Goodluck Jonathan

PIUS ADESANMI: My father is a motor car: Reuben Abati, GEJ, and the Addis Ababa fiasco

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Written By Pius Adesanmi

My father is a motor car: Reuben Abati, GEJ, and the Addis Ababa fiasco

[I am reposting this article by Pius Adesanmi. This article reveals the stupidity and foolishness of the Jonathan presidency. It also brings to light the foolishness of Reuben Abati. Reuben Abati has lost it completely. This is a story of how money, position and fame have destroyed some Nigerian intellectuals. Abati is the new scandalous face of the Nigerian intellectual class]

President Jonathan and his handlers dreamed up the ill-fated ambition to gun for the Presidency of the AU because of their juvenile rivalry with a far better governed South Africa

Baba Sala needs no introduction unless you came around in the age of iPods, iTunes, and music files. The dinosaurs among us who are more at home with LP records will remember him. He is one of Nigeria’s greatest artists in my book. In one of his memorable radio skits, Baba Sala decides to learn the English language. A friend’s son offers to help with home lessons in basic English conversation. The scenario is classic: the teacher reads a simple sentence from a grammar primer and the student repeats the sentence. We all went through that “repeat after me” ritual in primary school. If you were in French class, your teacher, often from Togo or Benin, screamed “répétez après moi” as you struggled to memorize the antics of Aja Dudu and Monsieur Mayaki.

“My father has a motor car,” says Baba Sala’s teacher, reading from the primer. “My father is a motor car,” choruses Baba Sala. Naturally, the teacher is dissatisfied. He reads the correct sentence again, Baba Sala repeats the error, and a back and forth ensues between the determined teacher and the stubborn student. Frustrated, Baba Sala finally asks the teacher for a Yoruba translation of that problematic sentence. “Baba mi ni moto ayokele kan – my father has a motor car”, replies the teacher. “Excuse me, come again” thunders an incredulous Baba Sala. The perplexed teacher obliges him: “Baba mi ni moto ayokele kan”.

A furious Baba Sala summons the ritualized protocols of the familiar – what we call “see finish” in popular culture – to upbraid his teacher, giving him a long, sanctimonious lecture about lying, lies, and liars. Baba Sala knows the teacher’s family. E don see dem finish, as the popular saying goes. “Your father did what? Bought a motor car? Look at this small boy o! You really must think that I am dumb! Ibo ni Baba re ra moto ohun si? When and where did your father buy a motor car? Have you forgotten that your father and I used to trek to oko egan (the farm) together? Until he died, your father was never able to afford an ordinary bicycle let alone a car. How dare you look me straight in the face and lie to me? You dare to tell me that your father is a motor car. What’s the world coming to?”

The teacher stands his ground and tries to explain to Baba Sala that the sentence comes from the grammar primer they are using for the English lesson. This is where Baba Sala delivers one of the most memorable lines of his career. Says Baba Sala to the teacher: since I have absolutely no doubt that there is a lie hanging ominously in the air, the question is, who is telling that lie, you or the book that you are reading?

These scenarios came to mind as I monitored the recent faceoff between Sahara Reporters’ Omoyele Sowore and Dr. Reuben Abati, a former progressive intellectual who, sadly, is now in charge of President Goodluck Jonathan’s Ministry of Truth. The first cause of disagreement between the two men needs no further elaboration beyond the necessary reiteration of Sowore’s demand for the full list of President Jonathan’s official entourage to Addis Ababa. Dr Abati has not denied reports that he claimed to have forgotten the list in his hotel room in Addis Ababa at the time of Sowore’s initial request last week. We are still waiting and I hope the goats of Addis Ababa are not as ravenous as the goats of Yoruba land. The truant kid who fails his exam can return home at the end of the term and claim that a goat ate his report card. Perhaps a goat invaded Dr Abati’s hotel room in Addis Ababa and ate the list?

While we wait for him to make good on his promise to release the list and thereby prove that the President’s entourage to Addis comprised “not more than 32 people”, as opposed to the higher figures that had been reported, I must again express considerable sadness that this is what Dr Abati has been reduced to: an unrecognizable marionette who must now split hairs to explain the difference between stealing a cow and stealing a goat to the Nigerian people. No, we were about thirty-two people on the trip and not fifty-seven as was reported, as if it was okay to jamboree thirty-two people to Addis Ababa in the first place.

In Addis Ababa, they characteristically mismanaged everything including the question of President Jonathan’s woolly-headed moves for the AU Presidency. Why an incompetent President, whose leadership report card, is evidenced by the distraught condition of Nigeria and ECOWAS, would get ambitious about leading the AU is beyond me. Moreover, the moment news of that scuttled ambition filtered out of Addis, I knew that his Ministry of Truth would enter panic and crisis mode and swing into action. That much was predictable. What I couldn’t predict was the format of the damage control. Would Dr. Abati dare to depart from Aso Rock’s compulsive recourse to irritating lies in every situation?

Spinning, nuancing, and glossing come with the territory of statecraft. Those with no temperament for euphemisms call it deniability. There are countless occasions when the Presidency or the President must not be disgraced, humiliated, or embarrassed, hence the recourse to spin, nuance, and gloss by spokespersons of a given administration as they retail talking points to the public. That much we understand. In advanced democracies, officials of the state try as much as possible to spin, nuance, gloss or stretch the truth with considerable circumspection. You want to make sure that the spin does not cross the border into the province of outright lies because there are consequences for lying to the people. If you lie under oath, that is perjury; if you lie ex-oath and you are caught, the people will wait for you and your principal at the ballot box.

Alas, Federal statehood in Nigeria comes with the sort of unbridled impunity that I described in my essay, “The Nigerian Presidency: Assault with a Deadly Weapon.” Impunity translates to the absence of consequences for even the most grievous travesties committed by the agents of an omnipotent presidency. The absence of consequences means that the Nigerian presidency enjoys the luxury of telling endless lies without repercussion. And who wants to deal with the strictures of spinning, glossing, or nuancing your way out of tight situations when an outright lie would do the trick without unsavoury consequences? This explains why the Nigerian presidency does not just lie primordially, she lies needlessly and continuously about the obvious and the unnecessary. As far as institutions of state go, the Nigerian presidency is a lie telling lies as I explained in my essay, “iro n paro fun ro”. Precisely because that institution has enshrined lying and lies as the singular basis of her social contract with the Nigerian people since October 1, 1960, she has created a citizenry that knows the opposite to be true of whatever she has to say.

Thus, when Reuben Abati rushed out a press statement claiming that Yayi Boni did not defeat Jonathan in Addis Ababa and that the West African caucus did not reject the idea of his leadership, I knew instinctively that the opposite had to be true, given the history of the Nigerian presidency and her integrity-challenged officials. The first thing I did was to make a number of phone calls to strategic contacts in Cotonou, Lomé, Abidjan, and Dakar to get a firsthand assessment of the situation from the viewpoint of our Francophone friends. Was there a prevailing sentiment of a Nigerian ambition in the build-up to the summit in Addis Ababa? How was this ambition reported in the media? As soon as I heard the other side from various sources on the ground, I did next logical thing: scour the internet for my daily dosage of newspapers from Francophone West Africa.

All the Francophone newspapers that I read reported the exact opposite of what Reuben Abati had claimed in his press statement to Nigerians. Even before the summit, on January 26, 2012, the pan-Francophonic weekly magazine, Jeune Afrique, had reported “murmurs” of President Jonathan’s ambition. The report indicates that Cotonou “was surprised” by the information on the Nigerian president’s ambition. In the penultimate paragraph of its own report, Benininfo.com insists that the names of Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh and Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan had made the round as “candidates” in addition to Yayi Boni but the leaders of West African countries decided to support the candidacy of Yayi Boni.

La Nouvelle Tribune was even more detailed in its own account of the intrigues that led to the collapse of President Jonathan’s ambition in Addis Ababa. The newspaper regaled her readers with juicy details of the situation that Abati had tried to deny in his press statement: President Jonathan’s candidacy; behind-the-scene moves by the Beninois delegation to gain a concession from the Nigerians; the decision by Ghana and Burkina Faso to support Benin Republic in the face of the obduracy of the Nigerian delegation; subsequent public announcements of support for Yayi Boni by Ghana and Burkina Faso to checkmate Nigeria.

According to La Nouvelle Tribune, it was only after these public announcements of support for Boni by other West African delegations, and after further pressure by Ghana, that Nigeria finally saw the handwriting on the wall and backed off. All the Francophone radio stations that I listened to on January 29 and 30, from Gabon to Benin Republic, Togo to Senegal, and Mali to Côte d’Ivoire, pretty much confirmed these details as reported in the newspapers. True, they confirmed it in the celebratory tone informed by the usual Francophone/Anglophone rivalry, complete with the usual hints of giant resentment but they were nonetheless all very consistent in terms of the details of Nigeria’s ambition. And Reuben Abati would have us believe that none of this ever happened! President Jonathan was never interested, was never a candidate! He even worked assiduously for Yayi Boni’s election! Somehow, everybody else in Africa made it all up! Waoh.

President Jonathan and his handlers dreamed up the ill-fated ambition to gun for the Presidency of the AU because their juvenile rivalry with a far better governed South Africa. Nigerians should worry about the modes of actuation of that ambition. A few commentators, including yours truly, have grumbled that a President who has so thoroughly malgoverned Nigeria, serving as undertaker for his citizens via Boko Haram, armed robbery, unemployment, fuel subsidy removal, and general economic hardship, should not be gourmandizing for regional leadership. That view is only partly right. The real problem is what the President didn’t do in the months leading to Addis Ababa. We heard of no scrupulously thought-out leadership vision, no carefully planned roadmaps to continental initiatives with actionable results going to Addis Ababa. The possibility of continental leadership thus becomes a function of somebody’s perfunctory, spur of the moment brainwave, possibly over peppersoup and Sapele water. He was going to become AU President first and think later about what to do, maybe constitute a thousand advisory committees along the way, as is his wont. Does that sound familiar about how he rules Nigeria?

There is worse. If we were dealing with reasonable people, one would have hoped that the humiliation suffered in Addis Ababa would be an occasion for serious lessons and sober reflection. What went wrong? Maybe the days of thinking that the rest of Africa would just queue up behind us because we have 160 million people and oil money to throw around are over. Maybe we should try to put our house in order? Maybe we should face corruption, Boko Haram, youth unemployment, comatose infrastructure, deeper questions of Nigerian statehood and federalism and hope to earn the respect of the continent based on how we run our own lives? After all, when someone promises to buy you new clothes, you examine his own vestments. Africa now has responsible democracies to look up to in Ghana, Botswana, Benin Republic and South Africa. What should we do to join that league?

These would be the reasonable working questions of genuine leaders in the wake of the Addis Ababa summit. Alas, the rulers of Nigeria are wired differently. They are wired weirdly. On the flight back to Abuja from Addis, they probably were asking: who did we forget to bribe? Should we have promised President Atta Mills an oil block? Looks like funding for HIV/AIDS clinics is drying up in Ghana and a major international agency is pulling out of Accra. Maybe we should offer to take over the funding of Ghana’s HIV/AIDS programme as the giant of Africa? Will they support us at next year’s summit if we did that? Meanwhile, Reuben, don’t forget to release a statement when we land that this never happened o.

I have written repeatedly in this column that Nigerian government officials – especially those in the Presidency – are not believable. They are utterly contemptible liars, direct descendants of Apate, the famed goddess of lies and deceit in Greek mythology. Even without the benefit of my research into the issue at hand, ain’t no chance in hell that I would have believed an Aso Rock statement anyway. They have lied to the Nigerian people too often for one to grant them such considerations. A lie hangs in the air about what actually transpired in Addis Ababa. There is no doubt in my mind that the account of the Nigerian presidency is a blatant lie. This brings us back to Baba Sala: who is lying about Addis Ababa, Reuben Abati or the press statement he issued Pius Adesanmi?

The Foolish Jonathan Presidency

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By Adeola Aderounmu

Instead of arresting corrupt Nigerians and retrieving the stolen wealth of Nigeria, Mr. Jonathan preferred to remove the (alleged, non-existent) fuel subsidy and thereby ensuring that Nigerians are further demoted down. This means that Nigerians will now be forced to survive on even less than USD1 per day.

Already there are Nigerians who have no form of material comfort. No work, no money, no social and health security.

Some, several millions to be sure, have no form of income and no hope for the next hour.

Unemployment and hopelessness are ways of life of over 40m Nigerians.

Over 90m Nigerians are unsure of the next meal.

Words are never going to be enough to repeat that the situation in Nigeria ranks among the worst human tragedies of this era. This is largely underreported.

It is sad because as one of the richest countries in the world, it is ironic that Nigerians rank among the poorest people alive. The situation in Nigeria raises a lot of issues concerning the intelligence of the black race.

Yet rather than confront the issues, Mr. Jonathan pushed them aside and hinged the resuscitation of Nigeria on the fuel subsidy. Okonjo Iweala is a disgrace to the intelligence of the black race for championing this cause.

Can Jonathan and Iweala frankly face Nigerians and tell them that removal of fuel subsidy is the solution to the problems facing Nigeria? This collective daftness should be challenged and Nigerians will be slaves forever in their own country if they allow this fuel subsidy removal to stay. It must not, even Iweala and Jonathan should be carefully probed among the corrupt Nigerians who have destroyed the Nigerian economy.

I make bold to question Iweala on the recovered Abacha’s loot. She was the finance Minister when the Swiss Government returned parts of the monies that Abacha looted. Where is the money?

Jonathan should also be reminded that his wife is among the thieves who have looted the Nigerian treasury. She could only have done that with the consent of Jonathan himself. Jonathan and his legacy in Bayelsa leave much to be desired. He has no track record to show for any positive performance in government. Nigerians are in the hands of fraudsters!

The economy of Nigeria cannot get better by removal of fuel subsidy. It will get better when Jonathan and the PDP looters stop looting the treasury.

The economy of Nigeria will get better when true federalism is re-introduced and power taken away from the corrupt Aso Rock.

The economy of Nigeria will improve if all the people who stole monies meant for national development are prosecuted and made to return the monies they stole.

The money that have been stolen from Nigeria is several trillions of naira which make Jonathan and Iweala’s argument a foolish one.

These fools cannot fight corruption because they are part of it.

Nigerians should never, never allow them to get away with this madness.

A protester gunned down by the government of Jonathan, Jan 3 2012

A protester gunned down by the government of Jonathan, Jan 3 2012

Jonathan is showing his true colour. Nigerians are now faced with bullets and at least 2 people have been reported killed by the Jonathan government.

The people have the right to protest against the increase in the price of fuel. Transport cost has increased to over 100% more. In some place to over 300%. The price of everything has gone up and Nigerians earn N18 000 minimum wage, which is even yet to be implemented.

This government is EVIL and it must be STOPPED by all or any means possible.

The War on Fuel Subsidy: Isn’t It Time for Jonathan To Get Out of the Way?

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By Adeola Aderounmu

By removing subsidy Mr. Jonathan and Mrs. Iweala are trying to save N1 000 000 000 000 but together with others before them they have all stolen more than N60 800 000 000 000. Is it not wiser to try to recover the stolen monies by fighting corruption TOTALLY? So much for Iweala’s Havard Education and IMF employment.

If Jonathan and PDP remain in 2012, I won’t recover from the shock..!

Nigerians should resist by any/all possible means the proposed removal of the subsidy on petroleum products.

If the pump price of petrol hits N140/per liter Nigerians have a duty and the obligation to make the country ungovernable for Mr. Jonathan. Since Nigerians insisted in April 2011 that they voted for Jonathan and not the PDP, then a moral obligation here is to ensure that they remove the evil they accidentally or stupidly voted for.

At that time, Nigerians should demand for the sack of Ngozi Iweala. This is the same woman who in connivance with Obasanjo ensured that Abacha’s loots disappeared into thin air. Now she is the champion for the removal of subsidy.

No Nigerian politician or Minister will be affected by this policy because they steal and loot as they like. Instead it the people who are already poor that will become poorer. More than 90m Nigerians live from hand-to-mouth, mostly on less than 2 dollars / day.

Already since many years now, many civil servants don’t go to work daily because of insecurity and the cost of transportation. With the removal of subsidy the cost of transportation will be one of the highest in the world on some of the world’s worst roads!

When the cost of transportation increases, the cost of food will increase and hunger will become more rampant. A spiral effect will ensure and the cost of housing increases. In a country where unemployment is a way of life, crime will increase and insecurity will reach an unprecedented height.

And the thieves in Aso rock and other government houses will continue to merry and loot. This is probably the last chance for the Nigerian revolution!

It is time for the people to seize their regions and stop this homage to Abuja. For the government that has always denied the people an open referendum for how to lead their lives, there will probably be no better opportunity for self-determination than now.

Jonathan as a typical corrupt Nigerian politician has refused to confront the hydra-headed problem which itself is corruption. If you are corrupt or you have skeletons in you cupboards, then it is clear you cannot fight corruption.

The same goes for Mrs. Iweala and the zeal with which she is pursuing this evil agenda.

Otherwise all the corrupt people in NNPC should have been prosecuted by now. All the corruption around the Nigerian oil should have been tackled by now. Jonathan came to power in April 2011 and it is business as usual.

Instead of rolling out a blue print for Agriculture and how our mineral sources (including Uranium) will be used in 2012, Mr. Jonathan and Mrs Iweala are reading out riots acts. Jonathan stated that he is ready to confront the demonstrations that will follow.

It appears that N921.9 billion for “war” in the 2012 budget was not only for BOKO HARAM war. Part of it will be used to fight the people and kill the voters if possible. The evil in PDP will be manifested more than ever before in 2012.

Iweala and Jonathan want to save N1 Trillion. I challenged both to them to prosecute all the corrupt politicians in Nigeria, they will emerge with more than N60 Trillion.

They can start with the USD12 billion that Babangida cannot account for. They can then proceed to the N16 billion that melted away under Obasanjo while pretending to be fixing the power problem.

Even Abacha’s loot should be retraced and Iweala can tell us what exactly happened to the recovered loot. What she must not say this time is the lie she told a few years ago: that the money was used to execute projects that pre-dated the recovered loot.

In several ways and through several avenues, Nigeria can recover billions of dollars of stolen funds that will make the proposed removal of fuel subsidy a useless adventure.

In that sense Nigeria needs strong men who can take actions and prosecute thieves and loots. We are tired of weak men and weak women like Mr. Jonathan and Mrs. Iweala.

Nigerians have only one major obligation in 2012, to end the PDP Regime in any way they can as a way forward..!

I agree with Reuben Abati: It is Time to Stone Those in Power

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By Adeola Aderounmu

In 2009 Reuben Abati recommended that it will soon be time to start stoning the economists in the corridor of power in Abuja. In 2011 I strongly recommend that everyone in the corridor of power and all those who are called stakeholders who have supported the removal of the subsidy on oil and oil products should be stoned.

Goodluck Jonathan has pinned the reactions of Nigerians to the proposed removal of subsidy on those who want to throw him out of office. I say that he fired the first rounds of shots on his legs. If this will mark the beginning of the end for his insensitive regime, let the occupation starts.

I want to ask the same questions that Reuben Abati asked in 2009: How? Where is this subsidy that government talks about? How was it disbursed?

Reuben Abati wrote in that headline that Nigerians will soon be trekking. Sadly enough Nigerians have actually been trekking before 2009. I remembered trekking from festac town to CMUL during the 2001/2002 fuel scarcity. I had obligations that couldn’t wait.

In 2011 Nigerians are not only willing to trek, they appear ready to march down the Jonathan government that has come to be characterized by weakness in all its ramifications.

From one generation to another, the Nigerian government presents a constant image of a permanent aggregation of dubious elements. In my personal opinion I have concluded that no amount of additional suggestions or written essays can solve Nigeria’s problems.

Are there problems facing Nigerians that the solutions have not been proffered here in the Nigerian Village Square or elsewhere where Nigerians display their intellectual capabilities? Do we have problems in Nigeria that we have no discussed about openly? What has happened to their implementations?

I believe so much in the solution proffered by Reuben Abati. Even so because when it is carried out it will consume people like him. I like such solutions that will not spare the hypocrites, the pretenders, the sycophant and the famously corrupt people in government, many of whom have recently been rewarded by meaningless national awards over several years.

I can’t imagine how people receive national awards in one of the most corrupt countries in the world. How does it feel to receive national awards in a country with one of the highest child and maternal mortalities in Africa? How does it feel to receive awards in a country where electricity is almost absent? How does it feel to receive national awards in a country where public education is almost grounded?

If Nigerians obey Abati’s call by simply rising up and stoning the people in the corridor of power, I am convinced that the revolution we long sought will start. It might be ultimate the clean-up we have waited from since 1960.
It is sad how things have turned out for the ordinary Nigerians. On a poverty wage of USD 113/ month, a Nigerian is expected to pay his rent, bills, and sundries. There is no greater miracle on planet earth than a Nigerian living on N18 000 per month.

In a country where more than 20% of the population is unemployed, I have found it hard to find a greater tragedy against the back drop of the immense natural resources and potential human resources.

If there is any country in Africa where the government should be giving relief packages to her citizens after 50 years of misrule and leadership failure, that country is Nigeria.

In a twist of test of resiliency the ordinary masses will be insulted further. For failing the build or maintain functional refineries, for failing to fight or curb systemic corruption, for failing to deliver on the so-called dividends of democracy, the insensitive Nigerian government now headed by Goodluck Jonathan will make Nigerians suffer even more.

Rather than relief package the economic team of Goodluck Jonathan, his executive council and the so-called stakeholders will deliver loads of additional burden onto Nigeria.

The arguments are hinged on the famous textbook concepts rather than the realities on the ground. There are no arguments that the Jonathan government has put forward that is different from what Obasanjo and late Yar Adua proposed. In all the previous partial or total removal of subsidies that have been used to increase the pump price of petroleum products, there has never been a corresponding increase in the quality of lives of the Nigerian people.

There is absolutely no reason to believe or trust the Jonathan government. It represents the PDP government that has held sway since 1999. The PDP is the largest aggregation of corrupt people in Africa. Under the PDP the quality of life has declined sharply at the same time that the cost of it has continued to increase unhindered.

This, as Jonathan feared in his recent utterances that the opposition wants to bring down his government, must be the last test of resiliency for Nigerians. Any attempt to increase the burden of Nigerians should be met with the highest possible resistance. The opposition that I see is the over 90m Nigerians living below the poverty level.

The argument that the state governors are in support of the removal of fuel subsidy does not hold water. Which governors? We know they want more money from the 52% that the federal government has been looting for several years because they are all the same birds. Why should what the governor wants be a benchmark for what the people want?

Why do the extremely rich but corrupt people in the corridor of power think that they know what is good for the suffering masses? When will the voices of the people start to matter democratically, if truly we are under a democracy?

I think it is sad and disappointing that Jonathan think that only the people in the middle class who have 4-5 jeeps will be affected by the subsidy removal. A lot of middle class Nigerians are even still struggling to maintain their statuses and to continue to pursue a happy life.

The dynamics of the Nigerian economy certainly reveals that the masses are the end-receivers of failed policies. When the subsidy is removed there is no doubt that the cost of transportation that is already exorbitant will increase further and the prices of dietary and other consumable products will follow the same curve.

We cannot live in denial and allow those who are shielded from the reality of everyday existence since they got to the corrupt corridor of power speak for us any longer. Reuben Abati and the other advisers cannot speak for the masses. Nigeria has not improved since this administration started wasting our time. Policies or parameters that neither put food on the table nor increase the quality/standard of living are abstract and worthless.

The practical situation in Nigeria today is worse and even more deplorable compared to 2004. Someone, an ordinary Nigerian who knows where the shoes hurt, wrote today that Nigerians should be ready to turn sand to food. In all sincerity he was not joking and he didn’t think we should laugh about his comment. People are suffering.
Nigerians need relief packages and they should be brought forward now.

If this virtual subsidy on oil products is removed and Nigerians remain resilient, it means our collective “suffering and smiling” will continue. It also means that People Deceiving People Party and the team of political and economic looters who are blind to the reality of a daily Nigerian life have succeeded again. Our glory is not yet come and that is so sad and disheartening.

aderounmu@gmail.com

A Move that Should Send the Jonathan Government Packing!

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By Adeola Aderounmu

The tasks facing Nigerians continue to pile up. More than ever before Nigerians need to rise up and stop the evil once and for all time.

What is subsidy on petroleum products?

Since time immemorial Nigeria’s oil wealth has been looted, mismanaged and plundered.

The government of Jonathan is making no serious efforts to get Nigeria’s money from the likes of Babangida and thousands of politicians who have looted and mismanaged the economy.

How much is the government going to re-coup from the subsidy? How much is being looted daily in Nigeria and how much money do we have draining away from the national treasury every minute?

Babangida is keeping over 12 billion dollars. Bankole, David Mark, all former governors and all former and current government officials are keeping/looting several billions in different banks scattered around the country and around the world.

More than a million times we have said that individuals like Babangida should return our looted funds. Nothing happened. We are still shouting that looting should stop and looted funds should be returned even if it is from the Jonathans. This has not happened.

Abacha’s loot that was returned disappeared under the watch of Okonjo-Iweala and Obasanjo. No trace of the funds and these people are still in government or active from the sideline.

More than a million times we have said that it is not sustainable for the Nigerian lawmakers to continue to earn billions of naira annually while the rest of the country is on a freefall.

Nigerian politicians are the richest in the world while the ordinary people of Nigeria are among the poorest in the world.

How many times are we going to write and cry out loud that these things cannot continue the way they are.

The only way now to keep the mouths of Nigerian politicians wide and big to fit their extravagant life styles and unbelievably enormous wages is to tax the poor and needy and make them poorer and needier by making them pay more for petrol and kerosene.

Obasanjo and his co-travelers stole billions of naira meant for the power sector. Today Nigerians live in absolute darkness. Nigerians use all kinds of deadly generator sets to power their homes and offices. Noise pollution and severe environmental degradation means that life threatening factors have increased astronomically.

Over a long period of several years, more than half of a century Nigerian politicians and military gangsters collectively ruined the country economically, politically and morally.

Human dignity in Nigeria is on the negative axis.

The crooks in government continue to award all kinds of contracts to themselves. They never did what they promised. Instead they stole the monies for the contracts without doing anything. Nigeria was grounded on all fronts!

We know that the fight against corruption will continue to be superficial and pretentious because Jonathan and his wife have been accused of corruption.

Now Nigerians are been prepared for more days of evil and unknown years of grief.

Jonathan and his economic team want to increase the price per liter of petrol. The subsidy part of it is the malicious expression of their collective malformed mentalities. The successive evil governments in Nigeria have used the same phrase over the years and it has always worked.

It has always worked to put Nigerians in both chains and bondages.

If l could l will make this the last evil government in Nigeria.

What has changed since the prices of petroleum products started its artificial way upward in 1978? Our lives have only gone worse. The standards and quality still getting lower as the cost kept its rising profile.

The constant part of it is that the people looting and stealing have remained at large. They and now the Jonathan crew are living in opulence. They have no clue what it means for the rest of us to be jobless or to live on poverty wage of N18 000 per month.

Can Jonathan live on N18 000 per month? Even a maid or a houseboy cannot live on that!

Nigeria must NEVER, l repeat NEVER allow the price of petrol to go above what it is today. Nigerians should defend what is left of their already debased dignity.

Nigerians should fight Jonathan and anyone who tries to increase the cost of petroleum products. They should do so with the last drop of blood in their veins.

At all or any cost, Nigerians make sure that this man from the delta creeks does not add to the avalanche of burdens facing them.

The only reason any deceptive ruler will increase the cost of petroleum products again in Nigeria will be to increase the looting monies available to looters and useless Nigerian politicians.

Life is already too expensive. Why make it worse?

What has been done with the money that accrued from the increase in petroleum products since 1999, that is under the most useless party in Africa?

Why is the Nigerian government constantly in the need to remove the subsidy? As far as Nigerians are concerned there is no subsidy on petroleum products.

What have been missing since 1960 are good leadership and future-planning sane people in Nigerian government.

Is it the fault of the masses that Nigerian refineries are not working?

Is it the fault of the Nigerian people that the useless Nigerian government keeps importing petrol? Isn’t that a scandal that should be tackled?

So in four years Jonathan will not turn the Nigerian petroleum industry around? Of course not! How can he fight the power that controls him?

So, since 1999 PDP cannot make Nigeria work? Maybe there are no functional brains in the PDP!

No one in the Jonathan economic team can reason out that the best way is to find permanent solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

What blueprints is this fake transformation based upon?

What does the bad government mean by promising to provide infrastructure only after it has removed the subsidies?

Nigerians have endured more than 50 years of senselessness in government. We can endure till that time when a sensible government will plan for our children. Our lives are already wasted. My future was stolen before I was born. What else can I lose?

Our children and the generation coming after should be the focus. Therefore this talk about subsidy is evil machinery that should be met with the greatest possible resistance that will if necessary bring an abrupt end to the order of things and send all these wicked men and women into permanent exile or prisons.

Nigerians don’t need any cosmetic solution to the problems that have been created by 51 years of looting and continuous corruption.

Build the refineries. Stop importing petrol. Take away all forms of corruption in government.

Recover all stolen funds at all cost and by all means! Make them visible and accountable!

It doesn’t matter how long it takes to build the refineries. It is a task that must be done.

It doesn’t matter what it takes to fight corruption, it must be done. It doesn’t matter what it takes to get rid of the cabal in the administration, or in the economic sector or in the executive or judiciary. These things must be done.

it doesn’t matter how long it takes to recover all looted funds and whoever is keeping them, these funds must show face!

Jonathan must never be allowed to increase the cost of petroleum products. What he and the blood-suckers in the economic group including the corrupt people in the ministry of finance must be told is that only permanent solutions are acceptable.

If Jonathan’s government take out the imaginary subsidy on petroleum products to satisfy the greedy needs of his gang Nigeria should make sure that his government is thrown out in the days that follow. Nigerians cannot afford one more evil government.

The other day a man died in Oyo state while waiting on the queue for a verification exercise that will fetch him N1000 in pension. This is in the same country where already corrupt lawmakers and politicians effortlessly cart away billions of naira in allowances daily.

Nigerians wasted their time, votes and probably their lives voting for the PDP government in 2011. Nigerians lied to themselves; they said they voted for Jonathan and not PDP. Nigerians brought this new evil upon themselves but it is never too late to counter-act unless you are dead.

Now that Nigerians know that Jonathan is PDP and PDP is Jonathan I wondered what they are going to do about it. Nigerian should ponder deeply about that.

The proposed removal of the subsidy on petroleum products should be the last test of resilience for Nigerians. If it happens Nigerian should sack this government immediately. Arise O’ compatriots..!