Babs Ajayi
The culture and values subscribed to by Goodluck Jonathan has brought nothing but setback, poverty, distractions and diversions from real issues and objectives, and sustained an attitude that most Nigerians would love to see eliminated from the scheme of things in the nation.
The head is so rotten and we all know that when the head of a fish is rotten the whole body is threatened and doomed. Goodluck Jonathan is doomed and the nation with him, if he is not quickly rid of control and thrown out. Nearly 300 girls have been missing for more than three months; government has no clue about the whereabouts of the girls and cannot bring them home.
The same government has not even taken the step of reaching out and visiting the families of the girls, but when some of the parents succeeded in finding their way to Abuja to meet with Malala Yousafzai who visited from the UK over the matter, the government took advantage to lure them into Aso Rock and quickly induced them and corrupted them with cash.
It was a con game, a carrot laden with warms; these agonizing parents were offered cash and their rank and file thrown into a battle about how to share Jonathan's Greek gift. It is wrong, very wrong and criminal for Jonathan and his men inside Aso Rock to lure these parents with cash and to induce them.
It is very, very unacceptable to offer bribe to mothers and fathers who have been going through tough and difficult times, a hardship that Jonathan ought to have been able to resolve a long time ago.
I still wonder why the likes of Goodluck Jonathan believe that this life is all about money and that people are hopeless without cash. No amount of money is enough to remold or replace any of the girls.
We now know why looting and corruption is so rife in the nation because most of these people believe that money solves it all and money can do it all.
Money failed Umaru Yar'Ardua when he died as a sitting president. Money failed Ibrahim Babangida and that is why Mariam Babangida is no longer with us today. Money failed Augustus Aikhomu and Mike Akhigbe, both dead despite huge bank accounts of stolen money.
Money just recently failed Umaru Dikko and Rilwan Lukman. It is just a matter of time and money will fail Goodluck Jonathan as well. It is not a curse - just plain truth of life, so why elevate money to the level of a god in your life? Why steal and loot so much that there is little left to reach the people or develop the nation?
The level of corruption in Nigeria is so monumental that even those who are looting are deluded. They are now telling you and me that looting and stealing government funds is not corruption! They have now come up with their own self-serving definition of corruption!
Hallelujah! Everybody say amen inside the Aso Rock Chapel, our God is not a poor God!
These simple, hardworking, rural people who never sought the spotlight are thrown into it by terrible circumstances and nightmare no parent ever wished for have now been corrupted by Jonathan and his men. He met them just one time and he robbed the conning oil on them, anointed them with the spirit of greed and seduced them with filthy lucre. This is the only way known to Jonathan and the only language he understands.
Do not be surprised that Aso Rock and its media mongers will be shocked that some of us are making so much of a 'mere gift' of some millions of naira to some parents; that we are making so much 'noise' about it and making an issue of it at all. They will wonder what the heck is some millions of naira that we are 'making so much noise' about it, but we want things to be done right and the nation's resources used appropriately and fully accounted for.
Most of our people are tired of a nation that cannot fend for its people, not because the nation does not have money but because the money is often stolen and looted. Writing about the plight of the Chibok girls in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper recently, the columnist Mohammed Adam said the following: "But concerned and dismayed as people around the world are, we all can't just march into the Nigerian rain-forest and snatch the girls back.
That is the responsibility of the government, and the failure rests entirely with what passes for government in Nigeria. And this failure raises the fundamental issue of what use government really is, in many parts of Africa.
Dictators, politicians win elections, rig them or seize power all in the name of the people, but once in, look out for only themselves. Some of them plunder the kitty, leaving the vast majority of people impoverished…it is inconceivable that a child would go missing in Canada or say Germany, and the government machinery would not go into overdrive to find this one human being."
I believe Mr. Adam spoke directly to Mr. Goodluck Jonathan in that article. Jonathan, Mark, Okonjo-Iweala, and Moro should read it. Mr. Adam also spoke directly to the media mongers working for and with Jonathan to rewrite and pervert the truth. Essentially, it is clear that most of the people in Aso Rock and in this government have no conscience.
They have sold their conscience for cash and for positions they never thought they could hold in their wildest dream. They have also sold everything including their integrity, positive previous contributions to society. They have sold their peace of mind and their soul as well.
These people are finished despite the huge cash they have been able to stack up and the new houses they have been able to grab.
I was encouraged to write this piece by many in Nigeria who have been sending the news item relating to Jonathan's cash gift to the parents of the Chibok girls to one another and to their groups of friends online and expressing shock and anger at the action of Jonathan.
Here are some of their comments: "The leadership of our nation is sick," "Really shameful. Why the need for money," and "This is very, very shameful." The good thing about the concerns and comments is that they come from Nigerians of all religious beliefs, ethnic nationalities, businesses and professions. They are united around one thing: the need to rid the nation of a corrupt leadership.
The head is rotten and decaying and we can no longer stand by and watch criminals run the nation to the ground. It is a shameless and corrupt thing to do - to give cash in envelopes to some of the parents of the Chibok girls, who are still missing. Aso Rock must have a huge vault to be able to give out alarming and unaccounted-for sums of cash.
What was the money for? Why must Aso Rock give out money in cash to people? That is just how bad and corrupt things are right inside Aso Rock. Whatever happened to trust funds for education? How about rural development, infrastructures and social amenities? I guess those are not needed and are not good enough; cash is the way and the only way thieves prefer.
Just buy the people with cash and the problems will go away? Welcome to Aso Rock where thieves run the affairs of Nigeria.
For the record, Cameroonian soldiers rescued the wife of the Vice Prime Minister, Amadou Ali who was abducted three days earlier. What the morons in Nigeria Army uniform cannot do in more than 3 months was accomplished in 3 days to liberate a single person from the clutches of Boko Haram. That tells you that the Nigerian Armed Forces is a fraud, a sham and a bunch of citizens' intimidators and harassers.
The only people they are capable of waging war against are our citizens and unarmed, helpless civilians. Cameroon even sacked two senior army officers, Col. Youssa Gedeon and Lt-Col. Justin Ngonga just one day after the abduction of Mrs. Ali to send a clear message to its armed forces that the security and safety of the nation and its citizens is a top priority of the government.
We must acknowledged that the lady that was rescued belonged in the top political hierarchy in Cameroon but her rescue within days attests to the worthiness of Cameroon's Armed Forces unlike the do-no-good, fat-bellied, pepper soup eating, unruly and undisciplined, bus-burning, riot-ragging, poorly trained and terribly managed Nigerian Armed Forces. The Nigerian Armed Forces needs a major strategic overhaul and total retraining.
The Nigerian Armed Forces have been an army of occupation for 30 or more years and they have always perceived their job description to be largely the invasion of the homes of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and other critics of the Armed Forces, as well as human rights campaigners such as Gani Fawehinmi, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti and Femi Falana.
The other task they do very well is to go on rampage at bus stops, burn down buses, beat up drivers and conductors who will not allow them to ride for free, horse-whip drivers who will not carry their vehicles on their heads to allow an officer to drive by in a heavy traffic. These are the 'duties' the men and women of the Nigerian Armed Forces have performed with distinction in over 30 years.
Men of the Nigeria Army in particular have excelled in this work as they demonstrated (demonstration of craze, as Fela Kuti put it! Na craze man be that o! Na animal be that!) a few weeks ago when they went on rampage, destroying lives and property in Lagos State.
You have to give it to them. That is what they know and can do very well. They have been fighting the Nigerian taxpayer and citizens for over 30 years and they are not equipped to fight the nation's enemies, defend its sovereignty or checkmate insurgency; that is not Nigerian Armed Forces!
Clearly, we can see that the Armed Forces need to be retrained and retooled, be taken through values and culture coaching, and be made to know that the civilian - any civilian for that matter - men, women, young and old, boys or girls are their masters, their bosses.
I have never seen a soldier who did not pay to enter a bus in North America and yet these officers will always give up their seats to civilians whenever the bus is full. "Would you like a seat, Mam?" and the officer will get up and offer his seat. "Come and sit here, sir," and the officer will bow and smile and move over to offer his seat to a citizen.
We do not have gentlemen and women in our Armed Forces. Our own soldiers, naval and air force men are essentially "professional" thugs, hoodlums, irritants, touts and criminals in uniform.
I know I speak for the Nigerian people on this matter.
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