Boko Haram and One Hell of a Country

July 30, 2009July 31, 2009 / Adeola / Leave a comment

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria will have to do a lot more on her immigration policy. Chadians and Nigerien infiltrating Nigeria and unleashing mayhem on Nigerians is completely unacceptable. Northern Nigeria is a ready-made fertile ground for jihadists and for once those who introduced the sharia system of government in Northern Nigeria are beginning to see the foolishness of their actions.

In the name of politics and political gains, the Northern states in Nigeria introduced the sharia system of governance which is contrary to what the national constitution stipulates. Nigeria is a secular country and the introduction of sharia under the Obasanjo administration is a very costly mistake. It was an act of madness which MUST be reverted as early as possible. Obasanjo did nothing to stop the foolishness and stupidity of the Northern Governors which incidentally include Yar’ Adua who is now ruling Nigeria after forcing his way to power through illegitimate elections.

Bokom Haram is the latest addition to the “hell” that Nigerians are going through. This is a national problem and the effects are profound in the North of Nigeria. The illegal immigrants from Chad and Niger and the massive pool of unemployed Northerners have now become a national emergency.

Bokom Haram would have to be wiped out literarily. I am sure of this. But the real battle will include addressing fundamental issues relating to the Nigerian constitution, education, social infrastructure and national orientation. What does the constitution say about religion and secularity?

When we have addressed the issue of returning the Northern States to normalcy, it will bring social justice and fairness to the various citizens esp Christians living in Northern Nigeria. I mean the south of Nigeria is still secular and no southern states have declared their territory Christian Nation. So if Nigeria is one country, there should be a way unify the country in an absolute manner. If the Northern States continue to have Sharia constitution, then Nigeria is definitely not one country. It will be an illusion to address her as such.

Religious crises are parts of the hallmarks of Northern Nigeria. Bokom Haram is the latest addition to the madness in Northern Nigeria. Over the years we have seen how Christians and other innocent citizens have been slaughtered for no reasons at all. There was a time a problem in far away Denmark led to the slaughtering of Christians in Northern Nigeria. To avoid a Miss World Show from being staged in Nigeria, Christians also paid with their lives. They were murdered by riots in Northern Nigeria.
The level of ignorance and illiteracy in Northern Nigeria is extremely high and shameful. This is the same Nigeria that has been ruled for several years by military men and civilians from Northern Nigeria. These rulers do not have plans to educate the civilians in the North, at least not to the standard that is obtainable in the East, South and West of Nigeria. This way the few privileged ruling class in the North can conveniently suppress the illiterate population. Worse still is the ease with which these illiterate populations are harnessed and used for religious and political violence and riots.

In this manner, the Bokom Haram found a fertile ground to infiltrate the vulnerability of the people and the states in the North of Nigeria. It is a sad situation. Years of neglect, underdevelopment and ineptitudes has caught up with the North. It has infected the entire country because everything is now slow and almost standstill. The country is almost entirely paralyzed due to strikes and inefficiency of institutions.

Due to the mentality of the illiterates and politicians from Northern Nigeria, I don’t know if it is possible to completely prevent religious riots or uprisings in Northern Nigeria. It is a very complex situation as ignorance is a real disease. But a few things can be done over the next few decades for the future of Nigeria.

Education should be given more attention. Massive and unprecedented efforts should be made to educate all the children born in Northern Nigeria and of course in Nigeria as a whole. Such an effort will minimize the high level of illiteracy and consequently ignorance about religion and religious tolerance. Civics should be taught in Nigerian schools. Tolerance, co-existence and the acceptance of other people’s views should be emphasized.

Imagine that 80% of the Manufacturing companies in Kano have closed businesses. Kano is the commercial center of Northern Nigeria. This means that probably millions of youth in the North are unemployed or idle. Urgent steps must be taken to address unemployment across Nigeria. Electricity is almost absent in Nigeria and this is affecting businesses. What is wrong with Nigeria? Electricity must be restored by all means so that business can come back to Nigeria. Individuals and private people also need electricity to do many things.

Provision of basic infrastructures ranging from housing to water and safe environment (in addition to the electricity mentioned above) is now even more than National Emergency. It is something that must be done NOW!

Mohammed Yusuf

Mohammed Yusuf KILLED

Mohammed Yusuf (www.bbc.co.uk)

Image from BBC

Detained Nigeria sect leader dead http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8177451.stm

Mohammed Yusuf has been killed in Police Custody. Extra-judicial killing?

2009 Nigeria: Abuja Scavenger Makes Usd1.00 Daily

July 26, 2009 / Adeola / 1 Comment

By Adeola Aderounmu

A few days ago in Abuja a group of women waylaid the FCT Minister. Apparently these women representing families that have been deprived of electricity supply for several weeks decided to embarrass the Minister as he was leaving his electric-powered house for his comfortable office in a long convoy.

Somehow the Minister Adamu Aliero managed to get the NEPA manager in Abuja to the site where he was being detained and interrogated by the helpless but determined mothers and wives. The NEPA manager promised for the umpteenth time that electricity will be restored to the area. But he said that the power supply for the next few months will probably be between the hours of 7-10 am daily.

I was shocked when the women agreed with such a proposition. But then can anyone blame them? They are probably aware that some parts of Nigeria have been in darkness for several years. With Nigerian total power generation fast approaching 0 MW, they must know that they can’t ask or get too much from a very slow poison government (VSPG). So the anticipation of electricity for 3 hours per day will be a privilege if NEPA works out a solution. However, I seriously doubt that they will get 3 h/day supply of electricity.

I spent most of 2001 fighting a war against NEPA. Residents of 23 Road/402 Road Axes of Festac Town would never forget how I risk the lives of their children to NEPA Alausa, NEPA 512 Road and NEPA Agboju almost every other day. We even stopped at LTV Ikeja on our way. We made the newspapers, we made the TVs but we labored in vain. I know NEPA very well; it’s an acronym for DARKNESS and STONE AGE.

I have also seen a report that showed how wastes are disposed indiscriminately in Abuja. Senate committee members’ pretending to be doing their work were threatening to summon 3 ministers to the house of assembly as if the assembly has done any tangible thing in 2 years apart from sharing money. The FCT minister, the health minister and the minister in charge of the Environment don’t have to worry. Once the senate committee members are settled by the concerned contractors and agents, they will shut up.

In that same report you could see recycling facilities that have been built for upwards of 20 billion naira performing below capacity or not functioning at all. One of the inefficient sewage handling facility runs on 8 million naira diesel monthly. How true is that? 8 million naira monthly on diesel! Where are the contractors who built malfunctioning waste-handling facilities?

One Nigerian man, an Abuja scavenger makes 200 naira daily from toiling and searching for useful materials on the expanse of land housing Abuja rubbishes. By selling plastics or other useful materials, this scavenger makes approximately Usd1.00 daily. This is not a revelation. It is well known that this country flowing with milk, money and honey has about 70% of the population living below the poverty line, and about 54% of the population living on less than a dollar per day. It is just remarkable that while politicians, looters and contractors are making several billions of naira/dollars in less than 1 year, there are people making less than N70 000 annually! Some people do not make money at all and they have no known form of social security.

Was I the only one who heard Adamu Aliero saying that the (Human) Rehabilitation Centers in Abuja needs rehabilitation? This was in response to how the FCT can help homeless and less privileged people in Abuja. Adamu came across as a very confused person. What does it mean to say that a rehabilitation center needs rehabilation? Who is not confused or indolent among the entire members of the VSPG?

I don’t think Adamu knows what is called “from waste to wealth”. It is unfortunate that the (easy) oil money, corruption, irresponsible acts, ineptitude and mediocrity in governance do not allow us to have people who appreciate the existence of other resources in Nigeria. That waste in Abuja and elsewhere in Nigeria are money spinning industries that are lying in desolation-double wahala if you ask me. That scavenger can be gainfully employed if the recycling facility is working. He would even be a tax-payer! How much damage have we done to the Nigerian economy by relegating Agriculture, Education, Science, Medicine and Technology?

The present administration in Nigeria is one that is a complete failure. Unfortunately for ordinary Nigerians things are even going to get worse because at this moment the attention is now on 2015 Elections. 2011 Elections are almost over and governance is at a standstill in 2009. David Mark who constantly reminds me of how Nigeria became a failed country has canvassed for automatic tickets for all senators and Iwu the chief forger must have finished compiling the fabricated results. The cycle of idiocy has just been renewed, 2 years in advance.

It takes a combination of foolishness and stupidity to believe in something called vision 20-2020 in a very corrupt and unserious country. What happened to shelter for all by the year 2000? In this backward moving country, MDG have become Millennium Death Goals. Nigeria is too corrupt to achieve goals and targets. We must strive (even if it means against all odds) to counter the maneuvers of the politicians who have failed to deliver until now. We can do it, it is possible.

The channel from a failed state to a sustainable state is convoluted and only a purposeful leadership can navigate clearly to take us there. Miracles apart, it will at least 50 years and we are not even on the starting block yet. As we endure the last 2 years of this extremely wasteful and disgraceful illegal regime, we must prepare for the future of our children’s children. As we approach 2011 let all responsible and well-meaning Nigerians come together and form the most assertive (single) medium of CHANGE known to mankind. It may be the last chance for this generation to take back what is theirs from a formidable gang of rogues.

The Most Corrupt People I know

June 9, 2009 / Adeola / Leave a comment

By Adeola Aderounmu.

Mrs. Waziri said she is prepared to sacrifice her life in the pursuit of her job as the boss of the EFCC. I have heard or listened to many useless comments before and this is one of the most useless remarks you can hear from a Nigerian official. What about all the corrupt charges hanging on her neck plus all the sacred cows she has preserved for Umaru’s next campaign?

I have tried to raise my head high at all times-and I am still doing that. I wear clothes with N.I.G.E.R.I.A on the back and coats of arm on the front. I have a Nigerian flag standing on my parlour shelf and a big Nigerian flag is hanging conspicuously on my window in a white-dominated environment. Despite being torn apart between the choices of nationalities I continue to remind myself that I am Nigerian. I don’t know how much longer I can bear the huge cross. It comes with a lot of humiliation-accepting the responsibilities and bearing the shame for what some ignoble people have done and what others are still doing. Thank heaven for the game of football else there will be almost nothing positive about the green-white-green.

Everyday I rehearse at least 1 article in my mind yet I have written less than 7 in the last 6 months. This is because I long for real participation in the struggle that will emancipate Nigerians from the madness that has pervaded the country for 49 years. I thought about my (radical) activities and the plans I had just few weeks before I left Nigeria and I wondered if I would not have been forgotten in the prison by now. Maybe not…

Sometimes I ask myself: Is it just me? Maybe I am crazy. But the answers are quick to come. Human nature is besieged with greed, envy and insatiation. If you add this to the complete lack of cognitive ability in the crude men and women who control violent-takeover of power with ill-gotten wealth in the peculiar Nigerian political landscape, you will end up with probably the most unreliable collection of political aspirators in the universe. This is equals to extremely wicked and selfish people.

I have written on a number of occasions in this square that Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world. I stand by my observation. In those articles, I have also argued and explained why. The amazing thing is that the situation remains the same. I know about the corruption in South America and South East Asia and elsewhere. The most corrupt people that I know are in Nigeria. I have compared the level of developments in Mexico and Thailand to that of Nigeria and I know that a European tourist will rather go to Mexico with Swine flu than to Nigeria. No amount of Tsunami or molestation of foreigners can derail the tourism industry in Thailand. It will bounce back-branding or no branding.

It is not that Nigeria does not plan. We do. It is not that we don’t have visions or missions. We do proclaim those. The very few sensible people among the leaders in Nigeria are very good with textbook versions of how things should be done. But the reality is that the mad act called corruption is the stumbling block to almost everything.

Nigeria as a country will not make progress. Not too soon anyway because the most corrupt people that I have ever known in my life are in charge in Nigeria. Mr Yar Adua is a symbol of corruption. He personifies corruption to the highest power. It is ridiculously shameful. It is one of the major weight hanging on my green-white-green curtain. I am not proud of the position of that office right now. It weighs me down than my personal burdens.

The guy has openly confessed that he was rigged into power. He has also insulted the intelligence of anyone who cares to know that he cannot prosecute all the corrupt people around him because literarily they are all the same. Men and women who have no honour! Altogether, these people have no integrity and their sense of judgments is clouded by greed, selfishness and the corruption that goes with power.

How can any plan, vision or mission work out in such a counterproductive country like Nigeria? The country makes monies that are shared among crooks, godfathers, opportunists, sycophants and extremely corrupt individuals. It takes madness to store money in foreign accounts when Nigerians are starving. In Yar Adua’s Katsina, thousands of women fetched dirty water to sell from deep wells. They make less than 1 dollar a day! Generally while Nigerian masses are classified among the poorest in the world, Nigerian politicians are the highest paid in the history of man. Paradox or irony?

Schools has dilapidated, hospitals are so unsecured that even Yar Adua himself depends on voodoo and foreign hospitals. Schools have been shut, opened and shut again. School fees are above the clouds, far beyond the sky and education is no longer for all. Billions of dollars are resting in private accounts and the deaths on the dilapidated roads are blamed on witches and wizards. The electricity supply is the worst in the whole world and the seventh largest producer of crude oil is now a laughing stock in the comity of nations. A nation of 150m people depend on less than 3 000 MW of electricity. Michael Faraday must be turning in his grave. The Niger Delta is now a killing field to the delights of the clique whose groundnuts have been grounded.

President Obama is visiting Ghana because Nigeria is so unbelievably corrupt that any attempt by Obama to visit Nigeria can destroy his political career. Nigerians have been deceived again that the economy will be among the greatest 20 by year 2020. Nonsense! How can that happen? What about the persistence of the crooks and political jobbers that are siphoning the money that we will use to build the economy and infrastructure. Even when I think about FIFA and the world cup saga, I just think that FIFA is simply stupid.

It is only in Nigeria that FIFA deals with government which is against the statutory procedures of FIFA. FIFA knows very well that Nigeria lacks the infrastructure and when we do have them, we don’t maintain them. Yet FIFA is still looking in the direction of Nigeria. Will it take a 10 year old boy (born in 1999 when we hosted the world) to inform FIFA that the corruption in Nigeria will not allow us to do anything right? FIFA is not even thinking about the heat in Nigeria and that matches cannot be played at night because of lack of electricity. How does FIFA think sef?

I simply do not understand why Nigerians are allowing all this rubbish. It beats me! Is this why the intelligence question is dangling over our head? How dull are we really? I was expecting a total revolt or some kind of revolution with the nonsense that took place in Ekiti. Was what an election? E gba mi o..! That was absolute rubbish and to think that it passed is unimaginable and unthinkable. What happened to the song we sang those days: how many people police go kill o, how many people police go kill…? What has happened to the resistance that pursued and hastened IBB to Abuja? Some people deserved to be chased to the bush right now.

The most corrupt people that I know are working with the Nigerian government headed by one unserious and incapable Yar Adua and the earlier Nigerians wake up, the better for the future of their children. I seriously do think we need to do something now. The time is now. We must enforced an appropriate electoral reform and pursue early elections. Let’s see if we’ve learnt any lesson. Our future is ruined. The future of our children is stolen..!

The validation and triumph of evil in Nigeria

December 13, 2008December 13, 2008 / Adeola / Leave a comment

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria's greatest enemies

(Picture culled from the Nigerian Guardian Newspaper)

Look no further! This man Michael Aondoakaa is the face of evil behind the massive corruption and looting in the Nigerian Political space. This is the man shielding all the corrupt governors and politicians in Nigeria.

He can congratulate Yar Adua because together they are strangulating democracy and refusing to prosecute the likes of Ibori who helped them to power.

This is Nigeria, representing the worst democracy in the world. More than 90 million Nigerians are living below the poverty level courtesy of the implications of the actions and inactions of people like Aondoakaa and an extremely incapable illegal president called Yar Adua.

The Nigerian Supreme Court is definitely made up of dumbs and nonentities and that is why they could validate evil and make it triumph.

What a shameless country! A country without real leaders, a country without a president!

Only the heavens know when the people will rise up and take what is theirs.