A recent report by the Nigerian Tribute said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had discovered yahoo-yahoo training institutes in almost all the states of the Nigerian federation. Many Nigerians thought this revelation was alarming but several others did not see it as a big deal. It was not a big deal because Nigeria has since independence been a yahoo nation; everything this country holds dear is a product of fraud.
The country was fraudulently imposed on unwilling disparate entities; a reason it is yet to cohere, even more than six decades after the forced amalgamation.
Until lately, Nigerians thought it was only the Biafrans that wanted to exit the ‘federation’. However, the emergence of Sunday Adeyemo (Sunday Igboho) and Prof. Banji Akintoye and their strident cries for the Yoruba Nation has further exposed that Nigeria is a doomed wishy-washy creation, which Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, described as a zoo land.
The Ijaw Nation has also written to President Bola Tinubu indicating their decision to exit from Nigeria with June 24 deadline for referendum. All these, if not well managed, could be setting the stage for an implosion.
The problem with the various agitations though is that they too are yahoo-yahoo conglomerates of sharp guys trying to make a kill out of the naivety and gullibility of others. Indeed, they are cleaning out big time like those before them.
So, the yahoo-yahoo training schools were, perhaps, geared towards certifying what Nigerians deride in public but celebrate in secret. I wonder what the course outline would be.
The training institutes could be a way to ridicule our so-called educational system. Nigerians love certificates, empty papers that cannot put food on the table. Some of the yahoo-yahoo trainees are graduates of higher institutions but have failed to secure employment in the formal sector after several years of leaving school and, so, sought refuge in the yahoo-yahoo trade.
The yahoo-yahoo guys are trying to organise their trade by setting up schools to train their members. This is shameful and what to expect in a country without moral scruples. The society now celebrates wealth and ridicules hard work. Nobody wants to send their child to be apprentice anymore, which has affected the artisanal industry. All one sees these days are weird-looking young men adorned in drooping trousers and logging laptops. They hang around street corners. They have taken over seedy hotels and hardly go home. And when they make a ‘hit’, the society erupts in praise. Even the traditional institution that should be in the lead to protect our moral base gets infected, dishing out chieftaincy titles to people with no verifiable accomplishments.
There are many yahoo-yahoo parents everywhere who encourage their children by not questioning the source of their sudden wealth. Some time ago, there was a report about a Yahoo Yahoo Boys Mothers Association. I don’t know how far that went but I suspect that it fizzled out when the yahoo-yahoo children started using their mothers for rituals.
Until we begin to ask questions about the source of one’s wealth, there is no ending to yahoo-yahoo. Until our politicians are exorcised of the evil spirit of pilfering, yahoo-yahoo would continue to thrive. Until our churches and mosques remove their eyes from huge envelopes fattened by ill-gotten wealth and start preaching the true message of salvation, Nigeria would continue to swim in fraud.
Only last week, the government launched what it called creditcorp. I believe this is an official credit scam. Till today, we are yet to receive the account of the Tradermoni for which the former Vice-President, a ‘whole’ professor, went into markets to dance kokoma. Nobody knows how much was dispensed during the bonanza and who got it. Also, we have not got answers to how billions of naira were spent to feed schoolchildren even while schools were locked down during the COVID-19 crisis. Was the food taken to their houses or what?
Who needs credidtcorp? Nigerians need hooks to fish, don’t make them dependent on crooks. Devote this money to job creation and production so that our naira will recover, instead of the yahoo-yahoo ‘recovery’ government is pushing that has not reduced the cost of living.
The mad pursuit of the White Lion of Kogi, Yahaya Bello, also has a tint of yahoo-yahoo. Is the rush to nail Bello at all costs and by all means germane? Have they arrested all his contemporaries? Even those preceding him have not got this kind of attention.
Is it not funny how judgments are procured from the cash-and-carry courts? Ironically, those who benefited from the collapse of the courts now deceptively charge the same rotten courts to go after corrupt judges. I laugh in Swahili.
Everywhere you go, people cut corners. Our highways are highly dilapidated, providing easy visas to heaven or hell. Yet the government wants to construct a misguided coastal highway on water at a cost that is comparatively out of this world. Who needs this highway in the first place if not only those whose pockets would bulge from inordinate enrichment?
Nigeria certainly needs a change of values, not just for the yahoo-yahoo boys but for all of us. We need a new mindset that hard work pays. Is it not madness that pensioners who spent their productive years serving their motherland are deprived in the evening of their lives while the upstarts they nurtured in kindergarten straggle into politics and get swollen by stupendous wealth and power and begin to even collect double salaries as lawless lawmakers?
Have you not heard that the airport former Abia State governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, built in Abia State is missing? If you find it, kindly notify Dr. Alex Otti to come and collect it. Even the other day, I wanted to fly Nigeria Air to Siberia only to be told that erstwhile aviation minister, Hadi Sirika, took it home to his village. If these are not yahoo-yahoo, I don’t know what is.
So, our orientation must change, if we must get rid of the evil called yahoo-yahoo. There are bigger yahoo-yahoo boys in power. Even the EFCC is yahoo-yahoo for leaving the lynchpins and going after the small fries. Why have they dabbled into police duty and chasing naira abusers as if it has fully delivered on its mandate?
If the EFCC raids the government, the so-called yahoo-yahoo boys will have no motivators anymore; they will have no one to emulate because the wasted and looted treasury would have enough to generate meaningful jobs for the youths.
We are looking for one man who would make a difference in our land. We are yet to find him among the current crop of politicians. We need a leader to champion the cause of cleansing the Augean stables. We need an active orientation agency to educate our youths and wean them off the caprices of yahoo-yahoo.
I wonder why our so-called leaders are not ashamed to see how Nigerians are eagerly trooping out to very obscure lands despite the humiliation and giving testimonies in church for accomplishing that feat.
There is no reason Nigerians should suffer so much amid wealth. The privileged few enjoy their wealth with vulgar flamboyance in the clear view of squalid Nigerians. Our value system must change. We must stop the worship of money. We must not see politics as the most profitable enterprise, which it is in Nigeria. Politics is for service, not for gain.
This is a yahoo nation. The schools EFCC discovered across the country are in the Presidency and the National Assembly; they are ministries and parastatals; in Government Houses and state houses and assemblies. Until the EFCC raids these places, they should stop disturbing our peace.
It’s not only about going after the Lion like their job depends on it, as Ola Olukayode has vowed to resign if he fails in nailing him; it’s about going after the whole bunch that has made our country and our youths the d vermin and blight of the comity of nations.