Cooling tempers and righting wrongs
With TundeThompson
Monday, February 8, 2010
Once again, Nigeria is at the cross-roads, as it was in 1959; 1966, 1967, 1979 and 1999. Those were times that preceded independence in 1960, and set the pace for the country’s present unsettling geo-political experiences.
They were times when the brief, hopeful period of oneness under the Anthem that partly read “Though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand”, was interrupted by misdirected inter-ethnic tension, insensitivities and miscalculations of group benefits from narrowly – contrived ethnic plots.
The year 1966 was when singers heard gunshots and knew not whence they came, and warned their kinsmen to think deeply rather than sell themselves into slavery through potentially regrettable decisions and actions.
And then, in 1967, for three long, painful years, the warnings gave way to war, a civil war. War between the East and the Rest, in which valuable national wealth that could have been deployed for accelerated national development purposes, was burnt up in procuring war weapons and paying for the maintenance of fighting forces.
After that came “The three Rs” – “the period of Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction” – which, as many Igbo men and women still say, shamelessly excluded the release of all “abandoned properties” in Port Harcourt and other parts of the country, contrary to the claim that in the war, there had been “no victor, no vanquished”.
Nowadays, one hears and reads reports of people still talking about another “Biafra”, when Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, is still alive. Now, what are the territorial limits of that new “Biafra”?
And then, some militants on the Niger Delta say they will be seceding, maybe because they are genuinely aggrieved and think that going away is the only solution (which History has already debunked), or they have concluded, naively of course, that oil in its unprocessed form, guarantees happiness, love and progress. One wishes that was so because, well managed, even Europe would have been less prosperous than Nigeria today. Now, the more hot-headed militants are threatening to blow up everything that took more than 50 years to build – (pipelines, tanks, flow-stations, jetties and so on) – not realizing that it is easier to destroy than to build, and that to replace all that may be destroyed today, will cost perhaps 1,000 times more. You don’t have to do something crazy, to prove you are strong, do you? Especially if you know the value of dialogue.
After the civil war in 1970, another 28 years passed before the citizens realized that the military-men, who had pushed the politicians out of power, were not themselves totally above board. Far from perfect. That awareness led to agitations for a return to civil rule which, because of the shifted goal-posts, assumed greater dimensions, such that by 1975, the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), set up by the assassinated Head of State, Ramat Murtala Muhammed, produced a new draft constitution which recommended the presidential system of government, leading to the transition to civil rule in 1979, with Alhaji Usman Aliyu Shehu Shagari (NPN) emerging as President, after a legal tussle with Chief Obafemi Awolowo (UPN),up to the Supreme Court level.
By 1983, the civilian rulers had again forgotten to behave properly, because it became obvious that election rigging and inability to replace incumbents via the expected free and fair elections, had become the new way of life for the political heavyweights of the time. Even then, they were still angelic, because the practice today is to, through strategic election rigging technologies (including delaying tactics; veiled authorization of illegal polling centres, avoidance of designated voting points on election days, and overland movements of pre-concluded election ballots et cetera, as the various elections tribunals and appeal courts heard at their yet unconcluded sessions), avoid talking about disciplinary measures against established election riggers, as provided by the Electoral Act, 2006.
By 1999, after another round of civil protests in favour of civil rule, General Abdulsalami Abubakar and Admiral Okhai Mike Akhigbe (Head of State, and No. 2 man, respectively), acquiesced to pressures for democratic governance by commissioning more work on the constitution,with a view to restoring the suspended democratic order.
And there we are now, not passing, not failing, but just marking time on the democracy maturity scale.
Chief (Retired General) Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo held the presidential post from 1999 to 2007 and whatever he may say today, personally decided that Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, brother of his friend and ally, the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, was the acceptable man to succeed him. The newspaper headlines and clippings of those times are available in the libraries for all to see who said and did what before and during the campaigns in the year 2007. After all, politics and politics – watching are not meant for the mentally shallow and dunderheads, or what do you think?
We have a Seven-Point Agenda, but after almost three years, we cannot point at one of them that has been faithfully implemented. Figures in billions and millions of Naira and dollars, are just flying in the air and reporting to pockets or private vaults which we, the masses, can neither see nor benefit from.
The ease with which people in and around the corridors or power access public funds today is rather puzzling and at the same time frightening; it is as if the “financial instructions” which were put in place way back in the colonial times, vamoosed with the military and their succeeding rulers in “agbada” or “babanriga” clothings. How could so much money in billions have been traceable to so few, when we have a Treasury and a Central Bank? Do some people think they have a right to steal us blind and then leave the rest of us to stare and clap for their doing so? Where is their conscience, or has it taken a permanent flight from them? Who will save us from these treasury plunderers, and when? Of course, not all leaders are guilty, but the innocent ones may need to start identifying themselves soon!
When will the hopes, nursed since 1975, of free and fair elections, agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, modernized health facilities, et cetera, et cetera, be realized?
Jos, the temperate and otherwise attractive Plateau city, which the sons of Satan have tried to destroy, stands as a reminder that when conflict is left for too long unresolved, tempers may well run high, and violence ensue. And when law-enforcement agents fail to act at the right time or are partial (for ethnic and religious reasons), fury erupts, anywhere. It is a shame that we should be having refugee camps as in places like Darfur and often flood-ravaged countries like Bangladesh and India, or perhaps bomb-damaged countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is why one was delighted over the call made in Abeokuta by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III on January 30, for greater dedication by all to peace-building and reconciliation in the country. As the Sultan, a retired Army top brass who is an old student of Barewa College and Honorary Old Boy of King’s College, Lagos, rightly said: “…We must pray to Allah to grant Plateau and indeed the entire nation the kind of leadership that protects the lives and property of all its citizens, regardless of creed and ethnic origin and works earnestly to safeguard their welfare and livelihood”
When a young man stabs a pregnant woman in the tummy and says “God is Great!” or kills an invigilator for reasons connected with the Holy Koran, although the Koran does not tell him to murder, then I am afraid we need more than prayers. We need to act decisively against such men, who are agents of hatred and division.Hunger claims cannot validate plain acts of murder.
We need the Muslim Umaah’s leadership to impose the fatwa (like on Salman Rushdie, for his book titled “The Satanic Verses”) on them, to save the rest of society. Those “Boko Haram” type of men do not speak or understand grammar. This is the right time to cool tempers and dutifully right the wrongs in the land. Not later , because delay is dangerous.
