HOW TO MAKE SLAVE OF NIGERIANS

HOW TO MAKE SLAVE OF NIGERIANS
By Onesimus Enesi
Slavery is not known to be enjoyed by humans except Nigerians. Since the days of the slave trade in the 19th Century leading to British colonization of the people now called Nigerians, slavery has proved to be a good companion. Resistance has either not been considered a respectable response or freedom is too dangerous to be desired as an alternative to slavery.
During colonial administration, all institutions of state were orientated to treat Nigerians as brutes and criminals before it is proved otherwise. The coercive arms of government such as the Army, Police and Revenue inspectors were the worst culprits.
Their duty, it appeared, is to harass and roughen you up before you are informed of any offence. The standard procedure is to arrest you first, beat you to pulp, take you for dead and abandon you in the cell. If they happen to take any notice of you as still having breath in you, they may then dump you in the mogue-or hospital-since there is little or no difference between both. If in the process you give up the ghost, it will be just one other case of a wasted soul among so many. But if by any miracle you survive, you would have learnt how not to be innocent.
In the popular parlance of the Nigeria Police promo, bail is free, and here us how. As soon as you are arrested and if you are in one piece, you will be asked to apply for bail. You need biro and paper to write the bail application, these you buy, through the police. Then the person to bail you must be of a class high enough to be trusted-but that is, on paper. In real life, he who will bail must come with a fat bank account and ready to part with a hefty amount of naira, if he is going to go home with the accused. Isn’t bail so free or cheap?
To the law enforcement agents, criminals are not the problem. It is the innocents who constitutes the challenges facing the police. Because they are so many, innocent souls must be made to pay for the criminals if the police cells and prison houses must be filled up-and it must. That is why the police will not arrive the scene of crime when it is taking place. No, the best time to visit the crime scene is after the event when the criminals has vamoosed into thin air, and when innocent passers-by are going about their legitimate business and unaware of any crime or incident. The very efficient and no-nonsense Nigeria Police will burst on the scene from nowhere and arrest as many as they could cart away. That is when you will know that there is little or no difference between cell and bail and why bail is so free!
Government in Nigeria is a cult. If you are not in it, you are an outsider and will be treated as such. Because you are regarded as a slave, you are not entitled to protest in public against the evil government metes out to you. Take these.
In January 2010, the FCT Water Board woke up one day and increased their monthly water rate from N1,500.00 to N4,000.00. and faithfully and meekly, Nigerians have been paying without asking a question, because they see themselves as chattels or slaves who has no right to fair treatment.
The Federal Road Safety Corps is free to arrest you for any offence and to fine you on the spot without trial. As if that is not bad enough, you will have to pay the fine into a designated bank account-no matter how far away. Not done yet, you will return to them with a satisfactory evidence of payment and go and tow or drive your vehicle from where it is impounded. You may need to return to their office several times before your driving licence is released to you. All these for one offence - by a slave?
The leper called NEPA whose name and mandate is now to include holding power away from factories and homes knows and treat Nigerians as slave. First you must agree to pay for black-out instead of light. Then you must agree to be charged any amount, since no one cares to read your metre to ascertain your consumption.
Second, you must go to their office or any designated bank and pay your outrageous bill. After payment, you must submit it to a Clerk in their office who will record your payment and make you to sign the register of payment. Third, you must then proceed to photocopy the receipt or evidence of payment and paste it on your doors or the gate of your house as a pass-over sacrifice. If you are disobedient or arrogant enough not to paste the receipt, then the ‘lepers’ will come and disconnect your light-for an offence unknown to law and common sense. That reminds you of your status as a slave.
Even private schools have now borrowed this standard treatment from public schools. Your children school fees must be paid to designated Bank accounts; after which you take the evidence of payment to the school for official receipt. Now, you are to make a photocopy of the receipt which you must give to your child, for keeps to be produced on demand. If at any time your child misplace the receipt, the school is then free to believe that you have not paid your child’s school fees and that leads straight to suspension. Don’t remind them that they retained the duplicate copy of the receipt as well as the Bank teller, or are you not supposed to be a slave?
When the President visits a state or the governor a local council area, it is regarded as an august event for which schools, offices and markets must close down. Not even this alone, school children and their teachers, workers and market men and women must line the streets-to welcome the august visitors from the third heaven.
The man-hour loss, the missed trade, the lost teaching period and the cost of it all are unimportant to anyone. When slaves do the bidding of their masters, that is legitimate, not so?
It is said that those who don’t value freedom does not deserve it. This is probably true of Nigerians. But it failed to explain why the people are so docile, mostly cowards and work hard only at negative and illegal schemes, or is it the case that the people have been so free and treated so fairly in the past that they take slavery as an acceptable alternative to liberty? I bet that the question will not go away until someone provides a satisfactory answer. Please try!



 
THE MALAISE OF A MEGA PARTY
By Mas Damisa
Is there any hope that opposition parties will ever take over power or win electrons in Nigeria? That is a trillion naira question which this piece will attempt to answer or at least broach. About eighteen months ago, Chief Anthony Enahoro CFR thought aloud about how opposition parties could close ranks, come together and merge or form one big political party. The purpose was to defeat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in a clean and fair election, come 2011. Given his age, the nationalist needed others to carry out his vision and Chief Olu Falae came in handy. He it was who led other prominent opposition party chieftains in endless rounds of consultations with the view of steering them into such a big-call it Mega Party under the sobriquet of Mega Summit Movement.
How else can we describe Chief Olu Falae, Gen. Muhammed Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Alh. Attahiru Bafarawa – all presidential candidates between 1999 and 2007? Alh Balarabe Musa, a professional opposition politician and a group of others not-so-prominent but important actors were part of the process. From day one, the PRP leader announced that his party will neither dissolve into or be merged with any other party. He opted for alliance with other parties; but at the end, he let it be known that he and his party will not merge or align with the Mega Party!! Many were astounded as to what went wrong and why Balaraba Musa behaved the way he did. Someone even asked if the PRP leader was not planted in the Mega Summit Movement to destroy or frustrate it in the first place. He is entitled to his opinion.
Not long after, a group of top members of the MSM broke apart to form what they called National Democratic Initiative (NDI) which changed later to become National Democratic Movement (NDM) – purporting to have absolved the MSM by adoption of the word ‘movement’. But the NDM is a counterpoise to the MSM which was considered as too ‘southern’ by Northern leaders in the Summit. So, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Attahiru Bafarawa with a sprinkle of southerners like Tom Ikimi and Barr. Mike Ahamba went with the NDM. For sometime, most members of the MSM became also members of the NDM until-like water and oil - each went its own way.
However, and at this stage Alhaji Bola Tinubu and his team appeared on the scene on the side of the NDM and helped to finally nailed the coffin of the MSM. But the NDM was to receive the most painful shock. Atiku Abubakar whose heart was in the PDP while pretending to be in MSM/NDM dumped it after slamming accusations against Buhari and Bafarawa. And Bafarawa left, not before he accused Buhari of perfidy and betrayal. Buhari and his new party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were treated like lepers by what was left of the NDM. Soon, Tinubu’s rump of the A.C. and Bafarawa” Democratic People’s Party (DPP) became the sole legatees of the NDM who agreed to merge into-presumably a mega party.
Right from the onset, Alh. Shitta-Bey was not happy with the pace of events and was very suspicious of certain MSM leaders of northern extraction whom he described as dealing deceitfully with the MSM. He left to file in his papers with the INEC to register what he called Mega Progressive Peoples Party- which remains in process. Subsequent developments tends to justify Shitta-Bey’s action. Whatever was left of the MSM resolved to go ahead and form a new party called the Social Democratic Mega Party – which registration is also under way. The MSM still led by Chief Olu Falae still left its doors open to those who may change their minds to return to the fold; and to other progressive forces who are yet to decide.
In fact, the Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC finally wrote the NDM that they will, under no circumstances merge with any other Party-including the MSM; although they never really inform the MSM of their decision. These are the facts of the case with the ‘Mega Party’ as much as it can be recalled. If opposition Parties are going to be relevant and serve as the hope of the common voters, the failure and malaise of the ‘Mega Party’ as initially conceived must be studied and the right lessons must be learnt. What are these defects or failure?
It was very obvious that the initiators of the MSM as altruistic as they seemed, were never really trusted by many of those who pretended to embrace the idea. If Chief Olu Falae had been able to jump out of his skin to demonstrate his openness, it would still have been difficult for the doubting Thomases to believe him – and this is due to no fault of his. To those with discerning minds, there was always a ting of fear, of distrust and perhaps of superiority complex between and among the top leaders of the MSM/NDM. And the causes of these feelings are to be found in ethnic, religious and regional differences as the core factors. These factors gave birth to the NDM in the first place, even if some would disagree
The second factor that weakened the MSM was the ambition of the leading characters who formed the NDM. There is no way the presidential ambitions of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar could be hidden and at strategic points in the process, they plead against themselves to the detriments of the unity of opposition parties. The tripartite accusation of betrayal between Buhari, Atiku and Bafarawa is a testimony of their vaunting ambitions and the clashing of thereof
The third factor is the presumption on the part of the MSM initiator as if all Nigerian opposition leaders are of the same level of understanding or ideological inclination. When therefore many NDM/MSM leaders fall short of expectation, disappointment sets in, leading to the failure of the process. It is to these enumerated factors more than anything else, even far away from whatever the PDP was able to do, that disrupted the process of an emerging national ‘Mega Party’ of our dream. Before the MSM/NDM, there was the Nigerians United for Democracy, NUD first led by Chief Enahoro and now by Dr. Tunji Braithwaite. There is the fragmented Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP with Balarabe Musa, Olapade - Agoro and Maxi Okwu holding a part each. The four year old Coalition for New Nigeria, CNN is still struggling to survive. And the new entrant, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, and perhaps some others.
Now the question: Why has it been difficult to forge unity and sustain a country-wide organization that could challenge and defeat the occultist group which controls the centre? Lack of common property of nationhood; all others are subsidiary causes. To make project-Nigeria work and work well, the polity must be organized and restructured on ethno-geographical basis. To continue with the present structures and system and expect a different result is to tread on the path of insanity. Nothing wobbles to victory-nothing!