Politicians as public servants (Part 3)

Guest

Nigeria has had the misfortune of suffering at the hands of two types of public masters who parade themselves as public servants. As posited last week, the worst of these public masters are political soldiers. Nigeria has one of the most politicised military in the world. What else can anyone expect of a military where federal character supersedes merit as the major determinant for promotions and postings? From independence to date, and in and out of uniform, political soldiers have dominated the affairs of this nation and continue to lord themselves over workers as if they need to be reminded that the civil war ended decades ago.
If our soldiers are were indeed public servants, incidents like the brutalisation of workers and other members of the public would be anathema. Sometime ago, the media reported the case of Ms Uzoma Okere was brutalised by Naval ratings attached to a military top shot. Mrs Okere’s brutalisation by those who swore to protect her and other Nigerians against foreign invasion was not the first of such ugly incidents by this category of public masters. Neither was such barbaric treatment reserved for the working class.

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Chief Mike Igbokwe, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, was beaten black and blue by two military ratings along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway some years ago. Unlike other Nigerians like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his Kalakuta Republic nationals who were also terribly brutalised but denied justice, a Federal High Court in Lagos recently awarded Chief Igbokwe N100 million as general and aggravated damages. Like the presiding judge in the matter noted, such conduct by soldiers is “brazen recklessness” worthy of condemnation.
The fact remains that our politicised soldiers are not only totally “wild, barbaric and uncivilized” in the course of assaulting the persons of Nigerian workers, they have become rather crude in the way and manner with which they looted our nation’s coffers. It is indisputable that Nigeria remains one of the few nations in the world where retired soldiers fortunate enough to have shot their ways into political offices retire as billionaires with hill top mansions that rival the Buckingham Palace in opulence.
And they are very adept at hiding their loots as well. As recently revealed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), $450 million of the over $3 billion stolen by the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, simply vanished into thin air despite incontrovertible evidence to indicate that the loot is stashed away somewhere. Add to this the fact that another ex-soldier and later military-civilian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in a display of esprit de corps with his late colleague-cum-foe reached a plea bargain with Abacha’s family which enabled them to keep a sizeable portion of the loot and you would begin to understand why Nigeria workers need to take their destinies in their own hands and resist civil and military public masters in order to enthrone true democracy in 2011.
Meanwhile, of the over $3 billion Abacha loot, only $1.9 billion has been recovered. Of this amount, $750 million came from voluntarily surrendered by the Abacha family which makes one wonder how many billions they kept for themselves. Yet the Federal Government pats itself on the back and considers this paltry sum recovered from the Abacha family a major success story in assets recovery. This is despite the fact that $300 million of the loot in Luxembourg and $400 million in Liechtenstein hidden by the late despot is yet to be repatriated, same as the billions the dictator stashed away in several bolt holes in Nigeria.
The only reason Nigerians became aware of the colossal sums of money stolen by late General Abacha was because the dictator died. In the case of other living politician-soldiers who retired as billionaires living in opulence with private jets, helicopters and state of the art cars they cannot possibly justify on grounds of their legitimate earnings, the party continues. In the face of the horrendous looting of our nation’s oil resources against a background of mass poverty, disease, squalor and deprivation in the Niger-Delta that produces the oil, militancy could never have been avoided. It is safe therefore to conclude that the ongoing war in the Niger-Delta region was fuelled largely by the greed of our civilian and military politicians who fester their nests at the expense of workers since our nation’s independence.
That is why this columnist considers the conclusion by the Federal Government on the origin of the ongoing crisis in the Niger-Delta region as rather absurd. For the Federal Government to ascribe the crisis in the region, as recently done by Minister of Interior, retired Maj. General Godwin Abbe, to the handiwork of some aggrieved repatriated Nigerians who collude with militants to foment trouble, beggars belief. It shows that our political/public masters live on a different planet.
According to Abbe, the ongoing crisis in the Niger-Delta region arose from the “gory and unimaginable suffering, exploitation, punishment and death experienced by those deported from all parts of the globe” who were in the first place, lured out of the country to Europe, America, South East Asia and other African countries by human traffickers. It remains to be seen how these defeated returnees with their “various habits and attitudes, grievances and “all sorts of ideas that are anti-social in nature” caused the poverty, deprivation, and environmental degradation that constitute the building blocks for what is today known as militancy in the Niger-Delta region. If Minister Abbe cares to know, the Niger-Delta crisis is a product of the greed of Nigeria’s military and civilian political masters who parade themselves as our public servants. Away with public masters!!!