(An Open Letter To Fellow Nigerians Iv)
Dear Fellow Nigerians,
In continuation with the discourse on the suggested Year of Sovereign Conferences, it is necessary again to review the state of affairs in the fatherland. The third quarter review is coming at a particularly emotional period for the writer. Personally, the month of October is the month of our shame as a people. It is the month when a ruthless international imperialist transferred the key of the jailhouse called Nigeria to a local equally ruthless feudal imperialist. It is the month of the anniversary when a calculated and deliberate gerrymandering of Nigeria was finalised and sealed. It is the month that reminds me of my status as a dressed up slave under an imperial local feudal lord.
This month, since this writer became awakened into the truth of the political set up of Nigeria, has ceased to give me joy. October is the month of mourning. It is the time to cry silently and to mourn quietly for my seized, withheld, sabotaged fundamental human rights to freedom, equality and justice. This writer is aware that the inability of most Nigerians to understand the problems facing us from the viewpoint of a brilliantly crafted deception of fake political independence is one of the reasons why Sovereign and Sovereignty have failed to become a crucial political agenda in Nigeria. We believe that to understand ones status as a slave who has been fooled into believing otherwise because of empty constitutional dressings of equality, justice, and freedom, that were carefully made ineffectual with deliberate unjust clauses in the body of the constitution, cannot but bring out a moral outrage for instant redress.
Most of the issues we are raising since January are revelations of truth. This writer was as dumb and blind as the next Nigerian until 1998 when through the grace of heaven he began to see and to hear. He was equally as complacent as any ‘educated’ Nigerian until the episodes surrounding June 12 threw some light into his dark, sombre and seemingly peaceful world. In all seriousness this writer can say he is one of the children fathered by June 12. Whatever the writer is doing today has a lot to do with the trauma of the seismic shock that followed the unprecedented acts of brazen shenanigan inflicted on Nigerians by the owners of Nigeria through the annulment of the election of June 12, 1993. This episode succeeded in turning me into a seeker. It is the desire of this writer to share the little knowledge and facts so far discovered in his search for the truth of Nigeria that motivates and drives this enlightenment project.
Nigerians should join me in thanking God for the life of people like Harold Smith who through his Libertas Webpage has helped to fill in some of the missing chapters in the Nigerian history. Harold Smith’s life is another evidence of the special place Nigeria has in the divine programme for planet earth. People like Harold Smith should not be alive today, going by what we know about imperial powers of this world. Harold Smith’s types are wasted before they can start to sing. That this fellow is still alive is a testimony that truth can never die. It is a fact that Britain played havoc on Nigeria and they had and still have collaborators among us who are always prepared and willing to do Britain’s dirty jobs.
To understand all these dirty, murky political activities and yet for any Nigerian to refuse to take the issues of sovereignty seriously is difficult for this writer to fathom. It is unfortunate that though most Nigerians claimed to be literate they have serious aversion to learning and reading. Hence, all the earth-shaking revelatory material posted on the World Wide Web have attracted very insignificant Nigerian readership. Most of us must have heard our educated friends, acquaintances and relations that say to us point blank, “I am no longer interested in learning or reading. I have done enough of reading for a lifetime. My children will read whatever remains to be read.” Mind you this kind of statement is coming from a twenty-something or thirty-something year old Nigerian who has managed to purchase by hook or crook, a useless HND or BA or BSc certificate in a generic discipline called Ignorance. With this type of mindset and mental attitude, how can Nigerians do justice to the wealth of intellectual materials floating about around them? Yet without learning and without seeking an intellectual understanding of our problems the solutions cannot just come out of the blues.
It is under the search for answers to my problem as a Nigerian that the awareness of my status as a yet to be redeemed slave hit the core of my consciousness. This writer realised that he was merely transferred like purchased cattle from the British imperial colonial court to the Nigerian imperial feudal court. It is from this position that we shall undertake the third quarter review of the National Year of Sovereign Conferences. We need to ask ourselves again whether the nations of Nigeria have made any significant progress in the last three months. Have the political situations seen any drastic improvement to the extent that we can say the call for Sovereign Conferences is no longer necessary? Is it right to say that the nascent democracy is yielding the desired fruit of peace, unity, progress and prosperity?
Current Burning Issues
As usual let us quickly review the current news that are making waves in Nigeria. This exercise is necessary to buttress our position with respect to the inevitability of Sovereign Conferences. It is extremely difficult to resist being impatient when one observes the unfounded optimism of fellow nationals who wish to reform the status quo without tinkering with the fundamental national questions. It is difficult not to be impatient when one reads the erudite submissions of fellow nationals on necessary reformation packages that will see the country out of the woods. It is difficult not to be impatient when one observes the zealous efforts of octogenarian senior statesmen and women in their selfless devotion to mend the leaking roofs of Nigeria, to patch the worn and torn political and economic fences, and to renovate the burnt and moribund moral and ethical structures of the Nigeria state. It is difficult not to get impatient with all these fruitless exercises that will obviously lead to nowhere.
At this stage, one is forced to begin to question ones mental state and to seek assistance of medical professional colleagues for a thorough medical and psychological check up. Is the writer going insane? Why are other Nigerians not seeing and shouting themselves hoarse about the fundamental contradictions of the Nigeria State? Why is it that fellow nationals are blind to the obvious? If Fellow Nigerians are seeing the larger picture why are they offering puerile, cosmetic and palliative solutions when only fundamental revolutionary actions are needed?
However, if indeed this writer is going crazy at least there is enough evidence to show that there are more chronically mad people among the members of the so-called political class of Nigeria. If mine is madness then the members of the national and state assemblies, federal, state and local governments must definitely be the sane Nigerians under the popular conventional wisdom. This is the dilemma facing this writer. if indeed he is not insane and if the medical professionals have given him a clean bill of health, how does he bring the members of this generation to the state of awareness of all these critical and pertinent issues that need our immediate attention? What other modes of communication must he adopt to attract the attention of fellow suffering Nigerians? How can he arouse the sleeping Nigerians from their slumbers in order that they can address the national questions with utmost devotion, passion, intellect and spirit?
The current revelations in the political mad house of Nigeria cannot surprise keen watchers of Nigeria. It is what is to be expected as a natural outcome that should flow out of a state under the governance of groups of dishonourable men and women. As it were we have instituted ignorance as the state religion and sycophants can be found all over the country always on their knees to pay obeisance as they worship the little gods that own Nigeria – the Family. Let us take a quick snapshot at the most pathetic story that took place in the last three months.
The Agura Hotel Affair
Agura Hotel, Abuja shall enter the history book of Nigeria as the place of the great confirmation of what every awakened Nigerian has always known. The episode of political arm-twisting by a group of blue-blood Nigerians that was brought to light by President Obasanjo is not new. What is new is that it is the first time in our history that the Family has been careless to leave behind pertinent evidence of their diabolical handling of the affairs of Nigeria. Every thinking Nigerian understands that since 1960, there has always been a clandestine, cloak and dagger inner government behind every open government.
The political bombshell released by President Olusegun Obasanjo is bound to reverberate and will continue to reverberate until the cathedrals of ignorance built across the nations are completely demolished. We are in the least bothered about his motives. We are not in least concerned whether the release of the information was done carelessly or deliberately. As far as we know, it is clear that without a high dosage of national ignorance in the polity, the cruel and ruthless Family that has held Nigeria to ransom would not have succeeded to this extent. We give thanks to heaven that we are now coming into factual information and knowledge of how Nigeria had been run and is being run since its creation. This is a common knowledge to most federal civil and public servants. A good number of them were kicked out of the civil service with ignominy because they refused to pay necessary obeisance or failed to accord royal respect to the members of the Family.
It is at times like these that we wish Nigerians who had first hand information and experiences about the master-servant political arrangement of Nigeria would have the courage or the moral concern to enlighten other Nigerians. This writer would wish to appeal to friends and families of people like Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the former Chairman of Federal Electoral Commission and retired Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, the former Chief of General Staff to prevail on them on the need to write their memoirs for the sake of posterity. It is in knowing the truth of some of the degrading relationships that these Nigerians encountered in the hands of other blue-blood Nigerians and the unsavoury experiences they suffered in the corridor of national power that the next generation can understand fully the meaning and the essence of freedom.
