OWNERS OF NIGERIA I

(first published in August 22, 2004)

By Oluwaseyi Oduyela
After the 419 Gubernatorial and Presidential elections last year (by 419 I mean April 19, which coincidentally also means Advanced Fee Fraud, and that was exactly what the election was), Chief Bisi Akande, former Governor of Osun State, the man adjudged as one of, if not the best Governor of 1999 2003 said that his defeat was like a thief coming to rob you of your possession. You are helpless; the only thing you can do is just keep quiet and allow it.
I thought about this and came to the conclusion that our situation in Nigeria is like that. However, I
disagree with Chief Akande in the area of not doing anything about it. This we will discuss later on.

Nigeria in the last 52years has been stolen by a cabal, which now owns her (note to author: you can use
“it” instead of “her” if you want to be more modern.) This cabal consists of a few robbers that have created dynasties for themselves while they pass us around. I have to call them the owners of Nigeria because that is what they are. The rest of us are mere tenants. Who are these people and why are they the owners of Nigeria?

They cut across all the geo-political zones of Nigeria. They are in the West, North, East, South-South, and the Middle belt. Nigerians’ livelihood depend on them, Nigerians live how they want them to live, do what they want them to do, sneeze when they asked to, eat what they offer.. They are able to do this because the people allow them to have access to wealth by being complacent. They are hailed, worshiped them, praised; in fact Nigerians kill themselves because of them, fight each other for them to live. They enjoy seeing their citizens die, suffer, queue at the gas stations, beg for crumbs from their table, even when it demands that their struggle with their dogs to get it.

It is surprising to see that Nigerians live in the midst of plenty yet they are poor. Children now abandon schools for foreign embassies, because they need visa to go and be slaves in another man’s country. These people have succeeded in driving the good brains out, so that they will turn the country to a junk yard. Nothing works except what they want to make work. They control everything including the air that people breathe. While the people pay NEPA bill and don’t enjoy the power, they, yet never experience power failure. No good water to drink, they waste the ones they have. They make the refineries unworkable and import petroleum products from their refineries outside the country while the money goes back to their different purses. Many of them have been in the system since the Independence of Nigeria and they are still there, some are replacing themselves with their sons and daughters, while Nigerians watch helplessly.

They kill and get away with it, maim without any consequences. They call the shots in all facets of lives. They determine who gets what and where he will come from, they write the constitution, a constitution that has the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob.  A constitution, unitary in all its features but called federal. What is interesting is that these people are not faceless; they are people we see daily, meet daily and sing their praises. Their empire is big. They have the media, banks, police, and military, state security and above all government.

Though I was born 6 years after the so-called independence, I think as a history student both at my elementary and high school I studied Nigerian history and now as an adult I can talk of what happened since independent to date. Though it is believed that Nigeria has had four republics but I maintain there is only have one Republic in Nigeria. The country has only being ruled by one set of rulers under same system that is cyclic. Since 1960 Nigeria has been going round the vicious cycle.

Let me start with the former t President of Nigeria and Balogun of Owu, Ex- Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces and Chairman of the Owu King makers.

Olusegun Matthew Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo became a household name in 1976 after the coup that killed Murtala Mohammed on February 13, 1976, I was in primary six then. As we were made to know, Obasanjo turned down the offer to succeed Murtala but had to accept at gun-point. This fable sounds ridiculous, because under no circumstance will a brave man compromise his principle for anything. A soldier as we know, do not fear death, they know this from their day one in the military. Let us leave that aside. He ruled Nigeria for 3 years, with iron hands.

It was in his tenure that Akintunde Ojo, who incidentally was is god-son was killed at the University of Lagos in 1978. Professor Ade Ajayi, then Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos lost his job because he attended Akintunde Ojo’s burial. Ebenezer Babatope, Ola Oni and many others lost their jobs as lecturers in various Institutions as a result of the students unrest . He launched OFN, then called Operation Feed the Nation, little did we know that it was a sample of what we were to see later as Obasanjo Farms Nigeria ( OFN). While Operation Feed the Nation failed, Obasanjo Farms Nigeria did not. It has branches in Ota, Igbo-Ora, Owiwi, and some other places I cannot remember now.

In his books “My Command” and “Not My Will” he painted himself as the hero of the Civil war. He stated that what some people struggle all their lives to get and they didn’t he got it without sweating. He also confirmed that he voted for National Party of Nigeria in the 1979 elections against Chief Awolowo. When he was the Head of State, one of the Yoruba senior officers had gone to him to discuss the need to restructure the military to favour all ethnic groups, he called Late Musa Yar’Adua and Theophilus Danjuma to the meeting and asked this man to repeat it, the officer a Major-General confirmed what he had told Obasanjo in private and left but heard of his retirement on the radio on his way home.  He was chosen to succeed Murtala in 1976  not because he was the next to Murtala, no, Babangida gave the reason in 1996 when Obasanjo was jailed for the 1995 phantom coup. According to Babangida, Obasanjo is a conformist. They see him as someone who can sell his own brother for a plate of porridge, just as he did in 1979, 1993, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2004.

In 1979, he saw the rigging and closed his eyes, Awolowo lost not at the poll but because Obasanjo and those who put him there wanted him (Awolowo) to lose. You need to read “Not My Will.” In 1993 he sold out and supported the annulment of June 12 1993 elections. We all remember that there was a movement he founded then on good governance- Buhari and Idiagbon were members, they pulled out after seeing that OBJ supported the annulment and was also talking of new elections and not the de-annulment of the election. This issue caused a rift between him and his kinsman Onoolapo Soleye, a Sociology lecturer at the University of Ibadan who served as Buhari’s Finance Minister, Soleye on hearing of the imminent annulment disagreed with OBJ. The argument heated up that Soleye left in anger; he got to his house to remember that he left his agbada in OBJ’s house.

In 1998 Abiola was killed for him to become President. In 2001 December 23, Ajibola Ige was killed. Ige until his death was the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation and it is sad that he did not get justice, his suspected murder master mind (Iyiola Omisore) served as a Senator for four years. In fact he won his election while in jail. Unprecedented! It is only in Nigeria, “Giant of Africa,” in the “biggest Political Party in Africa” that a murder suspect would be nominated for a position as high as Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Un-Independent Electoral Commission will clear him. According to Audu Ogbeh, the PDP National Chairman, he warned them against it. And this is what we call democracy. A kind of democracy ran by robbers, people who stole our mandate through the barrel of gun, made Governors over us, and stole our wealth. These are bunch of informal and formal illiterates. What they know about governance his treasury looting. And in 2004 Ige’s killer was set free.

Pastor Tunde Bakare maintained that Obasanjo was not God sent, he was condemned, but I told people then that they should wait, that God’s time is not our time, it was too early to write off Bakare, I think a lot of people will now see reason in Bakare’s prophecy. Forget about those other pastors falling on themselves to gain access to the villa. In Old Testament studies, some prophets are categorized as domesticated, they are official prophets, politicians go to them for prophecy to win elections and they bless them. I won’t mention names, but it is unfortunate that we found them in such positions; they see the truth and avoid it because they want gratification. I know a general overseer of one of the nosie-making churches in Nigeria who is a Defence contractor, who is also a money launderer. That a country’s president or his wife attends any church’s convention does not make the gathering acceptable before God. God does not respect position. Will Adeboye, Oyedepo, Okonkwo tell the world that Nigeria is okay? What works well in Nigeria in their own observation? Power failure, water failure, crime, insecurity, unemployment and underemployment still persist, under democracy.

They cannot see all that because they are too high to see what those at the lower level go through. They ride the best cars, have guards, they do not know if there is fuel crisis because they don’t queue at the filling stations, there church workers do all that for them, even if the workers will have to join Molue to church. The poor in Nigeria pay tithes, spent by the Pastors for “GOD.” Well we shall come back to the religious leaders later.

As the President of Nigeria doubled him as the head of King Makers in his town Owu, someone was picked by the majority of the kingmakers and just one person said NO! This is the man leading Nigeria to the promise land! Sad! Pathetic! What does he know about democracy?

…….to be continued…..