As we approach Nigeria’s 57th anniversary, I am beginning to see that we as the people of Nigeria have not been fair to Nigeria.
The APC should stop accusing the PDP of corruption and stealing the monies of Nigeria – because the monies that PDP stole are in APC. And being in APC seems to have become the escape from being prosecuted for financial crimes.
The PDP should stop blaming the APC for Nigeria’s woes. There’s nothing going on now that didn’t have its version in the days of PDP.
There were brutal killings in Odi and Zakibiam. Umuleri and Aguleri almost finished themselves. Obasanjo had the portfolio of the Petroleum ministry in his office; there was OPC, BAKASI, AREWA, MOSOB (now IPOB), BOKO HARAM… etc. Notin wey we never see before.
This kind of politics we play, where we celebrate our own even when we know they are wrong; or say “he was arrested not because of the money he stole, but because he is an Igbo (or Hausa or Yoruba, or Niger Delta) man is myopic, disingenuous and unconstructive.
Instead of questioning the propriety or otherwise of the arrests and prosecution, let us insist that it cuts across. Let us also insist that people don’t get off the hook merely because they joined the APC. Also, the government should not pretend that the ADs of the South-West and the APGAs of the South-East are not culpable merely because they are in league. Who the cap fits, let him wear it.
Jonathan used the Chibok girls and BOKO HARAM to score political points, Buhari is doing the same. The importation of meat was banned under the PDP. It made meat very expensive at the beginning, then suddenly everyone owned poultry farms and piggeries, and grasscutter/rabbit farms. The policy made entrepreneurs out of Nigerians. Now it’s rice… Same story, different version.
Priorities are still been misplaced – People are sponsored to go and take selfies in Mecca and Jerusalem, but the Nigerian students studying abroad (even Ghana here for our backyard) are not given privileges that will ameliorate their situation. Even in Nigeria, kids are changing schools or dropping out of school. Politicians erect Christmas trees instead of paying salaries and pensions… We clap for politicians for giving scholarships to 5,000 students, forgetting that they stole state funds CONSISTENTLY for 4 years and over, impoverishing MILLIONS in the process.
If truly there are primary schools in Nigeria that pay over 1million Naira PER TERM, what sort of corruption are we fighting? If churches are building schools with the offering of church members who ultimately cannot afford to take their children to those same schools because the fees are too expensive, what kind of corruption and injustice are we fighting? If a church builds a school with the offering of church-members, who owns the school?
40 of the top 100 richest Nigerians are politicians (some of them were broke, extremely broke or dead broke in their former lives).
20 out of the 60 left made their monies from 3 of the most corrupt sectors in Nigeria’s economy, namely: the Oil and Gas sector, the Telecommunications sector and NGOs.
10 out of the remaining 40 are good friends and family members of people in government.
10 out of the final 30 are kings of the North and South-West. The rest are pastors.
Nigeria is one of the very few countries in the world, if not the only country in the world, where politics is seen as an occupation. Kids go to school in Nigeria and ASPIRE to be POLITICIANS when they graduate from the university. Leadership and office is no longer about service, but about acquisition of stupendous wealth and power.
The greatest beneficiaries of the monies stolen by our politicians and their cronies are the churches and our traditional rulers, two of the “supposed-to-be” most sacred institutions we have in the country.
Thieves are the ones receiving most of the chieftancy titles from our royal fathers. By this our kings desecrate our lands and insult our culture. Then our pastors take monies from the same politicians who cause mayhem and penury in order to make money – people who steal the due from the labours of the hardworking Nigerians. They give fat offerings and chair church-building-projects. Choristers and ushers shamelessly surround them after church service for 1000 Naira tokens. I speak less of the Mosques cause on the face of it, they have more standards – they don’t need an edifice to worship and they have not forgotten the route to their destiny.
I SEE A CURSE and that curse must be lifted. The curse from the tears, the sweat and the blood of the Nigerian workers whose salaries are withheld so that thieves will have enough to steal for themselves and their children; the curse from the tears of the pensioners, the curse from people who are denied their due merely because of their ethnicity or religion.
I said before and I say again, the true change of Nigeria will not happen in the battlefields – it doesn’t depend on Biafra or the North. It will begin from the church. An enemy has done this…
In the meantime, may your heart be stirred up, that you may PRAY for a #RevivalInTheLand.
Source: Ogochukwu Chidiebere Nweke, vice President at Synergies Institute-Ghana.
