APC: Govt Of Liars, By Liars And For Liars

By Dr. Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo
Recently, a senior official of the Buhari administration came out on national television to tell us that Nigeria is now the second largest producer of rice in the world. This is the most ridiculous claim I have heard in the last couple of years.

 

*Dr. Nwankwo

I know that the Buhari administration, even those that can be numbered among his kitchen cabinet, is full of clowns and morons bereft of intellect; but honestly I didn’t know that somebody can be this naïve and crass to come and tell us that Nigeria is a world class producer of rice.

Why do people lie so brazenly? Does he think that he is talking to kindergartens? I do not understand why this government has made lying an article of faith and governance. How can anybody in his right senses make such useless claim?

How and where did he get the statistics? If his claim is true why is a bag of local rice still going for between N18000 to N20000? If this claim were true why would the UN only a few days ago, include Nigeria among famine-threatened countries in Africa alongside Sudan and Somalia?

I know that Nigeria is not famous for statistical records. This is a country that does not know its population; the number of unemployed graduates; the number of the poor; does not even know the number of secondary schools in the country or anything for that matter.

Yet this is a country that wants to pay monthly stipends of N5000 to every unemployed graduate and the poor. As a matter of fact, I have come to the conclusion that APC is a fraud. Democracy is said to be government of the people, by the people and for the people.

But strangely, the APC government has become “government of liars and thieves, by liars and thieves and for liars and thieves”. I want you to understand that this type of APC government is the perfect setting that creates deep-seated social resentment and which also leads to the inevitable death of nations.

*Dr. Nwankwo, an eminent intellectual, author and publisher shared these thoughts on his facebook page

Nigeria: Oh, At Last We Are Here!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

This Saturday, Nigerians will pour into the streets to find out if Professor Maurice Iwu and his “Independent” National Electoral Commission (INEC) were really serious when a few days ago they once again assured the nation that they were ready to conduct the April 14 and 21 elections.

Indeed, the desire for change in many Nigerians has reached fever pitch, and become so palpable. What has become clear is that so many people are eager to perform their constitutionally assigned role this Saturday to ensure that this long-awaited change comes. It is to be hoped that nothing would happen to reward their pleasant expectation with devastating disappointment.


Nigeria

It should be quite clear that the change most people crave so much, perhaps, more than any other, is that the current (outgoing) gaggle of garrulous, incompetent fellows at Aso Rock should just give way to some other people come May 29, and they can’t wait to embrace April 21 to do what is expected of them to ensure that this happens. In fact, to some people, just anybody can reclaim Aso Rock, so long as he was not part of the outgoing most disappointing mob.

The abysmal failure of the outgoing regime in virtually all spheres of life has so traumatized Nigerians that many now feel that no other leadership can be worse than it. What they are saying is that the exit of the current regime in Aso Rock will mark the end of the worse of the worst in Nigeria.

I just hope they are right. What I think I strongly believe, however, is that our environment is changing, for the better. Nigerian citizens are beginning to shed the colonial view of government as some kind of oracle or god that must not be questioned by any “ordinary person”, and have in fact started looking into the eyes of their rulers to demand responsible leadership and accountability from them.

What this means is that the end of the Obasanjo regime would automatically translate to the end the Kabiyesi syndrome or what has been variously described as Babacrazy. I foresee a much freer (even if not less corrupt) National Assembly. I foresee many threats and actual enactments of impeachments, even at the highest level of governance. I see excesses by chief executives in the states and at Aso Rock thoroughly abridged.

As I look at the various presidential candidates, I fail to locate any Emperors waiting to be crowned, to ride roughshod on Nigerians, and be rewarded with superfluous praises by an army of sycophants. Yes, the sycophants would still be there, but I see the level of impunity that marked this expiring era being drastically reduced. I see rulers realizing that the populace would no longer be content to watch them passively as they squander the nation’s resources and mortgage the people’s future. I see them fearing the possibility of immediate repercussions, yes, serious challenges from a citizenry that has lost patience with incompetence and shameless thievery.
Also, I see a Presidency that would shed its current excessive weight and powers, and limitless access to funds. I see a truly federal structure emerging.

Again, I foresee a Presidency that can even be investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and kicked out in disgrace. Change is here, my people, and I am so excited.

The states too will not be spared this refreshing wind of change. I wonder how many governors that will be on their seats to celebrate their first hundred days in office.

By the time the gods that imposed them on the people have all become powerless ex-emperors, chances are many of them would be shoved aside. Very soon, also, Iwu and his INEC would take the backstage, and many of the genuine cases brought against some candidates, which it had conveniently ignored, would be properly tried in courts of competent jurisdiction. I don’t see the judiciary easily jettisoning its post-Uwais vibrancy and recovering independence. What I see are judges who would not like to end up like Wilson Egbo-Egbo, and would stand up to be counted on the side of decency and justice. Indeed, the vestigial remains of this decadent era, where people catch thieves with horribly soiled hands, where mere scums and renegades are planted in positions of responsibility, would soon be blown away by the cleansing wind of the new era that is coming.

What I see, therefore, is that some candidates who have remained reluctant to clear the clouds swirling around their hideous pasts would have no place to hide again. Yes, those who had made false declarations in their INEC forms will be put in their right places, as their matters would surely receive fair hearings in the courts, after the lords of lawlessness, who derive peculiar animaiton from obtructing the course of justice,  have left the stage. Indeed, I can’t see any godfather after this dark era who would successfully manipulate the judiciary to kill such celebrated cases.

By the way, has anyone located any of Prof Iwu’s polling centres? Has anyone seen where he has displayed the voters’ registers for the elections that are just a couple of days away? Please, if you have, just give me a call and I would go and see the wonder with my own eyes.

Again, who can say with assurance that his name would eventually be found in the voters’ register which Iwu till now (Tuesday afternoon) has refused to display?

Or is this part of the winning formula of the “largest party in Africa” which INEC does not pretend anymore it has great sympathy for?

Well whatever happens this Saturday, I am confident that Nigeria would never remain the same after April 14 and 21 no matter what next Iwu will bring out from his bag of tricks. There is a wind of change blowing across the landscape, and it can only sweep away anyone that tries to resist it.

I am still hopeful… And watching…
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scruples2006@yahoo.com

 www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

www.ugochukwu.blog.com

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Nigeria: Campaigns In Troublous Times

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

As I see the reports of the numerous rallies the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is addressing in several parts of the country, I am always forced to ask: what really is the PDP telling these people? Somebody should, please, help me, because, I have not attended any of their rallies, and sometimes, I am too sickened to read the boring, exasperating, empty and incoherent speeches the newspapers say they made at those rallies.

There is nothing I hate like listening to or reading speeches, everyone knows, including the speaker himself, are full of lies and empty promises, and only meant to deceive the hearer, or show that the speaker thinks his listeners are a bunch of fools. In such an instance, the fellow just feels he needs to tell his hearers something, and so, he opens his mouth and vomits even what he himself does not believe.

Nigeria is facing the worst kind of energy crises at this very moment, and President Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP Chief Campaigner, whose regime has dragged Nigerians through a most excruciating eight years of boundless decay, deterioration and unspeakable pain and hardship, is out there telling Nigerians to forgive the PDP for fielding some governors, whose performance in their states may even had brought some tiny bits of succour to the people unlike Obasanjo’s at the federal level, but whose only offence today is that they had decamped from the PDP.

In the nation today, under Obasanjo’s effective management, power supply has become the people’s greatest source pain and torment. People attempt to sleep in their houses in a pool of their own sweat, and wake up the next morning so tired and drained of strength, and probably nursing a headache, that the thought of being productive that day becomes a distant dream. Severe damage is being inflicting on several eardrums by the tormenting noise of different forms of generators, which conspire with the oppressive heat to make Nigerians have a juicy taste of hell here on earth. Nigeria is fast becoming a dangerous gas chamber because of the dangerous fumes the countless generators are emitting into the atmosphere.

Many have already died as a result of the fumes they had inhaled and many more dying gradually as they inhale these killer fumes daily. Business outfits are folding up due to the high cost of doing business in Nigeria, caused by the perennial energy crises, and this has greatly compounded the already terrible unemployment situation, and shot the prices of goods and services far beyond the reach of the ordinary man.

Fuel scarcity is still very much with us. So, while the nation is plunged in thick, blinding, suffocating darkness because of the abysmal failure of NEPA/PHCN, despite the billions of naira the government claims it had poured into the power sector since 1999, those who have generators are not able to get the fuel needed to power them. Last Sunday’s night in Lagos here, because I needed some fuel to power my generator, I had to burn the little fuel I had in the car, to go very far from where I live, before I could find fuel to buy.

After nearly eight years of “great achievements” by the regime of the “Father Of Modern Nigeria”, the PDP Presidential Candidate, Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua, had to be flown to a German hospital for the treatment of catahrr, on the orders of the President, because, according to the president, they did not want to take chances. So, in essence, those other Nigerians who attend Nigerian hospitals are taking chances with their lives? Did you hear that?

 Also, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had to go to the UK for a minor knee surgery. After eight years of wonder-working “reforms”, our rulers do not trust our hospitals enough to patronize it. They know too well that these government-forsaken and dilapidated “hospitals” are nothing but high roads to the grave, and so, they would always jet out to well-managed climes to treat catahrr! In a decent society, the PDP would not have even bothered to present any candidates for the coming elections, because no one would cast any votes for them, given that the bold signs of its eight years of resounding failure rudely stare everyone in the face.

 But this is a strange country where strange and bizarre things are normal, daily occurrences. Moreover, the “Largest Party In Africa”, headed by the “Father Of Modern Nigeria”, with its various fearsome garrison commanders, must have perfected its winning strategies in these “do-or-die” elections.

The votes, we know, would not count, or else, what were some of Prof Maurice Iwu’s data-capture machines doing in the lair of Chief Lamidi Adedibu in Molete? And we are talking about the Adedibu case because they were discovered. What of the other ones that were not discovered? What is the guarantee that what would be declared at the polling stations would not have been earlier fed into the systems by well-appointed “foot soldiers” at the various joints of the less-prominent, but more savagely zealous and dare-devil “garrison commanders”? Common, a failed regime cannot be oozing out such confidence for nothing.

Maybe, the people are really listening to the PDP at those rallies, because, I am sure some tiny crumbs of the “national cake” do fall out on or before the days for those rallies. I have met some fellows in the villages, who, though over-stretched and shriveled by the harsh and punitive economic conditions, are still able to announce boldly to me that they are members of the PDP! And what is the source of their motivation? At least once in every three months, some crumpled five hundred naira note would fall to them when they attend those nocturnal party meetings in the house of the “local organizer”, plus some beer and cups of rice. And with that, they mortgage their future, and consign themselves to many more years of unspeakable suffering, slavery and impoverishment.

Nigeria! This is the only country I know where people would have no qualms hailing the very fellow who had brutally murdered their parents and made them sudden orphans, just because of what they hoped to get from the person at that particular point in time. Indeed, this is the only country I know where people would be eating and drinking poison with every relish, and yet wishing to live.

Many Nigerians would readily murder and bury their tomorrow, or cheer on the person doing that, only to wake up early the very next day to yearn and search for it. This is indeed a strange country inhabited by a strange people.

The man who before you yesterday had cursed the leaders for enslaving and impoverishing him will file behind those same leaders tomorrow should such failed leaders offer themselves for re-election, so long as the leaders concerned would be willing to part with some tiny bits of the billions of the commonwealth they had stolen.

That is the Nigeria you and I have found ourselves in, and so, when you see many Nigerians thronging the rallies being addressed by those same people who are known to have stolen the nation blind, you can now understand what is driving them. A nation whose larger population is stuck with this kind of mindset may never be saved.

That’s the truth.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
www.ugochukwu.blog.com

Thursday, March 15, 2007