The Fury Of 'First Ladies'

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
We are indeed in very perplexing and stressful times. As a people trapped in diverse, debilitating contradictions, occasioned by obvious failure of leadership and character on the part of those directing the affairs of our clearly rundown country, the much we should expect from the growing tribe of First Spouses, First Concubines, First Children, and even First Uncles, Cousins, and Nieces, of our clearly unprofitable rulers, wallowing in flamboyant idleness and having all their unspeakable excesses serviced with state funds, is to, at least, allow some measure of humility and moderation attend the way they flaunt their sudden and limitless privileges before the rest of us.

Stella Obasanjo

It does seem that in these parts, we are most adept at creating grotesque legitimacy for the totally absurd after which we   advertise it with indecent fanfare. At the end of the day, we end up providing  delicious specimens for bellyful mirth for the civilized.

I would certainly not be bothered one bit if I never got to see the wife or concubines of any governor or president until the expiration his tenure. I do not edit a society tabloid whose passion it usually is to discover the current colour of lipstick that adorns Madam's lips or the latest revealing blouse with a plunging neckline she wears to dimly-lit balls.

*Mr. And Mrs. Obasanjo

My candid opinion is that we can do with one ruler at a time. Let the wives of our rulers spare us their clearly unappetizing presence and retreat to their houses and be good wives to their husbands and good mothers to their children. For the umpteenth time, they should please remove their mostly over-bleached, over-made-up and over-dressed selves before our faces so we can find the presence of mind to bear the pain and anguish their husbands are unleashing on us.

We are almost forgetting that the Constitution has no provisions for the so-called office
 of the First Lady.

*Lucy Kibaki

I am not bothered, for instance, if the president's wife has a battery of special assistants, senior special advisers, and even press secretaries attached to her "office", so long as their salaries and allowances are paid from the private purse of her spouse. The state can pay for her security, we can overlook that, even though her "office" is not backed by any constitutional provisions.

So when recently, Lagos lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, issued a statement alerting the nation that the Publisher of Midwest Herald, Mr. Orobosa Omo-Ojo, whose paper had carried a story titled "Greedy Stella", had been arrested by detectives from the "D" Department of the Ondo State Police Command, on the orders of Mrs. Stella Obasanjo, I almost thought it was not happening in real life.

*Mwai And Lucy Kibaki With George And

Laura Bush In Washington

Unfortunately, my desire to obtain a copy of the Midwest Herald that week to see how it looks like could not be gratified. The real tragedy in the incident, however, was that the mainstream media proved themselves incapable of appreciating the dangerous signal the ugly development portended and decided to treat the report with levity. Well, let's wait until a "First Son" or "First Concubine" decides tomorrow to seal off the premises of a "national" newspaper, and then, our eyes would then open to the street wisdom that every monster is the product of a gradual, undiscouraged evolution.

Incidentally, this new piece of scandal was treated with amazing seriousness by the foreign media, and I could imagine the well-remunerated 'experts' at the Image Laundering Project office submitting fresh, well loaded requisitions to enable them adequately whitewash the stain the sorry event might have registered on the "model" regime in Abuja. Indeed, Mrs. Obasanjo, like every other Nigerian, was perfectly justified to feel pained if she was unfairly represented in the media, but should an aggrieved person respond to a perceived wrong by perpetrating a more insidious wrong? Are the courts in perpetual recess in Nigeria, or are we just witnessing a raw exhibition of "my-husband-is-in-charge" mentality here?

*Unruffled? Mwai And Lucy Kibaki
Dance To Usher In The New Year 2007
At The State House, Mombasa

And the fact that the poor publisher is still in detention, nearly one month after his arrest, should alert us all to the devastating evil that is gradually taking root in the nation.

Now if this incident in Nigeria represents a huge baggage of shame, what happened in Nairobi, Kenya, during the same period, where this "my-husband-is-in-charge" mentality was raised to an insufferable level by Mrs. Lucy Muthoni Kibaki, one of the wives of Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, has no counterpart within the boundaries of civilized behaviour.

Mrs. Kibaki, with her ferocious body guards, had invaded, the Muthaiga residence of the outgoing World Bank country representative, Mr. Makhtar Diop, where a private farewell party was being held in his honour, to complain that the music was too noisy and was robbing her of her sleep.

*Festus Keyamo: Against Stella
Obasanjo's Excesses

Diop was a tenant of the Kibakis. They were still his neighbours, and probably often exchanged pleasantries each time they stayed in their private residence, next door to the one rented by Diop. And Kibaki's children were also guests at the riotous party that disturbed Madam's sleep.

Mrs. Kibaki had reportedly stormed Diop's house in pyjamas, with boundless rage, demanding that the music must stop. She charged ferociously at the man, as she attempted to unplug the electrical connections supplying power to the sound systems. According to The East African Standard of Monday, May 2, 2005, a day after the incident, "the party was graced by the top cream of the diplomatic, donor and private sector circuit."

As would be expected, the Kenyan press were unsparing of Lucy Kibaki in their reports the very next day after her disgraceful outing. The East African Standard captioned its report on the incident, "The Shame of First Lady." The report in Daily Nation was no less-scathing. Angered by these reports, Mrs. Kibaki dressed in a pink blouse and blue jeans trousers, jumped into her 4WD, a Toyota Prado, and raced down to Nation Centre, the corporate headquarters of the Nation newspapers, accompanied by body guards and the Nairobi Provincial Police Chief, Mwangi King'ori. Her anger had received additional fuel with later reports that she had visited the Muthaiga Police Station to report the Diop's incident dressed in casual white shorts.

And so as she stormed Nation Centre by 11.30 pm, she was clutching a copy of the Standard where she had earned a front-page lead due to her embarrassing action. Her photograph on the front-page as she raged and raved was very unflattering. Once she got to Nation Centre, she headed upstairs to the editorial department and disrupted operations for five hours. She announced that she had come to protest the unflattering reports about her in the press.

"You reported that I went to the police station wearing shorts, what is wrong with the First Lady wearing shorts? I put on skirts and even bikinis when I go swimming. We are a decent family, humble and Christian. You have tried to discredit me since I became the First Lady," she yelled. 

*Meanwhile, A Man Looks For

Dinner From A Lagos Dustbin

Complaining about how the media refer to her husband in their reports she charged: "In the news you call him Kibaki as you did when he was campaigning, when will you learn to call him the President, [and] start respecting him?"

Then she turned and yelled at the provincial police boss that came with her:

"Does the Police Commissioner (equivalent of Nigeria's Inspector General of Police (IGP)) know that I am here protesting? Call him. He should be here with us."

And immediately, the officer went out, radioed his boss, and within some minutes, the Commissioner, Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali, was there with them. Indeed, Mrs. Kibaki was an unmitigated nuisance. She went from table to table, shouting, complaining, threatening, and even occasionally laughing.

Suddenly, she noticed the KTN cameraman, Clifford Derrick, recording her and she went berserk. Said Derrick later: "She just walked up to me and slapped me hard. I was terrified."

Yes, she attacked him and attempted to take away the camera from him. As this went on, none of the police chiefs moved an inch. According to the Standard, the "Central Officer Commanding Police Division (OCPD), Julius Ndegwa, watched from a distance, as he communicated on his pocket radio." 

Mrs. Kibaki's action has been greeted with unsparing condemnation. Derricks is considering legal action, especially, against the police, for failing to protect him from the angry woman.


Lucy Oriang, a Daily Nation columnist, called on President Kibaki the following Friday to save Kenya's honour by curtailing his wife's excesses.

I agree totally with Ms. Oriang, because, till now, Kibaki is yet to make any comment about his wife's unedifying outing. It does seem that for his government, what his wife had done was acceptable. The only reaction I have read from the authorities in Nairobi was the one some days after the incident by Dr. Alfred Mutua, government's spokesman, who was quoted in Kenya Times as dismissively saying: "The Kenyan government and its people is known for many things and a particular incident cannot cost the country's image."

If you ask me, this is the most unfortunate statement to come out of Kenya since the Mrs. Kibaki affair.

I also must add here that as much as I condemn Mrs. Kibaki's crude behaviour, I must admit that I was thoroughly sickened by the nuisance constituted by Diop's party. They have no right to rob Mrs. Kibaki of her sleep. But her reaction to the inexcusable disturbance caused by Diop and his guest has now overshadowed what was clearly unambiguous advertisement of irresponsibility on the part of the World Bank staff. His action is as detestable as that of Mrs. Kibaki who has vowed to fight her own battles and confront those who disparage her and her family.

"Every day you write lies about me, I will come to the newsrooms and you will see me in my true colours. I'm annoyed beyond control," she bellowed at Nation Centre.

Somebody should please advise Mrs. Kibaki to rather deploy this energy to keep herself away from behaviours that embarrass Kenya boundlessly.

--First Published May 2005

Enough Of The Obasanjo Family, Please!

(First Published November 26, 2008)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye           

Last Saturday (Nov 22, 2008) I wanted to purchase a copy of Bitter-Sweet: My Life With Obasanjo, by Mrs. Oluremi Obasanjo, the woman who is sparing no effort just to underline her belief that no matter what anyone, including even Gen Olusegun Obasanjo himself, thinks is the case, the truth she would want everyone to see and swallow is that among the countless women swarming the Obasanjo harem, she is the only one qualified to be called his wife.  Others, she insists, are mere concubines.

To buttress this point, she reminds us on page 91 of Bitter-Sweet, that while broadcasting the profiles of leading members of the Obasanjo junta just before he handed over power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979, “the NTA showed me, and my husband, and our five children then, as the officially recognized and properly married wife, the wife of his youth he swore to keep forever.”

When I called the number on the invitation card for the public presentation of the book (which I didn’t attend), an elderly female voice told me to go to James Robertson Street in Surulere, that I would get the book there. In Surulere last Saturday, especially, on Adeniran Ogunsanya Street, and virtually all the other streets in the area, including Ogunlana Drive, Masha Road, and James Robertson, I encountered one of the worst traffic situations Lagos may have experienced since it began to exist, which served as painful reminder of the abysmal failure of character and leadership that had distinguished the eight-year reign of the subject of the book I was taking all the trouble to purchase.

As the traffic situation worsened, I abandoned the car in one of the streets, jumped onto an okada, and in no time, was in James Robertson Street. Since I needed to get an additional copy for someone, I bought two copies – one hard cover (N3, 000) and soft cover (N2, 000), and there went N5, 000 which I now sincerely believe, after reading the book, could have been invested in a more rewarding and edifying venture!

Now, forget the sensational reviews of the book you may have encountered so far since it was presented to the public at a very poorly attended ceremony in Lagos a fortnight ago. The book contains only very insignificant, highly biased items that could be considered new to what the public already knew about Obasanjo; there is hardly any information therein with the capacity to shock or awe; nothing really exciting, enlightening or edifying about the subjects treated in the entire book. The public appears to have more than it offers.  

Mrs. Oluremi Obasanjo At The Public Presentation 
Of The Book In Lagos

The book is all about a woman’s attempt to rewrite herself into prominence and reckoning in one man’s life, to demonstrate, albeit incoherently, that no matter who the public saw starring with Obasanjo in all those days he hugged the limelight   as Nigeria’s ruler, it was she, Oluremi, that the man regarded as the central figure in his life, despite the countless battering she got from him; that it was she who turned down the offer to live with him in Ota; that her decision to stay apart left a huge void in his life; that he was always pleading with her not to leave him alone; and that despite his brutal actions   towards her, he loved and respected her and only kept the other women as “ponies.” Although, it is known that the author and her husband were separated at some point in time (and she keeps talking, about “when I  was kicked out”) the strength of the book lies in her ability to leave the reader in total confusion about when exactly this happened, how long it has lasted, or whether it has been intermittent.

Instead, greater energy was devoted to show the prominent role she continued to play in Obasanjo’s life, playing down the separation and reducing all the other women to mere fringe elements in Obasanjo’s life. Dripping from the pages of the book is the undying love she retained for her man, and her willingness to receive him back any time he returned from his boundless wandering through countless skirts. The author’s bitterness towards late Stella was so palpable; it could not be assuaged even by her death. And the way she always gleefully announced the misfortune that met the several people that did her hurt speaks volumes about the nature of her heart. And despite all she suffered from Obasanjo (including being detained on Obasanjo’s instructions at the Lafenwa Police Station, “stripped to my underwear”), she, like Carol McCain, still loved him. But she makes a touching confession on page 64: “He is the only man I have known all my life … So when I found out his philandering exploits, I regarded it as the unkindest cut for his breaking   the sacred vow we took at the London Registry.”

Olusegun Obasanjo: The Man At The Centre Of The Storm

He went further to say that due to this multiple sleeping partners his wife was generously hosting with immense relish, he required a DNA test to establish the paternity of the children born to him by his wife, since he was not sure any more who among the three had fathered them. What a family! My heart surely goes out to those hapless tender children, who never asked to be born into the badly mismanaged Obasanjo family, and who would grow up tomorrow to grapple with the serious debilitating doubt over their paternity, raised by no other person than the man they call their father.    

Iyabo Obasanjo: First Daughter Of The Marriage

Senator Iyabo, on her part, is always in the news for the most horrible reasons. When she is not transacting very controversial and ugly deals with a name other than her own, she is being accused of mismanaging committee funds in the Senate. In fact, a newsmagazine once called her on its cover, “The Queen of Scandals,” a tag her mother on page 123 of the book thinks does not befit her daughter. Rather, Oluremi thinks her children are all unfairly having image problems because of “the name, Obasanjo.” And so, the attempt by the EFCC to get Iyabo to explain her role in the scandal involving the Senate Health Committee fund was all done “in a bid to humiliate her because she is Obasanjo’s daughter.” Iyabo, she maintains, was not appointed Ogun State Health Commissioner because she was Obasanjo’s daughter, but rather she had worked hard to earn it. I suppose she expects anyone to believe that?

My problem with this book is that it is a needless effort to advertise raw bitterness. And it would end up dishonouring the same children she loves and defends. But what sickens me most is her attempt to exonerate her children from matters in which the public is even in possession of superior facts. What it tells me is that if Obasanjo had not kicked her out of his life, she would also have been out there today defending him against Nigerians who dared express   disgust at the unmitigated disaster and organized banditry he effectively supervised for a whole eight years in Nigeria, during which corruption was effectively institutionalized and celebrated,  and  the country ruined.  

For her, so long as a person is in her good books, the person can do no wrong. So, why should I bother myself about such a person and her book?

------------------------

scruples2006@yahoo.com

US Election 2009: For Senator John McCain, Nigeria's PDP Beckons!

(First published October 22, 2009

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

No matter who is announced winner of the American presidential election after November 4, 2009, what would never remain in doubt is that this is one election that would be far-reaching in redefining the political and social scene of the United States. As the campaigns rage and voters package their decisions, virtually nothing would be spared the raging fire of large-scale transformations sweeping through the US, as cherished and pampered myths are exploded, resilient pretensions and hypocrisies unmasked, and obstinate, enduring obsessions and habits badly scalded and shredded.

 *Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

For instance, a distinguished statesman like former president Bill Clinton whose non-racial credentials had been so well-acknowledged that renowned African-American novelist, Toni Morrison, had to describe him as the “First Black President” is still in his Harlem office hurting because of the serious bruises on his well-cultivated image as a result of the racial remarks he had let out during the primary contest between his wife, Hillary, and Senator Barack Obama. 

A recent report suggests he is still nursing his wounds and hoping that Obama would publicly defend, clear and help him brush off the racist dent now prominent on his image,   as a compensation for the rousing endorsement he gave Obama at the Denver Democratic Convention. 
On his part, Senator John McCain has so badly dishonoured himself by the kind of crude and ugly campaign he has conducted so far that  people are wondering whether this was the same man who began to lay enormous emphasis on character and decent politics after recovering from the “Keatings Five” scandal which nearly sank his political career.

*Senator John McCain, US Republican

Presidential Candidate (2009)

 I am glad that I am only an observer, and not a registered voter in this election, else, I would have found myself in a very big dilemma.  Obama may be young, intelligent and charismatic, but I am not a big fan of his. In fact, if I am a registered voter, I will not cast my vote for him. But if he eventually manages to get my vote, it would be a vote against McCain (who is unredeemable in virtually every respect), and not for Obama. Obama’s views on abortion are ones I cannot in all good conscience overlook. The almost callous, emotionless manner he declares in the paper he authored as president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 that government has more important things to do than “ensuring that any particular fetus is born” makes me very sick indeed.

Not too long ago, Obama was also quoted as saying that he would not allow any of his daughters “to be punished with a child” just because “she had made a mistake.” And so, to protect his daughter from the responsibilities that ought to go with her action, another innocent, tender, helpless child (though yet unborn) should be cruelly, heartlessly and gruesomely sacrificed?

But the Republicans have not helped my dilemma by choosing McCain as their  flag-bearer. The way McCain has conducted himself so far in this election shows he is not ashamed to embody all that could be wrong about politics and politicians.  His crude methods, fired by raw desperation, carried beyond the fringes of decency, have been most revolting to many people, even in his own party. His campaign brazenly lies and distorts facts with ease, and all his claims about character and decent politics are now proving to be overly fraudulent.  

*Sarah Palin, Alaska Governor and
US Republican  Vice Presidential Candidate (2009)  

McCain enjoys being addressed as a “maverick” and “Straight-talk” politician, and his running mate, Sarah Palin made heavy weather of this maverick tag when she answered almost every question posed to her during her debate with Senator Joe Biden, her Democratic Party opponent, by restating that McCain was a maverick. In fact, at one point, she called him a “consummate maverick.”

One person thoroughly sickened and offended by this unending false characterisation of John McCain is Ms. Terrellita Maverick, the 82 year old San Antonio lady, who, according to New York Times columnist, John Schwartz, “proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.”

Ms. Maverick, member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas could not just understand how McCain would claim that he is a maverick among the Republicans.  
“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again,’ ” she said.

*Senator John Mccain And Mrs. Cindy McCain

To better understand the phenomenon that is John McCain, let’s recall the story of Carol, his first wife.  McCain, then a 28 year old navy pilot had in 1965 married Carol, who reports say was “a successful model.” After their daughter, Sidney, was born, he left for Vietnam at the end of 1966.

But his plane was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam. He remained a Prisoner of War (PoW) in the dreaded Hoa Loa Prison for five years.  During the Christmas holiday of 1969, Carol was involved in a terrible accident that put her through multiple surgeries as a result of the severe injuries she had sustained. She eventually learnt to walk again, but had to limp because one of the legs had become shorter. She equally gained some weight in the process, thus losing the willowy figure that once gave her a stunning look.

In March 1973, when McCain was released, and received in the US as a war hero, he scored a fast one on the American public by telling reporters how much he still loved Carol despite the effects of the accident on her.

*Carol Mccain: The Wife John McCain  Dumped

Having lost his chance of becoming an admiral (his father and grandfather were admirals), McCain turned his eyes on politics and equally rekindled his wild taste for strange women. In fact, he has admitted he was unfaithful to Carol as he had girlfriends at this time. But when he met Cindy Hensley in Hawaii, he devoted the next six months in extramarital affairs with her for, perhaps, one principal reason: Cindy, a former rodeo model, was daughter of Jim Hensley, the highly connected and extremely wealthy Arizona beer distributor. 

Thus, while Carol waited at home for the husband she trusted and loved so passionately, McCain and Cindy played Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton all over the country. He eventually dumped Carol to the shock and dismay of many people, and married Cindy, the beautiful blond and heiress of the brewing giant, and moved to Arizona, where his new father-in-law offered him a job, and gave him the necessary connections that put him on the fast lane to political ascendancy. 

*Former US President, Bill Clinton and His Wife, Senator Hillary Clinton  

Commenting on the character of John McCain, Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam, told UK’s The Mail On Sunday: “I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit. When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better. This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.”

Some old acquaintances of McCain’s interviewed by The Mail On Sunday portrayed him “as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field,’ just the same way it is now feared that he,  as   US President, could also abandon the pursuit of national causes if they do not advance his personal and selfish interests! The other day, he refused to answer a question at a town hall meeting if he had ever cheated on Cindy. Instead of answering the question which was asked him repeatedly, he began to talk about his son serving in Iraq.

*Barack and Michelle Obama

As an old political warhorse who always finds ways of securing the understanding and accommodation of the American people and wriggling out of career-sinking troubles, and whose Vietnam heroic stories have sometimes been questioned here and there, the only thing still rekindling some hope on the McCain candidacy is, perhaps, the white skin covering his body.

With his rather poor choice of Alaska Governor, Ms. Sarah Palin (who is now proving to be a huge liability and raising serious questions on his capacity for quality judgment) as running mate, and even some of the other impulsive decisions he had made of late like suspending his campaigns to join the bailout talks (where he eventually contributed little or nothing), suddenly conceding defeat and pulling out his campaign from Michigan when he saw he was not making any headway — a decision that baffled even Republicans who feared it could make it easy for Obama to secure the 270 electoral votes he requires to win, and his uncritical adoption of “Joe The Plumber” as a symbol for lampooning Obama’s tax policy, mentioning him about two dozen times during the last presidential debate only to realize later that the man he had raised to celebrity status was not even a registered plumber and also owed arrears of taxes.

His attempt to turn Obama into a scary figure is backfiring, lowering his esteem before many people instead, and attracting more sympathies and  support for Obama. Indeed, because of the consistent false claim by Ms. Palin that Obama is  “palling around together with terrorists,” people now shout “terrorist!!” once Obama is mentioned during McCain campaigns, and McCain is having serious trouble stopping that.

 How would McCain repair his damaged honour even if he wins this election? How would he explain that just to win an election in a do-or-die fashion, his campaign had to stoop so low to falsely label his opponent a terrorist just because Obama had served on a number of education boards in Chicago with Bill Ayers, a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, who many years ago, when Obama was only 8, had set bombs targeted mainly at properties to protest American military campaign in Vietnam.  

Well, it is clear that McCain would surely lose this election, but he needs not to worry. A more fulfilling job would be waiting for him in Nigeria in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where his unedifying talents and crude strategies would be better appreciated.

----------------------------

scruples2006@yahoo.com

---------------------------

REATED POST

The Return Of NewtGingrich

NIGERIA: No Doubt, This House Has Collapsed

(First Published Tuesday, February 6, 2007)


By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye


This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen — Prof Chinua Achebe

“Something startles where I thought I was safest” – Walt Whitman
-----------------------------------------------------

A couple of months ago, the Minister of Education, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, came to the Independent to meet with top Editorial staff of the newspaper. The meeting commenced with the normal ritual of introductions, and as my brother, Mr. James Akpandem, the Managing Editor, who introduced the Independent team, got to me and said: “This is Mr. Ugochu—”, the minister cut in: “I kno-ow him! He is the angry man!” And the whole room erupted in loud laughter.   

When later it was my turn to speak, I began by saying that there was somebody else whose column, “Conversations of the Angry Man”, appeared every Monday, that I was not the person, and that the minister was, perhaps, mistaking me for him. This caused another round of loud laughter, with someone raising his voice above the loud mirth: “You are angrier than the Angry Man!”  To make sure she was actually referring to me, each time the minister, in the course of her speech, recalled an incident that offended her, she would say: “When I saw that, I became angry, but not like him!” And she would point at me or use a gesture to indicate she was referring to me. At some point she said: “I am even more angry than you are. That’s why I am doing what I am doing to change the situation. It takes someone who is really angry about the situation of things to do what I am presently doing at the Ministry of Education.” 

Now, I do not think that what I feel about the dilapidated state of Nigeria is anger. I would rather say that I am deeply pained. I am deeply pained that a nation like Nigeria could be practically abandoned to rot away by a gaggle of heartless and conscienceless men who have managed to get themselves into power. Nigeria today presents the perfect picture of how a country could look like in the absence of any form of government. I agree with Prof Chinua Achebe that Nigeria today is too dangerous for silence! In fact, in this country, everyone is on his or her own. Virtually, no one  in Aso Rock today wakes up each day with genuine thoughts about the welfare of the citizenry.


Olusegun Obasanjo: Not A 
Laughing Matter, Please!

Whatever one occasionally sees in form of motions or semblance of actions are mere political stunts enacted solely to give the masses the impression that some form of governance is in place in Nigeria, and to let them know that very soon, elections would hold, and they would be required to come out to vote, so that their turn-out could be used to justify the outcome of the hideous rigging that would surely be perpetrated.  We live in a country where the government has become perennially incapable of causing any form of cheering news to occur. One thing anyone can predict with unfailing accuracy in Nigeria is the failure of this government in virtually every aspect of our national life. My kind prayer for those who think I am exaggerating here is simple: May God help you to survive to tell the story any time you find yourself in any of those very perilous situations that bring home to you the rude reality of the dangerous state of Nigeria.  

On New Year’s eve, my entire family and I would have perished, but for the mercy and intervention of God. We were travelling to the East on the very mischievous and perilous Lagos-Benin Expressway. It should have been a very joyous, pleasant ride by a happy family through the country-side, observing the beautiful forests and enchanting hills, all sandwiched between several villages and towns, under a clear bright sky, but for those cruel potholes, which were purposely left there by those who should eliminate them, to ensure we never for once have any cause to be happy in Nigeria.

As we approached Okada in Edo State, we became captives to a most stressful and terrible traffic hold-up, caused by the horribly bad road which the authorities had deliberately refused to repair, and we were made to crawl in this suffocating trap, amidst curses and over-boiling anger from fellow drivers, and the heart-rending cries of children who could not understand why anyone with blood running in his veins could subject them to such a heartless torture, for about five hours. When it seemed we had escaped this one, we ran into yet another, an even more complicated one that delayed us further. As the sun gradually shed its brightness and receded to its lonely, dark-blue hut, and a canopy of darkness eagerly sought to enfold and blind us, I began to pray that we escape the unyielding trap before it became really dark, because, given the reputation of that area with hoodlums, I could imagine what would happen to those still trapped in the midst of that thick, intimidating forest  when the darkness becomes really thick and murky.  


Obiageli Ezekwesili: Also Angry!


We eventually escaped as it became darker, and into further adventures on that road amidst impatient, angry drivers, many of who were, like us, unduly tasked by the nightmarish, manmade affliction we had just left behind us, and whose tempers had been driven to the edge by the excruciating experience. In short, the road became a mini-battle ground, and to cut a long story short, as we entered Asaba, when it had really become dark, we had an accident that severely damaged my car, knocking it into a very violent and benumbing coma. But thank God who is our only Hope in this unmanned jungle called Nigeria, we all escaped unhurt, including my two-year old son, who was picked up from the floor of the car where he had fallen from the back seat.

My wife who had removed her seat belt at that instance to attend to the kids who were already freezing with cold smashed the windshield with her head. But although her head was decorated with very tiny bits of broken glasses, she sustained no injuries. It was a miracle. As we got out of the vehicle, and discovered that no one was hurt, gratitude to God welled up in my heart. Indeed, we may not have a government, but we have a God! Sympathisers came and helped push the  badly wounded car out of the road. When they saw that no one was hurt, they all dispersed.
Suddenly, we were there, all alone, on that lonely stretch of land, under the freezing cold, abandoned to our fate and ourselves.

I looked this way and that, and it became clearer to me again, that in Nigeria, you are always on your own. Whether you lived or died is entirely your business!  As we waited for the friend I had called up in Asaba to come and “evacuate” us from the accident scene, my four year-old daughter began a lamentation:   “Now, Daddy’s car has spoiled, what are we going to do? We won’t go to the village again. How will my Daddy go to work again? What are we going to do? Daddy’s car has spoiled, what are we going to do?”  She was saying this and crying bitterly.



These were simple lines any child can compose and render, but her very sad, mournful tone that lonely, cold, sad night, and the deeper meanings and disarming imageries her words conveyed broke my heart.  I had never seen her in that mood before then, and even as I write now, I wish with all my heart that nothing would ever happen again to make me see her or anyone in that mood.  Her words appeared like sad poetic lines, written with pale colours on that lonely stretch of dark land. So, if I had died in that accident, that’s how my children would have been mourning me? My thoughts ran really wild. 

Now the question I am forced to ask is: even if there was no road at all on the place we now have the Lagos-Benin Expressway before 1999, is nearly eight years of being in office not enough for any focused, people-oriented and compassionate government to construct a befitting and safe road for the use of Nigerians? There is absolutely no reason that can justify the horrible state of that road,  the callousness and cruelty of those in power.But for the clearly avoidable traffic hold-up that delayed us for several hours, nothing would have made to me embark on such a hazardous night-journey with my family, and be caught up in  the kind of “war” the drivers engaged in on that road that night.

I was even planning to spend the night in Onitsha, because, it was even  more suicidal to enter the more dangerous Onitsha-Owerri Road, still in very bad shape, at night, to compete with the ever furious trailer drivers.Yet, this is the same road President Obasanjo used to flag off his campaign in the East in 2003!

Many have died on these roads and no one, except the countless orphans, widows and widowers they left behind to lick the deep wound of their sudden, violent departure are feeling it. After eight years in office what exactly can the Obasanjo government show for the incredibly huge revenues that have accrued to it since 1999?



 The roads have degenerated to mere stretches of cruel slaughter-slabs; the hospitals have become waiting rooms to cold and lonely graves; indeed, it is a big shame that after eight years of wasting the nation’s resources on frivolities, Alami and Bamaiyi, are receiving court orders to go abroad for medical treatment, just as government officials and their families do; schools have decayed so much that no person who can afford it can risk having his child in a Nigerian school. No, they would rather send them abroad, and that includes Ghana! Very soon, people would start sending their kids to Liberian schools and patronizing Somali  hospitals!  

Also, Nigeria has never been as insecure as it is now!  If you were told some years ago, specifically before 1999, that a time would come when both the police and the people they are hired to protect would all become a mass of helpless, hapless, vulnerable and frightened victims of a growing army of an all-conquering and seemingly invincible hoodlums, would you have believed it?  But that is exactly the case today?

We are the sixth largest producer of petroleum, but what do we have to show for it? No fuel filling at stations, no functioning refineries, nothing. While corruption has been institutionalised, and leaders are building wealthy dynasties with stolen funds, the killing hunger in the land is driving Nigerians to roast themselves alive while scooping fuel from pipelines obviously vandalized by NNNPC staff and their collaborators. 

Nigeria is still trapped in suffocating, blinding, thick darkness, because, the Obasanjo Government, after nearly eight years in power is still talking about 3,000 megawatts, 10,000 megawatts, while industries are closing shop in Nigeria and relocating to better-managed countries like Ghana because of the unending crises in our power sector, thereby compounding the already worsening unemployment situation. Everyday, this government invests energy and resources only to explain away its failure, and declaring phantom achievements. 



Look at the situation in the Niger Delta. For years, the place was neglected, while money realized from there, at the expense of the people’s lives, sources of livelihood (fishing and farming), were squandered on damnable vanities, “woman friends” and building of ungodly  and contaminated dynasties, that will surely meet with calamity in the near future. Now, the nation is paying greatly for that profligacy. The place has become unsafe for oil exploration. The Filipinos have just barred their nationals from coming to work in Nigeria any more. Many more countries may follow suit. The situation will compound further, and those who have accumulated stolen wealth may not have any peace or space to enjoy it. Na so this world be! 

Indeed, this house has collapsed. I do not envy the person who will take over from Obasanjo. The person will inherit an angry, hungry, impoverished and frustrated populace, wilfully plunged into unimaginable hardship by a regime that behaves as if it was  contracted to visit untold punishment on Nigerians.  Indeed, the next president will take over a collapsed country. And the people will pour their impatience and frustrations on him, because the suffering will become worse, as the impact of Obasanjo’s  ”reforms” ( i.e., selling off Nigeria’s prized possessions to self and cronies) begin to be felt. No doubt, what we see now, is but the beginning of protracted nightmare, what with all the talk about continuity. It is that bad.

  scruples2006@yahoo.com