Foolish men have won the abominable war of eating their own people.
Ironically, the old, the dying has won the genocidal generational battle over the youths, over the young, over the future of this God forsaken geo-political nebula called Niger area or for easy pronunciation, Nigeria. Yes, a Niger area country is a misnomer, a geo-political nebula because Niger area should mean the area extending from Tembakounda in guinea by the Atlantic Ocean , through Mali, Niger Republic , then Lokoja, Onitsha and PortHarcourt. Perhaps the problem with Nigeria, the confusion, the abominations, barbarianism, the intra fascism, the infanticide and the ‘youth-cide’ has their origin in its name. Because its name, Niger area does not reflect reality on the ground. It is therefore not a surprise that nomads from Niger Republic attack natives in Plateau states. Because Nigeriens are by definition a Niger area people. But this is not to say that being citizen gives one the right to attack another citizen. Rather, the point here is that the religious socio-political problems, the confusion, the abominations, barbarianism, the internal fascism, the infanticide and the ‘youth-cide’ in Nigeria must have an origin, a cause, a source. And it is this origin, cause or source that Nigerians with conscience, ethics, morals, and integrity have for too long searched to uncover.
It is self evident that Nigeria, that Nigerian leadership or the political class, elders, their youth, eating their yet to be born, in what is veritably a murderous Socio-political-economic fratricide cannibalism. Only in Nigeria do leaders, render the youth, young, the unborn, ignorant, uneducated, educated without knowledge, dangerously half baked, social schizophrenic, criminally insane, substance depent, internal displaced, fugitives, armed robbers, kidnappers, prostitutes home and abroad and into all sorts of social deviations. It is an undisputable fact that Nigeria is among the first twenty nations in the world with the highest level of child poverty, maternal death; the highest unemployment, most economic crimes, most infrastructure deficit, worse security to life and property, the worse untimely death from road accidents, the worse road system among the nations; just to name a few societal ills, yet the country is basketted in vast oil wealth and Arable lands.
Nigeria would soon lead in the prevalence of kidney disease, diabetes, AIDS, Obesity, cancer, hypotension and in much other disease that are dietary influenced. On visit to Nigeria in 2005 I noticed many, sugar, perhaps carcinogenic, chemical loaded, unregulated packaged foreign food dump in Nigeria, especially from china. I predicted then that within ten years diabetes, cancer, kidney disease would be common in Nigeria and lo and behold this is true in today Nigeria. Once again I predict, if no action is taken as none would be taken, Nigeria would within the next seven years rank first as the country with highest death from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and kidney disease. I second this prediction that except something dramatic happen they current leadership or political class would do nothing to avert the scourge of death from these diseases that will befall the nation in the next seven years or thereabout. I regret to say that Nigeria is doomed socially, economically and politically; except a benevolent Übermensch, a super being, perhaps the youth emerges, seize power through socio-political upheaval, these things will come to pass. But why, why is a country, a people so heavenly favored, blessed and endowed with natural resources and great arable lands so destitute, so whretched, so diseased, so hungry and poor? What a difficult question with an easy answer.
Primitiveness, ignorance, lawlessness, greed, corruption, incompetence, and mediocrity is the bane of leadership in Africa and in Nigeria in particular. Recently I had heated online debate over an online news article with a individual whose identity I did not know and still do not know. This individual too did not know my identity but base on the position I took in the debate he correctly identified my blackness and attacked me on it. Because this individual lacked facts and truth, instead to dabate he called me names and said that black people are homo sapient with inferior intellect. He impugned that slavery and colonialism were not only justifiable but that they were the best things that happened to black people. Then I knew from his statement that this person was not addressing me as an individual because he did not know anything about me. He didn't know if I am nuclear, Astro, quantum physicist, a string theorist, a medical doctor, an engineer, a lawyer. He was generalizing not based on fundamental truth but on evidential facts; rather base on the realities on the ground in the black societies. African's current socio-economic political realities make the question of black inferiority as relevant today as when it was debated in 14th through 19th century. Yet African leaders have not directly answered this old aged question. Are black people inferior to other homo sapients? Yet, at every turn African leaders have by their behavior and disposition affirmed the inferiority of black people hence the persistent of this assertion that is fundamentally false.
The problem is that African leaderships took abundance of natural resources, and good weather conditions as an incentive to nothing but to steal as much from the masses as one would possible not need. While the goodness in the white societies was the absence of the natural resources and the presence of harsh weather conditions which encouraged innovations and creative ideas. Is like, the nature, to whom it gave everything he gave nothing and to whom it gave nothing he gave very thing. In Nigeria today the youths are dying at a rate that no nation can sustain if it is to survive for the next generation. Youth are dying from hunger, poverty, diseases; in fresh organ harvest scheme otherwise called ritual killing, from gang violence, dying as victims or perpetrators of armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism, in road accidents, from extra judiciary killings, in prison, in fratricides, as victims of hate crimes in foreign lands, in foreign prisons, from drug abuse, as condemned drug paddlers. What are the Nigeria leaders doing about this explosion of death among its youth? Nothing, because these deaths represent the battle the Leaders have won. These deaths is the victory Nigeria leaders have won as they deviced to keep the masses hungry, poor, weak, uneducated, un-medicated, diseased and comatose so that they by themselves would steal public wealth unhindered and unchallenged. This battle by the leadership, by the political class against the youth, against ordinary citizen has root in ignorance that is informed by lack of knowledge.
The independent fathers intended that this generation acquire knowledge hence they built schools and places of higher learning. But this generation went and acquired educational maladies and became ill educated. The educated today among the citizenry are curse unto the people and unto the nation. These leaders were sent to acquire knowledge but instead they got educated in numbers, corruption, forgery, ignorance, greed, lawlessness, hate and drunkenness. These leaders cannot claim to have knowledge when they travel to Germany, Europe, to America or to the middle east for medical treatment for hundreds of millions of dollar when they could built a better medical facility in the country with just a fraction of the cost of one time foreign medical treatment? How is this foreign medical treatment not ignorance in the part of the political class and their hatred towards the masses of their people. Such medical facility if built locally would benefit these ruling cabals and the masses whose wealth they the loot. How it is not ignorance when a leader of people exports his people’s wealth to another people only to see his people die of deprivation of the same while the recipients of the wealth blooms and flourishes? How is it not greed beyond any understanding and education in numbers as against the acquisition of knowledge when Nigeria leaders steal such enormous amount of wealth that they and generations of their families will never need? How is it not lawlessness when these criminal leadership class are never prosecuted? How is it not lawlessness when the chief law enforcer or the chief executive is one of the looters and the courts, the place where the loots are shared and the legislatures the distributor of the loots. How is it not drunkenness when leaders starve their fellow citizens to death in the mist of plenty? Veritably, what is actually wrong with Nigeria people is not the lack of knowledge, but the willful rejection of knowledge by both the political leadership and by the citizenry. Knowledge is always omnipresent for those who truly seek after it.
Nigeria by virtue of its location and providence is fashioned for greatness but only under the freewill act of the Supreme-One. Nigeria will be what the leaders and the citizenry make of it. The Supreme-one have finished his work and the hand work of the Supreme-One is perfect. Yet Nigerians childishly and ignorantly pray to the Supreme-One for the same providences he made available from the beginning of time. Metaphorically God is dead because his creation is perfect and enduring and no long requires his presence. The rest work is up to man, up to the citizenry.
Nigerian is a nation blessed by the creator but ruined by ignorantly corrupt primitive leaders. By the very late 70s and horribly by the mid 80s to present, this potential great nation called Nigeria has been hijacked and ruined by barbarians who masked as leaders. The actions of these abhorrent criminal leaders have reduced Nigeria to a banana republic. The tools of trade of these barbarians are ethnic division, abuse of power and position, murder, assassinations, public and private corruption, theft, lawlessness, trampling of the law and the constitution. Over the years these barbaric leaders gingerly and stealthily deployed their tools. Today these corrupt leaders are brazen and shamelessly bold and their actions make medieval kings angelic. These officials serve none but selves and are gods into themselves. These people are gods of deconstruction, gods of chaos and children of perdition. They have called to questions the wisdom of the independent fathers who risked everything, staked their lives with the conviction of securing and leaving for the future generations free, prosperous and democratic Nigeria. The behavior of these criminals is questioning the timing of Nigeria independent that the independent fathers labored so much for. Truth is that the independent fathers were right and these corrupt leaders are wrong and time will not only make these criminals face the strong arm of justice but they will be blunted from history and the period of their reign of terror declared the dark period, the period time stood still in Nigeria. History will hold the names of these criminals contravene to the constitution, to the law and to the universal morality. In the history book the names of these crooks will be prefixed with Con.
Faced with foreign forces armed to the tooth the independent fathers had little or no chance but they gave all that they had. From the lion’s mouth and with bare hands they wrestled and secured the promise of a free nation. Perhaps, it is not so correct to say that the independent fathers successfully fought for Nigeria independence with nothing. Veritably, the fathers had wisdom, knowledge, understanding, courage, will, determination, conviction, unity but above all they had love for the people. These characteristic are mightier than any man made weapon system. The fathers too loved life the real life. They imagine, and dreamed of the real life, they saw the real life and went for it. They secured the real life and the better life not just for themselves but for all generations. They understood that life in bondage, servitude, adversity, deprivation is no better than life not lived. Like the freedom fighters around the globe the fathers understood that life, peace, freedom, and natural rights are not gifts from the powerful or the corrupt to the powerless naïveté but from the creator to all people.
The independent fathers were also religious and understood that on the sixth day God saw that every thing he made was good and complete and so he rested on the seventh day. The fathers understood that the work of the creator he did finished and the remaining work rest with man. The fathers knew to pick up the tools of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, courage, will, determination, conviction, unity but above all the tool of love, love for the people. May the good Lord bless the souls of these Compatriots. In return for the great gift what did the fathers ask of us? Not much, nothing for themselves but that we love one another and build a free, prosperous and democratic union.
Contrary to the lyrics of the national anthem the criminals masked as leaders that have led the nation since the mid eighties have let the country down and made in vain the work, the hard earned victory, the aspirations, and the love of the independent fathers. In the struggle for independence the fathers confronted the tyrannies of foreign invaders; the enemies without, today Nigerians are faced with the tyrannies of enemies within that bully and terrorize their way to power. These enemies within are no less dangerous than the ones before; in fact they have shown to be cataclysmically dangerous. To defeat these inside enemies Nigerians must employ no lesser than the tools the independent fathers used. These enemies can and must be defeated but make no mistake these enemies are primitively dangerous. Yes, these enemies are vicious and barbaric but they will be easily defeated by a united and determined people. They are thieves and outlaws who must act rabidly because law and time are never on their sides. These criminals know that they have no moral leverage and legitimacy to put a coherent and intelligent fight. And the question is whether Nigerians are prepared to stand, defend and protect that which the independent fathers staked theirs lives for. Would the present generation let the hard earned freedom on the back of the patriot be lost to the vultures that dastardly prey on their own? Would Nigerians especially those in Diasporas standby watch while very few primitive cabals destroyed the gift of great nation that the founding fathers gave us to in a platter of gold? Do Nigerians think that these criminals who have for long hijacked power will out of goodwill and of goodness of heart give up power? No, nowhere in the history of man have power usurpers ever voluntarily given up power. Frederick Douglas rightly said that power is never conceded voluntarily but is only restored to the people through the revolution of the deprived and the oppressed: A peaceful revolution, Reverend Martin Luther King JR said those that strife to stop a peaceful revolution only invites a violent one.
Do Nigerians think that the manner of good governance will fall from heaven. No, the work of the creator he did finish the remaining work is for the men. The French revolutionists were no less religious but they knew that the fight for good governance was not only right but Godly. The abolitionists in US were not less religious but they knew that faith without work is dead. The revolutionaries in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and across the Middle East are not less religious but they understand that among men freedom is never free. Nigerians, it is troubling for one to willfully fail oneself and the present generation but it is apocalyptically sacrilegious and deadly for one to cowardly and willfully fails the unborn generations whose survivals and future consist on one’s present actions and or inactions. Nigerians, failure is okay but not doing anything to save the country from the claws of these barbarians is blasphemous and a sin that cries to heaven.
Nigerians in Diasporas have seen and know good governance, they have the resources, the number, the connections, and the influence but where is their will? They should remember that to those much is given much is expected of them, no excuses will absolve the diasporas from the solemn responsibility to rescue the nation. For Nigerians in diasporas that have seen the benefits of truth and transparency in governance, know the great need for transparency in governance and understand the supremacy and the beauty of the rule of law but yet collude with the criminally minded leaderships or serve as accessory for the criminal exportation of public wealth overseas; those of them that engage in this mortal sin and crime will be exposed on the day of recompense.
Nigerians in Diaspora at best have paid lip service to the deplorable situations in Nigeria because they think they have escaped abject poverty and lawless in the country. Events in Nigerian today have proven this 'escapecism' mentality as delusion. Today Nigerians in Diaspora while on trip to home land are the prime targets of the otherwise good citizens turned criminals by the actions of the criminal leaderships who have over the years hijacked power and liquidated the country. These barbaric leaders use the neglected Nigerian army and police force to protect selves and their neighborhoods while the general citizenry live at the mercy of armed bandits.
Truth is that there are so much Nigerians especially those in Diasporas, can do to make the country a better place for every Nigeria. But to realize a better Nigeria requires patriotic citizens; those citizens willing to scarify all for all and for the nation. Nigerians have had only but few patriots embodied in the independent fathers. Fortunately many citizens can easily become patriotic only if they can correctly answer the basic question of life: And that is, why are we here? For what purpose did the Creator put us here on earth? Ignorance of this purpose is the reason many have failed to pursue cause larger than selves. Surprisingly, in every human endeavor, personal or public, legal or illegal, sinful or righteousness humans with the exception of few have unknowingly or misguidedly sought this creator's purpose.
For answer to the basic question of life please contact me at corevoci@gmail.com