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damol66@yahoo.co.uk Berlin, Germany

THE NEED FOR A CHANGE

One of the major causes of the American war of independence that ended in 1776 was the denial of a FULL cup of tea to the subjects.

n France, reacting to the selfish extravagant and despotic rule of Louis XIV whose wife Marie Antoinette was alleged of using at least four pairs of brand-new shoes every new day, Lafayette, an intelligent General of the Masses who had gathered his wealth of wisdom from the works of Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, took the masses to the tennis court to educate them on the rule of law and the necessity for a change. The dogged and eloquent oratory in Lafayette attracted a lot of audience that the King, the then world's symbol of absolutism, felt challenged, in a state where Press was censored, where the peasants were excessively taxed, where the rich enjoyed his affluence and the poor gnashed their teeth in excruciating penury. He then sent a message to the masses to disband. Lafayette replied: "Tell him we can not leave except at the point of bayonets".

Even the masses felt unruffled and continued their thunderous ovation to Lafayette with verve and vivacity. Enraged with that development, the king attempted to disband the masses with force. That was the most regrettable mistake of this unconscionable and corrupt despot. And the result of that was a surge of uncontrollable rebellion that went to history as the popular French Revolution of 1789 which changed the mode of things in France. With that, the age of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity emerged. French economy flourished more than in anywhere in Europe until Napoleon's fall in the battle of waterloo.

Even in the biblical story of Moses and the Israelites, the people began to cry at a stage when they could no longer bear the scourge of thirstiness. God heard their cry and acted passionately to them by ordering Moses to strike the rock for water. But Moses, acting like an African president for the first time, called them "brood of vipers" before doing the will of God. This singular mistake of his attracted the wrath of God. Therefore he was ordered to relinquish the leadership role to Aaron his brother. Then Moses was taken onto the mount of no return.

And who knows! Who knows if the death of Abacha was simply a parody of Moses` situation? Who knows if Abubakar that replaced him was in consonance to Aaron's functional interlude? For though Aaron took over the leadership, he himself did not complete the journey.

He only ushered the Israelites in, just like Abubakar ushered us into a pseudo-democracy. It was Joshua who finally led the Israelites to the Promised Land, after a series of wars. However to be able to create a parallel between this rare biblical allegory and the Nigeria situation, one should be careful not to plunge into a faulty hasty conclusion. In this mere literary equation, one can find oneself directly susceptible to the alluring logical conclusion that Obasanjo is to Nigeria as Joshua was to the Israelites. But for me, it is easy to resist such a temptation, because little knowledge of Logic tells me that not all logical judgements represent truth. Whereas the logicality of any judgement depends on its prescribed premises, truth sometimes emerges from the blue, defying all forms of logic.

In the Nigerian context for example, when Obasanjo was sworn in as the fourth republic president of Nigeria, majority of us (the masses that were already living in despair for two decades) were in jubilation that salvation has finally come from above. As some believed that God has sent a Moses to strike the rock, or a Joshua to lead us in the conquest of Ai and Jericho, others even saw in him a Jesus to take us to paradise. We felt so because, we reckoned with the logical conclusion that after he himself had "passed through the valleys of the shadows of death" he would now have more human feelings to be able to understand our problems.

We believed he would identify himself better in the camps of the masses than to dine with the rich. He had only passed through the valleys and was uncomfortable, but we the masses -the poor farmers, the youths, the orphans, the university students, the old men and women in the villages - all live in these valleys of the shadows of death, round the clock, for there seems to be no much difference between the life of the common man in the street of Nigeria and the life of a prisoner. But no sooner did Obasanjo become the president, than he turned his back on us. He has given us so much distance that it now becomes impossible for him to hear our cry, no matter how we shout. With this, one does not need to waste the dear time going to ask him: "Are you the saviour who is to come or shall we look for another?"

For as the realities unfold, we come to terms with the fact that he is definitely not. In fact the presence of his regime in our national record is a mere hyphen in the political sentence of the Nigerian democratic process. As the story of Moses demise should teach Obasanjo and his advisers that it is a sin to deride or neglect the suffering masses, it also reveals that the masses can not be erring if they grumble and protest in the face of unbearable sufferings or oppression. It is the core curriculum of any leader to provide the led with at least, minimum comfort. And if the early man could recognize that his basic needs were food; water; shelter and fire, it underlies any logic that a modern man in the 21 century needs unrestricted quantities and measures of those basic needs as well as uninterrupted power supply, and, in the Nigerian context, also an incessant supply of petroleum products.

It is also the basic right of every child to get free education and subsistence allowance. Other basic social responsibilities include: re-introduction of bursaries to students in the tertiary institutions; basic subsistence allowances to the old people who have attained the age of 65 and have no reasonable means of monthly income; basic financial allowances to every unemployed youth; maximum protection of children against child abuse including forced labour- That is to say, the government should pass it into law against any adult or adults who send their children into hawking, among other things.

I am convinced that any leader who has masses in mind can implement all these. Some may argue that the policies are unrealistic. But I know that the Nigerian masses are willing to cooperate with any good government. In fact any such government that introduces a kind of social insurance scheme and at the same time implements the social policies outlined above, can always win the support of the majority of the citizens. A worker who receives a net monthly salary of ten-thousand naira, for example, would not hesitate to pay 3% of it for social securities as far as the money is judiciously used. In addition, the federal government should be able to provide additional monthly allocation for social securities, directly payable to the local governments. Moreover the policy can better be achieved if, with the introduction of national identity cards, every local government compulsorily has a register of all the people living in its wards, their addresses and occupations.

In the absence of basic social policies, a society is bound to experience chaos anytime or every time. We should therefore not be surprised that the Nigerian society is today a crime ravaged community. It is a society with extreme contrastive class arrangements. The society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And to be able to break the jinx and shackles of poverty, many people have resorted to different types of crime, in the society where one's recognition depends on the amount of wealth amassed. And gradually we plunge into the primitive age of the survival of the fittest.

Or like Kwei Amah puts it in his novel "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born", we are in the society where it is "only those who are weak that see anything wrong with the possessing fashion." And the leaders are blurred in their views to realize that this development is a dangerous octopus that can spread its long tentacles to consume both the leader and the led. They only understand that their gates, doors and windows are closed against the hurricane, and the amount of damage the turbulent wind causes outside has no effect on them. But that is how far we are.

Even those at the corridors of power are not left out of this possessing fashion. They seem to be more corrupt and criminal minded than the common man.

• They steal from the government treasury;
• they raise killers against their opponents;
• they enjoy opulence at our own expense, and the moment they claim to be helping the common man is when they try to inflict people with the disease of corruption and crime at high places. Their own niveau of corruption and extravagance has passed that of Emperor Louis XIV and his wife. And that is the censorious truth. So the majority of us tread on treasures, yet we have no wealth;
• we live in a peninsula, yet we have no water;
• we toil on the savannah, yet we have no food;
• we export oil, yet we have no oil;
• we have a government, yet we have no leader;
• we have a constitution, yet we have no law;
• we have a judiciary, yet we have no courts;
• we have houses, yet we have no representatives;
• we have a cabinet, yet we have no ministers;
• too many churches and mosques, yet we have no righteous;
• too many Bishops and Imams, yet we have no peace;
• too many preachers, yet we have no pastor;
• too many hospitals, yet we get no treatment;
• too many pharmacists, yet we have no drugs;
• too many Engineers, yet we have no machines;
• too many economists, yet we have no firms.

And the list goes ad infinitum. It is all eyes on the oil money. And they do not think of diversification.

The onus is now on us to change the status quo. To be able to do this, we must come to the starting point. The starting point is the polling station. And the instrument of change is the vote we cast. We must be able to shun their bribery. We must be ready to choose the right team - the team for the masses. Do not let them confuse you with the notion of pessimism that we can not make any impact. They only say that because we are already making an impact. They know they can not stop us, even with their preparedness to cheat.

If they rig it to intercalate an extended tenure of misappropriation we fight them, and if they don't rig it we defeat them. That is why they fear us. That is why they fear the party for the masses. That is why they fear the National Conscience Party. That is why they fear the Justice Party. That is why they fear the All Progressives Grand Alliance. That is why they fear the Peoples Redemption Party and other parties that stand for the collective interests of the masses.

This is the time for the youths to contribute towards nation building. The age of looting is about to end. The age of persecution and oppression is singing its last song. Awake all students; awake all youths; awake all progressives and chase away those scavengers from the seats. Don't let them deceive you with their dangerous sermons of ethnicity or with their venomous hypocrisy of religious fundamentalism or with their somniferous ricochets of empty promises. April 19 shall not just witness an election, but a revolution -A revolution for the dawn of refined democracy. A vote for collective interests is a vote for the masses!

"We've got to make a change!" -Amaru Shakur.