Article published in The Nation Newspaper
14/02/2007
Drowning News: Another 60 people drowned, uselessly, on a Cameroon – Nigeria ferry just because we do not enact cheap ‘life jacket’ laws. Negligence and Criminal waste! We know about politics but not about life jackets. Is there something wrong with us?
Obasanjo, the national assembly of 1999-2007 are clearly not the Messianic democracy to right the LGA and all other military wrongs. The ‘silly census’ figures reverse God’s Laws and turn the excess of females over males on its head like in China. Now Lagos produces evidence to double its figures what will Kano do? Protest also or just double its LGAs again?
The Chinese shot down a satellite. They do not care about Darfur and are oil business partners with ‘Arab’ Khartoum. The Chinese can say it is just business but the miseries and deaths of black Sudanese, formerly West African slaves, are not ‘just business’. Happily Sudan has again been denied the Presidency of the African Union on account of the genocide and dreaded janajweed. Will our new President ask the Chinese to shoot down Niger Sat 1 to hide the true population figures that have been assembled by ‘heat sensitive’ satellite counts by the Americans and British satellites?
The supposed discrepancy between North and South Nigeria will raise questions until justice rules. However there are up to 10 million disenfranchised Nigerians abroad. Will anyone in power count them and allow them to vote? Most of them relocated during The Terror – ‘Great Military Depression’ of the Buhari/Babangidai/Abacha Deadly Days – spelt ‘BAD’ and the first oil windfall, $12.5billion, which is still missing like the Okigbo Panel Report. They are migrants, 90% of them from the South. And before you say that many Northern Nigerians are in Chad, Niger and Sudan, no be so. They are suffering countries, so why should many Nigerians be refugees there? In fact Northern governors complain of invasion from poor neighbours and even Lagos is awash with refugees. The ‘silly census’ criminally perpetuats myths for political, ethnic and economic domination and subjugation. Until and unless we get a political leadership willing to give ‘true justice’ to all its people, we will continue to have corrupt ‘silly census’ figures, corrupt laws, corrupt fiscal measures and a corrupt country. Only the greedy need to corrupt ‘silly census’ figures to rule and that is not an ‘Act of God’ but an ‘Act of man possessed by the devil’.
Our first census figures were ‘guestimates’ on which have been built the mathematical progressive Nigerian ‘silly Census’ Tower of Babel. If you were the colonial power would you watch your post-colonial policy plans being counted away in ‘all honesty’? If you start a nation with fictional figures then expect mega-fictional results later. But these figures will be unquestioned as the first fictional figures were unquestioned ‘colonial’ versus ‘colonised’. Layers of lies reinforced by military fiat make a tasteless sandwich difficult for honest Nigerians to swallow. What vomit will the Direct Data Capture voters list bring assuming we cancel the magic eight ‘Ibadan’ collecting centres and arrest the INEC staff not the house owners?
In 2007 are we so pathologically afraid that we are prepared to plunge again into magic ‘silly census’ figures to ‘live harmoniously’? Harmony and nationhood come not from fear, but from honesty and justice. The figure of 140m is exaggerated and skewed because the first father of all Nigerian Census figures, on which all subsequent ones are a magical mathematical multiple, were exaggerated and skewed. The evil seed has mutated into the tree of mischievous census ‘fact’ and has taken firm root. Today we struggle in the harmattan mist of fictional ‘silly census’ figures.
And now we have the fearless General Buhari seeking to again rule a fearful nation. Could he please tell us his role and the results of the probe of the Lagos Metroline and who, him or IBB, paid $180 million as penalty rather than benefit Fellow Citizens from all over Nigeria living in Lagos State, daily for the last 30 odd years with quick mass transit? Will he do it again and insist the railway and electricity are ‘reserved’ federal issues with double charges in the South? Answer, please, extremely military General Buhari. Who does he blame for the Petroleum Trust Fund ‘Pampering The Few’ at the expense of the rest – or was he just obeying orders? Come 2007 election will Buhari prove the PTF episode a rehearsal and the blueprint for the balkanization of the country into those to ‘get’ and those to ‘get not’ as he again denies equity and justice? Will the Niger Delta become a garrisoned war zone area under you General Buhari? Buhari is said to be honest in financial matters. You must judge, based on his history, if he will metamorphose into honesty where he has been wanting before. Honesty is about more than money. It includes honesty of purpose, action, equity, ethnic equality and human rights. Will the real General Buhari please stand up, answer the questions, and then please sit down and siddon look. Nigeria needs one of the civilian nationalist presidents, not another ‘General President’. If OBJ, who I did not vote for, could turn out as he is today, what will General Buhari of proven ‘fear factor’ do in ‘democracy’. Democracy is not just discipline and lining up. It is peace of mind. Nigerians should start shouting for a ‘Civilian President’.