As you read my reflections, let me tell you what will happen before you get to the last sentence. A group of terrorists called herdsmen will kidnap a man/woman probably in western Nigeria and demand for a huge ransom. Another group of terrorists, also called herdsmen will move their cattle into another man’s land probably in Eastern Nigeria or in Edo state and destroy the farmland. They will never be apprehended, and they will never be prosecuted.
My Random Reflections @ 47. Niger-Area: An Expired British Colony.
By Adeola Aderounmu
This should be my 12th annual random reflections. I wrote the first edition of this series when l turned 36. I celebrate my earth day on July the 12th. Let’s see how long Olodumare carries me for.
There is so much to write about this year as in the previous years. This sounds a bit contradictory considering that l published an article on July 13, 2007 titled: Nigeria, what more to write? The article is online at the Nigerian Village Square (NVS).
Despite the fact that there is so much to write about, it would also be impossible to highlight everything in my random reflections. Nigeria, the country is overstretched and Nigerians, the people-at least 100m of them-are broken physically and psychologically.
The country Nigeria as it were today, or as defined by the colonial thugs who merged non-similar, non-familiar entities until it formed the Niger-area colony, has outlived its usefulness to the citizens/indigenes. It is clear that Nigeria is no longer functioning as a country and all the fears genuine writers and real social commentators expressed especially in the last 2-3 decades have matured and overtaken us. Niger-area is likely living on borrowed times.
As writers, we yelled! We screamed! We warned! We suggested, we gave advice. We proffered solutions, we wrote volumes upon volumes of articles. We gave our time, our energy, our resourceful thinking and many gave their lives. We are living and carrying on with heavy hearts after the demise of our beloved brother and crusader Pius Adesanmi. In him, we lost one of Africa’s most illustrious sons. In his honor and for the sake of the unborn generations we must carry on and be ready to give our lives too.
All we did in the last 2 decades fell on wrong ears. As you read my reflections, let me tell you some of the things that will happen before you get to the last sentence. A group of terrorists called herdsmen will kidnap a man/woman probably in western Nigeria and demand for a huge ransom. Another group of terrorists, also called herdsmen will move their cattle into another man’s land probably in Eastern Nigeria or in Edo state and destroy the farmland. They will never be apprehended, and they will never be prosecuted.
Many travelers will cancel their road trips from Kaduna to Abuja and from Benin to Lagos because of terrorists called bandits. Some terrorists called bandits will kill a few dozen men, women and children, probably in southern parts of Kaduna State. The terror attack will not make the mainstream news and the terrorists will chase away the natives forever.
Boko Haram may decide to expand their 15% ownership of Borno to 30% and overrun another Nigerian army barracks as they always do.
Also, before you finish reading my random reflections, a few other despicable things would occur elsewhere on the expired British colony called Niger-area. For example, a handful of lazy young men in Western Nigeria would have killed a couple of girls for rituals and some would have stolen some underwear for the same purpose. A number of lazy, disoriented people would be at Lagos lsland or seek out a fake mad man asking for where/how to buy human body parts.
Some psycho politicians and politicians to be will be at a shrine, not to worship their ancestors as they should, but to solicit for supernatural powers that would blindfold the people and bring them ill-gotten wealth. Even some pastors to be are looking for human sacrifices to bury at the foundation of their churches.
I can tell you a lot more things that would happen in advance in Niger-area. The kind of things you go to night vigils in churches and mosques to listen to. Road accidents, preventable diseases and inexplicable illnesses will claim thousands of lives in the next 24 hours and more than 90% of them will not make the news.
You can’t stop these predictions because Lagos roads for example, are the worst roads in the world and millions of people in Nigeria have drivers’ licenses without learning how to drive. Some cannot read and some have bad sights. Many have cars/vehicles without brakes. The public hospitals are ill-equipped and not every sick person can afford treatment. So these things will happen, as usual in a failed system, the Niger-area.
Still, I can predict that fuel tankers will explode, there will be boat mishaps and there will be flood in Lagos disrupting residential and business areas. The flood in Jos is not receiving any attention and efforts will never be made to prevent a repeat.
I can tell you that it is not only the herdsmen that are problems in Edo. That state is ravaged by cultists and the young men are fast disappearing so much that even those s/elected into the political positions in the state are still in hiding, afraid to resume offices. The states in Nigeria are not viable, many of them were DOA.
Should l continue to tell you the one million reasons why Niger-area is an expired colony?
We are totally lost as a group of diverse people. Our focuses are on the wrong things and distraction is our common middle name. We are all about “self/me” because we lost the plot and some of us lost our minds. Our brains, and subsequently our reasonings were sort of destructively infected by the way the government was/is managed. The crudest survival of the fittest was re-introduced to us after the exit of the colonial thugs in 1960.
We entered a self-destruct mode, something l had earlier described as a form of human necrosis in an article many years ago.
Whilst all these mayhem and elements of civil war are going on, the criminal politicians continue to sign cheques and award one another salaries that are the highest in the world. You won’t find criminals worse than these gangs in Nigeria on planet earth.
One of them will be arguing with the others on why he has the right to beat women in a sex toy shop whereas he and the others like him should be tied in chains in a psychiatric ward for serious evaluations and eventual medication for the rest of their lives. What happened to “aro” and “yaba left”?
The ruler of the pack whom they call Buhari has lost touch with reality and suffers permanent dementia. The rest of us will suffer dementia also to varying degrees as we age or near death, so it is not a personal illness of Mujahedeen Buhari.
To him, West Germany still exists and Ambode was a former governor of Edo state. In fact, he handed over the presidential ticket to another man at a recent rally. All the traits that should earn Buhari a disqualification elevated him as typical of Niger-area, an expired British colony. Buhari belongs to the archive but now he may face the war crime tribunal for all the crimes and killings under his watch. He should.
Boko Haram may decide to expand their 15% ownership of Borno to 30% and overrun another army barracks as they always do.
Still, Nigerians are following a man whose only consciousness is about the lives of cows and the expansion of the Fulanis from neighboring West African countries to the shores of Lagos lagoon, a sort of jihad.
All our warnings about the useless unitary system that continue to produce extremely useless rulers from APC and PDP are still falling on deaf ears. Some of us continue to argue that we must depart from this useless unitary system of government or the road to perdition is guaranteed for the next generation too.
One of the major reasons Western Nigeria fell behind countries like the France and the UK in the race for development was as a result of the eradication of the Western Region and the senseless introduction of the unitary government following the murderous coup of January 1966 and counter murderous coup of July 1966. The fallouts and the other reasons can be debated.
Why are we shy of the facts that led to the civil war and the gradual de-civilization of the prosperous regions within Niger-area?
For, no political system in the world will be rid of corruption and greedy politicians. It is the reason for the law and the judicial systems as checks everywhere in the world. When Nigerian politicians became corrupt and greedy under the regional system in the 60s, performances still outweighed their greediness because no region wanted to be behind in the development race.
Indeed, it was the appropriate democratic institutions regulating the law, the police, the judiciary and indeed the people that needed to act democratically. Nigeria was destroyed forever by the lucky bastards in khaki!
Even since 1999, Obasanjo and Buhari have come to represent these tropical gangsters, the juntas. When we compare one evil with the other rather than sacrifice our lives if necessary to rid ourselves of all evils, we enthrone kleptocracy, nepotism, ethnicity and even tribalism above common sense, above the good of all. Systemic necrosis becomes inevitable. Our predicament seems incurable under a useless form of system called unitary system.
It has led to more than 40 years of misrule, the introduction and propagation of hope through foreign religions at the expense of equality and social justice. The useless unitary system and the senseless federal character led to diversion from hardwork /dignity of labor towards ostentatious lifestyle, grave nepotism and cancerous tribalism. The dirty celebration of ill-gotten wealth also crippled Nigeria further.
Today, the sum of all evil culminated in the existence of two criminal organizations called APC and PDP with the same agenda/goal. The total eradication of these two monsters will be a valid first step towards hope for a better federation. Nigeria needs a restart button, some sort of reboot to reset and begin again. Until freedom comes and until true independence is achieved, the agitations from the various regions would remain permanent.
Sadly, Nigerians will likely remain the poorest people on earth as long as this arrangement stays. Pray all you want: Niger delta will remain polluted, almajiris are forever, roads will remain death traps, public schools/universities will never rise again, primary/public health care will remain almost non-existence and the few successful learned people/experts/professionals (including sportspeople) will continue to seek other countries, making the world a better place and Nigeria (the producer of the brains) a shit-hole.
Truth is bitter but constant.
There is nothing happening in Nigeria today that we have not highlighted in the last 2 decades. Personally, l have put pen to paper about these issues since 2002. Dig the archives of the Nigerian Guardian and read my article in 2002 titled: Why Politicians Steal.
The more you think things we change, the more they stay the same or get worse. We unite and rally round the wrong things. We bring our best brains into a stupid political system and they join the useless circus called unitary government. Nigeria’s (useless) unitary system is government of the elites, by the elites and for the elites.
The day the rest of us are ready for freedom is the day we shall rally round the things that matter to us. We will unify on the way forward for all the different ethnicities trapped in this expired British product called Niger-area (Nigeria).
Those who will suffer most under this elitist system are our children and our children’s children. If they are in Nigeria, when the time comes, they would fight for their freedom. If they already became slaves again, even on home soil, and therefore hopeless, they will curse our graves and make sure they are unmarked.
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