|
For Nigeria, A Big Lesson From South Africa And Liberia?
By
With the possible exception of the United States, Nigeria is the world's
greatest Father Christmas in peace keeping missions around the world. We
did it in the Congo. We, sure, did it in Sierra Leone, if you remember
ECOMOG, and more recently, we are doing it in Liberia. We were more than
prepared to do it in the war-torn Ivory Coast and in South Africa and any
other part of the globe where our help is needed. I am sure we may have
done it in Iraq under the auspices of the UN, although few of our leaders
have the courage to openly admit it, because of our country's sensitivity
not to be seen as taking part in a war that is perceived in most parts of
the Middle East, as an attempt to subjugate Islam or minimize its power
around the world.
My point is that we are ever so generous in volunteering peace keeping
forces in Africa and around the world, even though the majority of our
citizens are wallowing in abject poverty, and our Nation is classified
among the poorest nations, and one of the most corrupt in the entire
Universe. We volunteer troops for peacekeeping duties because most of our
leaders have seen the Budget for such international deployment of troops
beyond borders, as another Security Vote whose disbursement they are not
obligated to explain to any body at home, like they do in America. They
also see it as a huge conduit pipe to conveniently siphon away public
money into their own private pockets, as clearly demonstrated by IBB and
Abacha who made his billions using surrogates like Alhadji Arisekola and
Nzeribe as major Food and Weapon contractors to ECOMOG.
Our country used to complain of poverty when crude oil sold for 17 dollars
per barrel, and we are still complaining today when a barrel sells for 60
or 65 dollars per barrel. Because the Federal Government is leading the
way in this horrific observation, many of the States of Nigeria which are
now classified as oil producing States and therefore entitled to share
from the 13% of Federal revenues, set aside for them from oil which now
runs into billions of Naira, are similarly behaving, as if nothing has
changed in their financial buoyancy.
A good example is Ondo State where Governor Agagu and his Government
receive today, in just one month in Federal Revenue, what Pa Adekunle
Ajasin used to receive for Ondo State in all of his four to six years in
office. Governor Olumilua to whom the same Agagu was Deputy, had received
nothing, but mere peanuts for the few years he was Governor. The
difference is that Pa Ajasin and Olumilua still managed to pay teachers'
and civil servants' salaries when they were due, but Agagu, for reasons
best known to him, was not able to do that promptly, as we speak. Where is
all the money going? The short answer is to his own private vault where no
less than 2 billion Naira is reportedly being set aside for his
re-election in 2007, regardless of Obasanjo's hollow War against Coruption.
Much of that money is being squandered and stolen to purchase properties
abroad and to set up privately owned moneymaking ventures in London and
many other European capitals. Part of that money is being transferred
abroad to build private refineries in places like Ecuador, and to buy
properties across Europe and the United States in the name of girl friends
and their children, as clearly shown by the Governor-general of Ijaw
nation, who had no qualms forfeiting to the British Government his more
than 10 million of his fraudulently acquired assets in Britain, for
jumping bail and running back to Nigeria under cover of darkness, dressed
as a Yoruba "Onfoloke" woman with an expensive lace attire with lip stick,
jewelry and shoes to match.
I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw his portrait on the Internet.
If the Ijaw Nation Governor-general does not have money and other
properties and assets stacked some where else in Nigeria, and around the
world, he would have thought twice before jumping bail. I will be
surprised, if the British Government is going to waste her time and
resources going after him to extradite him to London to face justice. What
for? The cash and the properties Alimeiseigha or whatever it is, has
already forfeited, is more than adequate compensation to Britain. The
British need not waste a dime on him. Sooner or later the Governor is
going to come again to Britain with false documents when all the noise
about his escape has died down, and when he is no longer Governor.
If I were the British Prime Minister, I would not even bother seeking
extradition. Once a thief, always a thief. The terrible Governor would
soon venture to go retrieve some of his other assets elsewhere in Europe
or the United States. The British Government can then use their Interpol
contact to grab him in any of those countries where the obnoxious immunity
laws of Nigeria do not apply. They can then bring him back to London to
serve his term, before going back to enjoy the rest of his loot till he
dies.
I happen to know the Governor's young unmarried daughter just out of
College in Los Angeles. The young unemployed lady has been buying and
living in properties worth more than 2 million dollars in the Hollywood
section of LA, and driving the latest models of Mercedes SUV and saloon,
Lexus SUV and saloon and Lambrogini. She receives an allowance of
10,000.00 per month from her filthy rich father to maintain her life style
in LA. I am sure there are other properties bought in her name else where
around the United States by her heartless father who now ascribe to God
his miraculous escape from London, in a made for the movie kind of
scenario that has manage to fool the British and the French security men
on both sides of the two countries.
Our leaders wants Nigeria to actively participate in peacekeeping missions
not just for the sake of helping other African countries or neighbors,
secure their freedom. They relish it, because it offers them limitless
opportunities to steal public money, and to acquire properties abroad both
for themselves and for their children. Not too long ago, the only son of
the late first lady was rumored to have purchased a home for 78 million
dollars some where in the United States. Some would doubt the veracity of
that report because American Laws have a way of finding out purchases made
from money laundering. I seriously doubt the validity of that claim
though, when I realize that the Bayelsa State Governor's daughter, a mere
student at LA, has had quite a few multimillion properties purchased in
her name by her father without any problem.
When I bought my last property in New York for only 375,000.00 only a few
years back, I had to show the sources of my income, to the last penny. Not
so in every State in America. The Laws differ from one State to another.
Some of the foreign countries we deal with couldn't care less about the
source of your money. They depend on such looted money to keep their own
economy going, like Switzerland does. The same countries like America
often encourage Nigeria to embark on such peacekeeping missions abroad,
because they knew such transactions are carried out in dollar, to begin
with, and they know, it is a win-win situation for them. The Nigerian
leaders could steal as much as they want. They know such funds are
invariably invested or used to buy properties or weapons in their
countries.
Now to the real crux of the matter. We all know how much Nigeria has stood
up for South Africa in the Apartheid years. If any country could be cited
as being the brain behind the ANC eventual victory in her determined
struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, Nigeria was number one. We did
so in cash and kind, and with our sweat and blood, so to speak. We did the
same in Sierra Leone and more recently in Liberia. South Africa is today
the leading nation in Africa without any doubt. Nigeria is a distant
second to South Africa and we have so much to learn and emulate from South
Africa in terms of leadership and democratic maturity and civility.
Madiba Nelson Mandela is without any question the foremost African
Statesman that is widely respected all over the world. His was a virtuoso
performance, and he knew how to quit the stage, while the ovation was
loudest. He did not have to be appealed to, not to run for office the
second time or not to disrespect the South African Constitution. If, for
any reason, the immunity from public prosecution for a corrupt President
or Politician had found a place in the draft of the South African
Constitution, Mandela would have been the first to shoot such a provision
down, because he sought the presidency to set a standard below which any
future South African leader cannot afford to fall below.
In that unique sense, Mandela was a role model indeed. When he initiated
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, he did it for the
sole purpose of putting a closure to the long years of recriminations,
oppression and distrust that has existed between the Whites, the Blacks,
the Indians in a pluralistic society that South Africa has become. Mandela
was a leader in a million. Our own Obasanjo was a far cry from Mandela
whichever way you slice it.
While Obasanjo and his handlers were busy looking for ways and means to
review the Nigerian Constitution in a way to smuggle in a provision for a
third term for his own selfish end, Mandela was actively busy finding and
grooming a successor in Thabo Mbeki that would carry South Africa to
loftier heights after Mandela is retired or dead. Mandela behaved more
like Mahatma Ghandhi, the founding father of the Indian Nation who never,
for one day, held a public office in India. Ghandhi only led a movement to
change India for good, and his legacies still remained intact till
tomorrow. India is today, one of the most stable democracies around the
world where male and female Prime Ministers have been elected and where no
single Party has dominated the politics of India like the PDP is
attempting to do under the Balogun of Owu.
Whenever I hear Nigerians agonize over the subtle or hidden agenda of
Obasanjo to surreptitiously plant himself and his Party back to power for
a third term in 2007, I cannot help, but wonder how far apart the brand of
leadership offered by Obasanjo and Mandela truly is. Mandela has clearly
foreseen a South Africa where the Opposition led by DE Clark could one
day, come to power again, if for any reason the ANC did not live up to its
mandate and promise. Mandela evidently does not believe in a one party
dictatorship. Period. Obasanjo, on the other hand, is happy, and he wants
the PDP, regardless of its imperfections and iniquities, which are legion,
to continue to dominate Nigerian politics. How, for goodness sake, could a
Party that has produced the likes of IBB, Anninih, Enwerem, Wabara, Ngige,
Uba, Omisore, Dariye and now Alamieseigha, to mention a few, ever believe
it could win any free and fair election in Nigeria, if Nigerian voters are
not just being taken for a ride?
The situation is as bad as Alimieseyeigha or the PDP still nursing the
hope they could win any free and fair election in today's Bayelsa with all
the water that has passed under the bridge!
I am surprised that Obasanjo is even considering doing a third term, with
his track record and his Party's track record in the last six to seven
years. Yes, he may have been successful in getting debt relief for
Nigeria, on the short run, but if you discount that achievement and his
belated but one-sided effort at fighting Corruption, I think Nigeria is
decidedly worse off than it was, before his second coming. His leadership
has offered more liability than asset, if the truth must be told. His War
on Corruption is a horrendous failure.
The propensity of his Government to put in the wrong people into power by
crooked means is alarming. The exchange rate of the Naira is much lower
today, than it has ever been in our history. Starvation has hit the roof
as Nigerians now buy a bag of Rice for 5,000.00 to 10,000.00 Naira or more
to give a conservative estimate. A liter of 87 Octane Petrol is selling
for close to 150.00 Naira. University education has hit the rock bottom
while public University fee is unaffordably high. Unemployment in Nigeria
has become a total epidemic leading to uncontrollable brain drain every
where you look.
Compared to South Africa which we help to liberate we are doing much worse
today by any standard. Our network of roads and highways is nothing to
write home about, and our hospitals in Nigeria have become glorified
clinics. The last time I visited home in 2004, I had cause to visit the
old University College Hospital at Ibadan to visit a patient. What I saw
was a horrific eye-opener. Nigeria is literarily dead, in my judgment.
If you think the comparison with South Africa has little or no basis in
view of their head start under the white Apartheid moguls, how about our
comparison with Liberia which has just elected the first woman President
in the whole of the Continent?
Liberia may have passed thru the shadow of death in their evolution as an
independent State, but their voters have proved, for once, that they are
more rational and sophisticated than Nigerian voters taken together. In
the first Presidential Election recently held in Moronvia, the two top
candidates were a former Soccer champion named Weah and a Harvard
University graduate and former Minister of Finance under Charles Tailor
named Ellen Sirleaf. In the second run-off election that followed,
Liberian voters had a chance to rationally pick who has the best chance to
realistically confront the problems faced by Liberia, at this point in
their history. They have unanimously gone for Ellen giving her 59% of the
vote in an election closely supervised by international observers from all
over the world.
In Nigeria, Mr. Weah would still have won just like Tafawa Balewa, a
school teacher was picked as first Prime Minister of Nigeria in 1959 over
and above Ogbuefi Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe whose party had formed a coalition
Government with the then Northern Peoples Congress led by Sardauna Bello.
In 1979 and 1983, Nigerian voters voted again for Shehu Shagari,another
school teacher, over and above the late Nnamdi Azikiwe and late Obafemi
Awolowo. On June 12, 1993, the Nigerian voters had done the right thing by
voting massively for Alhadji M.K.O. Abiola over and above Alhadji Tofa,
his Kano opponent, but IBB in his blatant stupidity and dictatorship, had
mindlessly annulled the Election on a flimsy excuse. In 1999 the Nigerian
voters again voted for General Obasanjo over and above a worthy candidate
in Oluyemi Falae of Ondo State in an election believed to have been
rigged, and in 2003, the Nigerian voters reelected the PDP and Obasanjo in
the most outrageous rigging the country has ever seen, as clearly proved
in the trials of Tafa Balogun, the agent provocateur the Federal
Government had used to massively rig the elections in favor of the PDP and
Obasanjo.
Liberian voters would not stand for that kind of cheat. They had put
sentiments aside and they have given a landslide victory to the candidate
adjudged to be the better of the two. They knew they were not voting for a
Liberian delegate to the World Olympics Committee. They were voting for
the President of Liberia and they needed the a round peg in a round hole,
not a square peg. They had proved that a new wind of change is truly
blowing through Africa and the world at large. Today the new German
Chancellor is a woman named DeMarco, and the new Prime Minister of
Mozambique is also a woman, and there is a chance another woman who is now
Deputy President, may well be the most eligible successor to Thabo Mbeki
of South Africa. Even America, the world's greatest Democracy may well
have two distinguished women running for President in 2008, in the two
major political parties. That is an interesting trend to watch.
I see, in this article, a potent lesson that Nigerian voters can learn
from little Liberia. Liberian voters appear more politically savvy than
the Nigerian voters at this point, and they may well be on their way to a
more stable future. Ellen Sirleaf did contest and lose before, but this
time she has won, and won with dignity, proving once and for all, that any
opposition Party in a good and stable Democracy should be seen as a
Government in waiting like is done in all civilized countries the world
over.
There is no reason, at all, why Buhari and the ANPP or the newly formed
MDD cannot win the next presidential and general Election in Nigeria, if
it can convince the voters, it is quite different from the existing PDP
which has become an albatross on the neck of Nigeria. Why not, if not?
I rest my case.
|