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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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Open letter to the president
ONE is tempted to say with certitude that the President has encountered Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and probably picked from it the title of his prison book, The Animal Called Man. A portion of the book is apt for our cogitations.
In the Voyage To Laputa, Swift wrote, �I had often read of some great services done to princes and states and desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon enquiry, I was told that their names were to be found on no record, except a few of them, whom history hath represented as the vilest rogues and traitors. As to the rest, l had never once heard of them. They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit, most of them telling me they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet.�
If Jonathan Swift were to live in Europe of this age, Gulliver's Travel would never have been conceived, for these societies have advanced in humanity from that savage era of bestiality. Unfortunately however, Gulliver's Travels is as meaningful to us in Nigeria " a modern nation of 21st century " as it was in the 18th century pristine Europe.
Here, we reward state criminals with the highest honours in the land. Profligates, pillagers and murderers are accorded a guard of honour and red-carpet treatment all at the expense of the state. Crooks who brought the nation to damnation walk as free men while their victims reel under the yoke of abject want and penury and molestation by the law enforcement officers of the state. Here, probity is a vice while electoral fraud and corruption are virtues. Ours is an enclave of Yahoos!
Eleven years ago, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, like a standard-bearer of good governance and welfarism and archetype of statesmanship, expressed the minds of Nigerians with passion and candour, describing the regime and the transition programme of the self-styled military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, as a big fraud. Samples of his views (TELL April 26,1993) are worthy of our reflections.
�There is no leader that has been credited with so great a capacity for mischief, for evil as Babangida. �This administration is deficit in honesty, deficit in honour, deficit in truth. The only thing it has in surplus is saying one thing and doing something else. �I must say this is an administration that has done the least in the history of this country since independence. �Every Nigerian has been 500 per cent poorer. This is an economy that's taken us from per capita income of about 1,000 US dollars now to per capital income of about 100 US dollars. �SAP has hit the poorest hardest and coupled with the way the economy has been managed, it has created a new class of nouveaux riche from commission rather than production. �We've passed from the stage of appeal to the stage where Babangida needs to be challenged.
�You see, what was SAP asking us to do
�When we live as somebody who is a debtor, l believe that our international creditors will be ready and willing to look at us and say, yes, we can give you reprieve, we can forgive you. I think national conference in a civilian administration where of course things are reasonably in order, will be something desirable. There are a number of things we need to look at. We now have very heavy overhead that will undermine our ability to spend money on development.�
That was vintage Chief Obasanjo in 1993. The President has now awarded the highest honour in the land (Grand Commander of the Order of Niger) to Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (for all his evil deeds between 1985 and 1993). The economy is worse off and Nigerians are poorer than they were five years ago when Obasanjo came on board. The current PDP government pursues a policy of liberalisation where even common chewing sticks from foreign markets find their way into Nigerian markets. Production has kissed the canvas in the last five years.
Subsidies on petroleum products, where it hurts poor Nigerians most, have been removed several times since the President was sworn in on May 29, 1999. Nigeria of Obasanjo's administration is the second most corrupt country in the world. The electoral fraud of 2003 supervised by the PDP�s INEC is still in search of parallels in the annals of Nigeria. The cost of running the present government vis-a-vis our per capita income ranks among the highest in the world. On the national conference, Chief Obasanjo has remained the chief antagonist. What an irony of life!
There are two options open to the President. An open apology is either rendered to General Babangida for the harangues of 1993 or to Nigerians (including youths) whose psyche has been insulted and assaulted by that infamy of GCON award to the self-confessed evil genius, Ibrahim Babangida, who destroyed every fabric of the society during his eight years of misrule. In other climes, these reflections may provoke instant resignation... but this is Nigeria!
Opeyemi lives in Lagos
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