Emma Okocha
4 December 2008
opinion
"One had to be in the Tiv Division in order to feel the spine-chilling danger of poisoned arrows. Stories of the atrocities committed by the 'Temitios'....that is what Tiv rioters are called, and it means break the head into pieces and make the blood curdle."-The Headlines, August 17, 2003, VOL.V, NO 435
"Murtala Sani Hashim, who has been registering the dead as they are brought to the mosque, told Reuters he had listed 367 bodies. Ten corpses wrapped in blankets, two of them infants, lay behind him awaiting burial rites."--The CNN, Saturday, November 29, 2008.
"Politics divorced from religion has absolutely no meaning. Politics is as essential as religion, but if it is divorced from religion it is like a corpse, fit only for burning." - Mahtma Mohandas Gandhi.
"Jesus is not a pacifist. He chose a Zealot as one of his disciples. The Zealots were people of war. They believe in 'No Sword, No Peace,' Simon the Zealot was one of Jesus' disciples." - Father John Sigo, Political Jesus, Snaap Press, 1995, Page 40.
"In the Southernmost sections of the North, known as the Middle Belt, the move towards an independent state had progressed to the point where the disaffection with the dominating NPC superstructure had precipitated riot" - - Alan Feinstein, African Revolutionary, The Life And Times of Nigeria's Aminu Kano, Triatlantic Books New York.1998.Page 210.
"Ignorance of democratic governance has assisted unscrupulous leaders to deceive the population and to carry their evil and selfish designs on the citizens and the country. Because of ignorance, Africans have been notoriously patient in their sufferings and oppression. Such endurance has been founded on fatalism."- Dr. J M.Walliggo, Secretary, Ugandan Constitutional Commission.
In Africa's most populous nation, the PDP, Peoples Democratic Party prides itself as the largest political party in the continent. Going into its tenth year in power, the party has continued to focus all its energies in winning elections. Without giving the same attention to the act of government, the party has failed to recognize the difference between winning elections and running governments.
Under the PDP the only thriving industry in Nigeria is the Election Industry. Local government elections, state and federal elections, are conducted all year round from one state to another. In my own state of Delta my good old friend, the state chairman of the PDP, was few months ago, feted by some Nigerians in Texas as he arrived town to celebrate the PDP sweep of the entire state after the last local government elections.
Most of the brilliant legal luminaries rotate from one court to the other, prosecuting or defending election petitions. The whole of the country's Judiciary have abandoned criminal cases and millions are incarcerated awaiting trials.
The legion of cases involving elections and the petitions, challenging those abracadabras, postpone the freedom of many Nigerians, who look on the legal system to redress the atmosphere that has turned men into angry wolves.
These days instead of working the farms, tending the gardens, learning the trades, fishing the rivers, going to school or joining in winning souls for Jesus or for Allah, young men are often sighted, with angry and seething faces, seating and anchoring in formidable numbers on wooden benches in frightening clusters, outside the village squares, and in conspicuous verandas by the street corners, waiting for jobs the nation have denied them.
Often they wait for no long a time. If they don't fall into the mouthwatering temptations of the 'Kill and Gos' or the Kidnapping posse, they may decide to play into the hands of the armed underworld. Increasingly, more of our lost young men who for some reasons, discard the underworld, are bye and large ready, and willing to be enlisted as political thugs, ballot box smugglers and undertakers.
Dirty enforcers and outright anarchists of the clean democratic process. Once the price is right.
These battalions of disenchanted Nigerian youths have since the advent of the PDP grown into divisions and are daily pouring their spew of frustrations on the innocent and law abiding Nigerian citizens.
Presently, the shock is the fire in Jos town. How can we so readily forget the recent Armageddon in the Edo state local government elections? Some foreign media in their surface but one layered true analysis describe the Jos conflict as one that is motivated by religion.
In our sorrow as we watched the cremated properties and the escalating numbers of the wasted humanity, another section of the western media threw in some comic thread.
One correspondent observed that the local perception, is that the ANPP is a Muslim party, and the PDP is Christian. Whatever, if the PDP is a Christian, it is our challenge that the party after almost a decade in power should by now hold to certain solid landmark achievement.
It is unchristian and an unforgivable sin when after these years of wallowing in oil windfall for the Christian PDP to fail to provide power for the nation, so that the people can return to work. Where is the party's Christianity when all the billions budgeted for 'poverty alleviation' and all that jazz, disappeared before the poor masses.
As Jos burns, Nigeria has no modern railways, no shipping lines while the oceans are swarmed by the Liberian registered shipping fleet. Foreigners including the efficient Ethiopian Airlines dominate the Nigerian skies and major international outlets.
As Jos burns, President Yar'Adua has astounded all serious observers as he went for the old guard, and appointed Dr. Alhaji Rilwan Lukman Minister again. At a post retirement age, good old Lukman who has transversed nearly every Nigeria's federal parasatal and department, including the oil and the industrial ministries is joining as part of Yar'Adua's cabinet of over fifty Ministers and Special Advisers.
Included in this armada cabinet would be Ministers, of non productive Industries, Minister of a limping Transportation system, there is a Minister for the dead Nigerian Airways, of Health without hospitals, of Energy in a country of darkness, of Works where the bridges are about to collapse on commuters, of Agriculture where the hunger in the land is epidemic, Minister of Water, where the taps are dry. And a Minister of Internal affairs who have no clue how and when Jos was set on fire!
The tragedy is that most of these ministries are staffed with some silent and serious workers who want to do their work. On the other hand, the political putrid leadership who are catapulted to lead these ministries, are regrettably not the beautiful ones.
They were never schooled, were not prepared, and most will remain till the end of their staid tenure, and on account of their arid conceptualization of government business, and infantile understanding of political party responsibilities as regards party appointments and rewards; be overwhelmed by their elevated office.
These political appointees look at government as their reward for rigging or working the election industry. In the evergreen memory of the last of the Ibadan philosopher king, the Cicero of Esa Oke, Chief Bola Ige "they came to chop"
Where were these ministries and their ministers before and when Jos started to burn? If the Nigerian Internal Affairs cannot proactively read and nip in the bud an unfolding internal confrontation, the nature and the causes of which we are already familar with since the Igbo progrom of the 50s, and 60's, why are we keeping such dwarfs and their staff to protect the Nigerian people. Over the years, the developing patterns and the characteristics of the principal parties in conflicts of this nature are well known to the authorities.
The Internal Affairs, the Nigerian Police, the Army Intelligence have no more excuses. The mayhem in Jos is entirely their fault and this government cannot run away from that simple truth. If we cannot contain our peoples who at the slightest provocation, enjoy breaking to pieces the heads of their neighbors, then where do we run for cover if some of these local Talibans decide to invite as allies the Sicilian mafia or the desert merchants of the sword!
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