When Eedris Abdulkareem sang “Nigeria jagga-jagga” during a presidential outing and OBJ rebuked him by saying, “Your mama and your papa na jagga-jagga,” that was somewhat the beginning of the end of Eedris’ musical career. When Yar’Adua took over the utmost mantel of leadership, I quietly said to myself that I’ll give him till this December 2008 to see or feel the effect of his leadership. But as usual, a perennially hot syndicate of persons with no face infest the peaceful polity, taking strong root at the helms of affairs in each state of the federation and spreading like an unstoppable, incurable virus. They are the descendants of faceless political vampires of old, and they have spent billions of ill-gotten naira to create a powerful and transparent cloak of pretentious, waterless goodness to cover their collective evil. They make sure they shake the entire Nigerian nation. These creatures are faceless because there is no concrete evidence of the suffocating evil they forever do. They are clever and smart to permanently conceal their evil. Their biological children never grew up in Nigeria, not even in Africa or some parts of Asia. The members of this secret, “vampiric”, deathly and ever-growing syndicate are manifold, but compared to the size of the ordinary masses of this nation, they are far less than a handful, even lower than a fingerful.

Chinua Achebe said that the failure of leadership is the problem with Nigeria. The National Assembly was disgustingly divided over Madam Speaker Patricia Etteh’s renovation money scandal. Imagine a House of Representa-thieves wasting precious weeks and months in physical battle over trivialities!! And now, after several weeks of pressure, Madam Speaker and her deputy finally chose to resign. Why did she have to wait that long? This is a House of Representa-thieves who felt that there was nothing else to do. Don’t be surprised when certain so-called “pacifiers” would creep up and say: “Please sheathe your swords. Let us move the country forward.”

Of course, we Nigerians look very ungovernable. Instead of moving forward or backward, we seem to stay in one place, deceiving ourselves that we are making progress. This is a country where a wrong majority takes it all and a right minority suffers it all. It is not enough that we Nigerians should rest on the fact that generally speaking, we are relentlessly resilient in so many chronically relentless situations. Members of this terrible, hidden syndicate would just dip their ugly hands and carve out for themselves chosen crowds from the massive ordinary masses to represent the entire Nigerian nation. They rule upon the minds of these chosen crowds, thereby feeding on the consistent resilience of the ordinary Nigerians. It is a normal thing for a “vampiric” leader to pick a person and train and mould this person to rule like him, or worse than him, after he is no more. That “vampiric” leader will NEVER choose his own child.

When a bad man rules, his cronies will do everything possible to keep his world afloat, for this gives plenty of room to actualise their own evils. This is a certainty that never changes: The fall of a bad leader is very dramatic, sometimes melodramatic. Sani Abacha is a typical example.

Nigeria don jagga-jagga tey tey and Nigeria don jagga-jagga now now. If care is not taken, Nigeria will continue to go jagga-jagga. Nigeria’s gross inanity in leadership is as a result of the mindset of the leaders of regimes past, I believe after the discovery of oil. The western world, Britain and US, saw an opportunity to colonise Nigeria in new ways. Presently, we are still in the progress of trying to break away from this vicious type of colonisation. The ordinary Niger Deltans, the owners of this oil, have in recent times discovered avenues to cry out their pain. They would take arms, kidnap expatriates and their families, go to prison or lose their lives so that they can be heard, even if their moves were very extremist, which is as a result of prolonged and unjustified silence.

Day by day, poverty of every level grows and thickens fast, and this hastens inaneness. When a state governor keeps assuring and reassuring the people of the state he governs everyday that the state will enjoy the dividends of democracy for the rest of his regime, what has he actually done? The commissioners and special advisers under him go to “official” trips and attend one so-called social function or the other in order to spread this reassurance. What follows next is what I personally call grossly degrading and degenerating: unwanted sycophancy and praise-singing of these sub-leaders. These praise-singers spend their rest of their lives just being ego-masseurs for these sub-leaders, surviving on the sands on these sub-leaders’ wealthy shoes which their (sycophants’) dry tongues could collect.

It is normal for an ex-governor to mortgage his state during his entire regime for billions of naira only for the new governor to spend the rest of his regime paying back. So, presently, we are under a rulership of internal debt payment, apart from the external debt OBJ was able to pay through his former finance minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Oh, how beautifully Eedris sang that song! So unfortunate that he won’t be missed, generally.

Praising Yar’Adua and his state governors for a hundred days in service before December 2008 is, to me, ridiculous and a waste of time. You never go far, you wan make we clap for you. You dey do wetin you suppose do, you wan make we clap for you. You try. Luke 17:7–10 clearly states the true attitude of servantship. For those who are Roman Catholics, in the Apocrypha erroneously referred to as the Catholic Bible (New Jerusalem Bible; Good News Bible, today’s English version, et cetera) lies the book of Wisdom [6:1–11] which clearly enlists the admonishments of God on those who lead, the blessings on those who lead well, and the punishment on those who lead badly, those who shirk. African China sang:

Mr. President, lead us well

If you be governor

Govern us well

If you be senator

Senate am well

If you be police

Police well well

No dey take bribe

This is the handiwork of that deathly, everlasting, secret syndicate, and there is more up its sleeves. The top people of this syndicate have stamped their feet down and made themselves hidden prophets of Nigeria, and top clerics in churches bestow God’s blessings upon them for financial favours. And, of course, these ruthless top men (worse than militants, armed robbers, thugs and prostitutes) exert their power by granting these clerics these financial favours.

Most of these commissioners and special advisers of state governors became wealthy overnight as soon as they were sworn in. These are people who come from families of a poor middle-class, or lower than that, with the growing fear of being poor again in their minds. Their overnight wealth, facilitated by their equally power-drunk, corrupt, top subordinates, has kept them firmly inside a thickly thin oasis, completely inaccessible to the ordinary masses. They promise dividends of democracy as if they have them on their fingertips, as if they own those dividends. As soon as a viable project beneficial to a certain community comes, a commissioner makes it a ‘law’ to be the first to take a percentage of the financial costs involved before he does his official commissioning. When other key persons of this project follow suit and expand this ‘law’, the project crumbles like a pack of cards. This commissioner, after a long while, would then assure the community through the media that he would ‘order the contractor back to site.’

How you go work for place, your oga kpata-kpata no wan progress, so therefore you no go progress? People wey you dey work wit dey suffer-suffer like this and like that. Evrybody dey on in own, o! It is very normal for an employee to get a query because that person is a human being and it isn’t just possible to please the employer everyday, but almost everyday, the employer thwarts the creative efforts the employee(s) put(s) into the job instead of guiding and leading. That same philistine accuses the employee(s) of misconduct, lack of dedication to work and unpunctuality to the office, and official letters are filed in to that effect. How many memos make one query? How many queries can cause a suspension from work? And how many suspensions earn a final relief from duty?

A particular Nigerian leader made the mistake by mentioning that a bad civilian rule is better than a good military rule. I personally despise all uniformed men because of the bad name they carry. Prepare for gloom and doom when a military man seizes power with his gun, but get ready to die when a chronically corrupt civilian comes to power. Either way, hell is there.

Only schools with skyrocketing fees attended by children of rich parents can visit the first lady of a state to discuss and determine the future of the African child. Even the bleakness of a nation’s future is nurtured from the cradle. Nowadays, what a child first wants is to be rich financially, ignoring other riches divinely bestowed upon him/her and mortgaging his/her innocence. Even a child from a wealthy home wants more wealth.

The determination of IBB to come back to power in this dispensation shows how unfulfilled his political life is. When 2011 arrives, he will definitely be one of those politicians to raise up his hand and indicate his interest to return to power. So many leaders in Nigeria demonstrate this emptiness in their political lives. It takes one local government chairman to commit a grievous scandal, be it financial (allocation money, involvement of contract award, oil money, et cetera) or sex (trust ‘big’ men and their lewd nature), for all other scandals of those natures and more to rear their ugly heads at a gathering of local government chairmen and women. The local government chairmen and women are our immediate leaders, while the President is our faraway leader. The grip the central federal has on the local and/through the state is so piercing that it has shed blood immensely.

Amaechi may have rightfully taken over from his cousin Omehia, but does that make him a better leader? Omehia had to step out of power before it was reported that he was involved in a huge financial scandal. Well, Rivers is not the only state that governorship power is shared between cousins.

I still maintain that OBJ is an ex-military leader, not a democratic president. His grip on things during his ‘democratic’ reign is evident of this, the achievement he made notwithstanding. Being no longer adorned in military uniform does not in any way make him democratic. His past history of leadership stays with him, the good, the bad and the ugly sides of it.

The artificial peace Nigeria is lulling in is so threadbare that a full-blown war will come like a thief in the night. The inanity in Nigeria and her leaders grows steadily like a deathly fibroid and spreads faster than wild fire. Nigeria is lost in the political map of the globe, seminars, meetings and workshops notwithstanding. A voice like Majek Fashek’s sang:

Promised Land

Is not America

Is not Asia

Promised Land is a state of mind (2x)

Promised Land Is not Europa

Is not Africa

Promised Land is a state of mind (2x)

We talk about change without actually changing. It is ironic! We cannot go on like this. It will tell on our future. But as long as secret syndicates thrive, the Promised Land for this nation remains a dream and no permanent solution would be forthcoming for the deeply damaged polity of Nigeria. I am a human being whose spleen is cooked and left to boil to oblivion.

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