SOVEREIGNTY, ECONOMIC SECURITY, BARACK OBAMA’S VISIT, JONATHAN, 2011 ELECTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA: CORRELATION. (PART 3)
“Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.” Liberian proverb.
“Do what you can with what you have, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt.
“Can you imagine U.S. voters putting a leader in the White House who is a puppet of the ruling elite and criminal clans? Ukraine’s recent election witnessed the convergence of democracy’s two greatest weaknesses – the tendency to fear strong individuals (Tymoshenko) and the tendency to vote for simple-minded people (Yanukovich)…” Yulia Latynina. Popular Russian journalist. Excerpt from weekly column “Inside Russia.” with the title “Letting poor people vote is dangerous.” February. 2010.
“It is not news to hear that that corruption and perverse incentives matter. But perhaps it is news to find out that the problem of twisted rules and institutions expains not just a little bit of the gap between Cameroon and rich countries but almost all the gap. Countries like Cameroon fall below their potential even considering their poor infrastructure, low investment and minimal education. But worse than that, the web of corruption foils every effort to improve their infrastructire, attract investment and improve educational standards. Cameroon’s education system would be better if people had incentive to get a good education: if a meritocracy were in place, and good grades and real skills – rather than conventions – earned jobs. Cameroon would have better technology and more working factories if the investment climate was right, either for foreign or domestic investors, and if the profits weren’t eaten up in bribes and red tape. There is so little investment in machinery and computers that extra investment should be very profitable – if the profits weren’t eaten up in bribes and red-tape. The small amount of education, technology and infrastructure that Cameroon does have could be much better be used if the society was organized to reward good and productive ideas. But it is not…”
Tim Harford. Excerpt from book ‘The Undercover Economist’ chapter 8: Why Poor Countries Are Poor.
50 YEARS OF TRAGEDY AND FAILURE: COSTLY PRICE OF ABSENCE OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY.
This year, it will be 50 years exactly since the Union Jack was lowered and Nigeria declared an independent country. How have we fared within these 50 years? What are the results or consequence of absence of political sovereignty? Where are we today?
Unfortunately, if we are to be sincere with ourselves, there is just nothing to write home about. For 50 years, we have not been able to take decisions that best meet our economic, poitical, military and social interests. So far, what we have are:
1. 50 years of corrupt, incompetent, visionless and morally bankrupt and imposed leadership;
2. 50 years of economic slavery;
3. 50 years in the wilderness;
4. 50 years in darkness;
5. 50 years without peace;
6. 50 years of poverty;
7. 50 years without basic infrastructure;
8. 50 years without any direction and development plan;
9. 50 years of suffering and smiling;
10. 50 years of humiliation of Nigerians by its leaders;
11.50 years of military and civilian dictatorship;
12. 50 years of sorrow, pain and senseless deaths;
13. 50 years of barbarism and religious pogroms;
14. 50 years of terrorising, oppression, suppression, brutality and systematic murder of innocent and harmless Nigerians by the Nigerian police, army and government in general;
15. 50 years of the inability of the government – that is now planning to build a nuclear plant with the help of the World Bank, General Electric, Western House and Aganga – to maintain or manage anything successfully: infrastructures, airports, airlines, telephone company (NITEL),aluminium, metallurgical, steel and petrochemical plants and NNPC;
16. 50 years of dancing to the tunes of the British and Americans by our so called leaders;
17. 50 years of no economy and living only on oil;
18. 50 years of mass looting and moral decadence by Nigerian rulers;
19. 50 years of disasters and failure;
20. 50 years without any concrete development plan for the country;
21. 50 years of political intrigues;
22. 50 years of religious riots, ethnic cleansing and pogroms of Southerners by Northerners.
The list is endless. In a nutshell, within 50 years, Nigeria has turned into a failed state and the biggest banana republic in the world thanks to the cabal, the British and the Americans – their backers – have imposed on the country. All the above statements – without exception and exaggeration – capture the true state of things in Nigeria for the past 50 years till today. This is the costly price we have paid, are paying and will continue to pay for the absence of political sovereignty, true democracy and imposition of incompetent, corrupt, visionless and morally bankrupt leadership on the people and the country.
When the sovereignty and economic interests of a country are threatened for a long period of time and it is unable to mobilise its resources to fend off the attacks, the country, like Nigeria, eventually turns into a FAILED STATE and a BANANA REPUBLIC.
NIGERIA: A BANANA REPUBLIC OR NOT?
Some Nigerians who consider themselves to be knowledgeable and patriotic have never missed the opportunity to express their objections or dissatisfaction whenever Nigeria is referred to as a banana republic. Perhaps, they come to the defense of Nigeria probably out of ignorance, stupidity, patriotism and/or fear to admit that their country, afterall, is nothing but a banana republic despite its 150 million population and the large reserve of oil in the Niger delta. In order to objectively determine if Nigeria is a banana republic or not, please let us put all emotion aside and answer the following questions honestly.
1. What do you call a country whose president was missing for 6 months and nobody, not even his deputy, knew his whereabout or could assertain whether he waas dead or alive?
2. What do you call a country whose acting president happily admitted with pride to a foreign journalist that he had neither seen nor spoken to his boss for the past 3 months?
3. What do you call a country that awards road contracts to Lebanese, whose population is less than 4 million and territory less than Oyo state?
4. What do you call a country that allows foreign oil companies to pollute its land for decades without any repercusion?
5. What do you call a county that over pays half-baked foreigners for work and/or services that better qualified Nigerians could do better and cheaper?
6. What do you call a county that dishes out its oil blocks, its most valuable and liquid assets, to every Dick and Harry?
7. What do you call a country that allows foreign envoys and spies to hold closed door meetings with a former military dictator who was disgaced out of office?
8. What do you call a country that allows fopreigners, foreign companies and countries to dominate its energy sector, its most valuable and liquid assets?
9. What do you call a country that allows foeigners, foreign companies and countries to dominate the whole of its economy?
10. What do you call a country that produces practically nothing and lives only on oil for the past 50 years?
11. What do you call a country that allows foreign oil companies to use offshore taxation thereby denying it of billions of dollars in lost tax revenues?
12. What do you call a country that is not capable of drilling its oil for almost 50 years when other producing countries like Iran and Venezuela with much smaller populations of 65 million and 26 millions respectively have already been doing that for l
ong?
13. What do yuou call a country that has been ruled fo the past 50 years by incompetent, corupt, visionless and morally bankrupt oppotunists?
14. What do yuou call a country with a population of 150 million that is incapable of managing its airports, steel, metallurgical and aluminium plants and had to privatize them or hand them over to Indians, Arabs and Israelis?
15. What do you call a country that the American, British ambassadors and every Dick and harry American state official like William J. Burns, the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, could walk straight into the office of its president and hold secret meetings anytime they want?
16. What do you call a country with a population of 150 million whose president thinks that his country must form a bi-Nation committees with the American government on elections, the Niger Delta, good governance in order to conduct a free and fair presidential election that will be accepted by the Americans; and resolve the Niger Delta impasse and other issues related to good governance?
17. What do you call a country whose president can not find capable citizens out of a population of 150 million to conduct technical audits and write blue prints for the country’s power sector and had to award over-inflated contact – without even a tender – to the World Bank?
18. What do you call a country whose leadership has to make jamboree visits to British’s Chatham House in London, the country of its colonial master in order to resolve all its internal problems especially the Niger Delta crises?
19. What do you call a country whose minister of petroleum was appointed despite the fact that her own people people were even against the appointment and she has been indicted twice for fraud and embezzlement?
20. What do you call a country that allows the former spokes man to its deceased president to travel to America on a suspicious and strange Harvard scholarship without realising that in actual fact he was invited by by the C.I.A. in order to get a detailed and classified information about all activities in Aso rock especially all the circumstances surrounding the death of its president?
21. What do you call a country that American and British ambassadors, Secretary of State, diplomats are already openly supporting the candidacy of an acting president before the latter even declares his intention to contest and without any strong protest from the country’s civil rights ands democratic activists?
22. What do you call a country whose law makers do not feel that it is necessary to investigate and establish the true cause and all the circumstances surrounding the death of its president which has brought public humiliation to the country and cost the economy a substantial loss?
23. What do you call a country that was uncapable of arresting an allegedly corrupt former governor that the president ordered should be arrested dead or alive, and the same thief was arrested by the Dubai government a couple of days later after the he escaped from the country?
24. What do you call a country where Babangida is still bold enough to come out to announce that he wants to become the president again after all the atrocities and crime that he committed that warrant his execution?
25. What do you call a country that uses only English language, the language of its colonial master as its only official language, 50 years after independence despite the fact that it has its own rich indeginous languages?
26. What do you call a country that complains from time to time that Britain, France and the United States are keeping its looted artefacts in their respective museums but at the same time reward these countries with lucrative oil contracts?
27. What do you call a country that gives out its land to foreigners to farm and export the products without any hinderance?
28. What do you call a country that complains sometimes about the molestation, humiliation and murder of its citizens by foreign countries but at the same time reward these countries with very lucrative contracts running into billions of dollars?
29. what do you call a country that continuously send retired, redundant, sick military officers as ambassadors?
30. What do you call a country that continuously send diplomats, who are not capable of communicating at all in the language of the host countries to represent it?
31. What do you call a country whose presidents go abroad regularly for medical check-ups and treatments despite the fact that it could afford to build state of the arts medical center that could be run by its own medical personnel who rank among the best of the best in the world?
32. What do you call a country that squanders millions of dollars to send its army on training exercises to the United States on how to guard its own coastal water 50 years after independence?
33. What do you call a country that still bears the name given to it by its colonial masters 50 years after independence?
34. What do you call a country that is still not capable of printing its own money 50n yeras after independence?
35. What do you call a country that handed over a big chunk of its territory extremely rich in oil and gas and other mineral resources to another country based on a fraudulent and strange international kangaroo court ruling controlled by western countries?
In actual fact, the list is endless too. But I will stop here for now. It will be continued another time. If we answer the above questions sincerely, we will all agree that the answer to every question, without any excerption, is A BANANA REPUBLIC! Taking into consideration the fact that the population of Nigeria is 150 million, therefore, UNDOUBTEDLY, NIGERIA IS THE BIGGEST BANANA REPUBLIC IN THE WORLD. It is just impossible to imagine all or even any of the above happening in smaller countries.
BAKASSI: ANOTHER HIGH PRICE OF ABSENCE OF POLITICAL SOVEREIGNTY AND FAILED LEADERSHIP.
As earlier said, Nigerians have paid, are paying and will still continue to pay a very high price for the absence of political sovereignty, imposed incompetent, corrupt, visionless and morally bankrupt leadership. A very good example to buttress my point further is the fraudulent and controversial handing over of Bakassi, a territory extremel rich in oil and gas to Cameroon by the Obasanjo government. I wrote about this tragedy in one of my articles titled ‘Bakassi: Obasanjo’s sacrificial lamb to the West.’ For a better understanding of this problem, the article is highly recommended to the reader.
Obasanjo, who was imposed on Nigerians by Babangida, the British and Americans (absence of political sovereignty) decided to hand over Bakassi to Cameroon based on a fraudulent ruling made by a kangaroo international court which undoubtedly is tightly being controlled by western countries led by the United States. The Bakassi people, the bonafide owners of the land, who considered themselves to be Nigerians and naively looked upon the Nigerian government to protect them, were forcefully ejected from their land with a promise by the Obasanjo government that they would be fairly compensated for their loss and relocated. But at the end of the day, these people got practically nothing for loosing their arable and mineral resources rich land because of a ruling of an international court, located hundreds of thousands of kilometers from them, which they never approached or appealed to in the first place. Obasanjo, an imbecile, has connived with the Americans, British and French to rob the Bakassi people of their land. They have played 419 on the people of Bakassi and Nigeria as a whole!
Today, the Cameroonian government systematically murder those that are bold enough to return to their land when they realised that they have been duped and robbed by the Nigerian, British, French and American governments respectively. The same Obasanjo sent the blood-thirst Nigerian army to massacre h
armless and innocent indigenes of the Niger Delta and destroyed their homes because they had the guts to fight for justice. Obasanjo, who did not think that he committed treason – which is punishable by hanging – for handing over the territory of Nigeria to aniother country without any referendum nor the approval of the indigenes believed that it was treason for the indigenes of the Niger Delta who share the same border with Bakassi to protest.
Sooner or later, it’s obvious that the oil, gas and other mineral resources on Bakassi territory will be explored by the so called civilised Western countries – just like other oil blocks in Cameroon. Pail Biya, the president of Cameroon, has no other choice but to give all the exploration rights to the Americans, British and French who helped him acquire Bakassi illegally for peanuts. You just don’t expect him to give the rights to the Chinese or Indians. Even if he wants to resist, he just does not have the might.
The fact that Paul Biya, a military turned civilian dictator, who has been in power for more than 25 years (since Nov. 6 1982)and has brutally suppressed any form of opposition to his reign, is not an impediment for the Americans, British, French and other so called western countries, who claim to believe so much in democracy to the extent that they want to render their unsolicited help in strenghtening it in Nigeria, to drill Cameroon’s oil and cut other big deals with him since he came to power.
It’s obvious that Paul Biya, one of the very few remaining African dictators is free to rule Cameroon till death and even install his siblings after his death so far he remains ‘a good and obedient puppet’ to Western countries. And the only way Paul Biya could remain an obedient puppet is to continue turning a blind eye to the lopsided oil contracts between his country, Cameroon and multinational oil companies, and the exploitation of his country and hand over Bakassi to them. In return, the West too are ready to turn a blind eye at absence of real democracy and opposition in Cameroon; the murder of opposition figures, journalists and human rights activists in Cameroon and the looting of Cameroon’s treasures by Paul Biya and his cronies. After all, their loots are kept safely in their banks – just like the loots of other African dictators like Sanni Abacha, Mobutu Seseko, Ibrahim Babangida, Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 42 years, Hossni Mubarak and others.
Obviously, western countries are the sole benefactors in the Bakassi ruling. They have designed very simple but very effective methods of controlling resources in Africa from Algeria to Zimbabwe. The so called ruling by an international court is one of these methods. For every dollar that African countries make from their mineral resources, Western countries and companies make at least 1000 dollars more.
Because of absence of political sovereignty, the Bakassi people and Nigerians as a whole have been deprived of hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been got from the exploration of the oil, gas and other mineral resources in Bakassi. Theoretically, it is even possible that the amount of oil and gas in Bakassi is even more than the whole of the Niger Delta. We will never know since the government has always kept information about the country’s most liquefied asset a top secret in order to make accountablility very difficult and make stealing much more easier. In any case, what is certain is that the people of Bakassi and Nigerians as a whole have lost a substantial source of revenues worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
