In the Name of the Godfather

Understandably, for those in power, “continuity” is equal to “comfort”, and “predictability” assures them that they can continue to be in control. And so, instinctively, they prefer to believe that things would continue to go on as have always been: preferably, forever. A few seemingly mundane examples would help to shed some light on the matter:

If a frog is put in a pot of cold water, it would not bother itself, provided the water is heated up slowly and gradually. Instead, the frog would continue to adjust its body temperature, so as to accommodate the perceived minor irritation. However, unfortunately, the frog will in the end, let itself, unwittingly, to be boiled alive, simply because it was too complacent, and too comfortable with “continuity” not to realise that continuous change, at some point, becomes “discontinuous”, and therefore demands a change of strategy.

Only recently, six (6) mobile policemen, attached to “Operation Fire-for-Fire” in Delta State, were kidnapped in Ijala village, behind Warri Refining and Petrochemicals Company (WRPC), Effurun. The villagers, numbering about 25, disarmed the mobile policemen, who were sent there to arrest some “sons of Ijala soil”, suspected to be hardened criminals, possibly “illegal bunkerers”. As usual, a combined team of lethally armed soldiers and mobile policemen has since been dispatched to comb Ijala village for possible “clues” as to the whereabouts of the kidnapped policemen. (Heaven help Ijala village. Amen.)

In early July, 2003, a self-styled terror comedian, one Mr. Aaron Barschak, a Briton of Anglo-Saxon extraction, gate-crashed into HRH Prince William’s 21^st birthday party, dressed, and looking very much like Osama Bin Laden of al-Qaeda. Some weeks later, guests at a royal garden party got the rudest shock of their lives, when an invited guest, also of Anglo-Saxon extraction, suddenly dropped his trousers and underwear unceremoniously, to the full view of the special guest of honour, and royal mother of the day, Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Head of State, Head of the Anglican Church, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (God Save the Queen. Amen.)

In a world of incremental changes, it makes a lot of sense to ape our elders, so as to take over from where they left off. However, under conditions of rapid change and abrupt discontinuity, it is no longer obvious that the ways of our elders must necessarily continue to be our ways. We may need new rules for new ball games, and so, we may have to discover those new rules (which even our “elders” do not, or may not know), all by ourselves.

Consequently, if we want to avoid the fate of the boiling frog, or the kidnapped mobile policemen at Ijala village, or the royal host and esteemed guests at Buckingham Palace, we must learn to look for, and embrace discontinuity. We must change our thinking style radically. And as Sir Isaac Newton observed, it requires external force to overcome internal inertia: shocks to galvanise week societies, and revolutions to unblock the congested psyches of failing nations. Perhaps that is why Nigeria, untouched by revolution for so long, despite all its numerous monumental foibles, seems to prefer the maintenance of the status quo as “the way forward”.

Ten (10) years ago, according to conventional wisdom, General Sani Abacha (GCFR), in the company of ex-Lieutenant General Dipo Diya, Colonel Lawan Gwadabe, and others, after their usual “due consultations” with the patriotic (serving and retired) officers and gentlemen of the Nigerian Armed Forces, some foreign “core investors”, local businessmen, selected traditional rulers, and friendly foreign diplomats, received, and quickly accepted a letter of voluntary resignation from Chief Ernest Shonekan, the then Chairman of a so-called Interim National Government (ING), a committee (of friends) that ruled Nigeria illegally for 83 days and 82 nights, in 1993.

Eight (8) years ago, as we were made to believe, General Sani Abacha (GCFR) was informed by his North Korean-trained security advisers, and Libyan-groomed secret service operatives, (most of who are still on active service today in Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, and in the 36 Government Houses, scattered across Nigeria), that there was a coup d’état in the making. Subsequently, General Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR), Major General Shehu Yar’Adua (GCON), and Colonel Lawan Gwadabe (psc), were identified as the brains behind the coup plot of 1995, and were sentenced to serve long jail terms, along with several others, after the usual due investigations, interrogations, and “security considerations”, in the national interest.

Five (5) years ago, after the mysterious deaths of Mazi S.G. Ikoku, Major General Shehu Yar’Adua, General Sani Abacha, and Alhaji (Bashorun) M.K.O. Abiola, and the subsequent coronation of Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo, as the President, and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, straight from Yola Prison, the coup plot of 1995 came to be known as a “phantom coup”, for obvious reasons of political correctness. Incidentally, today, even Lawyer Oladipo Diya (Esq.), the one time deputy predatory autocrat under General Sani Abacha, and later, the cheerleader of another coup plot that was reported in 1997, also claims, rather unconvincingly, that his too was a “phantom coup”.

On Thursday, 10 July 2003, one Mr. Raphael Ige, then, an Assistant Inspector General of Police, with barely one month left before his eventual retirement from active service in one of the most corrupt police forces on earth, in the company of 200 trigger-happy mobile policemen, invaded Government House, Awka, and received, as we are made to believe, a letter of voluntary resignation from Dr. Chris Ngige (MON), the presumed winner of an election process that has been reported by both local and foreign observers to have been rigged with brazen impunity.

Shortly afterwards, Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR), three-times President, and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, straight from his usual useless ego trips overseas (one, to war-torn Liberia, and the other, to coup-infested Sao Tome), as expected, denied any foreknowledge of Dr. Chris Nigige’s nightmares at the Government House, Awka. He informed Nigerians, and the world at large, that his God, the one that helped him successfully renegotiate the oil wealth of Sao Tome with a band of rag-tag soldiers that partook in a coup d’état earlier there, would also help him to solve the aborted subversion of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Government House, Awka, and that the mater would be handled “politically, in-house” (whatever that means), by the PDP. In other words, nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, happened in Awka. Period.

In essence, what transpired between Dr. Chris Ngige (MON), and ex- AIG Raphael Ige’s government-trained terrorists in mobile police uniforms, could just as well be called a “phantom coup”: i.e. the figment of the collective imagination of Nigerians; no worse or better than what General Abacha accused General Obasanjo of doing in 1995, or Chief Ernest Shonekan’s voluntary abdication to General Sani Abacha (GCFR) in 1993, or Chief (Dr.) Nwafor Orizu’s voluntary abdication to Major General Johnson Agwuiyi-Ironsi in 1966. Déjà vu!

In order to better appreciate the theatre of the absurd that Nigeria has recently been appearing to be, we need to digress just a little bit, and take a closer look at similar tragic absurdities that play themselves out elsewhere:

In late 2002, Tanzania halted the export of a very precious metal called coltan, suspected to have originated from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Indeed, a United Nations report accused Ugandan and Rwandan soldiers, and companies, of massive looting of the natural resources of another country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the process, a Rwandan mining company took the government of Tanzania to court over Tanzanian allegations that Rwanda was attempting to export Congolese minerals illegally. The mining company claimed that a cargo of 36 tons of coltan, being withheld at the Dar-es-Salaam harbour, was worth over US$14 million.

The mineral, coltan (columbite tantalite), is the principal source of tantalum, a rare and valuable metal in huge demand in today's high technology industries. Tantalum is an extremely hard, dense metal that is highly resistant to corrosion. It has a very high melting point and is a good conductor of both heat and electricity. Tantalum is essential in the manufacture of certain critical electronic components in mobile phones. Some European lobby groups assert that coltan production is fuelling the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Interestingly, most of the key players now in the coltan trade, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, actually used to be simple rural peasant farmers.

Demand for tantalum has been growing in the past decade, mainly due to the increase in applications for tantalum capacitors used in personal computers, avionics, night vision technology, robotics, and cellular telephony. The electronics industry is by far the biggest consumer of tantalum, but severe shortages of the ore have been experienced recently as a result of market demand. The scarcity of coltan worldwide has put tremendous pressure on the mining of coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and illegal exploitation of the metal has become a serious problem.

Coltan is inside every cellular telephone on earth. Tens of millions of mobile phones have been sold in the past couple of years, worldwide. Now, think about the global demand for coltan, and also imagine the poverty it induces in poor countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Add to this situation the existence of a turf-based warlord system, very much like the so-called system of “godfatherism” in Nigeria, and the conflicts generated over deposits of coltan can easily degenerate into civil wars.

This warlord system also siphons off most of the profit from the coltan trade to line the pockets of local politicians, customs officers, policemen, and soldiers, loyal only to the money they can be paid to be either silent, or violent, as may be required by the “Godfathers”. What this siphoning of the national treasury also means is that the local people, who may be doing all the dirty work, see very little benefit, if any, of the dangerous work that they do. Some diplomatic analysts insist that the international demand for coltan is actually the driving force behind the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One might as well extend that conjecture to infer a possible link between the perennial and seemingly intractable inter-ethnic conflicts, the so-called “communal clashes” in Warri and Okrika, on the one hand, and “illegal bunkering” activities in the vicinities of crude oil pipelines, flow stations, tank farms and jetties of the two state-ran refineries located in the Effurun and Alesa-Eleme, indeed, the entire Niger Delta.

This situation can be likened to the politics of Onitsha Market Traders Association, or “illegal bunkering” in the Niger Delta territory, or trans-national drug-trafficking cabals, and/or diamond-smuggling mafias in Liberia, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone. Just as in the coltan trade, high-demand and cartels create high prices that nurture an atmosphere of gangsterism, state-assisted violence, and institutionalised corruption, spanning the entire spectrum of the executive, legislative, and judicial arms of government, at all tiers.

In all cases, the question simply boils down to: “Whose fault is this, by the way?” Should we blame the local people, and/or the so-called “Godfathers” and their “Godsons”, who are simply trying to make money to survive in the only way that they might know how, or victims living within the constraints imposed on them by an uncaring Establishment? Should we blame the state and Federal governments who turn a blind eye to the resultant violence, and the frequent shameless complicity of superior police officers in the sustenance of a culture of impunity, including condoning the associated violence of the so-called “Godsons”, while working in anticipation of huge “returns” from the “Godfathers”?

Are the GSM handset manufacturers, or spare parts dealers, or multinational oil companies, or pharmaceutical factories to blame, just because they purchase or produce a product that is known to have been harvested and/or processed in less than ideal circumstances, and which is very probably tainted by violence, and inequity? In truth, the answer goes beyond the obvious.

The sustenance of a benign indigenous colonialism promotes an atmosphere in which survival by all means necessary (fair or foul) is all that many Nigerians know today. The attitudinal syndrome that haunts Nigerians generally, is a seeming lack of self-worth, an over-indulgence in self-depreciation, and a complete lack of faith in their capacity to rise above the crushing blows that have been dealt them in the past 30 years, by various parasitic military dictators, turned civilian predatory autocrats.

Rumour has it that Mr. Christian Uba, the root cause of Dr. Chris Nigige’s headaches, the sole financier, expediter, and harbinger of all manner of electoral fraud, and lawlessness in Anambra State and beyond, is a Nigerian multi-billionaire. Mr. Christian Uba was born into extreme poverty some 38 years ago, even though, from time to time, his very sterile imagination allows him to derail into a state of stupor that makes him hallucinate, and regurgitate pathetic tales about a mythical mansion that his peasant parents left behind in Port Harcourt (Garden City), at the onset of the First Nigerian Civil War (1967~1970), in line with the clichéd stereotype of “abandoned property”, complete with its usual ingredients of misdirected aggression, voluntary amnesia, group blackmail, and unconcealed intimidation.

Master Christian Uba was only two (2) years old when that silly civil war started in 1967. Today, he openly brags that he is the “Godfather of Godfathers” in Nigeria. Most probably, like millions of unfortunate children in Biafra, Christian Uba must have suffered all manner of deprivation, hunger, and trauma, including one or two bouts of kwashiorkor, during the First Nigerian Civil War. With the end of that war, young Christian Uba, then only 5 years old, plodded through life as a child labourer, selling akara, “gra-nut” (peanuts), kpuff-kpuff, moin-moin, and akamu for his beloved sweet mother in Enugu (Coal City).

A few years later, he dropped out of primary school, probably because of the excruciating pains induced by his very strong hallucinations about his poor father’s “abandoned” 50-bedroom palace in Port Harcourt, Garden City. (See what kwashiorkor can do?) Very little is known about Christian Uba’s adolescence. Then, lo, and behold, like the transcendental transfiguration that took place in 1998/1999, between Yola Prison and Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, suddenly, the street-wise Mr. Christian Uba became a big-time government contractor, and a multi-billionaire. How? We do not know.

Mr. Chris Uba, like Chief (General) Olu Obasanjo, Dr. Chris Ngige, and the yet to be dismissed, and jailed ex-AIG, Mr. Raphael Ige, is a discontinuity in the social and political evolution of the Nigerian nation state, and should be treated as such: i.e. with tremendous doses of creativity and eagle-eyed eternal vigilance.

The paradox of their manifestation in the collective consciousness of Nigerians graphically mirrors the inherent contradictions, latent dysfunctions, and premeditated conspiracies that are intimately embedded in the interactions between the products of the civil war (particularly young men and women between the age bracket of 30 and 45 years, like Chris Uba, and Sir Emeka Offor (Jerusalem Pilgrim)), the key players, and flag bearers of the Nigerian Civil War (like Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR)), and the victims of the Nigerian Civil War, particularly the intelligentsia of the defunct East Central State (like Dr. Chris Ngige (MB; BS; MON))

In the final analysis, we urgently need new rules for this brand new ball game of transiting from military dictatorships, via the present condition of predatory civilian autocracy, hopefully, to a future state of stable democracy in Nigeria, if indeed we seriously mean to avoid the fate of the boiling frog.