Lagos — For a country that is looked upon by the entire black race to lead it to the promised land, Nigeria must rethink its battering of human dignity. The recent NNPC pipeline explosion that killed no fewer than 275 Nigerians is quite unacceptable. It is an indictment on both the NNPC , government and the rich.

It is difficult to imagine that NNPC will be pumping fuel from point A, through a pipeline to point B and will not monitor the itinerary of the flow which ought to be noticed by velocity check and output at point. So, how can two tankers be filled at a point in between and and no one raised an alarm at the time the first tanker was filled.

The eyes of the rich people in Nigeria are bigger than their stomach hence they are able to see what the poor with a bigger stomach but small eyes and brain could not see.

They came to a squalor with two tankers and scooped to the fullest the two tankers and thought that the inhabitants there were fools. Of course, their big stomach will grumble.

A hungryman is not a freeman. And, like a helpless and hopeless illiterate having a meal with two literate people communicating in high-falluting English language, all he cares to know is that the three lumps of meat in the plate must be shared equally, grammar or no grammar. His own lump must not be taken from him if he must be prevented from pulling the dagger.

It would have been hard for security people who allowed people with tankers to scoop to have prevented the poor Nigerians who were scooping with gerry cans not to take their share of a presumed national cake moreso that fuel scarcity was biting hard.

That particular experience is just a miniature of what goes on in Nigeria that makes one's tears turn to blood. To console a bereaved person or give solace to a poorman, the Igboman will always tell you that there is no way the eyes will be made to shed blood hence no bitter occurrence on earth is said to be unheard of. However, the same people acknowledge a saying that sees a human being as "better-dead-than-alive" when he allows goat to feed out of what he carries on his head. When such things are allowed, tears turn to blood.

This is Nigeria where a political godfather can decide the fate of the entire citizens of a State and no one dares to challenge him. Any protest is crushed and people die like chicken.

This is Nigeria where the pension funds for a group of workers could be put in a bank and no sooner it was done than the bank was declared failed bank with no settlement of the poor and, heart attack kills unknown number of people like dead leaves.

This is Nigeria where Government collects poor people's money since 1995 and promise them houses but turns around to use the money to build houses for rich people in Abuja and no one thinks of either reimbursing the money or marching words with action. FHA still exists and cares not about the pains the poor people they collected the money from are going through. Count those who had died since 1995 for that FHA attitude and one will see how the poor are decimated.

This is Nigeria where minimum wage is paid to a worker who feeds the dog of a rich man with meat 10 times the amount paid him as salary in a month.

This is Nigeria where the pocket money of a politician's child is bigger than what a professor earns in a month.

This is Nigeria still living in 18th Century French where the people cry for bread and the leadership retorts back by asking them to demand for cake instead of bread making caricature of their demand.

This is Nigeria where the poor man has no right to land to build his own house instead he is forced to vacate his squalor to worse conditions, Ã la Maroko, for the rich to possess the land and develop it as seen in Victoria Island Extension.

This is Nigeria where workers are ejected from their houses so as to sell the houses to rich people in the name of privatization as was done in 1004 and Eric Moore Towers.

This is Nigeria where the rich construct overnight universities so as to accommodate the interest of their fellow rich as their children are admitted without the right criteria and in the process public universities are neglected as more children of the poor seem to be in attendance than those of the rich.

This is Nigeria where the ailments of the rich are quickly funded by estacodes to travel abroad whereas the killer of the poor like Malaria, diarrhea, typhoid, remediable by making their habitats or surrounding clean is completely neglected.

This is Nigeria where the rich buy bullet-proof cars as a mark of scorn to the poor.

This is Nigeria where the rule of law is turned upside down by the rich whenever it tends to make the poor triumph over their oppressive rulership.

This is Nigeria where the rich always whip up the sentiment of the poor on religious or ethnic grounds so as to cause them to die by fighting one another, geared at sustaining the rich rulership.

This is Nigeria where dissenting or opposing view means assuming the stance of an enemy and, all is done to crush or silence the person even in learned places like the academic.

This is Nigeria where a chance will not be given for a transparent election as the materials for such exercise are not adequately made available and, our legislators who ought to mount pressure that the materials be made available prefer to return to the old ways where rigging is a fait accompli.

This is Nigeria where everybody seems to believe that votes are allocated before human beings, the poor who foolishly go out to vote, perform that so called civic duty. Some primaries of the parties tell the story.

This is Nigeria where the classrooms of the future generation show clearly that more area boys and girls are in the making than responsible people.

There is an urgent need to arrest the situation so that Blacks wherever they are could have hope that the African continent through the most populous country, Nigeria, is capable of good things; for, any occurrence in Nigeria is relayed to Blacks in the diasporas a reminder that they should thank their stars for the slave trade without which life would have been to them better death than alive.

To restore the dignity of the Nigerian person let better living of citizens be the priority agenda of 2007 leadership. Enough of making Nigerians shed blood tears. Enough of making Nigerian look like living corpses.

- Ariole is a Lecturer at University of Lagos