THANKS-GIVING AT INDEPENDENCE

Nigeria’s fifty-second independence anniversary should be an opportunity to thank  God, ordinarily.  Our traditional agenda for this programme usually includes prayer sessions at mosques all over the country, attended by muslim faithful and leaders whose propensity for looting bears a stark dissemblance to the ideals of Islam. The Christian churches also witness joyful services, hosted in big churches where overfed priests thank the Lord for giving us good Christian leaders who have nothing in common with Christ. 

This year has been different however, mosques are no longer safe nor churches the  peaceful sanctuaries that they used to be.  Churches especially, have been hardly hit.  Houses of God have been transformed into military zones where people have to be screened thoroughly before they come into his presence.  I cannot dwell on how this has affected tithe, offerings and the ministry in particular. The most visible of this change has happened inside clergymen, they have started criticising the president. One of them even went as far as to construct  and vocalise a prayer on corruption which embarrassed the president.  One of them even dared to contest an election and continues to make “inciting” statements about the leadership of our great country. Obviously, men of God are no longer cosy with the establishment.

The focal point of my piece is not to dwell on the fluidity of Nigeria’s theology and religion in these times.   My goal is to offer thanks on behalf of Nigeria to everyone whose action and inaction has brought us thus far in our national sojourn.  I am mindful of the fact that some of you might wonder why this piece was not published on the first of October, let me quickly explain the delay in simple terms.  I did not have electric power and there was fuel scarcity on Independence Day. My generator was bad too. The generator repair man could not get fuel to power his motorcycle so I spent the day in darkness except for the intrusion of my Blackberry phone which kept broadcasting the rantings of some endangered species of bloggers, activists and  concerned Noisegerians. For this lack of electric power, I would like to thank Professor Nnaji for telling us there would be more megawatts of power while arranging his cronies and companies to buy up all our power plants. We owe him and his predecessors eternal gratitude for enabling generations of Nigerian children shout “Up NEPA” anytime the light flickers, even when they are outside the shores of Nigeria.

Let me quickly apologise for breaking protocol by not addressing myself to the President  of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. I must thank His Excellency, first for his decision to hold the Independence Day celebrations in Aso Rock Villa rather than the stately and regal Eagle Square where the convention that eventually produced his ticket to  the presidency was held. Your prudent (some say cowardly) capitulation has sent victory signals to every member of Boko Haram group that our leadership is afraid and cannot  make adequate security preparations to host a military parade. I am sure all your service chiefs and military high brass all supported this directive, afterall, who would not recollect how our police headquarters was bombed. I am sure that you have set the right tone for negotiations with the dreaded group. 

I would also like to like to thank you Mr. President for   the inspiring, visionary and  prayerful Independence Day speech. Let me note that unlike 2010, it did not embarrass us  with your inept use of teleprompters when neither you nor your aides had tried it out to test its adaptability to our dynamic environment. This year, your speech called for prayers and provided budgetary allocation for calling the almighty to come and solve our problems. Let me quickly remind you that Saudi Arabia, Isreal and Italy all lay more direct claims to our God yet they invest in people and put institutions in place to achieve societal change. They hardly budget for prayers. Your speech created a buzz for the “armchair critics and activists“in blogosphere for whom Dr. Reuben Abati has so much angst. You quoted a phantom report from an organisation that announces it reports globally. The authentic report was just a few clicks on any decent browser. I want to thank you for confirming the veracity of some claims (in blogosphere) that your Doctorate Degree in Zoology must have been a gift from the University of Port Harcourt. If I were the Vice Chancellor of that institution, I would refund your tuition and withdraw your doctorate degree in order to protect the brand of that institution. I am sure the Vice Chancellor will dare not! That is why I can never be a Vice Chancellor. 

Your speech also confirmed that you are not given to intellectual rigour or cerebral  exertion.  I am thankful to you for encouraging the youth in Nigeria who would rather skip school to become musicians.  They have a reason to believe that holding a doctorate degree makes no difference to personal intelligence. My eternal thanks also go everyone who had a hand in the speech. They confirmed our submission that you do not read whatever is given to you. You just go ahead and blurt it out!

I want to thank the Vice President for being a passenger in this democratic dispensation. I guess he realised that adding his voice to this cacophony of ineptitude would overwhelm the average Nigerian’s threshold for rubbish.  Without any clear constitutional schedule of duties, I appreciate his ability to do nothing, say nothing and stand for nothing. He could have towed the line of a certain Abubakar Atiku who attempted to invent a job description for the position. We all know how that went down.

I would like to thank the Senate and House of Representatives for deliberations that have led to no improvement in the lives of Nigeria. Aside tossing out Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s five thousand naira note, the legislature has been more concerned with increasing an already anomalous remuneration. They have proven that human greed overpowers reason. They have also proven that amongst thieves, compassion is not a virtue. Unless he wins his  re-election bid, Barack Obama would gladly consider their salaries if he could apply!

I must thank all the ministers in Nigeria especially the Coordinating Minister of the economy. A brilliant woman, her inability to explain anything in clear terms has helped me to understand how smart people behave when they have incompetent bosses. Her inability to explain the performance of the 2012 budget clearly indicates she is a good manager of information. I also salute her courage in sitting with chronic debtors as members of her national economic committee while she expects AMCON to take objective decisions on their indebtedness. Special thanks must be giving to the Minister of Labour for continually embarrassing this administration in the media. His lack of processing abilities makes the Minister for Water resources look extra-terrestial. Labaran Maku deserves our thanks and pity for assailing our ears frequently with not-well-thought-out representations of the government. I am sure David Mark conveyed our gratitude more poignantly!

I would like to thank all governors for the increase in the number of cars in their details while hunger pervades the land.  I will like to thank the southern governors for asking for more money from the federation account even when most states have not utilised their allocations for anything productive. I must single out Uduaghan for attempting to retrieve his cousin’s fifteen million dollars from the EFCC. Blood is indeed thicker than governance. I must also thank Dickson for providing the first lady with a decent salary and pension via her appointment as a permanent secretary. Who knows where such gratitude could take him? 

I would like to show appreciation to the northern governors for laboriously connecting Boko Haram to monthly allocations from our commonwealth. We now know we created Al Majiri to set the North back economically and politically. We are the reasons why polio still ravages the North.

The Eastern governors must be applauded for agreeing that Igbo presidency is the only panacea to the litany of problems facing Nigeria. We are yet to receive a blueprint for the eradication of commercial kidnapping and other crimes which continue to fester in their states . I must thank Orji for institutionalising non-performance. His billboards clearly advertise his personal dereliction. I will like to thank the Western governors for the gift of propaganda. They have taken the art form to a new level closer to mass hypnosis.

I must thank Nigerians for putting up with the current leadership, afterall we voted them in and collected their money to mortgage our future. I must thank all the market women who participated in all the rallies and all the people who sold their voter cards. I am grateful to all the people who continue to keep quiet and hide their heads in the daily humdrum of torture that our lives have become. They are the reason why the evil darkness grows in temerity. 

We do not have to thank God for the turn of events we have brought on ourselves.  He has given us the will and mental fortitude, to seek out the truth and set our minds free. We have a God-given gift to demand more and better from our leaders. I thank the few Nigerians who exercise this right.

THE NIGERIAN EXPERIMENT AT FIFTY

Everyone and every country celebrate birthdays. It is an occasion that brings the life in question into full retrospect, creating an opportunity to question the essence of the actions, choices, outcomes and consequences upon which the celebrant's waking moments have been spent. If this be, Nigeria offers itself as a critic's cadaver this time in history.

I have seen pictures of the moments of joy and euphoria that welcomed the lowering of the Union Jack and the hosting of the Nigerian Flag. I have read some of the flowery and grandiose speeches that heralded the birth of Nigeria. I have also followed closely as Nigeria crawled into statehood but refused to stride into its potential as the Giant of Africa, choosing to remain a toddler in all spheres of development after fifty arduous years . I have participated in the trials and tribulations of Nigeria, experiencing my own unfair share of disappointment, indignation and sometimes; annoyance at the state of Nigeria. I have had cause to question God's fairness in his decision to send to planet earth via Island Maternity Hospital in Lagos Island instead of John Hopkins! I am sure I am not the only one. Many an Andrew actioned their lethargy at the Nigerian Experiment and bade good bye to our land. They chose to give up on the "Nigerian Experiment". Yes, I know you are wondering why I keep using the cliche.

I remember my chemistry laboratory very well although it was a waste of time! I had already decided on my bouquet of ordinary level subjects in class two. I recall the experiments with all kinds of chemicals, reagents and powders. I remember my first titration class and my inability to control the pipette. Every chemist knows that if you cannot control the pipette, your experiment is doomed due to your failure to control the volume of whatever liquid you had in the pipette. I was not the only one who could not get it right in my chemistry laboratory. We all got varying degrees of success and ended up with different results. To save face, we all gave our solutions (the results of our individual and collective ineptitude) various names. We invented funky names for our failures and felt good with ourselves. I coined the term "demolution" for my inadvertent solution while someone called his own.................wait for it......Nigeria.

Nigeria is a British experiment that poured different ethnic groups into a fictitious entity, attempted to use different versions of legalisms (constitutions) to forge (yoke really) them together. The aim was to cover their failure at herding and governing black nations who had varying degrees of sophistication and organisation in ruling themselves so they lumped them together under on phony geographical entity and awarded independence. Every student of Nigerian history knows that some parts of Nigeria had been independent and had highly developed political institutions before the white man came.

It was clear as at 1957 that Nigeria was an experiment in the making. We had mostly regional leaders and no national leader. Our intellectuals who were vying for national positions all named themselves as the leaders of their ethnic nations: Saurdauna, Zik and Awo. They were all reagents trying to dominate the same solution. Other ethnic nationalities in the same experiment just kept quiet and waited for a time when constant temperature and pressure would create a deafening explosion but I rest that for now. Lest I forget, even the name Nigeria was not original and neither was Miss Shaw! You already had a Niger Republic and you sleepily affix "ia" to it and proclaim to your beau that you had solved his insomnia. It is clear to me that some of the problems we face fifty years on were clearly evident in the pangs of parturition that brought forth Nigeria. It was a political experiment, given a random name and pushed on her merry jolly way.

As at 1960, we had huge gulfs in mind-set, expectations, goals and sensibilities. The opiate tendencies of Independence kept us going while different regions kept their separate agendas to themselves and as oil had boosted our confidence, we lapped up the goodwill of the international community and deluded ourselves: All Was Well! It took the coup of 1966 to let jolt everyone to the reality of different reagents and combustible elements occupying space and time in the same test tube. Form that fateful day in 1966, every single decision and action of the Nigeria government has been tainted with the poison of ethnicity. Subsequent military coups followed this pattern of wrestling power from one party and giving it to another party in the experiment. Even when the coup plotters had no such intentions, the public foisted these insinuations on their actions. This military experiments continued until we finally brought another element with the military DNA (Obasanjo) to power in 1999 too see if he could catalyse the development of a homogeneous Nigeria and create a stable solution. We also introduced a coagulant: Peoples Democratic Party. The attendant explosion will be examined tomorrow.