Eagle point; A Nation and her spectacles of shame

By Steve Remume Ovirih.

Nigeria is not found wanting when it comes to dishing out back to back stream of activities that make both the citizenry and foreign observers marvel with a chuckle, “do things they report about them ever make them feel embarrassed?” The past one week in Nigeria has been filled with one frenetic happenstance or the other. It started with the subtle visit of a Federal Minister in charge of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja to an allegedly controversial property in the center of the city. According to report, the property had been visited severally by officers of the Federal Capital Territory Authority (FCTA) with one intent, to warn them , if not threaten those working for the developer, to put an end to whatever structure they were hoping to lay on the property. Hearing that there might be demolition on the site with heavy equipment being mobilized to the site by the FCTA, the property owner , a retired service Chief mobilized his military details to the site to ward off the officers of demolition.

And that was how both demolition squad and the advance team of property defenders birthed last week ‘the less than commendable Minister Wike/Lt. Yerima’ public brawl. Less than commendable because either right or wrong, the joke was not just on Minister Wike but on Nigeria; the nation where the Minister is made to eat the humble pie by a young, firm and fiery Naval officer whose retort was pregnant with enough dark humour to make him look filled with integrity for obeying the last order of his superior why the incumbent Minister looked like the traducer who invades people’s private property with a wilful and malicious intent to demolish and or appropriate such property for government under the pretence of claiming the land has fractured ownership contestable by government and all that.

Truth be told , The Minister of Abuja as the case may be has the right either by him or through his proxy to assess, evaluate and question whatever goes on , on any property in the FCT as he holds this right as devolved to him by the constitution under the land use act. Without mincing words, no public servant has the right to dress down anybody verbally not in the least an Army officer in uniform who is functioning at the behest of his superior either retired or still in active service. Do we have channels of control in government? If we don’t there wouldn’t be what is termed bureaucracy. It is this channel of controll that the Minister has failed to follow that had earned him the public ridicule; if a job is executed to earn public applause as a ‘ no nonsense civil servant or Minister’ who is everywhere for showmanship sake ordering and forcefully tearing through and pulling down peoples’ property to create the impression of a performer, something will kick and give away soon. There is no honour in deploying the bulky tactics at the expense of virtue,logic and due diligence Even while ensuring that laws are followed in maintaining the Abuja Master plan and this is deemed the focus of the Minister, are there due diligence in enforcing these laws ?

The shameful spectacle is no less exhibited in a birthday bash in which the birthday boy became the one who was thoroughly bashed and cudgeled by a specially
invited and grandee guest. To all intent and purpose, there has been no love lost between former Ekiti Governor , Ayo Fayose, a good friend and political disciple of Chief Nyesome Ezenwo Wike, and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, nonagenarian and ‘ citizen of the world. The love lost scenario and bitter strife between the two ex PDP gladiators dated back to when Obasanjo as President declared State of emergency in Fayose governed Ekiti State. Fayose, bold , frank and daring in previous times had called the former President names not deserving to be stated on this page; call it political strife between godfather and estranged godson and you will be correct.

Enter Fayose’s 65th birthday celebration and here the celebrant deemed it fit to invite Baba Obasanjo. You would think the father and son bickering was over but not until it was the turn of the Owu Chief to address audience at the event. Baba Obasanjo either right or wrong chose the opportunity to address what he felt was Fayose’s less than virtuous conduct of years gone by. ” You and your wife, you have not acted with virtue as regards your action of the past,” Obasanjo thundered in the quiet of the auditorium, adding that he couldnt visit to invite him officially sending a proxy because he lacked the bravery to own up to his past mistakes of acting without logic. Trust the former Military and former civilian Head of Govt to be frank to a fault and blame it on old age if you care but he will tell you nobody muscles the bell from its jingling. Ordinarily , somethings are not said in public but the old soldier in Obasanjo doesn’t give two hoots about such niceties and it’s more hurting that the former President did not choose the option of a private audience to correct the birthday boy perhaps because while the birthday boy was dragging his stature through the mud, it was done for the consumption of the general public. The real ‘Omoluabi’ dictate presupposes that two wrongs don’t make a right and so it was a shocking news that ex Gov Ayo Fayose in his thank you text to Baba Obasanjo described him as a man ‘ fit for the zoo’ having thanked him for gracing his birthday.

For a younger person who could have prostrated and beg the older man even on his birthday regalia to actually convince the old man that unlike in the past years when he was then in his 40s, he had now become a man of virtue, for whatever purpose he could have aimed to achieve , there was no logic in hitting back an elderly man for whatever his jabs at your underbelly. The show of shame in the ‘ignoble Fayose thank you text’ to OBJ is a new low, an infra dig and national embarrassment. To think that Minister Wike and Birthday boy Fayose are best buddies is bitterly instructive.

There is a painful spectacle of shame in noticing for all its worth that there is a leak in The Nigerian army. Worse still is the fact that the reign of unabated terrorism in Nigeria is indicative of government helplessness in combating dare devil internal aggression that is already questioning the nation’s claim to her giant of Africa’s status. An army General leading a counter insurgency squad in the North , Brigadier Gen. Uba was killed by Book Haram insurgents on Monday because he dropped his location in the course of reconnaissance after a counter insurgency battle that had gone awry. The encrypted signal by the General for rescue was intercepted by Boko Haram who swung into action to intercept him before rescue could come his way. As in the street lingo ” as how?” How did his signal get into the hand of BH insurgents? How did they pick a coded info sent through his armed signal? Until this question is taken up and countered with military precision , sending uniformed men to go and combat the insurgents will appear a journey without life insurance for our valiant soldiers. More scary and lacking in virtue is the information that in the recent Kebi kidnapping of 25 students in which a Vice Principal was killed, the insurgents moved in thirty minutes after the troop had left the school. Why did the military troop leave if they acted on signal that there was a likely invasion?

The insurgency had tarried this while because it appears the political will to quash them is weak and not forceful. Until government takes the social contract of ensuring the protection of life of the people and their property seriously the nation will continue to be the butt of joke in the comity of nations. Is there genocide against Christians ? Government says no, yet in Eruku, Ekiti Local Government Area of Kwara State on Monday, an entire community was sacked with a church lighted by the terrorists .

Let’s for the sake of being patriotic assume there is no genocide, however, let us go back in time to the records, have there been massive killings of Nigerians by insurgents unabated? Your answer puts the joke on us. When the government puts its act together the narrative on the spectacle of shame may be corrected; until then we all look on helplessly…