All over the world, including the United States, which prides itself as the bastion of democracy, the system has been “buccaneered.” It is being replaced with oligarchy by the few stupendously wealthy individuals who now determine who becomes presidents in their countries. It is now a matter of cash, not votes.
Nigeria’s crude oil and precious stones are being stolen with impunity. The government’s efforts at reining in the thieves have not been successful enough. Senator Adams Oshiomhole recently pointed a finger in a particular direction, and the owls have continued to hoot.
“The Nigerian government is known to moan and lament ceaselessly when it has all the capacities to nip criminal activities in the bud.”
Oshiomhole stirs up a hornet’s nest
Adams Oshiomhole, a senator representing the Edo North Senatorial District, has of late engaged in much table-shaking. He fires from all cylinders, and when his anger is aroused, he takes no prisoners.
Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, used the opportunity of the budget defence at the Red Chamber of the National Assembly to tell the world that he had privileged information about those behind the thieving of precious stones in some states.
When the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Solid Minerals, Ekong Samson, submitted the report of his committee’s budget defence to the Committee on Appropriations, the former Edo governor was riled at the prevailing economic sabotage being allegedly perpetrated by the elite members of the Nigerian society.
He fixed his gaze on the Federal Government (eyeball-to-eyeball) and pointedly said to Abuja, “You have failed in the fight against economic saboteurs.”
Narrating his sad experience when Muhammadu Buhari was in the saddle as president, and he, the national chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Oshiomhole recalled how a team he delegated to conduct party primaries in Zamfara State encountered severe security challenges due to the presence of heavily armed illegal miners. He wrote to the president about it, but nothing happened.
“Unfortunately, the federal government is not doing what it should be doing. I took this letter to the former president when I was the National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress, and I said, “Call the generals to give you more briefing.”
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“It is not that we don’t know where it is. We have a whole survey of where we can find them across the length and breadth of Nigeria. Even as we are talking now, there are still those illegal miners, and those guys are getting richer when the country gets poorer,” he said.
Oshiomhole urged the federal government to deploy the same military force used against illegal oil bunkering in the Niger Delta region to tackle illegal mining in other affected areas.
The Nigerian government is known to moan and lament ceaselessly when it has all the capacities to nip criminal activities in the bud.
Oshiomhole noted this, saying, “My position is that we shouldn’t be lamenting. We should fix the problem. We should tell the executive you must deploy exactly the same force that you deployed against illegal oil bunkering in the Niger Delta.
“That same force should be deployed to deal with criminals who have money. When I say criminal, it can be a retired general, it can be a retired permanent secretary, it can be a retired trade unionist, or it can be a retired labour leader.”
Indeed, the lawmaker did not say anything new; he merely re-echoed what had been known and said over and over again. What is new is that he belongs to the elite class and may have spoken from the point of knowledge.
Nigeria is a country where a few individuals are richer than the collective wealth of the nation, with no known source of the wealth.
Illegal mining and crude oil thieving have continued in Nigeria despite touted efforts by successive governments and administrations.
The government has continued to borrow huge sums of money locally and internationally, even to fund its annual budgets, whereas it has God-given resources that can take care of all that the country needs.
Over the years, there have been reports about some privileged individuals who boldly steal away the commonwealth, and the government has only revelled in empty threats.
Two years ago, the media was awash with a report of some unknown people carting away the nation’s precious stones with helicopters out of Zamfara and other Northern states.
In the same manner, also, the nation’s crude oil in the Niger Delta is being stolen with reckless abandon. The government has also continued to pretend it did not know those behind the malfeasance.
The Nigerian government is telling everybody that it is fighting oil thieves, pursuing micro-thieves while pampering mega-malefactors who syphon the nation’s crude oil with barges.
Whereas Nigeria has the capacity to produce over three million barrels per day (mbpd), if these thieves were reined in, the government is comfortable with the little improvement achieved in the last few months, allowing the thieves to run their show.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) and its partners have only recently achieved 1.8 million barrels per day (mbpd) and 7.4 billion standard cubic feet (bscf) of gas per day.
It seems the entire country is losing the battle to criminals that many people believe are largely being shielded by the powers that be.
As expected, Oshiomhole is being attacked and silenced by a few elements, who now say to him, ‘Taa, kwuchie onu gi!”
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Is this democracy?
The democratic space is shrinking fast with the increasing incursion of oligarchs into politics globally. The will of the people and whatever happens at the ballot no longer determine who wins an election.
Unfortunately, it is not only in Nigeria; this is now the trend the world over.
Elections are now won days before the exercise through the deployment of massive cash to key individuals and institutions responsible for conducting and pronouncing winners.
What is now emerging as a trend is the gathering of the stupendously rich individuals for and around a candidate in the name of election sponsorship. These wealthy individuals, who are not “Father Christmas,” deliberately invest in the politician’s ambition with the aim of reaping huge returns.
It has been happening for many years, but it is assuming a frightening scale that is now making nonsense of democracy.
The last general election in the United States evidently showed how democracy is fast losing its true meaning. Instead of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is now the government of the Oligarchs, by the Oligarchs, and for the Oligarchs.
These oligarchs put whoever they want for a huge return on investment (RoI).
In many countries across the world, we now have a handful of highly influential and wealthy businessmen who determine the outcome of elections.
The word “oligarch” used to apply to the powerful group in the Soviet Union (Russia), but oligarchs are seen in every country these days.
Oligarch is described as “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefitted from the privatisation of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).”
Usually, the oligarch determines who becomes part of the government that is formed through his influence.
Looking critically at the last election in the United States that produced Donald Trump as the 47th president of the country, Bernie Sanders, an American politician and activist who is the senior United States senator from Vermont, believed democracy has been imperilled.
According to Sanders: “A small number of incredibly wealthy billionaires own and control much of the global economy. Period! End of discussion. And increasingly, they own and control our government through a corrupt campaign finance system.”
According to Sanders: “Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has added to his fortune $120 billion just since election day in America. Get that? $120 billion since election day! While Jeff Bezos, the number two guy, became $67 billion richer in the last month. And Mark Zuckerberg, he became $90 billion richer this year alone.
“In other words, the people on top who are already phenomenally rich are becoming incredibly richer. Over the past decades, the wealthiest 1 percent of the global population amassed $42 billion in new wealth, while the wealth of the bottom half of society barely budged. You know, it is kind of funny.
“In fact, as of today, the top 1 percent owns more wealth than 95 percent of the people on this earth. Outrageously, the wealthiest people in the world are stashing up to $32 trillion in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to the governments all over the world. In other words, governments are underfunded, and these people stash trillions in tax havens.”
The American elder statesman, in a short video circulating online, also expressed worries that “the super-rich do spend money to protect their incredible wealth. They do it by buying influence and increasingly by buying our elections.
“Billionaires in the United States are .0005 percent of the population. That isn’t a lot of people. Yet, they accounted for 18 percent of 2024 electoral spending. A tiny number of people spending huge amounts of money to buy elections—just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to buy our recent elections.
“Elon Musk alone spent at least $277 million to back Trump. How’s that? One guy, $277 million! And we saw the results of that investment working pretty good for him. The major defence contractors spent over $38 million this election cycle.
And you know what? They’re going to have a $1 trillion military budget with enormous amounts of waste and fraud in it. And AIPAC, a billionaire-funded super PAC, spent over $100 million to defeat members of Congress who were critical of the extremist right-wing Netanyahu government in Israel and the horrific war they are waging in Gaza.
“My friends, you don’t have to be a PhD in political science to understand this is not democracy. This is not one person, one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future. This is oligarchy. In my view, this issue of oligarchy is the most important issue facing our country and world because it touches on everything else. It touches on climate change; it touches on healthcare; it touches on whether or not working people are going to have a decent standard of living; it touches on whether or not we can eliminate poverty.”
The truth is that democracy has been “buccaneered!”
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