A government working against itself - IV

Look, this isn't a slanderous rant by a faceless internet blogger.

Ex-President Obasanjo himself admitted he knew Chris Uba rigged the 2003 Anambra Election, and also knew Chris Uba subsequently had then-Governor Ngige kidnapped and extorted. These are among the most serious crimes in our legal codes (indeed, the kidnapping was borderline coup-de-tat, which is treason), and in order to facilitate these destination crimes, Chris Uba and other co-conspirators would have had to have committed a swathe of lesser-included crimes as well (including, for example, suborning the Anambra State police command). Yet, our President, Olusegun Obasanjo admitted, without shame that he considered it "a family affair" -- by which he meant that he and the federal government he led had no interest in investigating, arresting or prosecuting any of the criminals.

The Obasanjo Federal Government went on to ally itself to Chris Uba as the godfather waged a 3-year war (2003-2006) to destroy his erstwhile godson Chris Ngige, but the anarchy in Anambra State really started as far back as 1999. He was merely continuing a pattern, indeed, the Obasanjo Federal Government treated the earlier 1999-2003 "war" between Chief Emeka Offor (a corrupt billionaire and political godfather) and then-Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju as "a family affair" and did nothing while the political machines allied to these two men brought the state to its knees.

All in all, Anambra State was at a complete standstill for 7 long years between 1999 and 2006 because our three tiers of government considered the political anarchy and violence to be nothing more than "normal" politics. All of them came to office through this kind of politics, so none of them thinks there is anything wrong with it. The total absence of public service delivery was of no importance or consequence to them. I passed through Onitsha during this time, and we can only thank God that an epidemic did not break out, because people and houses were outnumbered and overrun by the greatest stockpile of filth I had ever seen.

Do you understand that this is why we cannot stop violent groups in Nigeria? President Goodluck Jonathan is personally acquainted with Niger-Delta "militant" leaders, and owes them political favours for services they rendered to him in the course of his political rise.  The late former President Yar'Adua was likely not personally acquainted with the Niger-Delta militants, but he was elected in 2007 in part because of the militants' "delivery" of the Niger-Delta to the PDP as part of ex-President Obasanjo's do-or-die politics. As for Obasanjo, as noted in the prior paragraphs, he owes his both of his two terms in office to riggers, manipulators, scoundrels and thieves like Atiku Abubakar, Tony Anenih and the brothers Chris and Andy Uba.


I suppose I can't heap all the blame on the politicians.  A few of us citizens approve of this sort of governance, and hail the people who are successful at it as manly men of timbre and calibre. Most of us don't approve, but don't lift a finger to do anything about it.  We all watched as Anambra State was made a mess for 7 years.  They didn't help themselves and we didn't help them. We just let it happen.

But I am digressing.

I don't take the governments (at all three tiers) seriously when they say that they are going to tackle the insurgency. Whatever they are doing is not going to succeed, because they will deliberately avoid doing anything that will fundamentally change the nature of the Fourth Republic.

Understand that it is possible that they might stop the current insurgency, but the nature of things guarantees that even if they do, it will be replaced by another insurgency operating somewhere else in the country ....

....quite possibly, but not necessarily, in the Niger-Delta. There is much talk of the "amnesty", but I suspect the Niger-Delta militants are observing a temporary truce that will evaporate the moment Goodluck Jonathan is no longer president, whether it happens in 2015 or 2019, but especially if it happens in 2015.

Violence since 1999 has not been concentrated in any one single place. It flares up intensely in one place for a time, then it tapers down in that place and flares up somewhere else. The City of Jos is probably the one place where violence has been near-constant since 1999.

At the micro-level, the level of the ordinary citizen, a lot of Nigerians have been working to bring us together. I have posted profiles of some courageous and wonderful citizens on my blog (examples HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE). But everything good that is done at the micro-level is undone at the macro-level by people whose political and business fortunes would be hurt by societal rapprochement

I love the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I love my homeland enough to be honest about our public safety/security institutions.  The Nigerian Police Force, the Federal Investigations and Intelligence Bureau, the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Nigerian Customs Service, the Civil Defence Corps, the various (unconstitutional) state-owned pseudo police, the State Security Service and all the other intelligence agencies, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have hundreds of thousands of men at their command, but in many respects the Federal Republic of Nigeria often feels like a place entirely lacking in law enforcement.

A friend of mine once said he thought the murder rate in London was higher than the murder rate in Lagos. To be honest, it is hard to know if that is true or not, as Nigerian statistics are either non-existent or untrustworthy, but I felt that he was missing the point in terms of public security, or maybe public perceptions of security.

I was never the victim of a crime, violent or otherwise, in Nigeria, but I was a victim of an attempted burglary when I lived in the United States. When I saw the burglar through the window, I called the police and they arrived quickly, surprisingly quick to be honest. By contrast, when I am in Nigeria, my assumption (and the assumption of every citizen) is that if armed robbers attack there will be no assistance forthcoming from the police.

Read that last paragraph again. It encapsulates everything I am trying to get across.

While things are not "anarchic" in Nigeria, not yet anyway, there is actually nothing in place to stop anarchists from running wild if and when they choose to run wild.

This is why seemingly "stable" countries like Cote d'Ivoire and Libya collapse so quickly. In autocratic dictatorships, the dictator makes sure to avoid the creation of strong institutions that could challenge his exercise of unchecked power. The problem is, the day that dictator dies or loses even a fraction of his grip, you suddenly realize that there is a giant vacuum where real institutions should be.  Even the respective armies fracture and disintegrate quickly, or retreat (as Idi Amin and Mobutu's soldiers did) rather than die to defend a leader and government they don't really like any more than anyone else in the country. Liberia existed for more than 100 years without any institutions worthy of the name; Charles Taylor entered the country with maybe 25 men, and that was enough to collapse everything like a pack of cards.

Understand that we can't keep going down this road.  Something has to be done, not just to protect the status quo, but to move us to a position of ensured and reliable security. If we continue to emulate those African countries that did nothing when they began to drift down the problematic path, the consequences will be ... well, our population is much larger than theirs.

This is the time to act. It is bad enough already. We shouldn't wait for it to get worse.