Dariye and The Politicization of Issues

By

Umar Bello

umbell77@yahoo.com

 

The search for a viable solution to Nigeria's problems will remain brick-walled unless Nigerians begin to perceive issues shorn of politics or undue sentiments. Issues have defied solution because the issues are not pursued. Politics has become a handy tool for leaders and elite to employ at will to mystify reality. Sentiments like sectarian and sectional are employed in other to make people vent their spleen on nothing leaving grave crimes to go home to roost.  Events happening in Nigeria of late have again exposed this recurring albeit misunderstood reality. Every Nigerian whose hand is caught deep in the cookie jar has one thousand sentiments to whip to becloud his larceny. It is either his enemies are up for his neck, or that he is pursued because of his political ambition or that the enemies of his region or religion are out to get him. If this theory is even worth a grain of salt then no single penny from the Nigerian treasury has ever been stolen because all the thieves are victims of manipulation! But reverse is the case. In a recent report by Paul Wolfowitz of the World bank Nigeria has lost nearly $300b in the last four decades to corruption.

 

Nowhere has this reality of manipulation been made starker than in the Dariye saga. Through an adroit sense of political manipulation he, a stark thief and a criminal to boot, has been laundered into a victimized saint and the poor masses those whose future he has mortgaged through his wanton stealing are busy receiving bullets onto their bodies in his defense. Initially when he jumped bail in Britain, the northern CAN removed it cassock and as normal donned the garb of politics and cried that the travails of Dariye were engineered by the Caliphate. I wonder whether it was the ‘ubiquitous’ hand of the Hausa-Fulani perhaps represented by the head of the caliphate that pilfered the plateau treasury. It was perhaps the same hand that opened an account for him in Britain and stashed the loot. It was also the same hand perhaps in a state of hypnotic trance that beckoned to him to jump bail and sneak back home as a fugitive of law. Any blame of the caliphate but this is total hogwash and an attempt by the Christian Clergy to subvert the course of justice. While the plateau elite are till today busy constructing and reconstructing scapegoats for Dariye's crimes having themselves been generously subsidized from the unfortunate plateau treasury, no one cares a hoot about the repatriation of the cool cash he has fleeced from the public. The jobless youths have been thrown pittance on their way to ensure that they defend their hard-earned and nascent ' lootocracy'

 

Dariye is a thief who has understood the mechanics of the corrupt system in Nigeria. He has made sure that the political elite, the so-called elders and the Clergy have also partaken in the orgy of thefts of the state resources. People like Solomon Lar are on their toes to shout down any criticism of Dariye. The most recent cant by Lar in this defend-Dariye rhetoric is that the issue is now an attempt to ‘Islamize’ the state by the enemies of Plateau State. Such words effortlessly sail into the mouth of such politicians having by-passed their brains and they splutter them without reasoning or caring to substantiate. In this context, I hope Lar will be gracious to explain the meaning of this 'Islamize' and marry it with the plateau situation. The Deputy Governor, Chief Michael Botmang, who is likely to be the next governor should Dariye be ousted is neither Hausa nor a Moslem but a Birom Christian. Lar is somebody who will blame a wind in Sokoto if there is a cough in Plateau but in other to achieve his selfish and egotistical objective. 

 

When he was the minister of Police Affairs during the Abacaha regime, his hatred of the Hausa Fulani was then refrigerated or even non-existent but with the departure of Abacha and the inauguration of Obasanjo he led a group of 'Middle-Belt' elders to declare their independence from the Hausa Fulani North.  When this coterie of middle-belt gospellers emerged from Aso Rock having cut their umbilical cord from the North, they looked all Northern, head to toe. Not only were they all robed in the Hausa attire but they either spoke English or most probably Hausa-- the former being too wooden for an informal setting--for no any means of communication this cocktail combination of disparate ethnic backgrounds could understand among themselves other than these two languages. Lar's case is more poignant; he wears his zanna Bukar erect like an antenna and with the panache of a Kanuri and struts with the title of 'Walin' Langtang---a title purloined from the people he hates with a passion.  This all goes to show how our elite manipulates issues for their selfishness. The carving of the political middle belt is for economic gains of the middle belt elite who have created a receiving niche away from the larger one operated by their colleagues in the larger North all in a sharp elitist competition for our resources. But I digress

 

The EFCC, which is out to bring this criminal to the book, has been made to appear the enemy. The same people who have broken the law at will and flouted due process are those now calling for the ‘rule of law’ to prevail. The rule of law called by Dariye and his cohorts is to allow the State legislature to decide his case again and make a caricature of not only the constitution but also our collective gumption. To say that Dariye should be tried by the state legislature is akin to saying that the forty thieves are those to try their leader, Ali Baba. 'Due process' and 'rule of law' here were first followed and Dariye was given a clean Bill by the hallowed house of priestly legislature. ‘Due process’ and ‘rule of law’ was followed when Dariye siphoned millions of pounds and dollars into foreign accounts. ‘Rule of law’ and ‘due process’ was followed when Dariye jumped bail in Britain. The same ‘rule of law’ was followed when Dariye applied apartheid in his state by tagging some citizens ‘settlers’ and some ‘landlords’. ‘Rule of law’ and ‘due process’ was followed when Dariye sent his commandos to sack Yelwa village. A governor with such a thick dossier of peculiar ‘rules of law’ and ‘due processes’ should just be trussed up and bundled like a common criminal that he is and be taken to await justice. Such manner of arrest is not out of tune with the sort of law and due process Dariye has been steeped in, and has timelessly sanctioned in his state. EFCC should not relent in their efforts to see that this man who is making the unfortunate masses his human shield is brought to the law by hook or by crook. If he escapes from the law, let the law pursue him. The masses have nothing to lose but their tyrant and robber.

 

The plateau story is just one among many cases of subversion of justice through political manipulations in Nigeria. Alamieseigha of Bayelsa State has run his voice to croak saying that he has been hounded due to his belief in the emancipation of the Niger Delta. Charity, they say, begins at home. While raping the Niger Delta resources he was at the same time shouting for the economic emancipation of his people. Atiku’s henchmen are now everywhere shouting about the victimization of their Godfather but does that explain his embezzlement of funds in the PTDF?

 

Umar Bello writes from Jubail in Saudi Arabia.