

To base the attacks on Iran on the assumption that they might rather than the reality that they have would take us down the same lane that ended up with Iraq having no weapons of mass destruction.

This War on Terror has done more to turn the world upside-down at the behest of belligerent Americans than the disconcerting views of the Iranian leadership or the lack of cooperation from the North Koreans.

The diatribes against Israel by the president of Iran should be seen in an additional context which Israel should do well to take good note of.

A thorn in the sides of the Israelis

How is it that the West in assuaging themselves of the guilt of the Holocaust, help create the land of Israel and left the big thorn of the Palestinian issue in their sides?

In 2 years, this classic misappropriation of land would clock 60 years and we are still nowhere near a final resolution.

Rather, Israel has usurped more land from 1967 and with impunity built more settlements and like the Communists in Berlin, built a wall to even take away more Palestinian land without the slightest rebuke.

The person who exposed the fact that Israel had nuclear weapons still languishes in jail in an extra-judicial process that belittles the context of democracy.

Cool heads required – Now!

I am not looking for a black and white world; however, no one seems to have the moral high-ground to demand anything of any other country, not the least the United States.

More so, it is not the world asking Iran to stop the development of nuclear weapons, but Americans speaking as though they are speaking for the world at large.

They are preparing for war, amazingly

The greater fear according the NewYorker and this is a worrisome read is how Iran has been infiltrated by American agents to discover sites that might have to be bombed including the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons.

Scarier is the fact that they want to destabilise Iran such that people would rise for a regime change and ploy that failed woefully in Iraq only a few years before.

Iran does not need to attack Afghanistan or Iraq to retaliate, like retired four-star general did say, “the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.”

That, I would say, would be the beginning of the Armageddon with the destination of Megiddo just a few hundred miles away.

A country surrounded as depicted in the graphic below would be remiss to do nothing about maintaining its sovereignty, their quest for nuclear technology begins to gather support as that truth becomes self evident.

Surrounded by at least 22 US bases and almost 150 thousand soldiers - it is more than an "Annie get your gun" setting, this is serious business.

Map of the oil corridor

References

M’aider

Eureka! is Farsi for Enrichment