poverty

The BBC Story on Nigerian Police

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Adeola Aderounmu

The BBC yet again found another weak spot in Nigeria. The Police. It is up to the Nigerian Police to defend its integrity. How it goes about that is left to the authorities affected. I have done one or two pieces before on the Nigerian Police and I must confess that there was nothing new in that BBC story of December 8 2009.

There is a story that I always made reference to when it concerns how police kill innocent people in Nigeria. In 1995/ 96 while I was doing my youth service in Oyo State I lived on a street where Akinyele Local Government was/is situated. That is Moniya in Ibadan. At that time I was working at IITA in Ibadan as a youth corp member.

I lived directly opposite the local government and inside the premises of the local government was Moniya Police Station. It happened that in the middle of the night (almost every night) I usually hear loud noises that woke me up from my sleep. One day I had to ask my landlord’s son what the noise was all about.

He told me that I should ignore the sound and try to sleep because the police are doing their work-which is executing the robbers in the cell. He said they do that to avoid congestion in the cells. He told me that the bodies would be thrown into a famous river before day break. He told me this casually as if it was a normal thing. Going by its regularity, it was normal. I was shocked. From that day till the end of my service year I usually look closely at the police officers. As in they smile and go about like normal people but I actually thought they are crazy to be executing robbers at night.

That story plus all the other experiences about Police story that I’ve known before made me to dread the police like hell. I mean when I’m close to police officers with guns, I comply with whatever they say 100% because they can pull their triggers at anytime and you are dead. When I started driving in Lagos, every policeman was “Oga sir”! Many of them have red eyes and are invariably drunk. When a police man is pointing a loaded gun at you and ask you for 20 naira, I don’t think you want to mess around. Any dead citizen will be reported as armed robber to cover for atrocities. The BBC story is largely true.

But the Nigerian Police is just a product of a system that is decayed. The former inspector general of Police Tafa Balogun stole and looted police funds. Under Obasanjo billions of naira disappeared to his friends and family rather than the trust fund that was meant for the development of the police force. No one has been prosecuted, no one will be prosecuted. In Nigeria, you can loot and go. It’s your part of the so called National cake. A national tragedy as a matter of fact.

As mentioned above the police is just a product of a decayed system. Our politicians do not get anything fixed except their personal bank accounts and their homes/ future. They steal, they loot and they mismanage everything. Education, infrastructure, sports, health and so on. Just name anything, we have used nepotism, tribalism, corruption, and a form of madness called national character to destroy the fabrics and foundation of this (once upon a time) great nation.

The police have no modern gadgets and equipment to fight crime. They are usually overwhelmed by armed robbers who are more sophisticated. The Nigerian Police have inadequacies in everything! Patrol vehicles are probably too few and even the number of police / 000 citizens will shock anyone. I don’t know the statuses of the kinds of people employed by the police force. With Characters like Tafa Balogun, Mike Okiro and now one Onovo, the road is too long.

Police brutality and abnormalities are not peculiar to Nigeria but I’m a Nigerian blogger so I care less about the corrupt Russian police, the aggressive US Police or the lazy Scandinavian police. My attention is on Nigerian Police at this moment and I feel so sorry for them in a way. I mean their salaries are extremely poor and nothing to write home about. By setting up road blocks and begging for money instead of controlling, preventing or fighting crimes, Nigerian police is the apex of ridicule. They ask for money in the open and they tell you they have families at home.

This is the same country where one man will sit in his office and steal 12 billions dollars. A local government chairman will build houses and estate across the country. The senate president is a well known corrupt man, a thief in plain language. Name one prominent politician in Nigeria that is not a thief! So you see you can’t blame it all on the police, they see their bosses stealing. They see ordinary politicians amassing wealth overnight and with their poor salaries they set up road blocks to help their pockets. In fact, they give returns to their bosses who are sitting with their pot bellies in their office. How many police boss in Nigerian can chase a robber?

When it is election time the evil parties will connive with police to steal ballot boxes or to threaten voters so that elections can be rigged as planned. The Nigerian Police is at the mercy of the way the country is organised. Indeed all/ ordinary Nigerians are at the mercy of a certain evil force ruling the country. I have stated several times that in Nigeria we are in a dilemma: which problem/s do we solve first? How are we going to go about the rebuilding of this failed country?

For sure our politics and the corruption that have ruined the country will be an ideal suggestion. If we get it right politically, maybe we will succeed to elect the right people to lead us. Maybe we will be able to fight corruption for real and prosecute thieves and looters. Maybe our judiciary will work and then the police do not become the prosecutor, judge and executors? Just maybe!

Maybe when our politics is right, our education will pick up again, maybe our infrastructure will improve. Maybe we will build our roads, make our refineries work, create employment opportunities that will reduce the rising spate of armed robbery and assassinations. Maybe!

Maybe we will be proud as a people and eschew bitterness and hatred. One day I hope we will take out all the round pegs in square holes and chose the people who are upright, discipline and selfless to lead us.

Just maybe one day, the police and the rest of us will be doing what we are suppose to be doing and be really proud to be doing so. Until such a time when some of these dreams come true, no one should expect decrease in the number of unnecessary deaths from police miscarriage of judgement, from preventable diseases, from road accidents, from assassinations, from reckless driving and other man made atrocities in Nigeria. Imagine that we have lived 2 years with a fake president who is cooling off in a Saudi Arabian hospital while the rest of us including the police can go to hell! What a shameless man..!

reference: BBC on Nigerian Police

Nigeria: The Media, Politics, State of the Nation and the Fear of the Truth

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Adeola Aderounmu

There are obvious reasons why the Nigeria media is always short of expressions to drive home serious points when it concerns national issues and how it affects our lives. I can attest to the fact that Nigeria is not left alone in this media suppression of some sort. However the dimension it takes and the overall effects on the values of our lives in Nigeria leave much to be desired.

The other day one journalist with the Nigerian Guardian Newspaper was brutally murdered in his home. Bayo Ohu was a political journalist and his assassination will never be solved. The only thing we will get out of his death will be speculation and hypothesis. Those who work in the Guardian and his colleagues will probably have a clue as to what he was writing about or investigating before he met his brutal death.

There are countless other situations where journalists have been murdered in Nigeria. I am not surprised; journalists especially investigative journalists working on sensitive matters have met their untimely deaths in different parts of the world. Russia gives a typical situation here because quite a number of Russian journalists have been murdered too and like Nigeria the cases are never solved.

The Nigerian government does not usually tolerate criticism from media houses. The security service is always quick in seizing computers and closing down media houses in Nigeria. The Guardian, Channels TV and even AIT have at one time or the other experienced the evil and dictatorial arm of the Nigerian government. The craziest thing is that it doesn’t matter if it is the military or civilian government, once the government is uncomfortable with a report; it closes down the media outfit without notice or warning. Welcome to Nigeria..!

Now you can understand why authentic news or information about Nigeria are more reliable from external sources, I mean from outside Nigeria or on the web. Because if a Nigerian Newspaper for example carries an editorial tomorrow asking for the resignation of Mr. Yar Adua that media outfit will probably be closed down. The editors can be charged for treason and believe me, many families will be rendered helpless from the saga. Fathers will probably be behind cells for weeks or months and sources of livelihood will be terminated abruptly.

So there are no truths-saying media outfits in Nigeria. Sometimes some of them try to state the truth but they polish it and apply extreme diplomacy. It is hard to find a physical media outfit in Nigeria that takes a stand against the wrong doing of the politicians or the government at large. I have not read any newspaper that is bold enough to say that Mr. Ibori is a thief for example.

But seriously the Nigerian Media need to do a rethinking and despite the high risk they need to take a stand on national issues. Their passivity is contributing to the wretchedness in Nigeria. I know the risk but the truth is if all of them decide to start giving the government hard knocks I don’t think the government can close down all the media houses.

One key issue is that a number of the media houses are own by thieves and politicians who have stolen from the treasury. So in delicate principle it is hard for such media houses to crititicise the government. The hands of the owner are not clean and blackmail comes in cheap. Another related issue is that the pervading poverty has turned some aspects of journalism into a hand-to-mouth affair. Many journalists collect bribes to write favourable reports about thieves in power. Nigerian journalists are not immune from the corruption and hopelessness that has taken over the entire country.

It appears that in every aspect of our lives we are entangled, almost entirely entrapped. We have reached that point where there is no easy way forward. Nigeria is at a puzzled crossroad where the possibility to make one correct decision about our existence must drag along with it multiple options of how to deal with the entanglement. Indeed we are in trouble.

Out troubles are compounded by our actions and wrongfully inclined mentality inflicted by several years of misrule. In 2009 approaching 50 years of our existence as an independent country there are very few things to boast about.

If we are seeking ways out our media must start reporting things the way they are. We have no water in our homes unless we spend our hard earned money to make bore holes and buy pumping machines. There is no electricity and the people who stole the monies meant for the facility are walking free, our media houses should name them and shame them. The time to be bold is now. Our schools are in rot and almost no teaching is taking place. Cheats have taken over! We have a minister for education waiting for the media to scrutinize and expose more and more.

In our houses of assembly, both local and national, there are men and women of dishonour, sitting idly, awarding contracts, forming committees, paying themselves huge salaries and allowances!!! What is the media doing to expose these lazy thieves? If the media was good enough David Mark would never stay 1 week as the senate president! How can a looter and a known thief head the Nigerian senate? Where are our investigative journalists? I don’t mean the internet bloggers.

If the media had been sincere and bold we will never have allowed the fraud of 2007 to stay. Mr Iwu and Mr Obasanjo dictated for us, on behalf of the invisible cabal, who should be our next dictator. They gave us a terribly sick man and now we are all sick! Nigeria is a laughing stock in the comity of nations.

I must stop but I hope that the media would be bolder. I know the risk; I mean who wants to write that Obasanjo is a thief only to be found dead the next day, in cold blood? Who wants to write that Yar Adua is a stupid man for not building hospitals in Katsina or Abuja only to be shot dead or assassinated in the presence of his children? Nigeria is too delicate for the truth, but the TRUTH we must say even if it means laying down our lives. Afterall nobody will leave this world alive and only the truth can give us and our children that freedom, independence and justice that have eluded this failed country for almost 50 years…!

Nigeria’s Political Dilemma and Secession in the air

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By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria has been without a ruler or leader for several days now. In my opinion Nigeria has never had a president since May 2007. The man who was illegally imposed on us is now very sick and lying in some hospital in far away Saudi Arabia. Call it the shame of Nigeria-the nation with the largest concentration of black people not been able to provide good health care for its own (fake) president! Imagine the fate of the man on the street who has to beg to be able to afford a pill for his headache! What a tragedy for our nation?

Before he was bundled away he didn’t hand over the reign of power to his deputy, the so called vice president Goodluck Jonathan. On several occasions in the past Mr. Yar Adua had left his ill-gotten post unceremoniously without handing over to the man next to him. But this time it appears he will be away for a long-long time. There are uncertainties if he would be able to stand on his feet again, let home forcefully and illegally govern a nation of 150m passive people. Yes, we are that many but almost stupidly passive!

If we are not too passive or fashion-ly resilient we should have taken back all the things that were stolen from us or we should have kicked away the things that we didn’t ask for. Nobody voted for Mr. Yar Adua in the first place, so it was a stupid passivity that we allowed him to reign, forcefully.

We have been left alone several times without a ruler or a leader we still sit down and adopt the wait and see approach. By now millions of Nigerians should be on the streets demanding an end to this useless dilemma. Our economy is bad and investment is uncertain, yet we sit at home or go to work pretending that all will be well. The national budget is unknown making the already bad economy even looking predictably worse in the days ahead.

The men and women who pretend to be in the national assembly are too busy with personal interests and political survival that they do not see or realise how USELESS they have become in their own existence. If they are not useless what are they still doing when Nigeria with a population of over 140m has no legal president? Their own personal individual emergence continues to haunt them and they know that trying to do anything “right” will jeopardise their political future. I dare any member of the Nigeria Senate or House of Rep to sanely move for the removal of Yar Adua! They are all birds of the same feather-wicked and evil in colour.

The junta who want to have a northern president at all cost or the removal of Goodluck Jonathan to pave away for a Northern President to replace Yar Adua have now sown new seeds of secession. If the North must be president at all cost or at any cost, it makes more sense that they should keep the north to themselves. The rest of the south can decide what to do with their regions.

If the constitution of the PDP takes pre-eminence over that of Nigeria, then there should not be a country called Nigeria. This definitely is not the best option for Nigeria but it appears sensible that if the north wants to always dominate power then the other regions have the opportunity and reason to say, NO MORE!
The South-South have already issued a warning that if Jonathan cannot be the president in the absence of Yar Adua then the rest of us should brace up to a secession. That is more than justified. I mean if the constitution is not followed then there is no country to belong to. Therefore the individual nationalities have a reason to carve out their own existence. No one knows if there will be civil rife and on what scale.

But seriously what is wrong with Nigeria and Nigerians? I cannot stop looking at the intelligence question and the black race. Are we really stupid? Why is it so hard to follow the norm?

One man is sick and incapable, what is wrong with the deputy taking over as it is written in the constitution? Why should there be any rumour or allegation that a group from the north is putting pressure on the VP to resign? What sort of useless agreement could have been made between the VP and the North before the emergence of this unelected government? Are these the outcomes of Nigeria’s crazy democracy-one in which our votes are never counted? How long shall be continue with this nonsense? For how long shall we remain captives and slaves in our own country? For how long shall we bring shame and dishonour to ourselves and to Africa?

A time must come and maybe this is the best chance to redefine our mode of existence and the conditions for our co-existence or disintegration. What is of paramount significance and importance is the quality of lives that we want to live. We must be able to address the best avenues to attain our objectives for the nearest future.

To continue to live passively, doing nothing and encouraging these dictators-visible and invisible is a disservice to ourselves, our children and our children’s children. Just over the weekend Shakira said on Larry King Live: “we should be political, we must participate in the decisions that affect the future of our nations”

This statement must be directed to every Nigerian. We must participate-and we must start to do so positively-in the decisions that affect us now and our children in the future. Our political madness must stop and the way we do our elections must change. If nothing changes then we are confirming the fears of some group that as the black race we are not intelligent afterall. The prevalence of poverty and the fact that more than 90m live on less than 1 dollar per day despite the oil wealth of our country does not show that we are intelligent on our own soil. Maybe we are elsewhere.

The days ahead will shed more light on our intelligence especially in the political arena. The future of Nigeria is in our hands and whatever we decide to do or not do about it.

The Bad Luck and Evil in Nigeria Today

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By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigerians are resilient, no doubt about that.

The current illegal regime in Nigeria is full of bad luck and evil. Nothing good has happened in Nigeria since May 2007 when Yar Adua was illegally installed as the ruler of Nigeria. I curse the day I will call him a president! He will never be one!

Nigerian sports has now died completely. Education is extinct. Health care is rubbish in the public health institutions. In private hospitals, health care is as expensive as gold-

Roads and other infrastructure are near collapse. The cost of living is out through the roof. Employment is record high and crime rate is extraordinary.

Purchasing power of the naira is in the ebb and the cost of transportation has skyrocketed over and over again.

Summarily, the state of security is zero as anyone can be killed or kidnapped at anytime.

Yar Adua is full of bad luck and it is surprising that the people of Nigeria cannot kick this evil man out of the way. He is illegal and non-performing. His reign has brought tears and harm to our daily lives and he is still be pampered like an egg. He is using our money to treat himself in Saudi Arabia while 5 000 children die weekly immediately after or during birth.

This is so silly, as in what is going on in Nigeria. It is worse than horror movie.

If Nigerians don’t know, they should read it from me that as long as illegality and evil government persist in Nigeria, things will get worse and worse.

Life will never get better under the reign of illegality and evil. Millions of Nigerians will not experience the good life until they make a decision to steer the course of the National democracy and the respect for the rights of all and sundry.

Until this mafiac reign of illegality, corruption and evil machinations are crushed, the bad luck, poverty and all the attributes of a failed state will persist in Nigeria.

The first thing to do is to get Yar Adua and other forms of illegality out of the way. A revolution of minds and attitudes will present the way forward for Nigeria. The status quo is the way of perdition and ruin.

I feel so sorry Nigeria, the ant of Africa

Nigeria 2009 BC?

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By Adeola Aderounmu

There is almost 100% complete darkness in Nigeria. The other day women in Abuja were rejoicing over the promise by NEPA that they will be supplied electricity from 7am to 10am daily.

Almost every household in Nigeria now has 1, 2 or 3 power generator sets. From small sizes making loud noises to the very big making deafening noises they come in different shapes and makes. There are even custom-built power generators with minimum price of N150, 000. Nigeria in my opinion is probably the most polluted country in the world. The noise and chemical substances release from the combustion of fuel may have severe consequences now and in the future.

So where does this leave Nigeria because she Nigeria prides herself as the giant of Africa. I hope every Nigerian knows that this total absence of public power supply is a big ridicule. It is a very serious shame and catastrophe.

I do not need to re-evaluate the impact on the cost of business and the subsequent high rate of unemployment. What about the inconvenience and the unhappiness knowing that after a hard day at work, you are going back to the heat or the noise that surrounds you. Nerves can break down!

Darkness poses a huge security risk. Bad intentions and armed robberies are made easy under the shade of darkness.

But this lazy government in Nigeria is not even doing anything positive in ensuring that power generation is improved. After 10 useless years of democracy power generation has dropped sharply, the cost of living has increased and the standard of living is extremely poor. Violence, riots, strike and civil unrest is commonplace. Almost all the important public institutions are experiencing one form of unrest or the other.

Education is completely paralyzed and the health care industry is zero. Yar Adua is on his way to The Middle East where he will receive Medical attention. Nigeria’s fake president for you! How else do you want to describe the state of health in Nigeria when the one who claims to be number one citizen goes abroad to receive treatment?

This is why I was visibly shaken by statements made by Jack Warner FIFA’s vice president as he praised Nigeria and our health institutions preparatory to the U-17 World cup. I am wondering why Yar Adua did not go to one of those hospitals that Jack Warner was describing at the draws in Abuja on Friday 7th of August 2009. What is wrong with Jack Warner?

Seriously what will it take?
To have education back on course?
To have our health care up to standard, available and affordable?
To have good roads and basic infrastructure?
To have 24 hour constant power supply all year all life?
To improve the standard of living?
To reduce the cost of living?
To ensure that we practice democracy?
To ensure that life is worth living in Nigeria?

I am very confused, sad and disappointed in Nigeria where “be corrupt” is the first law of survival…