Sunday, 21 December 2014

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 21st 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 136th   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)

Monday, 24 November 2014

A Sheik Beyond God and Muhammad

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

An old secret has recently started coming out of the closet with the rise of ‘Hakika’ ideology of the Tijjaniya sect. Many scholars from other sects have questioned the actual meaning of the ideology while some clerics of the Tijjaniya sect maintained that their belief is correct only that their overzealous supporters demonstration of the practices disproportionately is going beyond the boundary of the value of the sect, and therefore are regarded miscreant.

The charges are that Tijjaniya has given ultimate relevance and regards to their Sheik above the prophet (PBUH) and to a larger extent, they elevate the Sheik to God’s position and sometimes even beyond. Against public chastisements, some clerics of the sect began pillorying the charges while others remained mute. For those who talk, whether they mean what they are saying  or not, we Muslims have all believed that it’s a grave blasphemy to compare prophet with ordinary human being in terms of character and divine miracles and endowments, relevance, regards and esteem. What we are seeing on the daily basis is that whenever a rank and file of the sect commits such sacrilege to say Sheik Inyass is more than prophet, or God or that he can forgive sin of his followers, some hierarchies of the group come publicly to condemn the blasphemy. but the public condemnation is many at times just an act, the group might in some subterranean ways be supportive and adherent of the Hakika ideology. For those who kept silent, we can detect their meaning in some ways while others who have spoken might just remain apologists.

Few among those who can go public to decry such acts is one Isyaka Rabi’u, a wealthy Tijjaniya Sheik in Kano. Before his death, Aliyu Harazimi had been accused of complicity to offer a hideout for the members who blasphemed to evade facing trial. Supposedly, he and other powers behind the sect had clandestinely masterminded the release of one evil singer named Taka. The religious singer in question, known for his profane songs against the prophet and God, was banned from singing publicly in Kano by the Hisbah Board. Some community organizations were formed to control the monster. But even after the ban, Taka had continued to perform his blasphemous songs unperturbed knowing that he has the weights and supports of some clerics behind him.

In his songs he reveals the core and essential values of the ideology which some peripheral and apologist members who might be uninformed naively rejected, on the ground that a Muslim of any sect could not say this. Unbelievable! When first I heard about the Hakika ideology, I thought it was just a framing by other opposing sects to paint the Tijjaniya and their Sheiks black, until recently when some untamed and overzealous followers felt that it has been high times for everyone to know about the essential beliefs of the Dariqa. After all this is what they have been indoctrinated by their Sheiks,  and as devoted believers, why still hiding it? Aren’t they right? They might feel. Some followers might naively suspect some leaders of cowardice who might prevent them from disclosing the ideology to the larger society especially to non-members, for some reasons the top Sheiks believe would definitely  generate public detestation and bitter intellectual polemics and castigation against the sect, reason which might earlier on have prevented   the hierarchy from bluntly informing their followers the true values of the movement. Fears of being faced with public outrage and disrepute, the leaders have been keeping secret from the all and sundry.

Fed with misinformation and somewhat misleading, with the accrued naivety of being right and the genuine devotion, headlong people like Taka who have seen no wrong in their belief started popularizing it which at first people were very shocked and aghast before they all learnt that of course this is the core values and true motive  of Hakika, documented in the books of Ibrahim Inyass, the spirit of the movement who transmitted his belief to the hierarchy and their supporters. For anybody who doesn’t believe in it, he is actually uninformed.

In this movement, followers must commit sins, adultery, skipping of salats: nothing is something for without sins how would one be forgiven? This is why some of the middle Sheiks who are running Dala’ilu schools lure young girls into bonking. During the day of Judgement, they are misled to believe that their Sheik, Inyass, would come with a spacious  pocket to carry his followers across the paradise. Other beliefs are that everything is God: dog, donkey and ball, just everything! Inyass is God and the followers must believe that they worship the Sheik not Allah and even if they worship Allah it is not for reward or punishment. What is the use of paradise or the fear fro the hell since they have the Sheik to salvage them? They attribute God’s exquisite qualities to the Sheik: Inyass is the giver of life, of wealth, the all-knowing who knows the knowing even before knowledge existed! The Gaus and Giyas.  If asked to explain how, they reply that one just can’t understand. It is a knowledge intuitively revealed to a person who has attained certain spiritual position and has sheer devotion and strong conviction. It is knowledge not all heads, unexplainable. All they want to mean is their  knowledge is built literally beyond normal human comprehension!

I never give a hoot to such gathering storm. Islamic clerics have issued fatwah renouncing this as shirk and for anybody with half brain cannot buy this idea. 
Anyway,  much as they could not  convince me with concrete proof from Qur’an and Hadith or using commonsense and reasoning, I still won’t criticize the belief, i know where I place them, they are entitled of their freedom of thoughts and expression. Only that I always wonder how such unsubstantiated assertions and dogmatic beliefs have made it to this age of knowledge. In this world where new discovery is always found and by a minute it will be rendered thing of the past by new development in the science world, the idea of incomprehensive knowledge should not exist. Anybody saying that there is knowledge incomprehensible is by self-definition evidently an incomprehensible ignorant. If you cannot explain the reason and logic of the depth of the literariness of your Sheik, then your shoddy claim for exceptional knowledge has collapsed. You should be ashamed of yourself to tell claim a theory you cannot explain. Sheik is everything, everything is God and upon asked for explanation you give reason that not all heads could understand. You are regurgitating around one point. Dogmaticality is dinosaur.

The wind of Hakaik ideology has swept many of the youths. Some of them have honestly joined  onboard very faithful to the movement, deceived by the top leadership without knowledge of its true motives, hoping that in the hereafter they would cultivate a huge reward. While some are just fun-seekers who are very willing to join every trendy in the society to enjoy the offer of laxity and re-laxation given by the movement, and some are trouble-makers who enjoy having upsetting others. I don’t care which is one’s motives  or door or window one gets through the Dariqa, for to me and many right-thinking Muslims, such beliefs contradict the fundamental values of Islam, upholding respect for the Prophet.

I was having a talk with some guy who believed in Hakika ideology telling me that he himself was a God and everything was also God. I got  composed, suspecting that he could be one to be a deliberate upsetter, and did not approach him in a combative way, or with any intention of  disputing him in the same baseless way he presented his beliefs. I pointed to a car that came to pass-by and asked him if the car too was a God. He answered yes. Then I asked him if the ball he kicked in the soccer field was also a God. He felt dumbstruck, temporarily speechless, tittering on the brink of indecision while processing the question in his mind. I read from his countenance that certainly he believed that anything was God but skeptical whether ball was also God because it was too much downgrading and insulting!

Belief in anything is a freedom that individual has and must enjoy. But forcing it on others is an encroachment on their  rights. Believers in Tijjaniya find comforts in disturbing others by chanting their incantation loudly through the mic from their mosque or turning their speakers to the maximum volume anytime they are holding event. Quite encroaching and disturbing is how the blasphemous verse would keep flying recklessly through the air to the ears of others who constitute the majority and don’t share similar beliefs. Words that are blasphemous, destructive and damaging to the dignity of Allah and His prophet. Actually, this could endanger the peace among the citizens as the provocation could easily rouse the ire of some local residents. This encroachment is of course constitutionally wrong, and is a violation to the serenity of the peaceful atmosphere as the songs causes irritating noise in the environment. Islamically it is offence to disturb another person’s tranquility especially during night time when they much need quietness.

A day to the Eid Fitr during one of the gatherings of the Hakika, the local followers organized a song event to welcome the upcoming Sallah festival. They  openly set loose their blaring speakers out of proportion and inconsiderately spewing out such venom of the sacrilegious songs. It’s been quite exasperating to the peace of the atmosphere and provoking to others who held contrary views.

A neighbor who was not buying the idea came out to stop the ongoing occasion. He just could not tolerate hearing such evil verses razing through his ears against the sanctity and dignity of Allah. First, the songs were very damaging and abusive, and second they were disturbing his family. They were performing right close to his home. He did not ambush them or rudely approach them. In a civil     way, he informed the police about it for such abusive songs might cause trouble for publicly insulting the holiest icon of Islam.

He asked them to stop it but they refused.  In the meantime, some of them had attempted to assault him. He politely reported them to the police who came for the public good and dispersed the gathering and took way the speakers and other equipments, since it was illegal playing such songs issued by the security agencies in the state, because not everyone could tolerate such abusive words against their scared beliefs. He came out ranting and steaming against the Sheik since it was the Sheik the cause of abuse against the prophet.  To me, Ibrahim Inyass a Senegalese with flattened nose who could not show any book as his intellectual contribution to Islam is just like any Tom, Dick and Harry.

The organizers regrouped after the police left to lynch Malam Yusuf  who was only saved by his neighbours. Malam Yusuf returned to his family to begin preparation ahead of the the Eid celebration the following morning.  Minutes later, a wagon of police came and whisked him away. Somebody among the organizers had contacted the daughter of the Sheik to report that somebody had insulted her father who later called Isyaka Rabi’u to tell him about it. Those who control Naira control direction. As a wealthy man and influential figure, Isyaka had ordered the arrest of Malam Yusuf who was detained extra-judiciously in prison cell to celebrate his Sallah in company of lice and mosquitoes and more worst, the police torture!

We now understand that Mr. Rabi’u’s public pronouncement against the ideology is just a cover-up. Everyone gets to know that there are some Muslims who prefer a Sheik to prophet, who cannot wince but shrug at the hearing of insults directed against the prophet. Those Muslims who order the arrest of anybody who tries to protect the dignity of Allah and His prophet have strong believed in this ideology that claim Sheik is God. Here we have a Sheik beyond God and Muhammad!
Truth has no substitute! You cannot play double life for long. The discreet and true belief of Isyaka Rabi’u is coming out of the closet. Unthinking act of him, interfering of the Sheik to arrest Malam Yusuf is an embarrassment of the old guy!


03/10/2014

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Hysteria In the Dark!

Hysteria In the Dark!

 alfalancy@yahoo.com

A person washing his body with salt

The day came with so much excitement although it was not Yam Festival or Tashe, or any African Culture Fiesta. The whole continent was thrown into an incomprehensible frenzy and hysteria, (especially the West African countries) as the citizens of the ‘Giant of Africa’ took charge; how people got horribly excited, jubilated, laughed, hollowed, jumped about, danced, sung, wrung their body, then danced and jumped again howling about this, regurgitating about that in an awful electrification like distracted living beings. With the news being disclosed, the atmosphere was thrown into hysteric thrill.

Some mischievous people broke the news “If you drink or bath yourself in salt-hot water, you have taken a reliable measure, a preventives against deadly Ebola virus.”  African magical realism, cure – or building civilization by magic, by folding arms and by doing nothing. Of course prayer is good but plus little action is be better.

Wait, I’ am not Conrad, a racist who questions the very portion of human identity. As I said it is not culture festival to align this to our tradition, it’s just a play with shallow intelligence and display of total ignorance. Criticism of this would not, and would never account to the subjugation of African culture and tradition, but a challenge to the opening of new perceptions.

That news made the headlines on social media that Friday morning of the 8th August, 2014, the morning of massive hysteria and frenzy where family and friends communicated the word to each other like a family of hyena in communicating the word of a new kill to their brothers. A friend of mine told me that his girl friend’s phone call woke him up that morning.

“Hello dear, please wake up, drink and bathe in salt-hot water.”

“For what?”

“Don’t you know about Ebola virus? I have done my bath now. It’s prevention against Ebola.” She explained.

How come such a lethal misconception, more dangerous than Ebola itself? The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself for in this stampede two people who had excessively drank the salt water dropped dead and about twenty others were rushed to the hospital, says the online Vanguard’s report of 8th August, 2014. It’s baloney!  

What caused all this fear about Ebola, and brought about all that hysteric excitement about its prevention? People have been hearing about Ebola and their understanding of it is nothing short of face-to-face with death.  It takes no more than twenty and one day before it’s patient dies from the infection right to the incubation period. It’s shortest way to the grave!

The deadly virus when infected into the body causes abrupt severe headache, fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches, and weakness. These early symptoms are followed by vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and conjunctivitis (inflammation of the mucous membranes in the eye), and internal and external flow of blood through mouth, nose and ears; and evidence of abnormal blood-clotting that is associated with profound shock. There are usually body openings and rashes. Death often follows quickly. (Murphy, Frederick A. "Ebola and Marburg Hemorrhagic Fevers.” 2008)

To prevent spreading and ensure maximum safety, health workers must work in special protective clothing, including hoods with controlled air flow, and full-body air-supplied suits that are pressurized to keep immediate air from entering, the use of gowns, gloves, masks, and lots of sterilizers. Even laboratories conducting research on the virus are in special buildings that must contain equipments such as filtered air exhaust and distillation systems, as well as other shielding features to block release of the viruses.

Our people have all the right to get into hysteria. I will not blame their ignorance that salt+hot water bathing is prevention of the deadly virus. But will blame the leadership of some African countries, specifically those ones in West Africa and especially the government of the communities where the virus was first discovered on the continent and the currently worst-affected countries. Nigeria as innocent country, previously Ebola-free, one may contemplate, shares some part of the blame.

Before the virus was actually found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first detection of the virus began in Germany and Yugoslavia in 1967 where the virus caused seven deaths among laboratory workers processing kidneys of African monkeys, (ibid). These serious countries where the virus was initially discovered and other countries where the virus had no presence, concerned about the health of their citizens began to investigate to find out more about it.  Some of these countries took all the pain till they were able to gather some vital information about it and have taken some measures of control. I am not sure if one can tell any country among Liberia, sierra Leon and Democratic Republic of Congo that undertook the task to finding its cure. Where our country shares the blame is as Giant of Africa and in Africa where we are at least sharing continent with those countries and there is very much likeliest interactions among citizens compared to other states on other regions of the universe, Nigerian leaders should invest in the labs for the control and cure of the virus at least since other countries in faraway places had done that even though their citizens may not get affected unless by travel, and would have no fear to contract it except when they came to our continent on aid mission, helping us treating our own Ebola patients. Perhaps if it were up to our African leaders we could not even know how and where we can contact the virus. Probably we might only identify this when the virus killed as many of us as it wanted, until then we would get to realize that anybody who got contact with the natural host animals such as apes, monkeys and bats could become victims from the filovirus  family of virus called zoonoses – a disease that is transmitted from animal to man.

What made matter worst about the jittery, is that each outbreak of Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, according to expert, “has been traced to what is known as an index case, a person who became infected by coming into contact with a reservoir host animal. From the index case, transmission of virus between humans occurs by direct contact with infected blood or other body fluids, usually involving health-care personnel and family members caring for the sick patient. Transmission of Ebola virus has also occurred by handling ill or dead victim”, (ibid).

Like HIV/AIDs and unlike HIV, it’s transmitted through blood contact and in the case of Ebola body fluid as well. Unlike AIDs, a person killed by the disease can transmit the virus to another person who touches the body without special clothings.

Here came in the question of burial since people have uncertainty if our leaders have any provision on the ground to supply the apparatus to face such challenge. What do we expect to happen suppose that nothing was done on the ground? So people must get jittery and become very much alive upon hearing the prevention of the disease even through magic. Much to the people’ belief and acceptance of the unproven prevention despite it being heresy was that, had our people have trust and certainty in their leaders that they can do something wholeheartedly for our communities, people would have only accepted medical advice from government agencies. But since government failed, people, have to find alternatives elsewhere.

Worst still, our leaders have broken the bridge to development, which is education, so that have our people been educated they would have unequivocally dismissed such mischievous and baseless rumor the first instance they heard of it, while our hope would be directed to the health personnel working in the labs doing more work on the disease to find some measures. We have such African sons and daughters who despite the stingy budget allocated to the health sector can drag themselves to the level of brilliant and successful scientists who can fight any disease.

African leaders continue to loot and fail to equip our labs, and invest finance to rescue the entire healthcare system of our various communities. It’s lamentable to encounter some documents about patients seeking donation for medical treatment which hardly few, or no hospital in our dear country could undertake. If such patients could not find any donor person to pay their medical trip and other expenses, it means the death of those sons and daughters of Africa while one can log on his gadget and find foreign papers carrying headlines reading something like a son of, or a Nigerian President, a Governor or a Senator from Kano playing a high life in London and Paris clubs. I must say thank you to Sani Kwangila Yakasai for almost all the applications I found referred directly to his desk.

A this juncture, I will like to crave the indulgence of the readers to share one example of the failure and inaction of some African leaders through the mouth of a celebrated African writer, teacher and poet. Achebe is recounting in his memoir There Was A County, how a longest serving president of an African state left nothing but misery to his darling country.
Not too long ago my attention was caught by a radio news item about Africa. As I had come to expect, it was not good news, and it was not presented with, nor did it deserve, respect. It was something of a joke. This was the announcement of the death of President Eyadema of Togo, whom it described as the longest-serving president in Africa (or may be the world – I forgot which). Then it gave another detail: Eyadema had died from heart attack even as he was about to be flown to Europe for treatment.
 Why there was not a well-equipped hospital in Togo to attend to his treatment for that long time of his tenure as a president? The worst would apply to a poor Togolese citizen who would die silently without an attempt to travel to Europe since there was no hospital in Togo to care for his illness. Eyadema fell into the very pit he had dug for others.

This fear that our government could not do anything for us for since 1976 one could not tell if there is any African country that embarked to investigate about the virus and find it’s measures and control as well as its cure. It was not first broke in Africa as we read earlier, but we did not hear any case about Ebola in the countries where it first infected people working in the labs. Those countries are more concerned about their people.

Such fear, despair and uncertainty made somebody to tell me that if the disease becomes epidemic throughout the continent, we Africans would just start breaking borders to pour into other continents to make it pandemic so that the whole world must work to find it control and cure. I asked him what if other countries have deployed their troops to gun down anybody breaking into their territory. He replied we just have to find someone very determined, (another Patrick Sawyer), and send him to risk bullets and touch one of the troops so he can get infected. To him an altruistic, but devilish work to spread the disease to the citizens of some countries so that their serious leaders with their citizens at heart must work to find its cure so that we, the helpless can benefit on their mercy since our leaders have woefully failed. Then why can’t we stand to that refine conduct to make a little move away from that raw savagery? I have to stop here to thank those doctors and volunteers who sacrificed their lives in treating others, for it is only then and only then with their commitments that the spreading of the disease is being brought under control.

Although health workers have been educating people that the virus is not airborne. Keiji Fukada, WHO Head of Health Security has this to say, “this is not a mysterious disease, this is an infectious disease that can be contained.” And he concluded, “It is not a virus that is spread by the air.”  But our people have long believed that the end has just come! We’ll all simply die one after the other. And you guess what? This is why more fear and hysteria flourished in the minds of the citizens of the Giant of Africa plus the belief that we have comatose regimes. But even before the coming of necrotic Ebola Patrick Sawyer, Nigerians have even gone to create a new way of greeting where people stand at a safe distance and wave instead of the usual handshaking.

Ebola greeting

However, another important point we fail to understand is that even in Sierra Leon, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo where the outbreak is worst, BBC report revealed that cases of death stood at 1013 in the region, with Liberia having about 5 million population (2008 census), Sierra Leon 6 million by the UN 2011 estimates and DR Congo 75m. While at home WHO reported that we have only thirteen ‘probable cases’  and three deaths with the recent death of the ECOWAS official since the arrival of Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer  in July into our beloved Nigeria. Have the virus devoured the population of the most at-risk countries; we could have fallen into such panic. Experts’ report said that fatality rate can reach 90% but the current outbreak stands at 55%. And this is the unprecedented outbreak ever recorded in the history of the virus. With right measures and steps it would be contained.

 In retrospect we can clearly see that more than a hundred can be killed by the single bomb of Boko Haram. Some others might be killed innocently from the reckless driving and over-speeding of mad drivers in the streets of Kano.  Many other might even be murdered in a car accident owing to the deathtrap roads along Kano-Abuja axis, Enugu to Bayelsa or Lagos to Oyo. All these can come close to the seven-month old Ebola related-death ratio in just few months if we calculate the statistics happening by the day.

In contrast to our panic, have we being so panicking about poverty and taken so much charge as we did in Ebola in fighting other viruses such as begging, cadging and subsisting on others to seek economic empowerment instead, and become self-reliant to be able to pay the school fees of own children as well as putting the bill of medical expenses, many who died from lack of five thousand naira medical bill would have saved their lives. Have we taken so much charge in fighting ignorance and corruption, we would have no worry even when Ebola came for we would have well-equipped labs and doctors to fight the virus as dividends of our educational and political progression.

On the final note, it appears that Ebola virus is like all other diseases that sent chilly fear into the minds on their latest discovery. A friend of mine studying medicine at Bayero University Kano told me that their lecturer was telling them the madness HIV/AIDs caused back around 70s-80s. The lecturer was doing his internship in Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, when they tested a patient and found him HIV positive. That day the entire hospital was thrown into delirious frenzy and confusion. Other patients felt more hope of life and trooped to see the HIV patients despite their ailments. Some patients had even quitted the hospital without physician’s approval. Some nurses had instantly issued their resignation for fear they might get infected. But for now, statistics has shown that hardly one can go out without interacting with HIV patient without him knowing. The issue of fear for HIV is now fading to the background because of the steady knowledge, precautions, procedures and treatment doctors have found about it. The same will apply to Ebola, as at now there are reports that two Americans being treated with an experimental drug are vividly making recovery. 



Twitter @abubakarsulai13