PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013
By Victor Nwoko
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piates and other drugs with addictive potential produce effects that are euphoric and illusory to the user, creating a false reality. They inhibit the ability of the individual to reason rationally and effectively through the changes they work in the brain. These substances mimic natural substances found in the body, acting through legitimate communication systems within the body to produce effects that are detrimental to the user. I cannot but see the parallel between these substances of abuse and the brands of religion that has crippled our beloved country, Nigeria. Nigerians are very religious. Across the land, religious activities and institutions are as ubiquitous as air. In fact, religion is a necessary addictive to political, economic and cultural life of the country. It permeates every sphere of existence of Nigerians inside and outside Nigeria. But everywhere religion is found among Nigerians, corruption abounds much more. Although the proof of causality will be too onerous for this article, an association may be easier to adduce from the abundance of anecdotal evidences out there. Politically and economically, Nigeria operates in a space defined by a synthetic mixture of black magic, religion and vacuous By Abba Mahmood
T
he English say it is "calling spade a spade". Here, one of the groups in Nigeria known for telling the truth and putting no colour to anything it says is the Gbagyi (Gwari). The Gbagyi do not have any false pretence. They say anything as it is. That is why anytime people want to say the truth without mincing words they say in Hausa language, "Muyi ta Gwari - Gwari" (let us do it GbagyiGbagyi style). Today I intend to say it as it is, no matter where ox is gored. This is what this column is known for, after all. With regard to 2015, let us say that President Goodluck Jonathan is going to contest. The legality or otherwise, as well as the moral and ethical dimensions, will be sorted out later by the law courts. If there is anything that gave him away, it is the interview he had with Amanpour of CNN recently. That interview was able to bring out Dr. Jonathan more than anything else. More than anyone else, the president is interested in continuing in office beyond 2015. He has made it clear by saying it as it is in body language. There was sympathy for him in 2009/10 when the sick Yar'adua was dying and the country was held to ransom because there was no proper communication to make him effectively take charge. All the governors and the National Assembly came to the rescue by using the Doctrine of Necessity to make him take charge and, ultimately, nature took its course and he became substantive president in May 2010 with the death of President Umaru Yar'adua. For the 2011 presidential election, the PDP governors had a meeting and unanimously agreed to support him for ONE term only. That decision was taken on Thursday, December 16, 2010,
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Corruption is like Opiates ideologies. The result is a system that has its moral and philosophical underpinnings in a cocktail of magical tales with religious leanings. To illustrate this, one need not look afar. A police officer is a candidate for immediate double promotion for doing his job especially in the presence of the Inspector-General or anyone with the ability to effect such. In countries where principles and order are observed, the officer may receive a medal for extraordinary bravery but no promotion because there is a laid down procedure and a guiding principle for that.. Yes, although the principles that informed the procedures for promotions are clearly stated in the police (or for that matter, civil service, army, bank etc) operational manual, it has no meaning beyond the pages upon which they are written. There is little wonder why the vast majority of our compatriots pray for double promotions - we act outside the bounds of rational principles. We act by impulse, as if overwhelmed by emotions to the detriment of our capacity to reason objectively Due process is a slogan in Nigeria while it is a reality of life in functional nations. It is an accepted 'truth' within
the Nigerian religious establishment that leaders both secular and religious are 'appointed' of God. This invariably means that such leaders are only answerable to God. This has led our people, leaders and followers down the path of complacency and laziness in the fight for eternal vigilance over the inalienable rights endowed on us by our creator. We rather resort to prayers in place of vocal opposition that demand accountability; we turn to fasting in place of civil opposition that articulates a viable alternative. Thus, we enable tyranny and corruption; enthrone injustice and ungodliness through our legitimate religious acts. No religious leader to my knowledge is accountable to the congregation in financial matters. Rather, they intimidate those who receive the revelation of accountability with heavenly curses and punishments. They teach that they are accountable to God alone. We grow up in our religious groups numb with respect to accountability. We are neither supposed to demand or expect it from our leaders. This sure feels like opium. There is a saying that the unborn Nigerian child cannot wait to get a share of the national cake. There is some truth to this because
the bribe givers and takers are religious Nigerians, The thieves pilfering and pillaging the nation's treasury are religious Nigerians. Yes, pastors, imams and other religious leaders are parts and parcels of the corrupt enterprise. Since money answers all things, it has become king above all things in our lives. How you come about your wealth doesn't matter; it can be baptized, renamed and you, canonized! Just bring a hefty sum for the work of God. We legitimize thievery, at least certain modes of it; we kill our collective conscience and we wonder why we keep producing leaders who are callous and unrepentant and very religious. We trade in fraud and stock-up corruption like treasure. Our pastors preach sermons copied in its entirety from televangelists or their books while claiming such as divine revelation received as they prayed. Our professors copy (plagiarize) other people's books and sell them as handouts to students. With the stolen intellectual property, we sell grades and graduate morally inane students and we wonder why we produce leaders who are clueless. We bribe (un)civil servants to do the very job they were hired and paid to do and we wonder why the engine of
Saying it as it is and the communique was read by Governor Shema of Katsina on behalf of his colleagues after they all had appended their signatures to that decision individually. It is clear that President Jonathan has jettisoned that agreement just as he threw out the zoning policy of his party in the course of the last election. The problem he has now is that he has many things to contend with over his 2015 ambition. One, he was supported based on trust in 2011 and now he has to have something to show for staying for almost six years by 2015. Two, there are 18 PDP state governors who are in their second term now who would naturally want to move on. Their support was critical to his emergence in 2011 and, being a former governor himself, Jonathan knows that EK Clark is not as useful to him for 2015 as the
governors that Clark is insulting now. From the many Supreme Court judgements too, such as Marwa vs Nyako and the celebrated case of Boni Haruna who inherited an election even before his principal was sworn in back in 1999 when Atiku was elevated to be the vice president to Obasanjo after winning the governorship of Adamawa, it is very clear that any stay in office of governor or president beyond EIGHT years is alien to the constitution. President Jonathan has to sort that out quickly with a competent court of law. Due to the fact that from Yar'adua to date every president and vice president has been a former state governor, every governor is seen as a potential president or vice president. That is why, collectively, these governors are very crucial to the whole
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Buhari is an inspirational leader any day but he has allowed himself to be mismanaged by people he is not ready to do away with. His main asset is his integrity. And, if after telling the whole world in tears that 2011 was his last contest for the presidency, he tries to change his mind now, at over 70 years of age, it is indeed unfortunate because that integrity will take flight
equation. There are a couple of governors who are presidential materials and everybody knows this. The PDP structure is skewed in their favour so that they are the teeth of the party. Obasanjo and Atiku committed that original sin that is now haunting the whole structure of the party. Every national officer of the party was either brought by a governor or the president and was adopted by "consensus" in the spirit of the party's "family affair". President Jonathan's main challenger in the last PDP primaries was former vice president Atiku Abubakar. Atiku wrongly came from a "northern" consensus platform. His speech at the convention dwelt on that "zoning" that was already jettisoned by the party. Atiku is still nursing presidential ambition but I cannot see where he will go in the current PDP. This is because I cannot see which state governor or even any national officer of the party that is behind him. This is just saying it as it is. Jonathan's main challenger in the presidential election was General Muhammadu Buhari. His party, the CPC, did not have a single councillor then because it was new. Some people in his party hierarchy also helped to mismanage the chances of the party to get at least a couple of state governors, which would have been a good starting point. Even Al-makura's governorship victory in Nasarawa in 2011 was largely a personal one and not based on any party popularity or acceptance, since the CPC has only four state assembly members out of 24 in the Nasarawa House of Assembly. This is just saying it as it is.
our government is dead, our roads, death traps, our hospitals, morgues and our aircrafts coffins. We thrive in disorderliness and crave darkness. Even those of us outside the shores of Nigeria, we crave for home in part because it affords us the opportunity for 'legal' disorderly conduct. For us, to wait in line is not just an inconvenience, it is shameful and beneath our person. We love darkness because light will expose our deficiencies, our weaknesses and our wickedness. Light threatens the root of our power. In our religious houses, we discourage reasoning and dissent because we prefer uniformity to unity. Top civil servants abhor dissent from their juniors because they fear being exposed as truly incompetent or clueless. Yes! We trade in fraud and breed corruption because we have created an environment where consciences, individual or collective, suffocate and die. This environment subtly changes the natural wiring of consciences like opiates do our brains. The euphoria of a certain quantity of booty dissipates quickly, requiring larger quantities for the euphoric effect. It flows down our head through our beards like the oil poured upon Aaron! No wonder we are addicted to corruption. Victor Nwoko lives in Philadelphia, USA. Then, there is even the sorry case of the prisoners' dilemma in the north. In game theory, the prisoners' dilemma is that one is enjoying at the expense of others or one is losing because of another's gain. Some people have been peddling the ridiculous falsehood that Buhari lost in 2011 because Shekarau and Ribadu did not withdraw from the race! Then, who stopped him from becoming victorious in 2003 when he contested against only Obasanjo? It does not necessarily mean that if Buhari alone contested against another person from the south, he would automatically win because he is from the north. Politics is more than that. Even to rig, you have to have some level of acceptance. Buhari has paid his dues; he should rest now. Buhari is an inspirational leader any day but he has allowed himself to be mismanaged by people he is not ready to do away with. His main asset is his integrity. And, if after telling the whole world in tears that 2011 was his last contest for the presidency, he tries to change his mind now, at over 70 years of age, it is indeed unfortunate because that integrity will take flight. That is just saying it as it is. The ongoing merger talks among opposition parties are a good thing for Nigeria's democracy. It will create a strong platform capable of challenging the PDP so that the democratic process will be more matured, deepened and widened. But if that merger is based on the ambition of certain individuals, then, it will go nowhere. If some people or section of Nigeria continues to say "Nigeria sai wane!", then, God will leave them with that wane! And everyone knows what that means. But, hey, this is just an ordinary citizen saying it as it is. Abba Mahmood is on www.Facebook.com