Social Media As a Challenge for Quality Journalism

Social Media As a Challenge for Quality Journalism

“The latest malicious media gossip that Vanguard gave editorial endorsement to is a tweet from an obviously fake twitter handle that impersonates Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II,” @Malsanusilamido, which released a tweet on December 13, 2014. “The following day Vanguard had this headline: “Muhammadu Sanusi II says help is on the way, Boko Haram will be defeated.”

“It editorized the tweet and implied that the emir was hinting at the Buhari’s presidency as the panacea to Boko Haram.” Culled from Notes From Atlanta titled: Emir Muhamadu Sanusi II and The Vanguard’s Internet-age Junk Journalism, published on Saturday, December 2014, by Farooq Kperogi Ph.D.

Some years back in 2011, I wrote an entry for a competition with the above title organized by Bayero University Kano, Freedom Radio Kano and Deutsche Welle International, for the “young and up-coming journalists.”  I was at least less experienced and immature, if not dangerously ignorant, but still, years to come, ahead of and better than the current staff editing the Vanguard newspaper to not have known that journalism demands reporting events in and around the society, rather than remaining glued on social media, waiting someone, perhaps inept and quack does for you, the gathering, reporting and bringing their vomit and you swallow it undigested. It’s very bad if our newspapers will be “scouting and scooping” anything they come across on social media and share it unverified, where scammers can easily impersonate a page of public figures and big-names. If it’s mischief, we can forgive the newspaper, but if it’s ignorance, no-no.

So, I have to produce the revised piece as my contribution to our current practice of journalism. Enjoy reading.

After a long-haul journey towards the world’s transformations, from age to age, generation to generation and from century to century, the evolution and revolution of modern technology have catapulted us into a new age; where we have reached a point in which information is power, seen as nuclear warheads. In this world of technological advancement and the power of modern tools, the dynamics and activities of journalism have changed from what we had been familiar with in the past.

The existence of Internet and social networking sites: twitter, YouTube, Wikis, Facebook, etc, are increasingly contributing and playing vital roles in the process of collecting and disseminating information in media arena. The introduction of social journalism have changed the activities of media, to which the consumers have now become the producers and distributors, people formally known as audience who were in the receiving point of media news are now taking control of journalism and distributing information.

According to Woody Lewis an American blogger, he defines social journalism as about listening as well as interaction with others who have something to say. Social journalism also known as participatory media, is the concept of members of the public playing active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating information. Audience participatory such as users’ comments attached to news, personal blog, photo or video footage captured from mobile phone or camera, or local news written by a resident of a particular community; makes a great, rapid development in gathering and distributing information faster, and facilitates the shrinkage of the world into a hamlet.

In 2004, when the 9.1 magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge Tsunami in Indonesia, news and footage came from the many people who had experiences the wreckage caused by the Tsunami and was widely broadcast. During 9/11 attack, many eyewitness accounts of the event came from social journalists or citizen journalists. A study explored that from then on, mainstream news organization are increasingly involving audiences in their research and telling stories. Futurists had predicted that by 2021 social journalists will be producing fifty percent (50%) of news to the media organizations for public consumption.

Funny! Citizen Journailsim comes with news break every bits of second which keeps people staying up 24/7 on Internet in an effort to keep up to date. Social media makes people less active about the real world, they concentrate heavily on their gadgets, they aren’t aware of exactly what’s happening right beside them, engulfed by an invisible togetherness with others, apart but attached, separate and yet bound by  a force, a kind of magic by proof as  more mystics and super-high technologies are blending to form shocking realities as data is poured in, in which tens and thousands of Internet users share sentiments and feelings right from their bed comforts, where people have to carry; eat, walk, drive and go to the bathroom along with their phones, a situation of excessive concentration on gadgets that a leading American sociologist professor describes as modern madness. Social media!

Nonetheless, the participation of audience is shaping the future of news and information transmission process, which provides independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that democracy requires. The idea behind social journalism is that people without formal journalism training can use modern tools to post or write something online in order to create argument and generate augmented fact on their own, in collaboration with others with their own opinions. For example, a parson can write something about government policy, events, news and other issues on his or her blog or in an online page or forum to hear the views and opinions of others. Or a parson can snap a photo of newsworthy events happening in their local area and posts it in online sites, for others to see and read.

Social, civic or citizen journalism became part of journalism movement as a countermeasure against eroding and concealing the veracity in the news media and the rifle of public disillusionment with politics and civic affairs. The covering of irregularities during Nigeria’s 2011 presidential election, and the events of fuel subsidy removal in 2012 where social journalists resorted to Internet pages as an e-meeting point. Social journalism is now being explored via new media tools such as mobile phones, cameras, and Internet sites have the potential power to report events in places with danger and difficulties for reporting. For instance, during Iranian election in 2009 when foreign journalists were strictly barred to enter the country, the micro blog, twitter, facebook and other social networking sites played a vital role in covering the events. While Arab spring in Middle East and North-Eastern Africa has been heavily covered with the brutal crackdown that came with it.

In traditional world, news organizations, governments and other agencies simply gave out information and people had to consume it without their opinion. But now, today’s audience expect to choose what to read and believe to contribute their views and opinions. Social journalism is not acting or replacing media journalism, but an extra layer of information and diverse opinion; so it becomes a search engine to which debate over truth and accuracy of news are explored. On the contrary, this is what led to media revolution where many traditional and modern media began to report comments on how the Internet and social media began to affect news organizations and quality of journalism for worse.

Street journalism demands reporting events happening in and around the society, but some social/street journalists do not bother to go even outside of their page domain to get news from the original source. They rather remain glued on facebook or tweeter or blog; somebody does for them the gathering, reporting and distributing the information and brings it to their doorstep for final consumption. All they do is scouting and scooping anything they come across and share it unverified, especially on the facebook, where everyone is a media baron and seasoned journalist without prior training.

Social media turns one into a total stranger in their own land. News might break in a local community and the residents would begin to see, conflicting reports coming in from outsiders other than the reality.  A person can send out a word, later they would come across news sending back to them, that they will wonder if a similar incident happens somewhere, while to their utter amusement, it is their own words twisted.

The Pew Research Centre conducted a research and found out that people have less confidence in the accuracy of the reports and news from social media than they had in the last two decades. The relationship between social media and news organization is witnessing events and reporting them for others to see and read.

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff has argued that news organization have to morph into social journalism and adopt it, vis-à-vis its negatives effects over the quality of journalism about some flawed activities that make people skeptical about the news and information found on such Internet sites about the bad habit of some people of reporting only what interests them rather what needs to be covered. This could seriously damage the quality of journalism though many believe that watchdog journalism is equally important.

Moreover, the negative impact of social media on journalism is now street journalists put pressure on editors over what to report and when. This makes editors abandoning the ethics of journalism to go ahead and publish unverified, unedited and inaccurate news in order to be first in breaking news, while not focusing on verifying it instead. But more so, it is the emergence of non-professional practitioners as social journalists which brings about doubt in the minds of the readers over the reports, news and information which is bound to debilitate the quality of journalism.

finally, there are ways to integrate the quality of journalism by building a concept of understanding that connects equal values which will make news room more responsive, so that audience’ comments would be shared to free the news organization from the suspicion of publishing only their own opinion. Giving autonomy to staffs in methods and decision making and embracing audience as valued partners. Sharing stories and organizing workshops with other media and other news-related agencies. Organizing memorable events, competitions and debates to attract young audience and sharpen their talents as future journalists. Adopting participatory journalism in a meaningful way that increases trust, shared responsibilities and mutual benefits in informing civic information and socialization.

The future we want build, the change we want to make and the quality we want to bring in journalism, sustainability and reliability will defend solely on how well media enable conversation with people and encourage them as well as providing them with basic journalistic ethics to guide their participation and activities.  Social media has become a part of human phenomenon in terms of collecting and sharing information, social interactions, peace, culture, trade, diplomacy, and many other human endeavors.

Feminism: A Struggle of Modern Gender

Feminism: A Struggle of Modern Gender

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

alfalancy@yahoo.com

Because we have been reading his-story or possibly because we are one, we have understood some grasp of the inner psychology of male from a person with first-hand experiences. Man is ever changing. I yearn to know the thoughts and perception of the females, especially the most disturbing ones. So I enjoy reading women words, and love to sit to engage in their gossips. Years back, I missed a lot about family matters that I should have known because I minded only my own business. Now, I fully participate, befriended females, especially my sisters and my sisters-in-law. We are so friendly that they feel I ‘am  closer, more of being from their home than my brothers’,  the husbands. They lower their defences and could talk about their problems, freely. It’s from this, one can understand  even those you judge from afar, are also very nice.  

Would a man feel bad if created a woman and vice versa? Would he have the sense of worry or joy if created in an opposite sex? Or is it just normal bird is created a bird and doesn’t have the sense of what it means all? Has someone ever thought what it would have been like, supposedly they were created in an opposite sex before, lived and died and now reincarnated into another sex, she or he is living now? In which sex would you wish to be created if given an option? This is my opening and then followed by this story, because I thought there are things to be shifted interchangeably to other sex, culturally.

This will be part of the thread of a discussion we have had in a group. I enjoy it, because of it literariness. People have contributed a lot. I likewise enjoy it because with my contributions, the discussion turned into some kind of literary-comedy.

The other day I was left at home alone. Being male, suggests the symbol of power and manliness, but I found out that I was very weak in the kitchen. I found it troubling and backbreaking. It created a kind of horror and fear whenever cooking time approached. I took it for granted that cooking is for all, it has no gender. But then I was wrong. The fire, the pan and the contents all conspired against me. They proved too much uncooperative. I began to suspect if the entire cooking process has no unwritten promise, contarcts and some kind of recognition to women’ presence. Something so simple that women don’t give it a damn thought as anything herculean, now turned out a horror. The simple rice and soup took me from around 10:00 am till evening before it had been finished. I just fasted without me knowing.

I felt that I could not go to the kitchen three times a day. Was my life created for that? And because I didn’t want get into what I could describe as an ordeal, I devised another means. I resorted to cooking once that would last me straight for the day. But even this was like jumping from one pillar to post. Do you know that the food couldn’t last to my targeted hours? It ran out unsuspectingly, and because of my dreaded encounter, I could not go to the kitchen again.  I would rather stay hungry. There were also some days the food would be more than enough that lasted over the next day. Yes, I hate cooking, so I saved my suffering the next day, by eating the yesterday’s food even when the cooked-together rice and beans went horrible.   I didn’t want to pay such unsuspected visits to my sisters-in-law around and afraid to cadge off on the neighbours because of the string attached.

Mama is a neighbor,  a kind and nice one. The other day I was bitten by hunger, and the Mai Indomie had not started yet. It was evening. So I sent to Mama to book my dish at night. She is kind indeed. I had food abundantly, ate and gave out the remnants.

Mama always peeps out whenever she has some excuses or wants to call a child. She doesn’t back away when some people come to pass by. But she quickly gets back whenever she sees me. She begins to feel shy in my presence. She has a daughter, which from some calculations, would be my marriage mate in some years to come. She is booking a husband for her daughter. I have to stop collecting food from her, I don’t want have my freedom of choice being tempered with.

Women are great. Sometimes I leave my room unclean for weeks. It’s an extreme boredom and trivial to sweep my room all day. I just have to ask one little sister to sweep it, and before you can even say Jack Robinson, the room will transform from that house in Dawanau into a grand Sanusi’s Palace. With this first-hand testimony, I begin to believe that each of the sex has its unique peculiarities, with women like Aysha Sanusis and the Naseebas sharing this belief : “women with their paraphernalia of equality with men should encumber or at least limit. From the religious perspective, men are placed above women for certain reasons. Psychologically, women feel inferior to men, and so they stand that what man can do women also do. It’s nothing that accumulated this except the Sigmund Freud’s cognitive field – Id, Ego and Super Ego (Fundamentals of Psychology).

“Coming to lay men, we (both genders) have our own distinguished features associated with men and women which if  one of the sex were to carry out the other’s, it would be unfit. And hence indicates that the distinguished features have now become general features.” And because of that natural feeling of inferiority, as a friend, you can see her cruising posh car, wearing expensive outfits but still have to greet you first.

To corroborate her perception, she suggested to me and I conceded, that it was even easy I was left alone to grapple with the thinking of cooking alone, what if I were left with the kids to babysit at the same time, to do other chores also cooking at the same?  I think it would probably feel like I was put into a colony of slaves and forbade discussing my condition, but not mean are also slave, just as I think they might feel the same if asked to undertake some male-dominated jobs, things like wood-cutting, well-digging, carpeting, blacksmithing, bricklaying and wheelbarrow pushing, as someone suggested. He had even found it embarrassing women to summon the gut of confessing that cooking, washing, and other chores as well as pregnancy, as hard works.     These are the things that define womanism. The females, he alleges, probably think they are being cheated because men don’t make complain of their sufferings. The carpenter will never tell you he’s doing hard work even when he climbs over the rooftops, injures himself with nails and hammer. He accuses, it is rare of a man to declare that his work is difficult, except of the lazy type. Ladies he, alleges, want everything best to fulfill their egocentric desires. Who will hinder them from being a well-digger?

I know some eccentricities of females. Should I tell this story where I met a girl, an old pal. We started discussing when she told me she was currently on business. She complained I didn’t stop by her house to see her. I told her I thought she was not in the town.

'ka ga ko gaisawa ma ringa yi.' It was a good point, I agreed.

As she was leaving I said, 'let me have your number so that we can communicate.' She hesitated before she handed me her phone. Why hesitation if only she would really give the number? I put my contact and we parted. Two minutes or so, I saw a called. I guessed the caller although the number was new. I picked up and the voice said, 'this is my number, we can talk at night.' Came the night, I loaded credit, joking to the boy I used to buy phone card that he should offer bonus on the purchase of #800 card.

You guess what? Catch your breath. She waited me to call for many hours. She refused to sleep. When I called her around, she asked, 'who is speaking?' I said Abubakar na gidan su Aisha qawarki.' Gwari-gwari, just in case to save time because. I also hate describing myself to someone. Is just like asking a favour! I love it to inform the person before-hand that I will call. I was very surprised. She knew I would call but she was still asking 'Wane Abubakar?' I told her 'the guy you met earlier today.'

‘Oh, how are you?' she greeted and we continued through some good chunk of the night that I've lost my dawn prayer. Finally I asked ' sai yaushe?' she said, 'you can call in the morning.' So what is the difference between that time and tomorrow? Only few hours.

This girl said bluntly to my face “kai fa nasan dadi kake ji idan ka ganni .” Meaning I feel happy anytime I met her as if she’s doing me a favour. I told her she too was not only enjoying, but savouring my presence as well. After all, I paid for anything in the relation. She was like an MTN line that I had to pay her whenever I called at her home for giving her ears. Such corrupt culture, where one bribes the girl to sustain his love. I was her personal ATM and deputy to her original boyfriend. She didn’t talk to me unless if the other guy was not around. I suffered a lot in her hand. Thank you God, you delivered me.

I respect women so much that one could think I’m afraid or gullible, that they make me like a tool of trick experiment, that unwitting creature.  You learn all about their behaviour but often, they have you scratching head, very dumb. This is how I struggle with the girls, especially in the college, and they still think I don’t understand this maneuvers. Men are not the type for understanding, they thought. These little kids at home would come, each complaining against the other, that I just couldn’t understand who is wrong or right. I just have to send them away, shouting ‘ni kun isheni’, in anger,  adding ‘haba’ furiously, and shot a blaze of  frustrated hiss. You know that temper when one is frustrated. They would go to the mother and she solves the problem with fascinating ease. Sometimes, one little sister will appear so much pathetic, with her lowly and pleading voice, that you just have to be aggressive to deliver her. Immediately after that, you’ll see the trick shooting out like vulture’s eyes. I often say in wonderment, “oh this little girl in JSS3 is cleverer than someone who reads books and rubs shoulders with others, garnering all the experiences on earth, knowing the tricks and the traps, but all of a sudden will be a willing fish swimming into a waiting net.” You know how women lure men into aggressiveness and turn to laugh at them. How men push, bustle and hustle, sometimes abuse and beat in the market or offices to get some means for the wedding lace of a friend of a friend of her friend. You know how they conspire against men to cause them sleepless nights, make them compete with their colleagues, working very hard to earn good result, all for what? To lead a successful life, building handsome mansion, wishing to have a good partner, and then worshipping her all day. Please women, stop colonising men!

Please, you should also know that, I hate it when some people sound misogynistic, harsh and bias to call a woman myopic, somebody with vision problem, shortsightedness. However, the word is used derogatorily to connote, metaphorically, someone lacking in predicting what is best for the future. I only know that, as an-unmyopic, full human and first class, being women as lesser human and second-class, I have my own genetic foibles, naturally I could not get rid of but at least should keep at bay to appear decent  and respectful .  I know some men who are harmful. Not only verbal, but also sexual. Although men argue that it’s the female who entice one and then complain sexual harassment. But should I tell you the story of this girl, Miss No Name. She was extremely strict with her phone privacy that she promulgated that decree that forbade her from going anywhere without her phone. That day she left the phone on the chair to walk out her visiting friends. I seized the opportunity and gladly muttered something like, ‘let’s see what this girl is doing with her that she doesn’t anybody to see it.’ The realization was very terrible. I had to ask her forgiveness for penetrating into her privacy, which the horrible discovery shocked me. That day I couldn’t sleep.  She was very decent and upright from what appeared to us, and we all trusted her. She remained that, no doubt. She did not recognise with indecency. She didn’t advertise, she was a prostitute. Her facebook profile picture was the one she took during a wedding of her friend’s sister. And even that one, was not vulgar enough to attract vultures. But vultures were already there, baiting her with every means at hand. You can earn your monthly subscription there. I earned one-thousand Naira top-up card. A rowdy series of ‘salam’ and ‘hi’ greeted my eyes, when I scouted into her inbox. People that you judge decent were actually not. They send in lewd pictures, sex captured in progress. They would give anything they possessed to get to that that thing you hide in your skirt.

And then this college friend of mine, left me because I would not do what she wanted. She dressed outrageously, in a moral scandal that revealed part of what it covered. She sat in a most closest inch to me, if any, side-by-side, hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder, which both of us felt a kind of vibration yapping around, urging to go ahead. She didn’t tell me but suggested it, and man is not a fool.  That unspoken words spoke louder than mic. The symbol so vivid and clear that I wouldn’t have to invite a Harvard Symbologist Professor to tell what it meant. I just had to mask my embarrassment when people that nurtured respect saw me. “Ah, Abubakar, really you?” their eyes said and their judgment.

This way, I will continue to be always feminist. 

Jonathanianism : An Appraisal of The Stockholm Syndrome

Jonathanianism : An Appraisal of The Stockholm Syndrome

Fool me the first time it’s your fault, second it is mine.

Anybody living in Nigeria or abroad should really know the glaring backwardness and regression the ruling party has caused to Nigeria fifteen years after the return of democracy. With the little hope of surviving infrastructure, emerging economy, power and water supply, security and somewhat functional institutions, the military left, although smelling the monster of corruption. Only to wake up into more deteriorating state when the democracy rule was installed back again and the ruling party PDP took over power. Since then, the word corruption, stealing, cheating and mismanagement and embezzlement and almost any word from the family of negativity fits to be synonymous with the word PDP. It has become a household word of admonishing a person not be harmful or bad, to tell him ‘No PDP.’  Many a time people in agreement would simply tell one ‘no PDP,’ and the other would say “yes no PDP”; meaning no cheating, no breach of agreement, no plotting and no any mischievous act. What comes first in our minds upon hearing the word PDP is nothing short of stealing, rigging and self-aggrandizement to a point that having giving the party fifteen years chances to rule over the country, we lost confidence in the party. No fools like an old fools. Nigerians for this long years of PDP rule, should be witnessing developmental projects everywhere, yet, the serial failure, regime after regime, Jonathan after Jonathan, is obtrusive. Despite the gross failure of the party’s 15-year of no electricity, no security, no water supply, no job opportunity, no transportation, no good policies and no everything; being certified failure, having giving them these years to rule, yet, some people seem complacent with the bad condition. To ask we should give the party another chance to right their calculated misdeeds is foolishness and that person requires seeing a psychiatric because of his excess in sycophancy and in appraisal of Stockholm disorder – defending his aggressor.

Mine isn’t hallow verbosity, an article filled with putrid words carrying stinking mood of hatred against certain group, “northerners”, “a fellow Fulani” envy, “a Muslim” hatred, “southern opposition politicians” admiring polarization, “to slow down the south in favour of the north to catch up” inciting and disuniting as well as demonization of a region, and you say you don’t play ethnicity nor regionalism in your treatment of politics.  Accept my defiance as politely as you can, your chaos of perception is glaring, could not pass such sharp-mind readers. I also forgive your, sorry, my ignorance and hollow understanding of the politics of the word ethnicity to underplay even a commonest intelligence. I will dwell a little on this matter of ethnic politics that some politicians play when they sense an eminent loss.  

Hopeless people have nothing to lose, after all they are looking for the death partner. They are just breathing their last. But why not just die alone? Anything within the vicinity is a weapon, religion, ethnicity and regionalism. So quickly they shout fear of Islamization by the backward Northerners who require “the South to be slowed down” for them  to catch up. I wonder how a backward society like the North with their almajiris with laptops, could be a threat to a Southern community. You see such an arrant bunkum in the fear of being Islamized when Buhari won it. But what if PDP presents a Sheik, Sambos and Dasukis from the Sultan of the Northern family to contest in 2019? God forgive Abubakar Rimi, one of the founding father of the PDP. He did not mean to create this monster, God, you know that. Some Jonathanians were babes in arms then, they didn’t know Rimi, they think PDP is the South-South political party. You know it won’t be Jonathan again, my dear paranoiac? Would these people shout fear for Islamization? Certainly there is something they are hiding, indefinable.

Nigeria under Jonathan has witnessed a rocking polarization on ethnic and religious divides as a political weapon. It’s Jonathan who once said one section of the country voted him thereby depicting himself as a representative of Ijaw nation (let me quickly acknowledge the worry of my big brother to hear me call Jonathan an Ijaw. You know the rule, in Rome be like Romans, I just have to appear like every Tom, Dick and Harry, like the president himself, who dumped his real ethnic identity. I just want to manage to pass the message across. You’ll believe that I know Jonathan is Ogbia), forgetting that in 2011 poll Goodluck Jonathan had got votes from the remotest villages of the Northern states as opposed to the closed, bigotted, paranoiac, insular, a state in the South-South where a candidate from the North had no, or little vote mainly that came from the fellow Northerners residing in the state who faced a tragic humiliation, beaten publicly for voting their candidate, yet in the 21^st century where people claim liberty and freedom.

Believing in his representation of one community over all other regions, as such he allows his people like that dangerous thuggish to throw threatening comments and insult on other people across Nigeria. I’ m not talking about the jet-owning pastor who despite being an unofficial kitchen-cabinet of the Jonathans administration and being a leader of one major religion in the country, preached disunity, in an unbecoming decorum, unguarded statement that could trigger deadly war in the country hadn’t the Christian communities became more rationale to disregard his call in which he urged them to kill fellow innocent Muslims. If he is so much passionate about the lives of the fellow citizens, he should have urged his friend in Villa to take effective measures including eradicating corruption from the  Commander-in-Chief to the rest cadre in the Nigerian Army and ensure they are well-equipped to face the challenge. But instead he participated in the $9.3 million arms deal illegally that shattered the image of Nigerians both Muslims and Christians. Stinking, a close friend to the president, himself  a president to the  Christian Association of Nigeria, involved in the arms deal which violated Global Arms Treaty using a company called Tie One which the authority of South Africa captured because the company which Nigeria’s officials claimed had no register with the National Conventional Arms Control. Some few days later, another $5.7m arms deal was also detected involving some top government officials which again the presidency claimed responsibility.

As part of the Jonathan’s anti-Northern sentiment, on the Independence Day in 2010, the exiled leader of Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) told the press in South Africa that an aide to president Goodluck Jonathan called him the day after the bomb blast to withdraw the claim of responsibility, the presidency wanted to pin the blame on the Northerners. Okah’s assertion was culled in the affidavit presented before the South Africa’s Gauten High court in Johannesburg with case no A570/10. “On the day of bombing of the October 10 2010, I received a call from Mosses Jitubon, the head personal security to the President who solicited my assistance and cooperation with the president Goodluck Jonathan towards shifting the blame to the Northern Nigeria.”  Okah believed that this was a move by the president to scuttle the ambition of some Northerners in the 2011 presidential election. This also clearly depicted the deep rooted enmity of the president against some regions of the federation.

I sensed that the South-South is up to something very ugly and terrible if Jonathan fails in the 2015 poll. They threaten disintegration of Nigeria if Jonathan loses the poll. They are now preparing re-launch of terrorist activities to make Nigeria ungovernable to anybody who emerges a winner other than Goodluck Jonathan. To any discerning mind, what’s the Jonathans agenda when he allowed the para-official jet-owning pastor to buy arms illegally on behalf of the president, praying the deal would pass clandestinely if not with the vigilance of the South Africa’s authority who exposed them. It was after much denial, with the mounting questionings from the public which pressurized the President to acknowledge it, possibly delaying any further would dig up more pores. Yet with this volatile saga fresh in our minds, president Goodluck Jonathan released the control of our coastal area to a violent thug called Tompolo, for the Maritime Security of the Nigerian Maritime Agency, who was also recently arrested smuggling in warships and other deadly warheads illegally.  How could a terrorist secure the boarders of our country? For this, Jonathan must not be the trusted candidate  able to keep Nigeria as united entity.

Now I will come to the response of the article I have talked about full of ethnicity. Jonathan and his hangers-on are so much bigotted making everything to capitalize on ethnicity to further divide the country. Such ethnic patriots, too much bigotted and guilty of their conscience, they will quickly tell you “I am not supporting Jonathan because he is from South-South” as an attempt to mask, their conspicuous bigotry to cash in on the gullibility of their village boys trapped in such closed and wild bushes, making such confession unasked and unpressurized, yet again pleading guilty by comparing their stance with others. These people may be called deliberate fools, to be honest to them. They believe in the failure of the PDP governments, they don’t argue this because they try so hard to sell their candidate not on the credibility of the candidate or what he achieves as president for six years.  No. they only accept defeat, and brazenly want to compare the opposition as the same evil. “I don’t support Jonathan and I don’t support Buhari. They are all failure. I will not change the status quo with the status quo.” This is the most embarrassing acceptance of failure one can ever confess. They want in any way to want to make you appear their death fellow – they are commiting political suicide. Why not die alone? They try so hard to stop any forces of change. We have gone far already. We have future, taller than your dreams of having divided Nigeria. Buhari is not our only hope.We have lot of incorruptible persons, the Ribadus. Continue to support your Jonathan; it’s your convictions, though, not on performance but ethnic and regional affiliation. The truth is, they don’t vote a candidate based on achievements, they prefer a mediocre, a failure no matter worst and corrupt in as much as he “is one of our sons” even when he could not help build a standard primary school to his village.

A man in his right senses, not intoxicated by the opium of religious or ethnic, should acknowledge the failure of PDP’s leadership and Jonathan’s administration. It is a bitter insult to the parents in Chibok community to tell them that this government is a success, while still tasting the agony caused by the negligence of this administration, and its inaction to accept the fact on the right time to rescue their daughters. It is still inhumane to the families of deceased who are living in bereavement of their brothers killed in this insurgency as a result of the government failure to curb its avarice to allow the security votes be judicially utilized.

We would find anybody very inhumane, saying the air is still fresh while it smells blood ordour everywhere. Plus the anti-masses policies of the PDP and Jonathan’s administration. Somebody remembers the pain, years back how his life changed drastically as a university student because of the austerity measure set by a government, that was when things were not tough like these days where we struggle to avoid being blown by the Fresh Air. We have suffered in 2012 from the fuel subsidy scam. I’m afraid the gift Jonathan will present to Nigeria in the wake of 2015.  It might be a move to skyrocket the fuel price and de-subsidise tertiary education, healthcare and many other critical sectors against the children of the common man which will ultimately make life harsher than the hell with the thieving Jonathans looting the money from SURE-P accounts while the Otedolas and Faruq Lawans, all collective of PDP, enjoying their ill-gotten wealth, travelling freely, leading a life of luxury while the poor have to pay the bill.  

It’s an appraisal of the Stockholm syndrome to anybody insisting an aggressor to continue ruling the country. Nigerians from everywhere has smelt The Fresh Air: we are all victims of fuel subsidy scam, alarming  poverty and its consequence, and stampede of the Nigerian youths in securing recruitment as a result of alarming rate of unemployment. Whether you’re living in the North or South, the danger of the collective raping of the country has affected you already in a way the other, especially under this setting where leaders believe and advocate this doctrine of Abuja Convention  for the Legalization of Corruption 2014, corruption is not stealing. Jonathan and his team of looters won the country a trophy of corruption where they perceive public properties as a possession of somebody, a legitimate plunder that any official believes he’s that somebody. Nigeria has become a Queen of corruption under His Excellency President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Having untouchable people like Jonathan who have actively participated in the graft of public resources energetically, with their teeth open like human piranhas struggling in milieu to help themselves to the state resources. With people like Abdulrashid Maina as frontline team worker, who stole $20b of police pension funds. Aruma Uteh, serving under Jonathan as head of Security and Exchange Commission who bragged to spend #850,000 on food per day, incurring another #30  million as hotel bills. Minister of Petroleum Resources Mrs Diezani Alison –Madueke used #10b in maintaining her private jet at the expanse of taxpayers’ money. That unaccounted $7 b that missed way from the NNPC to the Central Bank Account which cost the former CBN governor his post owing to his anti-stealing whistle blowing. Back in 70s-80s Nigerian had not witnessed women in the male-dominated world of corruption. Stella Oduah, Ngozi Okojo-iweala, Dame Patience, these are the names that are untouchable in the Jonathan administration despite their unbecoming conducts in the public offices. A great success, in Jonthan’s admnistration, stealing has no gender!

Ranging from monumental fuel subsidy scam, to the massive corruption in high offices, to the scam in Pension Administration, Security Exchange Commission and Public Enterprise, and collapsing of infrastructure, non-challant posturing of the officials for righting them, government officials have been involved in various graft which Jonathan remained mute and frowning at any move of investigation unless with outrageous demands poured from the concerned citizens. It is this trend of condoning corruption we need change about.

I understand those who earnestly insist we must vote Jonathan and PDP again, are doing so possibly because they believe corruption is a good norm, which is otherwise based on our home-training as sensible citizens. What they found  bad record on Buhari is his being very strict on corruption during his military regime. What most Nigerians complain about is not the genetic corrupt tendency in our blood but rather the lax and irresponsible leaders to implement the anti-graft policies that would enhance our progression. The restoration of discipline and sanity in the public institutions is what Jonathanians hate. They complain of Buhari being too tough and unfriendly to the corrupt officers. What of the use of such pitiless people to Nigerians, who hauntingly confessed that Nigerians “weren’t suffering because they weren’t eating from the rubbish dumps yet.”  To recognize with such persons is an insult to the sensibility and humanity of millions Nigerians. It’s  insensible to call an attempt of punishing this man-eating-man species viciousness. This alone, characterized the advocates as also vicious. So those complaining Buhari was a sort of rough person during his military regime, they should know that Buhari punished only those who thieved, looted and plundered the public fund. Whoever says that he or she is the victim or their parents or grandparents were victims, they should bear in mind that they are the sons of people with such dubious character of rats.

Recently the Transparency International had published its 2014 Corruption Perception Index in which Nigeria ranked the 136^th   of the most 174 corrupt countries over the world. Jonathan has really achieved.    The most effective way of eliminating this rotting behavior is by a strict application of anti-graft laws; unlike what pro-Jonathans are advocating because that is what their Oga believes is the best for Nigeria, under the slogan corruption is not stealing where the Jonathans abuse public fund. Now hear what Jose Ugaz the Transparency International Head is saying: “corrupt officials smuggle ill-gotten assets into the safe havens through offshore companies with impunity. Countries at the bottom need to adopt radical anti-corruption measures in favour of their people.” Let me emphasize his words; “in favour of their people”, if only Jonathans is ruling in favour of the whole Nigeria’s people, I mean the whole communities across Nigeria, not the Ijaw nation, he should be averse to grand stealing in high offices. But Jonathan is a career thief, few weeks after is inauguration in 2011, he ordered the payment of $155m to Malabu oil, a firm owned by an ex-convict and former petroleum Minister Dan Etete after which the company transferred the money into various accounts including that owned by a man with link to Jonathan. All epitome of corruption is there around you, you stink it.

Jonathan is ruling more or less like zoo curator, very rude and disrespectful of the rule of law (forgive my language) turning the country like an animal kingdom. The harassment of members of the then new PDP and defecting governors. It’s Jonathan’s administration that gave convoys of the state security to prevent the arrest and investigation of some cabinet members accused of corruption or ensuring the entry of the alleged government appointees access into their offices even when the State Assemblies ordered their closure pending the result of the legislative investigations. This has been a scenario in the case of Arunma Uteh as head of Security Exchange Commission and Abdulrashid Maina who played hide-and-seek with the anti-graft enforcement agents  before some dubious sycophants in Judiciary with the complicity of the presidency declared any arrest of Mr Maina a crime. The prevention of state legislators from performing their duty is very embarrassing where the president  messed up the country into police state that got  some observers have concluded the Inspector General of Police should be changed to Inspector General of the President, after all the P is still there. 

Lot of unconstitutional acts. Trouble started with Andrew Yakubu when he cancelled the proposal to release the money for the lease of private jet for the 2014 which cost $10m for the Minister of Petroleum Recourses. The extrajudicial removal of Justice Ayo Salami and the heedingless gesture of the presidency to reinstate him to his position after a court ruling. Jonathan had gone to a length, shamelessly, attempting to change the name of a university in Lagos overnight because of his personal odds with an individual.

They dug into Buhar’s past record and could not find an evil close to the least that of Jonathan, yet they complain that APC is as evil as PDP, which means they really believe PDP is an evil of some kind. They believed APC’s top politicians are the old wine in a new bottle recycling themselves to form another party. Yes we see them, the smooth criminal and former looters garbing to camouflage in the APC.  Troubled by their conscience of being collaborators of raping the country, some of the former looters have developed a sympathy for the entire nation (which Jonathanians don’t yet have), and begin to feel that it’s right time to seek a bright future, while some with criminal and kleptomaniac minds do not agree. Unlike the heartless Jonathans, these people felt bad for what they have been doing and don’t have the hearts to continue hurting the Nigerian masses. We want them here, the former rigging accomplice to show us the points where PDP starts it political maneuvering. The largest party of rigging on the whole African continent.

Buhari hasn’t bagged useless degrees in zoology, (I heard in the town, true or not, they are scraping zoology departments in the universities and sending the poor students to the psychiatry), yet he ruled the country between  December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985 and had brought significant positive changes, discipline and sanity in public affairs – something that is much needed by all Nigerians during this time of reign of terror and corruption. If you still believe the prefix added before a name means being intelligent, Buhari hasn’t come from the ‘folk’ who gain their degree certificates from some pirate street printers to rise up to the metre, nor from a family whose other siblings make do with the forged copy-copy certificate of a brother. You are also as a mere gullible as to not know that Doctorship can be obtained through organized politics in places like the Animal Kingdom. Don’t forget that we have some Mallams more intelligent than professor Soludos. Does this one ring a bell? Buhari is genius having the brain as part of his effort to beat counterfeit and to force the Jonathans “suspected of hiding huge amounts of stolen Naira to come to change and be nabbed or not change them and lose them all.” Isn’t this a good idea, my dear?

Buhari is a human being with his own foils, but he only appears saint because of the too much Jonathans on the ground. Supposed the 2.8 billion Naira allegation had ever happened under Buhari’s watch as petroleum Minster and NNPC boss, yet Nigeria had not witnessed the collapse if its refineries and the indiscriminate long and endless queue in fuel stations before one could drive to his village to celebrate Christmas. Something the Jonathans failed to overcome for years after assuming power. The allegations sound much of fiction and untrue, filled with melodramatics of fiction and surreal from the super ego of an all-knowing narrator such that the story flows from the mouth of wangled characters. PTF had no auditor, while later in the story the narrator quickly invented,  all of a sudden we were presented with, auditors during Pilot Phase and Main Phase “that looked at the three main accounts.” We read how Buhari promulgated  Decree No 4 banning press about anything that would embarrass government officials, yet we also heard Atiku Abubakar on air saying the bags was in fact 53 not 35. The figures itself seemed anagrammed!

Had the allegation confirmed as true, due to the nature of Nigeria’s murky politics inhabited with dangerous and malicious sharks, people like Alkalis, Okupes and the Abatis, yet they could not pin him down through the EFCC, a powerful political weapon of the PDP under Obasanjo through Jonathan, a simple way to drown Buhari down from resurfacing again to stand as presidential candidate long ago. The worst dreaded fear of the PDP is having somebody very averse to corruption and this man is one, then why going all that complex process of detonating bomb on the Independence Day or rigging? If they have had any way of killing this man politically, this scandal would be the best option mechanism at hand. Immediately after the collapse of Abacha’s junta, the Etetes and Abachas were arrested for their stealing, and because of the culture condoning corruption, now they are the parley of the tenant of Aso Rock.

Buhari could be a serial loser and the bunch of collective PPD as serial thievers.  I have this belief that you could not read well that post election violence 2011 is not the creation of the General. Like the usual of the massive and systematic rigging by the PDP and of course Jonathanians, people of the North believed that their votes were stolen and had to chase the thieves to reclaim it. Most of those on rampage were the products of the PDP’s malfunctions of stealing the fund dedicated to the welfare of the citizens.  How could you make a scapegoat on the innocent man? Being a Northerner comes with great responsibilities. You’re like the CEO of the country where the junior staff and less brilliant employees come to lord it over you, the whole of their problems. So being a Big Brother, remember you’ve been ruling since Adam, (I know this one kills them) you just accept it, you are the leader of the house. After all they expect you to always lead and they follow. They don’t doubt it, why they come? As peaceful as he always be, Buhari came and condemned it for the sake of the unity of Nigeria.  Everybody knew this except a deliberate fool or an unschooled corner-grocer who could not read a page from the national dailies.

If you are rather mischievous enough to think that Buhari’s stance against government approach to the ending of the insurgency is anti-Jonathan, you’re tapping on ethnicity and regionalism here again to gain the sympathy of the public and generate anti-Northern sentiment to hide your mischief. If it’s utter docility and close-mindedness to aver this. Then hear this words from Lisa Hajar. Don’t know her? google her. I won’t lend the article but left it as an assignment to find out if you can end terrorism by clamping down on them once and for all. The US officials would also tell you the futile use of drones in decimating insurgents. They are being droned for years now but not completely erased from the surface of the earth. Look internally and consider what president Umar Yar’adua did to the terrorists under your nose.

Besides, it’s the Jonathan who told Nigerians he knew the insurgents and even went on to say they infiltrated into the State House, he dined and wined with them but refused to mention their names. The truth untellable. Yes indeed he did not create Boko Haram and did not come to its full-blown under his regime, but came to the worst by his posturing in handling the security challenges. “I did not create it, why hurt my bones to stop the killing of others.” But even this does not justify the carting away of the colossal security votes. Leadership comes with responsibility. One must be responsible for any situation of the country. If you just cannot bear it, vacate the scene! Nigeria’s presidency is not a place for the irresponsible.

I keep the reader suspended over the definition. Jonathanians are those aspiring thieves, the street and internet sycophants, the all and sundry and other poor corrupt-minded downward. While Jonathans are the office-based looters, those already enjoying the loot who are averse to weaning them away from such misdeed. Jonathanianism a feeling of hopelessness that the future is always bleak, despair that no effort would cause a bright future such that some people affected with the syndrome are succumb to eternal doom and failure. A feeling of ethnic inferiority that members feel psychological weak and defeated where they develop an intense and excessive fear of change of the status quo, with a sense of extreme and unreasonable suspicion of other people, of someone willing to liberate them from their captor who they feel is one of them. It’s also an appreciation of mediocrity and condoning of unnecessary suffering where worst condition is perceived as good and welcoming as opposed to the best and better change. So they embark on any move to the victory or myterdom in protecting ethnic interest against any arrangement for the better change. In fact, it is a belief built on a diseased mindset, the enemy of progress, political terrorism, biological Boko Haram.

It’s also advocacy of ethnic mediocrity and inferiority complex, people advocating this doom of failure are mainly from one section, ethnic group or region, believing that they could never produce a competent candidate to offer to Nigeria. Providence is what brought Jonathan to power, such rare incident, a luck to the luckluster might not happen again because of the improving awareness of democratic principles of some forces who do not believe in the norm of the ruling party to force an interest over the larger members of party.

Despite the serial failure caused by the successive PDP administrations, some ethnic bigots would brazenly tell you they support Jonathan not because his being their folkman, trying to mask their ethnic patriotism, they become hapless and believe can’t present Jonathan as achievement but rather cling to the ethnic bigotry.  As helpless as they are, they are characterized by what one may call schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder of emotional instability, detachment from reality and withdrawal into self. This is why the whole region which the president belongs to, folded into self to support what they regard as “one of them” rather than the reality, the right person that would change their life and their children’ children for the better. Victims  became emotionally attached to their captors, reject assistance from liberators and defence the action of their captor and even begin to sympathise and justify the aggressor’s actions on the basis of ethnic affiliation.    Here we are, like Japanese in Paris, struck by the staggering dizzy of culture shock, of being complacent with a disaster and the acceptance of gross failure on ethnic ground. I tell you loud and clear, these people are ethnic comrades!

One important point I want to emphasize is that the conviction of the Jonathanians is that they believe in their candidate’s failure, he is not only corrupt but also incompetent, now all they embark on a matchmaking spree demonizing anybody contesting against Jonathan to be also corrupt and dishonest. I’m happy that even the harshest critics could only tell you Buhari “ is being used as a Trojan Horse by a predatory class ready to unleash their super greed on the nation,” the Jonathans around “sharpening their clowns and talons to attack our commonwealth.”

Contrary to the public expectation, we are dead if only Buhari is the only Messiah to Nigeria. To be honest, he could not turn Nigeria around within just four years while the Jonathans messed it up for that long. He could only put the country to a right direction so that his successors might continue towards the development of the nation. My only case with PDP is its failure to do something reasonable in its fifteen years of (mis) management other than looting the state resources that one could expect this is the party’s manifestos. This is my only indictment and need somebody who can do something for the better. Had APC presented somebody with bad record of leadership and poor governance, and PDP presented somebody like Onyebuchi Chukwu, my vote would definitely go to a person with commitment to Nigeria’s progression. You hear. I’m not damn bigot!

 Abubakar Sulaiman Muha, is a Nigerian blogger and  public commentator. (tiwitter @ abubakarsulai13)

Dying Alive!

It is less painful when an ailing sibling dies because you have already predicted, death is their likely visitor. But it is severely heartbreaking and wounding to have a loved one just said goodbye and went, expecting to be back, moments ago, you receive the news of their death. He did not come back alive because he was killed in an untimely death of Boko Haram attack.

Anticipating death helps the family of the deceased defuse later distress. But when the death is unexpected, the grief is likely to be longer and more severe. This is also less devastating if the family could identify the body of their brother, than having the body becoming human debris, missing from the confusion of bombardments, flesh went pieces, burnt, charred and disfigured and all of it went as “collateral damage.”

This exactly captures the situation we found ourselves in Kano. The news of my sister’s situation in Koki Quarters left me emotionally disturbed, feeling dejected and unworthy, losing all appetite for life. I wasn’t the member of her family who lost fifteen brothers in recent devastating Kano bomb blast by Boko Haram insurgents, who also stood behind and shelled fire at those who attempted  to run for survival. I only experienced, by imaginary, what it has been for her family when I assumed the role of being a bloodline. It’s a severe depression, a mental illness in which a person experiences “deep unshakable sadness and diminished interest” in nearly all activities. In this state, people have feelings of despair, hopelessness, and worthlessness. Very recently I was just dragging my life from such debilitating mood disorder.

That would not have been the gravest suffering and agony if members of a family would not be living dead, (of which we are ) with their brothers killed, some went missing, their daughters abducted, always with the hpes of meeting them again, and worry gnawing deep into their hearts. The anguish unleashed to the pitiful Chibok community readily comes to mind.

Psychologists will tell you the suffering: like dying patients, bereaved families go through stages of denial and acceptance. They typically cry, howling their body on the ground, rolling this way and that, rhythming in agony and mad grief, hands over heads, lump chocked up their throats, lips pulled back in resentments,  sobbing and often screaming “hei” in denials. They also have difficulty sleeping, and lose their appetites, nightmares of the loved ones hunting back in their dreams.  Later, the grief may turn to depression, which sometimes occurs when conventional forms of “social support have ceased and outsiders are no longer offering help and solace” (thanks to the #BringBackOurGirls Campaigners and those who offer financial assistance and soothing words to all the victims in Kano and everywhere). Finally, the members of the family begin to feel more troubled, worthless and their energy drained as well as any glimmer of hope. In a setting like ours, they are to the government,  inconsequential citizens whose life or death has no meaning to the larger society. From this, they feel removed from the shade of this tree called humanity.

No other torture and suffering could hurt minds than to inflict sorrows and pains by separating loved ones from their family and deny the victims to tell their sorrows in an organized suppression by the nation’s politicians to preserve their fragile image abroad. Living day in day out, with the hope their children would one day return. People are coerced to live in pent-up emotions, a load that burns more than hell - forcing one to die in an untold agony. We have to sympathize with the parents in Chibok community, those family of nobody whose situation would have been closed, leaving them living dead without the compassion of the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners.

Thanatologists (those who study the surroundings and inner experiences of persons near death, of course we are) have identified several stages through which dying persons go: denial (no, not me!) the parents in Chibok and the bereaved families in kano will be murmuring in anguish; confrontation and bargaining (why me?); regret (If I am not Nigerian, because government failed to protect my brothers and sisters, then  I can live); depression (What's the use?; acceptance (death) of which one finally dies, a dying alive, life being intermingled with feelings of hopelessness, despair, permanent sorrow and anguish.

You just can’t understand the pain until one of your daughters, sons or brothers is among those missed in  human debris or abducted which only means a statistics to the nation’s officials. There would be no monument to engrave their names in memoriam, just like those killed  in 9/11 attack. We have no worthy in the eyes of our politicians, as we are dying, they are celebrating their anniversary in Villa while some are scheming their ways into the public offices.

That unperturbed gesture of the officials has been eating up to the helpless Chiboks’ minds, their peace, and causes a lot of sleepless and restless nights. Solace no matter how little has been pasted on the faces of these grieving parents. At least, their tragedy is televised.  

Boko Haram has been successfully carrying out attacks on mosques, churches, motor parks, schools and market squares and there have been reports that Nigerian forces have shown apparent fears and fled the war front for inadequacy of competitive equipments.  These demented people are very determined to decimate all ‘infidels,’ their associates and any perceived symbols of an enemy from the surface of the earth: including you and me, Abdullahi and Zakariyya, Emeka and John, Hafsa and Blessing, and anybody who goes to college to pursue formal education, even when it means Aminu kano College of Shari’a and Islamic Studies. They have no tendency for peace. They have no second thought for dialogue to cease their bullets downpour.

We are living-dead because we live in shocking dread and uncertainty. While one is going out, his family is not sure of his return the next moment. These days we are told “goodbye” by our families, but deep down their mood we can sense their worry and unspoken fear.  Any time we hear an explosion, we don’t get composed again until we really found out it has been a tyre puncture.  A slight door bang generates apparent panic, and people will just not be sure until they don’t see the wall crumpling. This is the kind of, dreadful, life we experience. We are like condemned prisoners awaiting executions, now or later.

We just can’t continue to live in such fears, resting our lives on the authority that has failed and would continue to fail, out of negligence, to protect us.  We must protect ourselves because it has become necessary, an obligatory or else we are just delaying our tomorrow, which will definitely arrive. Saving our lives is a task that must be done. We will not continue to live at the mercy of the militia. We will run no more.

Some analysts have the view that Nigeria is a country of one-hundred-and-sixty million cowards, mainly the country of online activists; nobody wants to lead to change the country. It has come silently, we could not build an ‘amen’ civilization where angels would descend from heaven to do the work for us.

Nigerians are smart and God is no fool. God in his mercy wants us to do the work ourselves. Devils have emerged that have no regrets killing us. The first law of nature is that of self-preservation. We shall protect our lives, as we meet death every day, everywhere.

Boko Haram is a movement that comes to stay with us for the bad and for the good. It will stay long before we can erase the elements that created it like it took long time hatching before it finally exploded. We will suffer from it and die of it, which the experiences will change our lives forever. It awakens us from our dormant security insensitivity; learn new experiences about weaponized violence by the state operatives and the insurgents as well, political awareness, alertness and militarization of almost  all social life now that civilians have the guts to confront armed officers and even members of the militia  barehanded. 

Grief is what brings together disunity into unity. Boko Haram’s devastations doesn’t recognize Muslim or Christian, thus we must come together to fight these marauding forces and after we defeated them, then we look internally and squash all the elements that helped create the insurgency, their siblings, the national coalition of looters whose malfunction is the consequence of  our misery, who create our disunity on regional and ethnic division to enhance their continuing rape of our lives. That experience we gather from Boko Haram insurgency will be good for us, an opening door to fight any injustice from Boko Haram to corruption Haram.

But if you think Boko Haram is contesting for northern Nigeria alone, that it gladdens you when they kill people - you get it wrong. Boko Haram is a deadly endemic Ebola - it will consume the whole country. It started from Borno, then Yobe, then Bauchi, then Kano, etc, day by day, gradually. Their intention is to put the whole country under their rule.

This might be your, very elusive, dream that when Boko Haram has finished up the north, you have a valid reason to separate. You also miss the point again. Do not allow your intelligence to be draped into this hallucinating, dead-before-arrival dream – the stillborn. There are interests more powerful than yours. If you are the Shariffs from northern aristocratic family (although widely suspected as the sponsor of the Boko Haram) owning oil blocs in the south or have been the protégé of the president, you wouldn’t have thought of this. You now want to say that powerful people, Abuja-based northerners with the many oil rigs and their southern accomplice would allow their business to suffer.  You won’t even get any support from other African leaders because that might trigger other secessionist movements. You see, those powerful have their own interests to protect – not yours.

I have no rue if these people decide to split the country, but I only believe that they would never ever come close to this. Then whom would our politicans tell us are the scapegoats of our failures if the country split, meanwhile even the gullible masses would can understand that they are the real culprits. You know, your thieving politicians always tell you that northerners are the bad guys for your underdevelopment, to smartly show you their innocence by wiping their dirty hands on others, just to get away with their loot.

Politicians are always friends; they have the common cause of raping the country in a turn-to-turn stealing between the elites of the north and their southern counterparts through a corrupt channel called “zoning.” It has been Obasanjo, he expired and the ‘almajiri’ replaced him. When he died, the previously-son-of-pauper came. He might win in the 2015 presidential poll because of factors of internal crisis of the opposition, ethnic and regional divides of the voters and worst still, the rigging. We shouldn’t contest this that when he is leaving Aso Rock after another term, it wouldn’t be the Jonathans again. He would invite an heir from the north to continue the ‘good work’ he has been doing. They will continue to loot all of us irrespective of religion, region and place of origin while we remain their fanatic ethnic compatriots. They will continue with their tactical maneuver of divide-and-rule-and-loot. What we see is a war and what they see is a way of enriching their bank accounts – making us living dead!

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd is a commentator and Nigerian blogger.

(abubaksrsulai13)