If you don’t know Nigeria is the game, then you have been gamed. The antidote is to live to rule. Ahiazuwa.
Let us begin with an axiom. We take it as given that the general who abandons his duty posts and marches to seize the state house, to hijack state powers and rule, is a thug. The act of so doing has decommissioned him out of being an officer and a gentleman. He is become an agbero, now armed with the ambitions of a Satan. That is to rule the world or chunks of it without mandate, without grace. Like all axioms, this holds whether or not the said generals failed or succeeded in their coup attempts.
That is, we are all agreed that there is nothing to recommend coups or their perpetrators. Now, we may next comment on the recent scare by the chief of army staff. As quoted by the papers, General Tukur Buratai alerted the nation that some of his boys may be playing political hanky-panky with Nigeria’s democracy.
Well we are not in a position to know the details. Whether the general is putting up a scarecrow or is serious, is an uncommon mystery for us. However, our interests in this Buratai matter are those of a lay historian. We personally hold no interests one way or the other on coups in Nigeria. Those are matters that are currently out of our purview. Additionally, we are informed that there are no Igbo in the first 100 positions of any security outfit in Nigeria. And that the matter is deliberately made so, now studiedly made worse by this current administration. This is what we are told, though the agencies concerned are yet to deny these things. Thus despite our not being Igbo, we are Oru, why should we have headache if those who have cornered the security architectures of Nigeria are doing coups and countercoups against themselves or their country? By the time they killed their country we shall be there to help them bury the carcass.
To repeat our interests are purely speculative. That is, we are more interested in earning professorial nods out of Nigerian tragedy than seeing the Nigerian farce resolved. Let those who have hijacked the country, resolve their self-inflicted 97%:5% absurdist mathematical conjectures and cancers. After all it is their 97% country and our absurdist, thus non-mathematically viable 5%. The rounding up 5%, which by the way may be deliberate, can be taken as jankara jara. Jara has neither contractual nor justiciable reality as the MKO Abiola educated us. And the national scam of total excision of the entire Igbo from the 419 railway booty is just one of many jankara jaras denied Igbo.
Our duty thus is to understand these games. And next field antidotes. And one key antidote is to live to rule. Live to rule, is the citizen’s equivalent of the salaryman’s work to rule. So the best play is for all citizens of conscience to insist on live to rule. And this is to hold till justice becomes common in Nigeria as fishes are to Lagos lagoon.
Yet, in all these something rankles. It is the position of some retired generals. According to 20-05-17 Punch, some retired generals have backed the current democratic dispensation and warned military elements not to engage in destabilizing the country’s democracy.
We are on one page with them. However, this position cannot be canvassed by the very generals who took advantage of the insanity, the thuggery of soldiers morphing into coup makers. And some of these soldiers named by Punch were promoters or beneficiaries of coups, and the moral, material heists attached thereto.
It is thus totally reprehensible, having hijacked entire state powers, to lockstep, be campaigning that others should not. Meanwhile you are retaining all the stolen or dubious privileges you cornered as beneficiaries of coups? Are you then beyond good and evil? Why must the rights and privileges due to you be different from those of other mortals?
The point is this. It is the very dubious reality of yesterday’s coup makers, transformed into today’s democracy heroes and canvassers, that makes coups alluring and profitable enterprises. What these yesterday’s generals are telling by their forged modesties, is that what is wrong is not the idea of coups. For them what is wrong is that a coup failed. That is a successful coup is a glorious homerun by them. We must all be wary of the sermons of unprosecuted saints, sorry unpunished criminals, even if of the political kind.
This is especially in the light of the fact that not even bank robbery can compete with coups for returns on investment risks. Yes, it makes more commercial sense to be a coup maker than a bank robber. And this is without prejudice to their ‘’laudable’’ claims of being messiahs or Mahdi.
As successful coup makers, you not only hijack a state and its resources – that is Nigeria, her oil wells, CBN, etc. for instance – you end up making it to history as a democracy hero. Ahiazuwa. Which other robber has approached this state of plastic grace in history? Or could there be a greater pull-demand for coups than the logic of this magical reality? So these generals should please oblige themselves some decency and keep mute. Their democratic moralizing stinks of dysentery.
To restructure or not to?
With a leader of APC, Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu, adding his voice to the call for restructuring, it appears even the night has no hiding place. It is now clear as it should have been since Genral Yakubu Gowon and company that Nigeria cannot run as a unitary garrison.
Despite being a run against truth, the claim that General Aguiyi ironsi introduced unitarism in Nigeria, is false historical accounting. The verifiable facts are that Ironsi failed and with him his vision and template. So a new beginning was initiated. The man who instituted that new beginning is Gowon not Ironsi. So unitarism could not have started with Ironsi whose template was abrogated. That Gowon reintroduced unitarism is proof that he was not against unitarism. He was for it only when run by him and other northerners. This is what every southerner must know to be free and freed. Nigeria is a northern game sold as a national mission.
So modern Nigeria must date and be dated from the counter coup engineered by Gowon and fellow northerners. The consequent unitarilization of Nigeria is by logic and reality, a completely northern scheme. And they have so done it that it is a scam to benefit the north.
Bishop Hassan Kukah was once about saying so and stopped himself. We have treated the matter in some detail in our book How and Why the Yoruba fought and lost the Biafra Nigeria Civil War. So it is important nobody, most importantly no southerner be fooled. The game is to read data-backed research and free your minds.
That is why we got worried when an attribution was made to Chief Ajibola Ogunshola. For those who don’t know, Ogunshola is certainly one of Nigeria’s few corporate statesmen who will rank above all others. And we speak of the entrepreneurs who brought and propelled new ideas in open competitive markets. With what Ogunshola did with the Punch newspapers, he is assured of history’s best honours. And he has a reputation of speaking straight. That is, he can ink a check and it is a good as the CBN signed it.
And he was quoted: “They claimed that the military governments which created the present states (and local government areas) exercised considerable arbitrariness in their creation. The most powerful argument employed by the South-East was historical, starting with the former four regions inherited by the first military government.’’
The point is that there is no arbitrariness in their creation. It was pre-planned. And this plan is as ancient as General Gowon. And with our ‘’How the Yoruba…’’, we have established a simple fact. It is that each northern-led coup diminished the electoral fortunes of the south and increased those of the north, aka states, LGAs, federal constituencies. The trend was so specific and insistent it couldn’t have been accidents or to choose the words of Ogunshola, arbitrary. So it is already too late, definitely so with available researches, to claim that the north was into arbitrariness in its planned evisceration of the south, via discounted number of states, LGAs, etc. allocations.
To hold such ‘’arbitrariness claims’’ is tantamount to stating that the recent recruitment in the DSS was also arbitrary. No, it is a part of a deliberate grand plan. Dr Dele Sobowale, a columnist with the Vanguard, 21-05-17, got the heart of the matter. We quote:
‘’DSS ARITHMETIC: KATSINA+KANO = 17 SOUTHERN STATES. It was beautiful and simple; as all truly great swindles are. O. Henry.’’
Indeed, Sobowale must be a very generous guy, though we pray he is not being scammed. He thinks it is the DSS that is the swindle. No, it is the entire non-northern Nigeria, ala coordinating vice president, London budget signing fiesta, 97% northernization, etc.
The point however is that those who scam Nigeria are happy when they see others bothering about Nigeria. That is their greatest joy is to see millions of innocent citizens worried for the good of Nigeria, not knowing that Nigeria is a game, their fallen game. It is like with 419ners. The perpetrators are happy if the prospective or current victims are convinced the scams, the 419s, are genuine ongoing businesses. So as victims worry for profitable closures, they are the more irredeemably gamed.
But immediately you let them know you know it is a game, the bottom falls off the bouquet of scams. So if they say there will be a coup, you say good for them, the 97% people. If they say there will be no coup, you say good for them, the 97% people. The important thing is to let them know you know it is a scam, Nigeria is their scam ala DSS RECRUITMENT. Then you begin to live to rule and tell whoever tells you about patriotism he is the fool. Game over. Ahiazuwa.