My Assessment Of The Nigerian Nation!
By Hon. Ugochukwu Nwaokoro
Nigeria has continued to yearn for good leadership in all the three branches of the Nigerian government; both at the state and at the federal levels. Corruption, incompetency, nepotism, tribalism, religionism, sexism and all the other negative -isms have eaten too deep into the fabric of the Nigerian society that meritocracy, competency, equity, justice and fairplay have been thrown out the window. Insensitivity to the needs of the masses and recklessness by all three branches of government are now commonly displayed with impunity without consequences and no one is held accountable. The judicial branch no longer cares about delivering fair and just judgements in their rulings, rather, their rulings go in favor of the highest bidder without any concern to the perceptions of both the local and international communities to such assault to justice. When the judiciary that’s supposed to be the last hope of justice in a society becomes the home of hopelessness to justice, the society is as good as dead. Borrowing a quote from the very exceptional, eminent and legendary late Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, and I quote, “If you are a judge and you are corrupt, where do we go from here? Then everything has come to a halt. If the legislature is corrupt, you go to the judiciary for redress, if the executive is corrupt, you go to the judiciary for remedy, if the judiciary itself is corrupt, where do you go from there? That is a question, where do you go? To God whom you don’t see? To history which is past? To the future that hasn’t come? Today is here, so let us use it.”
In a society where the people’s government is not accountable to the people, not sensitive to the cries and needs of the people, then that society is doomed to fail. In a society where the legislative branch fails to do its oversight duties on the other two branches of government, but rather acts as a rubber stamp of the executive branch while fraternizing and currying favors from members of the judicial branch, that society is doomed to be lawless.
The question that begs for answer is, how did Nigeria degenerate to this level of decay? Nigeria did not get to this level of decay and hopelessness overnight, it took years in the making. With the above descriptions and attitudes of the branches of the Nigerian government, the shock remains, why are sane people in and outside Nigeria still believe that things will change in Nigeria simply because the Christians prayed for it on Sundays while the Muslims prayed for a new and better Nigeria as well on Fridays. With all these lip service “ceremonial” prayers by both the Christians and the Muslims for a better Nigeria with good leaders, devoid of corruption and bad governance, one would think that those occupying the elected government official are alien non God-fearing actors or at the very least, African traditional worshipers, but, they are not, they are Muslims and Christians who swear with both the Quran and the Bible respectively as they are sworn into their “s/elected” offices. Some of them even boldly swore oaths to take offices that they did not win elections for, they rigged their way in by bribing the law enforcement officers, INEC officials, party officials and in some cases that make their way to court they bribe the judges. The Emirs, Sheiks, Imams, Pastors, Daddy GOs and church members adore and glamorize these criminal politicians.
The politicians give generous donations to mosques and churches, they even use government or stolen money to send the faithful on pilgrimages. They pad up the budget using the pilgrims as unknowing money launderers, as the pilgrims only collect a certain percentage of the individual budget while the rest go to the corrupt government officials organizing the pilgrimage. The use of public funds under any guise to sponsor any pilgrimage is wrong by itself and destroys the efficacy of the pilgrimage, but when the pilgrim is not getting all the money budgeted for each pilgrim, it makes nonsense of the cleansing from sin which is the main idea of making the pilgrimage in the first place. A pilgrim is supposed to self fund by saving and using the money that he or she would have used for some earthly pleasure to do the pilgrimage, except if you’re an elderly or indigent, then someone who can afford or have denied himself and saved enough to sponsor others.
Knowing all these truth about the Nigerian politicians and judges, their characters or lack of, their antecedents and in some cases their lack of qualifications to occupy the offices they hold hostage for personal aggrandizement, one wonders why anyone would expect anything good to come out from them; not in law making, executing the laws already, and definitely no in interpreting the laws in a fair and just manner as the constitution of the land intended. How does one expect a president, governor, senator or a Judge who didn’t come into office via a fair and just means to deliver fairness and justice? One can only give what he has, according to a certain someone, “if it didn’t dey, it didn’t dey”! It is no secret to Nigerians how Tinubu became the president of Nigeria and the role Wike played in destroying electoral norms in Rivers State as a sitting governor to rig elections for Tinubu and Fubara, both of whom allegedly did not win their elections in Rivers State. Today, both Tinubu and Fubara are beneficiaries of the illegality of one man to put them in office. In the same today; all these three men still have the effrontery to ask for justice and fairplay, when they denied Rivers people the same to fully exercise their rights to elect candidates of their choice.
He who goes to equity must come with clean hands. Let us look at the role of INEC and the Supreme Court of Nigeria in the making of Tinubu as the president and Fubara as the governor of Rivers State. In the case of Tinubu, INEC ignored the electoral laws and constitution of the land and went ahead in the wee hours of the night to declare Tinubu the winner of the 2023 presidential elections without even reconciling all the election results and asked the opposing parties to go to court. At the Supreme Court, the court interpreted the law upside down, including the provision that says that the president-elect must score a minimum of 25% in the FCT to qualify to be declared the winner. The Supreme Court applied all kinds of technicalities to refuse to admit volumes of disqualifying material facts against Tinubu into evidence and went ahead to affirm Tinubu as the president-elect.
Ignoring all the material evidence, including videos of electoral malpractices mostly perpetrated by Wike as alleged, INEC went ahead and declared Fubara as governor-elect of Rivers State and the Supreme Court okayed it, the same Supreme Court that chased out a duly elected governor of Imo State and replaced him with a candidate that came a distant fourth as the winner. At the very least, the court should have called for a fresh election, but it didn’t. Not sure up till date the court has explained the rationale behind that ruling. This is the same Supreme Court that gave Godswill Akpabio victory for a senate seat that he never contested for in the primary, assaulting the electoral act that forbids a candidate to contest for two elective offices at the same time, since Godswill Akpabio was at the time running in the presidential primaries of the APC, today, that same Godswill Akpabio is the head of the legislative arm of the government as the president of the Nigerian senate. The Supreme Court of Nigeria is the reason Nigeria is the way it is currently, the court is everything that’s wrong with Nigeria. Every crooked situation in any branch of the Nigerian government can be traced to a reckless ruling by the Supreme Court of Nigeria. It is so sad that the court that’s supposed to be the final hope of the land for justice, is now the worst denier of hope from/of the people. If there’s no reliable judiciary in the land, then the land is standing on a shaky ground. Until the judicial branch of the government is completely overhauled, it will be difficult for positive changes to come to the other two branches of government. Am sure by now you get the picture of the makeup of our executive and judicial branches of government, so I am going to leave them alone and talk a little about the legislative arm of the Nigerian government.
Unfortunately, by the composition, character and antecedents of some of the people we call Senators and Members of the House of Representatives in Nigeria, there’s nothing good to write home about and be hopeful about the Nigerian National Assembly. Some of the members of the National Assembly are people with questionable characters with a lot of them either convicted by the courts for financial crimes and corruption but they’re appealing the decisions, or they’re still facing EFCC charges. In the senate for instance, some of the members are former governors who have been accused and charged to court, and in some cases convicted of corruption while in office as governors, including Godswill Akpabio, whom today sadly serves as the president of the Nigerian senate, making him the number three man in the government hierarchy. These former governors rig themselves into the senate as a way to immunize them from prosecution of their financial crime charges. Knowing fully well that the nigerian constitution does not grant immunity from prosecution to senators, they still go to the senate to become rubber stamp of the president in power, and as long as they do the bidding of the president, they are untouchable from prosecution as the presidency gives them cover and makes sure that they are protected, they become legislative assets to the presidency depriving their constituency a good representation. Are we still expecting fair and just representation from those in our elective offices? Far from it, never going to happen until the people, the true owners of power in the land, rise up and take action to take back their power that has ended up in the wrong hands.
One may ask, how did Nigeria arrive to her current condition? It has taken years to build up to this present condition. It all started before the civil war, when the British sowed the seed of distrust among the federating nations of Nigeria, pitching one against the other based on religion and ethnicity, using lies and made up stories as tools. This lack of trust eventually led to a coup d’etat, which by itself should have been a good thing to cleanse the military and redirect the country on the right path, instead the British made the narrative to be that of North against South, Hausa against Igbo. The coup and counter coup eventually led to a civil war, which could have been avoided if the British hadn’t fueled it up due to their quest of gaining access to the natural resources in the South by using the people of the north, particularly the Northern officers of the Nigerian Army and giving all military support from the West to the Nigerian side against Biafra and dishonestly and shamelessly tagging the war an Igbo war, in a typical case of, if you want to kill a dog, you give it a bad name. This lie that has been exposed at the Honorable Justice Chukwudifu Oputa’s panel, and by recent books written by actors and participants and decision makers during the war, including that written by Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, one of the, if not the main architect of the crippling and hopeless condition of Nigeria; has not triggered enough reasons for the Nigerian government to issue an official apology to and call for a reconciliation with Ndi’Igbo for all these years of official mistreatment and marginalization of Ndi’Igbo.
After the Nigerian/Biafran war, the then Nigerian Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, deceitfully announced that there was no victor and no vanquish, but still he allowed Igbo owned properties around Nigeria to be confiscated and termed abandoned properties, especially in Rivers State, particularly in Port-Harcourt where the Nigerian government has continued to wipe out anything Igbo from the map, up till today. As if that was not enough, the Nigerian government under the supervision of then Minister of Finance, Obafemi Awolowo, confiscated all the money deposited by Igbos in Nigerian banks and only allowed twenty pounds per family, regardless of how much an Igbo person had in the bank. Yes, for those who don’t know, the Nigerian government stole Igbo wealth after the war, and Lagos, the then federal capital territory of Nigeria was largely built from that Igbo wealth. Just had to give that little bit of history since Britain and the Nigerian government have refused to teach history to our children in Nigerian schools. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, an illustrious Igbo son is unjustly languishing in a Nigerian DSS custody for speaking against the treatment of Ndi’Igbo in Nigeria in exercise of his rights as a human being. He had to be extra-ordinarily renditioned back to Nigeria from Kenya by the Nigerian government, in violation of his human rights and rights of due process, he was basically kidnapped from Kenya. One would expect Britain to pull strings to stop the treatment of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, since Nnamdi Kanu is a British citizen. The question remains, why hasn’t the British government stepped up to demand justice for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu wrongly incarcerated in Nigeria? Personally, I am not surprised with the attitude of Britain to the extraordinary rendition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya to Nigeria. Why should one expect anything different from Britain? The same Britain that changed the narrative of the civil war and fought on the side of Nigeria against Biafra, and the same Britain that’s been benefiting from the resources of Nigeria, especially the crude oil that comes from the South.
Meanwhile, individuals from other parts of Nigeria have committed more serious crimes, in some cases, serious treasonable and terroristic acts against Nigeria. For example, people have attacked and blown up oil pipelines in the South South and nothing has happened to them, all the government did was to reward them with lucrative contracts, including contracts to provide security for the oil pipeline. In the North, people have narrated how they brought in the bandits and boko haram terrorists that have continued to terrorize Nigeria, especially in the north, still nothing has happened to those politicians and elite northerns that perpetrated these terroristic treasonable acts. Instead, the Nigerian government claimed to have rehabilitated them and integrated some of them into the Nigerian army. On the other hand, the members of IPOB who are simply asking and agitating for fairness, justice and equity in the treatment of Ndi’Igbo in Nigeria are constantly being pursued, attacked and killed by members of the Nigerian armed forces. In the South West, some Yorubas, including Sunday Igboho, have called for the separatist nation of Oduduwa, and nothing has happened to them. Sunday Igboho is still walking the street and still freely agitating for an independent Yoruba nation and recently led a protest to the seat of power in Britain. In the same South West, Lagos in particular, the Igbos are attacked almost during every election period for campaigning and voting their conscience and for their chosen candidates; their shops and businesses attacked because they want to exercise their rights as Nigerians. Where’s justice for Ndi’Igbo in all of these?
One might be wondering why I had to infuse the treatment of Ndi’Igbo in Nigeria since after the civil war, into a write-up about the crisis in Rivers State, the Fubara, Wike and Tinubu show. Am sure Nigerians and the world have not forgotten how Tinubu emerged as the president of Nigeria in 2023, and the role Wike and Fubara played to destroy free and fair election in Rivers State in favour of Tinubu. In all this gragra, whose electoral mandate was truly stolen? I make bold to say that the mandate of Peter Obi, an Igbo man was stolen, in Rivers State and in most of the other states of Nigeria, denying him the people’s wish for him to be their president. What did Nigerians do when all these were happening? Not enough!
Until the people realize that power really belongs to them and those in elected offices are their servants, serving and wielding powers on their behalf, and that everyone in any of the three branches of government is acting on behalf of the people. Those elected or occupying the offices of governor and president are required to govern in the interest of the people, to be guided by the constitution as they do it. The individuals selected and elected to occupy offices as legislators, both at the state and the federal levels are to represent the interest of the people, making and promulgating laws for common good and not for their personal aggrandizement. They are to provide oversight over how the governors or president executive the laws.
As far as the people are concerned, the legislative arm of government could be termed as the most important branch for several reasons besides making laws and providing oversight duties. The legislative branch has more grassroot representation and that’s why the constitution grants the legislative arm enormous powers; the power to make laws, the power of the purse(budget), the power to confirm cabinet members and certain appointments of the executive branch, including confirmation of Judges, the power to ratify, approve or deny certain policies or actions of the executive branch, etc. If the wrong people are allowed to occupy the legislative branch, then the country is on a free fall to doom land. No effective oversight on the governors or the president, it becomes a rubber stamp to the executive branch; bad and unqualified cabinet members are allowed, and other presidential appointments are also compromised. Corrupt, unqualified and incompetent Judges are confirmed. Nepotism and quid pro quo become the other of the day. At the State level, it’s even more troubling; with the State House of Assembly being a rubber stamp of the governor, corrupt individuals are confirmed as commissioners and heads of government agencies. The most troubling situation is that the criminal, 419, election rigging and corrupt governor gives staff of office to traditional rulers with questionable characters, birds of a feather, who are also the rubber stamps of the governor in their various autonomous communities, now, it has hit home, the entire country is infested by corruption and lawlessness. This is why some traditional rulers have been caught as king pins of kidnapping, supplying arms to kidnappers and providing hideouts safe havens for kidnappers to hide their victims while they demand for ransom.
Just out of curiosity, what do we expect from Nigeria, when a man who boldly said and encouraged his supporters on video, “to grab it, steal it, snatch it, and run with it”, making reference to ballot boxes, is today the president of the country? What do you expect from Nigeria where the Supreme Court shamelessly bastardized and made a mockery of the Nigerian constitution to impose on the country a candidate that clearly had not met all the constitutional requirements, the president-elect. How do you explain the ruling of the Nigerian Supreme Court that took a man that came a distant fourth and declared him the winner of the election, and today he’s the governor of Imo State? What do we expect from a National Assembly where some members do not even understand what their functions as legislators are? How do we expect to rid the nation of money ritualists when some members of our National Assembly are ritualists themselves? A former governor of Abia State was seen on video and photo dressed only in his underwear holding a life chicken at a shrine swearing an oath of loyalty to his godfather. How do we rid the country of kidnappers when official kidnapping by various means are rampant, stealing ballot boxes, distorting election results and falsifying numbers; rigging elections and giving faulty judgements by the courts, especially the Supreme Court are all forms of yahoo, yahoo plus and kidnapping. Stealing money that’s meant to be used to build infrastructural development to create jobs is kidnapping and denying the people public goods and services as well as holding the future of our kids hostage.
How is Nigeria supposed to change for good when daddy and mommy G.Os no longer speak up against the evil of politicians and fraudsters, rather they welcome them in their various churches on Sundays to collect their shares of the stolen wealth by way of tithes and sowing of seeds? How can Nigeria change when on Fridays Muslim imams and sheiks sing praises on government officials just because they are fellow Muslims, they preach violence and justify jihad against non Muslims or anyone who’s against the government? Both Christianity and Islam have failed Nigeria, as almost the same percentage of both religions are the ones committing all the corrupt acts, the Muslims could slightly have more treasury looters than the Christians because more of them occupy powerful government offices than the Christians, especially at the federal government and as military officers that have ruined Nigeria one way or another.
How can Nigeria change for good when by government design, infrastructural development is concentrated in Lagos and Abuja while government actions are put into place to stifle development in other parts of the country, particularly in the South East, using various means. In the eighties it was started by the use of NEPA and its half current to destroy machines at Aba and Onitsha industries. This forced the industrialists from these two Southeastern cities to import and resort to the use of generators to power their industries. Just when Aba and Onitsha business folks thought they had solved their problems, the federal government of Nigeria shut down all the refineries in the south causing the cost of diesel to skyrocket, making manufacturing more expensive. As if that was not enough, the federal government closed all the ports in the south and concentrated all importation through Lagos creating congestion that has continued to beleaguer Lagos till date. Also, most international flights in and out of Nigeria are through Lagos, until most recently from Abuja, the other airports are left in disrepair, making them unattractive and unsafe for international airlines. Just when Aba, Onitsha and other Southeastern importers and exporters started exporting and importing from Lagos, the presence of law enforcement checkpoints increased on the Lagos/Onitsha express road frustrating southeast travelers and cargos, as they have to deal with the law enforcement agents manning the roadblocks who are constantly extorting money from travelers, especially those conveying their imported goods. Besides the countless checkpoints, the roads are so bad that trailers carrying the goods would fall, and hoodlums would attack and steal goods from the fallen trailers.
The frustration from losing their goods and profits eventually led the Aba and Onitsha business men and women to permanently move to Lagos, creating more congestion and increase in economic activities with the creation of various markets by the Igbos. This move to Lagos by the southeastern business folks created a huge problem of insecurity in the S.E. region that has continued till date. When the southeastern business folks moved to Lagos, it disrupted the apprenticeship scheme the region is known for. The apprentices that ordinarily would have been engaged with their Ogas (masters) were left stranded in the southeast when their Ogas could not move with them to Lagos for various reasons, including accommodation. As more and more apprentices continued to flood Aba and Onitsha with no masters, nothing to do and in most cases no where to stay, criminal activities increased and this forced some of the traders remaining in Aba to form the Bakassi Boys to defend themselves, their goods and properties. The Bakassi Boys expanded to absorb some of the apprentices becoming an outfit of law and order and started dishing out instant jungle justice to suspects and grew beyond Aba and got into Onitsha. The Bakassi Boys became too dreaded and deadly, due to their instant jungle justice, that they had to be banned, making their former members readily available to be used as political thugs in the hands of politicians who took advantage of them during elections. After elections, these individuals who are armed to the teeth and emboldened by the politicians are now jobless and left to fend for themselves, they resorted to various criminal activities using arms; assassination, kidnapping for ransom, armed robbery, extortion, etc., increased. The good ones among them that could not join the criminal activities resorted into a renewed agitation for the secession of Biafra from Nigeria, through MASSOB and IPOB, and here we are today dealing with that and other problems that have emanated from the breakdown of law and order in Nigeria, including, but not limited to, money rituals, human organ trafficking, 419, yahoo, yahoo plus, more criminals rigging and taking over elected offices, more criminals becoming traditional rulers, etc.,
In case you’re wondering why I am discussing all these nationwide issues instead of focusing on Rivers State; the declaration of a state of emergency in the state by president Tinubu and the power struggle between Nyeson Wike and Simi Fubara. The simple reason is, what is happening in Rivers State is not unique to Rivers State, it’s happening in most states of Nigeria and at the federal level too. As long as the president, the Supreme Court and the National Assembly exercise powers over the entire country, what’s happening in Rivers State can happen in other states and has happened in other states. The only reason it succeeds in some states but fails in others, is because of the resistance level of the people of the state. If the people do not rise up and fight election rigging to make sure that quality candidates are presented for election and voted for, then the current situation will persist. In a democracy the quality of candidates matter, and the integrity of the process from which the candidates emerge also matter. The people must insist on due process and rule of law. Imagine if due process had been followed during the last elections, we probably would not have the current president, definitely not some of the governors we have today, not the caliber of members of the National Assembly parading themselves as honorable and distinguished members, confusing our youths and making it hard for them to know the true meaning of honorable and distinguished when they do not see anything honorable or distinguished about them. Calling a governor his excellency when we know there’s nothing excellent about him, not even the process through which he emerged as governor is excellent; is making a mockery of the word and an insult to our collective intelligence. By the way, His/Her Excellency is reserved for the president of the country in his role as the head of state of a nation, the symbol, leader and representative of the country or his ambassadors who are acting on behalf of the president in various countries.
In order to cleanse and sanitize our democratic institutions in Nigeria, we must use a holistic approach to do a complete overhaul, because corruption has eaten too deep into the fabric of all the three branches of our government, and one cannot be fixed without fixing the other. This cannot be done by a piecemeal approach, because, as soon as you fix one without the other, it turns around to be corrupted by any of the two that have not been fixed. This is why I do not agree with the school of thought calling for the Supreme Court to no longer be the court of final judgment and to establish a judicial review board to review their judgments, thereby becoming the new final interpreter of the law. This is so unnecessary, because reviewing cases is what the Supreme Court is supposed to be doing in the first place. Let’s not forget the fact that before most cases reach the Supreme Court, they must have gone through lower courts, in some cases though multiple lower courts, including courts of appeals. Having in place a judicial review board achieves nothing but creates another layer of judicial body and government bureaucracy to be bribed. Where will the members of the proposed judicial review board come from? From the moon? As long as they are human beings operating in the Nigerian space under our broken down system, it’s back to status quo. The only way to achieve a holistic overhaul of Nigeria is to constitute a Sovereign National Conference with a mandate to look at the issues of Nigeria and produce a new constitution that will work for all federating parts of Nigeria for effective development of the country. A new constitution that will reduce the exclusive list of the federal government, reducing the overwhelming power and economic choking grip of the federal government. A new constitution that will allow states to effectively police their states. And a new constitution that will grant states the management of their resources with the government collecting taxes on production, while having little or no overhead.
Nigeria, truly can work for all and can easily become one of the best countries in the world, if only we can be sincere, honest and truthful to ourselves, and stop using the crab in a bucket approach based of ethnicism and religion, pulling each other down, destroying talents that could benefit all, just because you do not like the religion or ethnicity of the talent possessor. A lot of Nigerian talents are excelling abroad, but for some reason Nigeria fails to notice them, even when some of the talents come home to establish, the “Nigerian factor” gets to them and they are frustrated, with no choice but to “jakpa” out of Nigeria, again. Nigeria does not have any system or incentive to attract Nigerian diaspora based talents back to Nigeria. Unfortunately, some Nigerians from the diaspora that have made it into Nigerian politics are the “rejects”, those who ran away from abroad back to Nigeria due to one criminal activity or another, but because of strong family ties, godfatherism or connection, they end up in Nigeria holding powerful political positions. What do we expect from these individuals along with their Nigerian counterparts? How can we continue to allow individuals with questionable characters and in some cases with criminal records into our government offices and expect them to perform miracles? How can one give you what he doesn’t have? How can we constitute a choir made up of goats and expect them to sing like canary birds? Not going to happen, according to a certain individual, “if it didn’t dey, it didn’t dey”. Only a fool will continue to do the same thing expecting a different result.
For Nigeria to change for good, every Nigerian must play a role, we must look in the mirror and tell ourselves the bitter truth, we must say to ourselves individually; I am the problem, and I want to change. Then collectively we start the journey to change, making all the sacrifices necessary, resisting bribery and corruption, stop cutting corners, being honest, telling the truth, stop judging each other based on religion, ethnicity and preferences, etc. Unless we are ready to take the necessary steps to do the needful for a better Nigeria, we are closer to living the story of an antelope and an elephant. “An antelope was running like mad, and an elephant saw it asked, Antelope, why are you running like that? The antelope replied, the police are arresting all the goats in the village. The elephant retorted, but you are not a goat! The antelope replied, with our current judiciary system, it will take me 30 years to prove that I am not a goat. And the elephant took off and started running like mad too”
Mercy of God be upon the good people of Nigeria and Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!
– By Ugochukwu Nwaokoro.
Hon. Ugochukwu Nwaokoro is the Founder and President Emeritus of the African Diaspora for Good Governance (ADGG)
He was a Former Deputy Mayor of the City of Newark, New Jersey, USA.
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