April 11, 2014 by The Nation

THE NATION FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 16

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'Niggers' with attitude Email: tunji_ololade@yahoo.co.uk 08038551123, 08111845040

T is not what you call him, but what he answers to that matter most. This minute, another innocent child is born into the world as a Nigerian ‘nigger.’ He will grow up pitifully, as just another poor black ant. His parents shall name him Clinton, Dave, Cregg, Oliver, Richard, Lovett, Colet, Da Silva, Humphrey, Jackson, to mention a few. His real names: Akanbi, Chiedu, Chimaroke, Isichei and so on shall become his “native names” or “middle names;” names he shall grow to loathe and be ashamed of. At a tender age, he shall be taught to despise anything and everything Nigerian, by parents who will persistently bemoan the erosion of the Nigerian culture. That impressionable child will be enrolled in schools that teach the superiority of western civilization. He shall be taught to think of Africans, Nigerians in particular, as an inferior race. He shall be psychologically defrauded and taught to accept his place as member of a hostage race and generation. As he grows up, he too shall learn to evolve a masochistic appetite for alien norms, unearned riches, undeserved acclaim and everlasting humiliation. Time

and over again, he shall learn to assimilate and project “imported condescension” as the next best palliative to his innate malaise. Like his forbears, he will get too impatient for his daily dosage of indoctrination and imported disdain and thus quit gawking at celebrated perversion on cable TV, social media and foreign news publications to be part of it. He shall doggedly sweat his way through standoffish, ill-bred and disdainful foreign customs and immigration officials in order to enjoy his share of dishonor and racial profiling abroad. Abroad, he shall labour to be part of what kills him. Like hordes of Nigerians slaving away abroad, he shall strive and try the patience of reluctant Caucasian hosts with his recalcitrant corruption and doggedness for eternal humiliation. He shall crowd the sidewalks of New York, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London, sweeping the streets, doing the dishes and washing the anuses of elderly Caucasians with the shameless carriage of “a nigger who would rather die than return home.” And if he is fortunate to come from a privileged background at home,

‘It is what makes the Nigerian Presidency nurture insults from perverse caucasian governments threatening to withdraw financial aids if Nigeria fails to legitimize same-sex copulation and marriage. It is what makes an average Nigerian lose his head in arrant madness over foreign soccer leagues. It is what makes the Nigerian lust to be less than to the pleasure of the so-called “first world”’

N a day the All Progressives Congress (APC) held a hugely successful congress in the 236 wards in Ogun State, I returned to Abeokuta at about 8pm to the warm embrace of the illumination provided by the new highways. From Breweries Bus-stop, cruising towards the city-centre, I was fascinated by the illuminated skies around Akin Olugbade road, provided by the lights adorning the beautiful roads constructed by the Amosun administration. Momentarily, I thought I was somewhere in Europe. Who could have imagined this is possible in Abeokuta? I recall that Pastor Tunde Bakare came to Abeokuta not long ago and echoed the same words: no one would have thought these things are doable. But Senator Ibikunle Amosun has surprised everyone. A couple of our friends in the media who are from Abeokuta have equally expressed pleasant amazement. One said he found it difficult to locate his house by virtue of the transformation of the state capital. If Amosun could accomplish all these in less than three years, one can imagine what the state will look like by the time he completes eight years. Hear the United States’ Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr James Entwistle, as reported in the Vanguard, Nation, Daily Independent (28/02/14). “What I see is fantastic, rapid development in Abeokuta. The roads, the bridges, the flyovers are very, very impressive.” Imagine if the Ambassador had had the opportunity to visit Ota, Aiyetoro, Ilishan/Ago-Iwoye, Ijebu-Ode, Sagamu and out-of-the-way areas like Ilara/Ijoun, etc. where the “very very impressive roads, the bridges, the flyovers” he saw in Abeokuta are being replicated! Interestingly, I passed through Ota on that fateful day of the APC Ward Congress on April 5, and gasped for breath! This is an area I frequented between 2005 and 2011. Is this Ota? Who could have imagined the possibility of all these three years ago? The beautiful Ota township roads, the pedestrian walkways - under construction; that axis used to be hell in terms of appalling state of the roads and attendant human sufferings. So, it is actually possible to jump-start development... But my mood has now changed. To think that Amosun accomplished all these - to speak in local parlance - by managing money, cutting this, cutting that, reducing that cost, cancelling that other one altogether - sometimes making enemies in the process, since some people are already used to getting free money from political office holders at the expense of development - has the tendency to make one feel downcast. Here are the reasons. The Federal Government sits on 52 per cent of the rev-

abroad he shall dwell, enabled and hampered by the lowliness of his mental skies. He shall desperately seek to impress caucasian course mates and neighbours with extravagant parties and insane acquisitions. He shall traipse the largely well kept streets – by immigrants like him – of London and New York in his desperate quests to purchase monumental forgetfulness at the mall. The over-celebrated malls of America and Europe shall continually whet his yen and titillate his airs. They shall become heaven to the ‘hellish’ markets of Ajegunle and Oyingbo ‘Ibo-made’ products. He is everything that is wrong with the black race. So pronounced is his inferiority complex that the tragedies of his civilization perpetually wail in its littlest details; take for instance, the contemporary Nigerian’s obsession to host extravagant wedding ceremonies and birthday parties abroad to the benefit of the host state and loss of valuable revenue abroad. It is even more amazing to see him obsess about foreign football leagues while the local football league suffers a slow, gruesome death. Like tadpole in Iju-Ishaga road crater, he believes if he could wade in the puddle for so long, he would grow scales and scissor-tail like an alligator in the English wild. An inelegant ‘mumu,’ he keeps pretending to channel joy and fulfillment from the attainments of another land while he bemoans the “poor leadership” that’s “killing Nigeria.” In response, he seeks escape by renouncing his roots. He conveniently forgets that, no matter how long the tabby cat pretends to roar like a lion, it will forever remain a cat…a whiny, pitiful parlour pet. The Nigerian youth has learnt to justify his moral claim to the successes of western civilization. He has learnt to intone that the so-called “first world” was built from the

blood and sweat of his slave ancestors thus his right to a stake in the “first world.” Thus today, the average Nigerian continually celebrates his cultural graduation from the servitude of slavery to being verbally nettled condescendingly as a “third world nigger” and subsequently distinguished by association with his perceived level of evolution. The Nigerian ‘nigger’ no doubt personifies the imagery of the black nigger in Chika Onyeani’s “Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success: A Spider Web Doctrine.” He suitably illustrates Onyeani’s depiction of the black race as a consumer race and not a productive race. “We are a conquered race and it is utterly foolish for us to believe that we are independent. The Black Race depends on other communities for its culture, its language, its feeding, and its clothing.” “Despite enormous natural resources,” he says, “Blacks are economic slaves because they lack the ‘killer-instinct’ and ‘devil-maycare’ attitude of the caucasian, as well as the ‘spider web economic mentality’ of the asian.” Onyeani calls for economic liberation through hard work, self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and fiscal discipline; he advocates building of better black neighborhoods instead of moving to hostile white neighborhoods; he appeals for unity, because “When spider webs unite, they can be a lion” (Ethiopian proverb). Onyeani condemns self-destructive behaviors such as ethnic warfare, dictatorship, black-on-black crime, and slavery in Africa. But fitting as it is to the Nigerian malaise, Onyeani’s literature is just another version of Johann F. Blumenbach’s human racial classification in which the “caucasian” is at the top of the hierarchy and the black is at the bottom. Capitalist Nigger is also reminiscent of the French philosopher Lucien Levy-Bruhl’s “primitive” or “prelogical mind,”

which he originally attributed to the Africans; and Hegel’s exclusion of sub-Saharan Africa from the world history among others. Like Onyeani I believe in the liberating character of the truth. However, I do not subscribe to his legacy of disbelief about Africa which permeates European imagination. Instead of confronting old stereotypes, Onyeani recites them with relish, thereby refreshing erroneous notions in the reader’s mind. His description of the African as non-productive, lazy, slavish, Neanderthal, dishonest, undisciplined and genetically unable to take care of himself is contemptible even as it speaks to the core of the Nigerian nigger. I do not agree with Onyeani for his “Capitalist Nigger” epitomizes the worst of blasé witticism that serve like double-edged sword, decapitating plausible realities and counter-arguments in its quest for applause. Yet in his subtle narcissism subsists truths, relative truths if you like. It rediscovers and plumbs the depths of inferiority plaguing the Nigerian nigger. It is what makes the Nigerian Presidency nurture insults from perverse caucasian governments threatening to withdraw financial aids if Nigeria fails to legitimize same-sex copulation and marriage. It is what makes an average Nigerian lose his head in arrant madness over foreign soccer leagues. It is what makes the Nigerian lust to be less than to the pleasure of the so-called “first world.” It is an emotional attachment, a bond of interdependence between captive and captor that develops when someone threatens your life, takes away your freedom, and doesn’t kill you. It is what causes the Nigerian to bark like a stray dog, pitifully seeking the collar end of the leash of the “first world.”

Between Abeokuta and Abuja By Soyombo Opeyemi enue allocation from the federation account while the 36 states share 26 per cent. It has been like that before President Jonathan came to power, so it has nothing to do with him per se. Among those 36 states is Ogun. When you divide the 26 per cent by 36, you have 0.7 per cent - but that is assuming the allocation is shared equally. But it is not, so Ogun State ends up with about 0.3 per cent out of the 26 per cent every month. Despite the gargantuan 52 per cent being collected by the federal government, virtually all the federal roads in Ogun State are in tatters: Atan-Agbara road (Agbara is an industrial hub in Nigeria), Owode-Ilaro road, Ikorodu-Sagamu highway, etc. I’m sure the Minister of Works has never heard the names of some of these roads let alone their locations. You see the futility of having federal roads in Nigeria. You see the grave injustice in the federal government getting as much as 52 per cent while the states are starving. Wait a minute; the Nigeria Police Force is an agency of the federal government. But it is from the paltry sums being collected by the states that the police are equipped. So, from the meagre 0.3 per cent Ogun receives from the federation account, the police are also being funded! Until the federal authorities started their problem of don’t touch this federal road, don’t touch that one, Ogun had been taking from the 0.3 per cent to repair the completely failed portions of the socalled federal roads. Imagine the amount the state government spent to repair parts of Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and several other federal roads! This is because the masses don’t like to differentiate between federal and state roads. Once any road is in Ogun territory, then Amosun must be responsible for its maintenance and reconstruction! Again, despite the pretensions in the concurrent list, power is still in the exclusive list of the 1999 Constitution. By the time the modernization going on in Abeokuta, nay Ogun is completed, there is no guarantee that the entire state capital can be illuminated like London, Paris or Berlin because Abeokuta currently gets 20 megawatts whereas it needs at least 80 megawatts, according to Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company! This much I experienced last Saturday, after I exited the illumination of Akin Olugbade, Ibara-Totoro and The First Bridge, and moved to Abiola Way, facing Ijaiye/Sapon from Iyana-Mortuary - all modern highways constructed by the current government. Is it then proper for electricity to still be in the exclusive

list (notwithstanding the so-called deregulation, backed by a subordinate legislation) when each state, local council, community, household, etc. ought to have the freedom to generate its own electricity and use it for its own purpose - in the 21st century? For the umpteenth time, I ask that these federal roads should revert to the states. The Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and National Assembly (NASS) should ensure that in the new revenue allocation template, Abuja (FG) gets 25 per cent from the Federation Account, while Abeokuta (Ogun) receives 1.5 per cent. Each of the 36 states should receive at least 1.5 per cent from the federation account. We are all from the states, there are no federal people. Concentration of powers and money at the centre has ruined Nigeria, drained it of vitality and made its development elusive for many lamentable years.The federal government should now concentrate on core federal matters such as foreign affairs, currency, and defence while powers are devolved to the states. With more revenue to the federating states and a truly federal constitution, the states will be in a position to maintain the highways (at cheaper costs), open up the bowels of their lands, revive agriculture, provide potable water, construct railway, generate and distribute electricity, provide security for their own people, and indeed, develop at their own pace – re-enacting and promoting healthy rivalries of the glorious days of the 50s and 60s… and building a strong and enduring United States of Nigeria. • Soyombo, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abeokuta.

‘Each of the 36 states should receive at least 1.5 per cent from the federation account. We are all from the states, there are no federal people. Concentration of powers and money at the centre has ruined Nigeria, drained it of vitality and made its development elusive for many lamentable years’