Nigeria, Democracy, 2019 and Beyond

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Toyin Falola

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Oct 16, 2018, 9:44:10 PM10/16/18

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Nigeria, Democracy, 2019 and Beyond

Tunde Bewaji, PhD, FJIM, MNAL

The world has witnessed bizarre things these past few years globally. It has been the period when democracy has bared its barren soul to the world in the form of Trumpism. The death of truth and dignity, decorum and human capacity for empathy in the world has been shameful and within Nigeria evil has been able to show its ugly head in the form of an emasculating governance inertia, making governance and peace the sacrificial he-goats on the altar of Sarakian perfidy.

When all kinds of bedfellows were accommodated within the coalition of opposition party in 2014 (in the form of APC) to banish and vanquish the ignoble and ignominious GEJ government, discerning persons wondered what the underlining script was. No sooner than election was concluded, and the turncoats found their ways back into the corridors of the National Assembly did they set in motion the most glaring case of daylight robbery in the political history of Nigeria. While the APC was still basking in the glow of victory at the polls, the criminals from the underbelly of PDPigs had concluded their plans of stealing the victory and turning it into a protection formula for their past malfeasance against the Nigerian people.

They (PDPigs migrants) who were defeated by the people at the polls colluded with willing and greedy bedfellows in the winning party (APC) to hijack the leadership of the National Assembly – Senate and House – in a surreptitious and deft coup de grace never before witnessed in any democratic society, and with that they set in tow the process of incapacitating the Presidency and the Change Agenda. The first thing on the agenda was the budget. This they blocked, savaged, padded and delayed into nothingness. When “The Single Account” system was implemented, they were enraged, as it blocked the sieve-like drain pipes through which they leaked government resources into various drain holes of graft. Then the BVN Banking system also became a serious clamp on their ability to evade, avoid and prevent detection. But they will not relent.

The elected President and APC party he headed took the reins of government in Nigeria at a particularly most challenging and unprecedented time of global depression and peace volatility in the last twenty years. When one examines the history of Nigeria’s oil resources and their contribution to national income, it will be seen that Obasanjo received an economy in decline; in fact, conspiracy theories have it that the military would not have allowed democracy a chance had it not been for the declining income of Nigeria. The reason was because Nigeria never invested in diversification so as to stave off the effects of fluctuations in raw material prices globally. But he was able to do some practical things which shored up his government. Showing the income analysis of Nigeria reveals, based on Crude Oil Prices alone, that the Yar’Adua government was the greatest beneficiary from this volatility, as Oil Prices reached the peak in 2008, when it was $140+ (http://www.fedprimerate.com/crude-oil-price-history.htm).

All the years leading to 2015, the prices never fell below $50. The best years were under Yar’Adua and GE Jonathan when the oil prices averaged to about $100, and Nigeria exported an average of 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, but with the failing health of Yar’Adua, he was never really in charge, and the vampires in the various part of his government fed fat on the crude oil blood of his untethered administration and the largesse of the land. The situation got worse under Jonathan, with the frenzy of open pillaging of the economy by all connected and sundry allies and cronies. This became so despicable that it led to open insurgencies in various parts of the country, leading to mini states within mini states, bands of outlaws taking control of various and unoccupied political landscapes in open defiance of the government of the Federation. The cluelessness was unimaginable; to make matters worse, this was by one who felt and proclaimed himself pompously the “holder” of the esteemed degree of Doctor of Philosophy from an accredited University in Nigeria; though as everything about him always panned out, he never really received this degree.

Let us examine the 16 years of PDP administration when Nigeria received the most from its oil industry. What infrastructural development did PDP accomplish in the 16 years of plenty. Absolutely nil. Virtually all the Federal Government Roads became death traps, taking the lives of the poor and the rich alike. The hospitals became morgues, and the schools became centers of cultism and open decadence, where certificates were traded for all kinds of favours. Yet more Nigerians bought jets, more pastors and mullahs and other spiritual charlatans built mansions, more persons of dubious income sources owned houses in Dubai and elsewhere.

In the same period, more Nigerians became unemployed. The youth became despondent and vulnerable. They became prey in the hands of demagogues and their agents of doom. This exposed to youth to deception, instead of enabling them to dream of better future, better society and better world in which they can become meaningful leaders and contributors to local, national and global economies, leading to the worst security challenges Nigeria ever faced. In virtually all aspects of life, more decay was recorded, and a country that was richly blessed in all aspects, from human resources to natural resources and climatic largesse of nature became hell on earth for the poor, the women, the elderly, the children and the disabled.

Let us take a few instances to show how the planlessness and cluelessness of the leadership of the PDPigs have disempowered and incapacitated the youth and the people of Nigeria. First, in educational sector, more young people sought education in foreign lands, draining resources from public institutions. More private cash and carry certificate tertiary mills were founded with dubious provenance, more illiterates were certificated with degrees. To protect themselves, the poor children of the unprotected masses in the tertiary institutions resorted to vigilantism and self-help measures in the form of cults. Their teachers were extorting them, the politicians were robbing them of career opportunities, their church and mosque leaders were deceiving them that some balm or fast will remove their fitinah overnight instead of hard work and patience as secrets to success. Since they are witnesses to people who hardly work but who become successful overnight, their education was not meant to teach them to follow the straight and narrow path – the politicians, thugs and pop artists become role models!

Second, in the health sector, more Nigerians became health tourists, including our own incoming President. PDP crippled all aspects of life, making Nigeria into a huge jungle where it was Darwinian survival of the most morally bankrupt. Many died prematurely in various avoidable circumstances and of preventable and curable illnesses. This gave space for all manner of traders in distress of the masses, who feed on the weaknesses of the systems to create conduits for milking the poor masses in the names of gods or ideas of salvation that mean little or nothing to anyone but themselves. It is the period under consideration that various groups come up with cures for everything from infidelity of partners to impotence and infertility, to unemployment and wealth management. The kinds of churches and mosques that were built to service the pained mental health of the masses are of unimaginable proportions. Some of these turned into schools which the poor masses whose pittances were used to construct can never send their kids there because the tuition fees are beyond their pitiful means.

Third, in the area of infrastructural development, we found that some roads and bridges were always contracted and paid for in the run up to each Federal Election, as a means of deceiving the gullible masses that things will change, and they will soon be able to fend for themselves once the enabling circumstances are in place. The Lagos-Ibadan Express Way and the Niger Bridge are clear instances of this malady – deception, subterfuge, abuse and misuse of public trust.

Fourth, it got so horrible that PDPigs started boasting that they would rule for 50 years unhindered. This is because they believe that they have stolen enough to be able to buy their ways into power in every election. They were confident that there was nothing money could not do. In any case, Nigeria was their empire, and the resources of the country belonged to them and their scions. What they never counted upon was the capacity of Nigerians to organize against brazen destructive governance by kleptocracy that was the order of the day. They did not think that with the loot hidden in plain sight to be deployed to accumulate more loot, Nigerians will dare take their money and tell them to shove it. They were confident that the pittances they doled out to the poor was enough to buy them four yearly turns at the till.

They were shocked that the extra six weeks of delay in the 2015 Federal Elections was not enough for the journeys of Ghana Must Go, loaded with dollars and Pound Sterling, delivered to all manner of area leaders, emergency news outlets, kings, obis, obas, ezes and emirs, pastors, prophers, mullahs and imams to procure victory for them at the elections. That they lost by landslide was a testimony to the intolerance of the masses of the poor who voted, waited for the votes to be counted and declare before their very eyes, so that nothing could happen overnight to the tallies.

This was the environment which propelled the people’s choice, PMB, to power. Clearly, after three previous tries, PMB was himself in a daze, not expecting the rapturous manner of the sweet victory bestowed by the masses of the people across the length and breadth of the country. Hence, people rightly wondered why the new President took so long to form a cabinet. The task was so huge it invoked paralysis on the President, but he woke up, faced the challenge. The six weeks of delay of Federal Elections was used by GEJ to plunder the treasury on a scale never witnessed in the annals of Nigeria. Even the so-called World Bank manager deployed to superintend the economy must have been shocked by the degree of brazen economic sabotage that was inflicted on Nigeria. That she was incapacitated was never in doubt, and the incapacitation was her own making, because “he that must come to equity, must come with clean hands”. Once she herself was compromised on many fronts, there was nothing that she could say when the vultures descended on the carcass of Nigeria, feeding as if there would be no tomorrow.

Under her watch (NOI) the Federal Government was borrowing to pay Federal Employees, so that elections can be over before the full scale of the emptiness of the treasury can be disclosed. Thus, with “thieves” virtually ensconced everywhere in government apparatuses, who can the new President trust or turn to. Even those in the Central Bank top echelons were compromised. He would have wished he could bring people from Mars, but he had to depend on what was available. Now, people wondered why he appointed those most close to him. What could he have done in an environment of negative trust; this was an environment of absolute trust deficit. Virtually all who paraded the corridors of power were political jobbers, prostitutes of the worst kind.

They even tried to waste Mr. President, poisoning him. But for the prayers of Nigerians young and old, living within the borders of this great nation and beyond, combined with the best medical facilities could provide locally and abroad, by Nigerians and foreign doctors within our borders and beyond, the dastardly machinations of the evil ones would have become reality. This led to the President being absent from Nigeria for the better part of a whole year! Yet, these people, the enemies of Nigeria, have the audacity and temerity to allege incompetence on the part of Mr. President. Forgetting that GEJ who was parading a bogus PhD never earned was always either too drunk or sleeping to do anything when he was in office, while all kinds of vermin were feeding fat on the lucre of office in full glare of these new day and latter-day apostles of restructuring! They are insensate that they could even emerge from the crevices of their decadence to want to launder their rotten images as saviors of Nigeria. How can AA now be the face of Restructuring in Nigeria? Someone who was enamored with the skewed and lopsided system that empowered him, enriching him beyond his imagination to the extent that he can now continue in perpetuity to fund a political party!

It is against this background that we must assess PMB and his three and half years in the saddle of governance of this great country, Nigeria. Many had actually predicted the disintegration of Nigeria. Many have orchestrated the breakup of Nigeria. The enemies within and without had done their best to ensure that Nigeria was ungovernable by PMB. These were parlayed in the form of Boko Haram, Fulani Herdsmen, Delta Avengers, IPOB, etc. When these are combined with the wicked NASS, the deplorable Judiciary, the despicable Bar, the horrible law enforcement agencies whose only mantra is “Family Support”, and a Civil Service where each Director was a subtle budget destroyer, one could only imagine what Jesus the Christ or Muhammad the Prophet of God would have done in the shoes of PMB. Yes, mistakes were made and may have been made in various areas. Yes, Change has been difficult to achieve in four short years. Yes, majority of Nigerians are not seeing the direct benefits of Change in their lives. But there's no doubt that the foundations are being and have been laid.

The TSA has reduced waste, profligacy and blatant fraud. By one single stroke of genius, PMB was able to do what GEJ could not accomplish, with all his bogus degrees. Many parastatals complained, many directors were not happy that the game was up. Many contractors who were the laundering conduits were checkmated in a single act. Thus, the foundations for infrastructural development has been and is being laid. Our educational sector is being empowered. In this regard, the Federal Institutions now need to be guided on the meaningful fee structure to ensure that they can be centers of learning and research they were supposed to be, where foreign scholars and researcher were always able to come and bask in the humanity of our culture and prosper. The health sector is being overhauled. With meaningful wages for all and sundry, the empowerment of the sector is underway. The provision of guidelines for meaningful health care will augment the financial resources being made available, to at least return Nigeria to where it used to be, so that the hospitals are not morgues for receiving the dead but places for care and healing of living humans. The power sector is being improved, the agricultural and small-scale business sectors are being empowered. These are things that will be addressed as Nigeria consolidates under a reasonable, meaningful and properly funded system of infrastructural development.

The next four years definitely bode well for Nigeria. Now that the criminals who highjacked the NASS have gone back to their criminal homes, Nigeria can begin the true healing. The security situation can now be better addressed. When I read that Saraki and his bedfellows have returned to PDPigs, I was elated; that after all, their true colours are on display to the world. They were playing Nigerians for fools all along. All their actions and inactions in NASS was anti-people. No group of people could have been so disdainful and spiteful of the people of Nigeria as to behave the way they have behaved, and expect no consequences. And their man AA, the henchman of perfidy now thinks that Nigeria is USA, where the sole financier of the party has unfettered capacity to dictate what is right, what is true, what is reality to his country. When did Nigeria become USA? The level of demagoguery of illiterate Americans expose them to the kind of nose-leading that Trump has perfected. But, Nigerians may not be as rich as USA; Nigerians may not even have the resources of USA, nor the destructive capacity of her military; these are not the measures of societies with conscience. We may be poor, but we are not totally stupid; at least, not as stupid as we look to the outside world. So, most Nigerians have seen through the whole gaff of PDPigs; they are still pigs. Their actions in the NASS, anti-people, anti-party and anti-progress, destructive, criminal and insufferable have shown that they have not changed, cannot change, and will not change. The only thing they know is stealing: from the dancing Sinator to the one who accumulates cars, to the one who empowers rogues with high powered guns, to the feckless ones who have no spines to stand up for their people, we know them and we reject them roundly. We will reject them again: Nigerians are waiting for them.

Has the last three and half years been rosy for Nigerians? Have they not been beleaguered in various ways – material, mental, spiritual, emotional? Absolutely, they have. Yes, Nigerians have every right to expect better from PMB. Is PMB happy with the report card of his administration? Is this the best he could do? The answer is NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. But when you factor the perpetual war with the Senate, hell bent on blocking progress, where PDP lost the 2015 election but conspired with moles in the home-front and captured the NASS through the back door, there's no doubt the going would have been rough for PMB. It has been. No government should ever have to contend with that. Roll into that the poisoning of PMB and his absence from duty for a protracted period of time, for treatment outside the country. Imagine what would have happened when the Senate President wanted to hijack the Presidency because both the President and Vice President were ostensibly out of the country. It is obvious that these criminals have no conscience: and the chief among them, the banker for them all, who bankrolled them before and is bankrolling them now, wants to be the President, so that he can continue the pillaging of the resources of this country, which he believes to be his estate.

Now, these people, the PDPigs want to come back. Only three and half years ago they were roundly rejected for the pigly behavior and pedigree in dealing with the affairs of this our beloved country. They're counting on the collective amnesia of Nigerians. They think Nigerians forget how we got here. They think Nigerians are such fools; they think the so-called “failures” of PMB is not the direct project of the failed and rejected PDP. Where did Saraki and Ekweremadu come from? What about the House Leadership?

2019 is the year Nigerians have the true choice to make. The migratory criminals have gone back home now, leaving Nigerians with the opportunity to make a clean start. They have gone back to their looting in chief Oga, who can bankroll a whole party and disburse billions of Naira overnight without feeling it, since he never worked for any of the money. How much do they actually pay in personal income tax? Why is the state where this “rich”, “wealthy”, blessed 72 year old rags to riches unable to use the taxes he pays to develop the state? What arrogance of greed and indecency?

If Obasanjo had had the testicular fortitude to call the bluff of Sharia Law when it reared its ugly head, Nigeria would have been a better place. In the tool box that would have dealt a serious blow to the fake religious bigots, who were using religion to divide and conquer the poor would have included having the attorney general for the Federation file a constitutional challenge to the Sharia, since the constitution recognizes Nigeria as a secular state, the stoppage of disbursement of moneys from the Federation Account to these States, and the clear baring of such states from all Federal Executive and Council Decision-making bodies. As client states on Federal funds, they would have either eaten their Sharia, which was only a tool to fool the masses, or declare their deception as unwelcome affront to Nigeria.

If Obasanjo had used the billions of dollars to generate light and not darkness, and not murdered Bola Ige in the aftermath, many of the religious fiefdoms that have sprung up in various parts of Nigeria would have had no place. Darkness breeds fear and poverty. It also breeds all kinds of illnesses and death. But from the 80s, government after government, the society have been destroyed by poor energy provision, to the point now where the country is worse off than it was in the 70s. And when PMB begins to address these in a multi-pronged and sustainable way, they, the PDPigs want to come back to continue where they left off. Nigerians must resist this lie that AA (Atiku the bearer of death, and Obi the one who will write the obituary) are now the salvation of a country that they crippled and emasculated. A reviving country can do without them. We would rather have another 4 years of progress in the making than go to another 16 years of certain death in reality.

If Yar-Adua had not died prematurely, and if GEJ had had the intellect and moral fiber to lead Nigeria properly, Nigeria would have been a better place. The misadventure that created the current problems are not beyond the intellect of human beings to fix. Singapore did this in less than 60 years after independence. They do not blame their colonial masters or ethnic diversity. Why is it not possible to reverse desertification, have trains running from Calabar to Dakar? Why are our youth unemployed and in the throes of drug destruction? Why can we not be feeding the Maghreb, and the rest of Africa with the plethora of resources abundantly bestowed by nature on us, as a country, the most populous black nation under the sun? These are not challenges beyond our capacity to fix. But we do not need the types of Atiku or Obi to return us to another series of decades of decadence. Allah has saved us from them once. We should not return ourselves with our eyes wide open into their clutches again. Once bitten, twice shy. First time it may be a mistake, second time, we must be fools. You can fool most people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. Our youth must wake up and do “Ali Must Go” now, tell Atiku to go back to his village and remain there in peace, and leave us alone.

I never wanted this to be long. But clearly you can imagine that these are many ifs. But the stage is now set for the battle between light and darkness; between PMB/APC with the people on one side and PDPigs and greed and destruction and decay on the other side. The people have an easy choice – between the rejected PDPigs of just three and half years ago, and a redeeming light that has been covered by the veneer of PDPigs in the NASS parading as APC in name only. For me, we cannot go back to the vomit that is PDPigs. What's new now with Atiku, who was described so eloquently by Obasanjo? Is it just the three and have to four years of APC? Can we forget how we got here and our journey to this place so easily?

We must acknowledge that what we have had so far has been three and half to four years of PDP under cover. We know them. We rejected them. Justice awaits Saraki, Atiku and the rest of them. We reject them again, and come 2019, Nigerians will reject the poison that is Atiku and Obi resoundingly. May Allah/God bless Nigeria.

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

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Assensoh, Akwasi B.

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Oct 17, 2018, 6:51:21 AM10/17/18

to dialogue, Godwin Ohiwerei, Afoaku, Osita, ovau...@bowdoin.edu, Osondu, Iheanyichukwu, deji...@yahoo.com, kes...@yahoo.com, Dawn, doy...@gmail.com, and...@southernct.edu, afaug...@yahoo.com, noahk...@gmail.com

Dr. Bewaji:

Your post evokes patriotism at its best, and it is also very enlightening. So, please do not worry about its length because "hungry" intellectuals, like some of us, have already

"eaten" it up and -- like Oliver Twist -- we are looking (or asking) for more! Of course, my legendary late mentor (Baba Ijebu), out of his usual pessimism, would have labelled your

piece as being "Book long, with a lot of IFs". Yet, many of us, as Nigerians at heart, see your cogent points, which can apply to several other African nations. Your examples, including

that of Singapore, are on target. When I visited Singapore in the mid-1980s as a Fulbright-Hays research scholar, I was simply overly awed by the cleanness of the place, where

throwing chewed gum on the street as well as spitting or urinating in street corners could lead to a severe punishment. The Singapore cleanness reminded me of that of

Stockholm, Sweden, where the airport, for example, is situated very faraway to avoid pollution! In fact, the Buhari-Idiagbon era attempted something similar, when it came

to cleanness: At the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, a man did spit on the street his chewed kola nut and, with a serious face, an old man retorted:

"Idiagbon will deal with you, if he catches you spitting on the ground".

Well, active Colonialists left Africa many years ago, but several of our post-colonial leaders still blame them because we now have neo-colonialism to deal with. Your beautiful

"Nigeria, Democracy, 2019 and Beyond" reminded me of many things, including the "Nigeria: Before Darkness Falls" article that preceded but predicted the Nigeria-Biafra civil

war. You wisely questioned ever-widening youth unemployment in Nigeria, which Ghana's current government is said to be tackling head-on with a youth service corp project, a

caricature of the Workers' Brigade of the late President Kwame Nkrumah (the Osagyefo). His opponents saw it as part of the "job for the boys" syndrome; In Ghana, the youth

service corp has been attacked by its opponents on the grounds that the monthly stipend to be paid (in Ghana's Cedis) was not enough.

Your essay also reminded some of us of the earlier Trump-Kim abusive exchanges before their summit in Singapore. For example, when Mr. Trump boasted that he had the bigger

bomb, etc., an African friend telephoned laughing ,and he simply retorted: "But Kim's North Korea has no homelessness problems!! Coming back to Nigeria and other African countries,

one wonders when many of the leaders in political power will really feel bad that the educated youngsters (or youth) of their countries are being drowned in a sea of unbelievable

unemployment each blessed day. That was why, in the mid-1970s, my late 80-year old maternal grandfather ("Agya") looked me straight in the eye and asked: "Can't we invite the white

people back?" "Agya, we now have our independence," I told him. He laughed, shook his head and asked in Twi or Akan Language: "Saa"? Simply, he was asking: "Is that so?" In fact,

Baba Ijebu, who was more enlightened, would have asked me: "Na independence we dey chop?" That brings one to Rene Dumont's cynical book title, indeed about African independence:

"False Start in Africa". So, what is next for African nations, not only Nigeria, in light of Dr. Bewaji's treatise?

A.B. Assensoh.

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2018 9:43 PM
To: dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigeria, Democracy, 2019 and Beyond

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