THE '419' AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Unlike in advanced societies and maturer democracies, and service-orientated polities where accounatbility is sine qua non and competitive performance and meritocracy, devoid of hereditary privilege are the yardsticks for national measurement, elective and political appointments in Nigeria and by extension, the whole of Africa are a sort of announcement to the privilege few, their relatives and cronies and the children of serving, former political officials and all of their family members that FOOD IS READY, hence the invitation to them by way of political appointments to COME AND CHOP, affording them the inglorious opportunity to partake of the so-called NATIONAL CAKE!
All these in part contribute to the inherent stupendous/endemic corruption and gross abuse of office/power and the unparalleled nepotism within the Nigerian/African system.
A cursory and reflective examination of virtually all elective offices and political appointments cum public contract awards, including promotions in the military and the police since the departure of the colonialists on October 1, 1960 would reveal this pattern/trend, and it reached an obscene height through the ignominious eight-year reign of Olu Obasanjo and has has been taken to a satanic level in the current *bigotic and nepostistic Governent of Emperor Daura's Sunni Muslim-led Government as currently being piloted by the Daura Ignominious Confraternaity (DIC), with that obssessive compulsive power-lust Sultan of Sokoto, Mohamed Sa'ad Abubakar, III., (a.k.a Sada).
Can Nigerians not yet see that the children of today's Generals, serving and retired already form the next generation of the nation's Generals?. The names of their General-fathers are the yardsticks by which competitive performance, military intelligence and strategy are measured in the armed forces and the police of today in Nigeria. This is how best to run a national institution!
A run down of this historical abuse of power and office, especially beginning from the khaki political Heads of State and Commander-in-Thieves of that so-called Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, would see one Olusegun Obasanjo deceiving the whole nation with his Land Use Decree 1978, enabling the ruining (ruling) class, privileged few elites and their royal land snatchers/grabbers in palaces to seize land from the hapless poor/the talakawas - and under the same Matio Obasanjo, the nation was deceived into buying into the much trumpeted and so-called OPERATION FEED THE NATION (OFN), which on Matio's retirement had metamorphosed into Obasanjo Farms Nigeria LTD with the same acronym of OFN as his dubious agricultural programme which was then hailed to high heavens; the late Major General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua took more than half of the Warri Port as I discovered on one of my investigations to that Sea Port, still on that investigation, the then Area Comptroller of Custom (name withheld) told me General T.Y. Danjuma was the only person importing byrites into the country, even though banned by the Ibrahim Gbadamosi Babangida Government, another public office abuser in that shameless cohorts, and upon Obasanjo's return to power in 1999-2007, he peopled his cabinets from the inception of his Government and throughout every cabinet reshuffle with butter-brain and chocolate-wise children, even some of whom were nationally known to be mentally unstable, from the nation's political families, in order to curry favour from his biological brethren and cronies and to stabilize his Government.
With respect to byrites importation by General T.Y. Danjuma, can my readers now see that whenever there is a ban on importation of products into Nigeria, it was never, ever done because of the nation, but because of the the privilege few in Government, their cronies and by all shameless Nigerians trading for them which can be found in what I had called CONSOLIDATED WEALTH (CW), and it is not lost on me and the international community as to which shameless crooks are currently, and have been trading for virtually all the nation's former Heads of State and Presidents, serving political officials and former top civil servants.
This is the very reason why no sitting President can probe former Presidents before him because they are all international crooks and robbers, and as the sayings go: A THIEF CANNOT TRY A FELLOW THIEF AND HE WHO LIVES IN A GLASS HOUSE MUST NEVER THROW STONE!
When I investigated the rice importation to Nigeria through Benin Republic by disguising as a rice merchant from South Eastern Nigeria and trekked to Republic of Benin through the dreaded Elepo bush path, risking my life, who did I discovered were behind such importation? Generals and high ranking custom officers and their civilian counterparts and all that really mattered in the then Ibrahim Gbadamosi Babangida Government. That investigation won me the Nigeria Media Merit Award as the Investigative Reporter of the Year, for the 1992 edition, and presented to me at a colourful ceremony at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Victoria Island, Lagos by the then Minister of Information and Culture, Professor Jerry Gana.
In his article published to commend me for the high level investigtive skills I had displayed by risking my life entering a foreigh, Professor Joseph Amadu Abalaka said the much he knew about me, all the stories I had brought from that investigation were not used - and that was the very truth.
Mr Kinsley Osadolor, my then editor and the editor of the Guardian on Sunday wrote me a commendation letter which he copied all the directors of The Guardian - and the joke then at Rutam House was that I was being commended for violating international law, entering a foreign country without a passport!
Yep! That was the stuff in which investigative journalism was then made of. But today, journalists in Nigeria have turned themselves into political egrets, writing to be called to go and chop at the Presidency and States Houses, as Media Assistants and Commissioners of Information. Shame! Again, I say, shame! Shame and shio at the same time! It is embarrassing that every Omaka and Okama today has a media assistants and do hire shameless journalist who have no honour and integrity to write and place press releases on their behalf for toro, adagboroja, ekpini and anini (Yala for worthless and counterfeited coins or person).
When I ivestigated the activities of multinational loggers, lumbering our exotic and pristine trees/forest through the Warri Sea Port to Western nations, guesss who again were involved? Of course, the very same people, whose paths I had crossed again and again and still do cross right now, to the point that the security agencies in Nigeria are currently intercepting my calls to Nigeria - I mean all the crooks that had ruled that country and still do!
Then they used to warn me: YOUNG MAN, YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO DIE...KEEP OFF THAT CASE! And my friends would express concern: "John, you are steeping on their toes...John, you are stepping on toes. You have to be very, very careful."
Also, when I was investigating the deleterious effects of the Yakubu Gowon/Audu Bako mega dams and masssive irrigation projects on the ecology of the Northern States of Nigeria round the whole of the North, those who took over the cattle tracks/routes/grazing land as gazetted as far back as 1959, through independence by the Northern Government Regional Authority and had their mechanised agricultural projects and other very obscene development, thus laying the foundation of the current conflicts and strifes between the pastoralists turned jihadists and farmers all over Nigeria, where lives are being lost on both sides, with the preponderance of deaths being suffered by the farmers, with women raped, properties stolen, land being seized from the local and hapless people, with many being killed and maimed by the rampaging and AK-47 Fulani jihadi herders and their foreign jihadi conterparts from far off East, North and West and East and Central Africa, are the same people, who are currently in the Presidency, palaces, from the business community, Fulani/Hausa elite farmers, Fulani and Hausa elites, top military, police and para-military officers, top civil servants, top politcal officials, elected/appointed, all either still in active service or have retired, are the very people to whom the herders and even Boko Haram are their foot soldiers!
IF WE MUST HALT THE IMMINENT ECOLOGICAL ARMAGEDDON FLAPPING ITS WINGS ALL OVER THE NORTHERN STATES OF NIGERIA
Therefore, any one out there that is ready to sincerely look at the constant clashes/frictions/the seeming perpetual conflicts between the herders and the farmers MUST really dig deep to look at both the man-made and natural causes, both of which have acted as catalysts to the universal fires, sand dunes, desiccation of the river systems, including the fast shrinking wetlands, especially, the two most important international wetlands - Nguru?Hadejia in the Northern States of Nigeria, acute famine, excessive drought, extreme weather conditions/extreme winds, the water table that has been receding at a geometrical rate all over the North for decades now, the dying animals, the disappearing fadamas (traditional agriculture), etc, etc, all of which have culminated in the death of seasonal migration by the Bororo herders, consequent upon the ongoing war between CAIN AND ABEL!
Again, Nigerians, both in the Upper and Lower Niger must summon the courage to join me in asking Muhammadu Buhari, Ahmed Joda, Alhaji Alhaji, Professor Jibril Aminu, to mention, but a few the simple question on behalf of posterity: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE PASTORAL RESOLVE, which my former boss and great mentor, Mr Romeo Barberopoulos had formed, funded based on the findings and conclusions of all my investigations round the whole North of Nigeria?
I personally wrote the contents of the PARE literature and booklet and also, wrote all the letters which we sent to eminent Nigerians on both sides of the Niger, including those for fund raising, but were all signed by my boss.
I was the Southern Coordinator of the Pastoral Resolve and its Public Affairs Manager. The Pastoral Resolve, in which Major General Muhammadu Buhari was co-opted to join and become its first President, and later Ahmed Joda, who is also, one of the trustees of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), serving with the likes of Izioma Asiodu, A.P Leventis, etc was our own little way of trying to nip in the bud, the daily killings that have become the real vocation of the now jihadi herders because in the conclusions of all my findings during those investigations across decades, I had predicted, what not only Nigerians are witnessing today, but the rest of humanity - and the herders had been known to be the fourth most dangerous and deadliest terrorsits organization in our world of today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Odey Aduma was formely Executive Secretary, Foundry Association of Nigeria; Southern Coordinator of President Muhammadu Buhari's pastoralists NGO - THE PASTORAL RESOLVE; Chairman, Editorial Board of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc; member, National Committee for the Nigerian Youth Festival, 1993; member, core Committee of the National Tecnology Summit and was the Summit's chairman for two of its sub-committees - Publicity and Exhibition, 1998; member of the Administrative Panel of Inquiry set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo to investigate the illegal trade in and smuggling of endagered species of wild fauna and flora into and out of Nigeria, 2003.
He was the Chairman, Planning Committee of the General Murtala Muhammed Memorial Lecture for two consecutive years, 2001 and 2002 before it attained a Foundation status in 2002, having first been upgraded to that status in 2001. General Murtala Muhammed was one of Nigeria's former Heads of State and was killed in the abortive coup led by the then Colonel Buka Suka Dimka on February 13, 1976.
That same capacity saw Mr Aduma delivering huge succcesses during the Daily Times of Nigeria's 75th Anniversary (in which he raked in N6, 000, 000 into the coffers of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc) and also, playing a similar role in a similar capacity during Dr Isma'il Babatunde Jose's 75th Birth Day. Dr Jose, doyen of Nigerian journalism was Mr Aduma's personal mentor. That relationship was so close and solid such that whilst Aduma was leaving the shores of Nigeria for Britain in 2003, Dr Jose gave him N10, 000.00.
In 1992, Mr Aduma's contributions to journalism was recognised with the awards of the Nigeria Media Merit Award as the Investigative Reporter of the Year and the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence as the Reporter of the Year, and also, the British Chevening Scholarship, which saw him studying International Journalism at City University of London in 2003-2004, with specialism in Environment.
Aduma is the author of the inspirational best-seller, THE DIAMONDS ARE HERE and the founder of Vigilance, the World's Leading Security Magazine and Scorpion News Corp, in addition to founding the Nationalists Unity Movement of Nigeria (NUMON).
God bless our Nigeria.
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