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[email protected] Alberta, Canada

OF THE EX-GENERALS, CULTURE AND FATWACRACY:
SCALING THE ADVERSITY

e are, notionally, cloning the Ex-generals. For that we ask, do we still need them in Nigerian political life and culture? In replicating the ex-generals, we are doing so in a new but hard word. We are calling it 'exgeneralfatwacracy.' We will also be developing the semantics as exgeneralfatwatiques. It is derived from the word Fatwa and Ex-generals of the military. The history is Nigerian based, the context is politics and religion. It means the destructive capacity and tendency of the Ex-generals in Nigerian civilian political life and culture. The motivation for this two-word combination to form a compound word is to enable a critical view on the zealous nature of the Nigerian Ex-generals in Nigerian political sensibilities. Grip onto the military and political power in Nigeria and the evils of the military life in the country are so pronounced. We had prayed, wished and did all in our all through home and abroad to ensure that Nigeria regains her place and responsibility to her peoples and the world as a whole. It appears that the more that effort, prayers and hopes are being rendered, the more the evil geniuses of the military clone into the stage.

The situation above is showing nothing less than a rebirth of sadism. And sadder still, it portrays a figment of the imagination for dominance aimed at burning out honesty and civility, as well as stimulating the woes of the normal civil candidature. Civilly debated, what the Ex-generals do not owe to Nigeria, and of which Nigeria will not seek from them, is their sadomasochism. What they owe to Nigeria now is simply allowing for a return to spaces of security and normality. In doing so, their contribution becomes something psychologically real in a truly democratic and responsible society. Given the situation as it may, we are seeking our Nigeria to become full-fledged democratic nation in building. This sought for identity have its moral clarity so simple and deserving. It matters now. Does Nigeria win or loose in all this?

Concern here in this essay is to depict a way for Nigeria to live up to her own principles. In 1999, Nigeria defined in her own terms those principles as total democratic sounding conditions of life, one in which the military class warfare with the civil society should take a high-flying long lasting break. It is a pledge to be responsible, positive and contributory in serving Nigeria. It appears this is now not happening. The choice of President Obasanjo to build the transition and reroute Nigeria to consideration and courteousness has become clearly disappointing. And for the fact that he has been so much tolerated so far, the evil track markers are timing into the stage.

Wallowing in the hands of Ex-military generals in Nigerian civil politics is a mixed development, taking now and again more than it is necessary. We had shed ocean tears and shouted to the world not to abandon Africa, in particular, Nigeria. Nigeria have viewed herself well, rated herself a giant, and pronounced herself conscious and eager for change and development. But have approached her means of well being wrongly. We thought we have welcomed democracy and that effort is being made to plant it in the Nigerian sensibilities and imagination. This thinking and hope have now been proved inaccurate.

The conspicuous Ex-generals are, namely Obasanjo, Babangida, Nwachukwu, Buhari, Ojukwu, Aikhomo, Useni, Mohammad, and so on, you can add to the list. The fact is not that Nigeria has not gotten well qualified, informed, articulate and active civilians in political management, including those whose capabilities have been tested and Okayed. The fact is essentially that the ancient Khaki Boys are still the political FATWA operatives. We cannot but DECLARE with deep disappointment that it is sad, wrong and bigoted. The zeal with which the ex-military juntas are doing things questions the calculations of Nigerian Destiny in, what do you say, military or cultural diversity. The most annoying thing is all of these Ex-generals have tasted political-military power at the highest levels. They have rendered their legacies and their histories have been written.

Apart from General Gowon who went back to school and General Ojukwu who re-studied to re-adjust their minds and positions, as well as to learn what it takes to be civil and responsible, it baffles most of us what these deadly and FATWA Ex-generals, think they are in this world? In the real sense of it all, a good military education and universilized formation make people sensible, ordered and reasonable. Only the half-baked will make noise and think through guns and fatwa-mindset. President Obasanjo just did that recently through a military technical onslaught that snow iced and thickly frosted Dr. Elex Ekwueme and others in the PDP presidential primaries. For sure, the incident was purely a military action on Chief Ekwueme rather than the principle of democratic nomination process.

Let me say it simply. Rather than President Obasanjo think about democracy, he thinks and operates military-civilian Fatwa thereby eroding the beauty of people's voices and choices that should come from democracy. A Fatwa president cannot in all honesty make it real that people should be given a democratic chance to choose their leaders and thus direct courses of their wellbeing and progress. Why are we logging in the term 'Fatwa'? As we have said before, it helps to describe and partition some ideas for simple understanding. It is especially also a working term quite significant in today's discovered tracks to do things and communicate them better, in particular in describing the tendency of these ex-generals. We had someone read this article that raised this question. The answer is been now offered and it is all this. In a recent article we submitted to Nigeriaworld (Jan. 9, 2003), we made the case of President Obasanjo's collective example of dictatorial and Fatwatique politics whereby political delegates lost their cultural sensitivity. It questioned the reality of democracy under such dictatorial, intimidated and military crafted circumstances. It was a declaration of 'do me I do you' political binarity and incumbentized showdown, which left Dr. Ekwueme wheezing for air and calling the situation a 'charade.'

The fact that Nigerians like to take easy and gainful short-term cuts, fostered the unpalliatory successive grabbish military governments, which ripped-off the greatness of Nigeria, wrecked her educational institutions, exiled her well brain workers, and investors such that institutionalized evil creativity took over the management stage of everything. As they floundered in deadly Nigeria military racialism, divide and domination underlined their marginal-horse of hate culture and Fatwa-politics. Uniformed hate-mongering can be driven by desperation rather than by reality, as Paula Simons has noted. Only of recent, references to the word 'Fatwa' have been used in Nigeria to describe the plural social conflicts and injustices. Little has been explored and fitted into related cultural consequences of Fatwa in the life and culture of Nigeria. More will be known now that the Ex-military generals will be facing Nigeria with a typical Ex-military sense of political Fatwa. Through the prism of President Obasanjo, who it is guessed have been put up with as marshal-president, the drive for other Ex-generals to re-route themselves in like manner has more and more been fired up, as we have said before. Would anyone blame them? It can only be unfortunate. Be that as it may, some bits and pieces of the exgeneralfatwacracy toward dealing with any real civilian presidential aspirant were recently released at the PDP primaries. Whatever these guys think they are doing, the truth, must always be told given the new exgeneralfatwacratic pre-determined customs as they unfold.

Do we talk of Mohammed Buhari, whose name unpopularly describes him as a brutal changer - bugharia! (Igbo word, literally meaning carry or change to another position), namely in the Southeast of the country. The Nigerian Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) he once headed under Babangida exacerbated his sticky finger on things. He is not what Nigeria wants as at now. Here is a general no serious Nigerian will understand the good of what his political ambition is, and of what sensible basis and to all it is equally about. Whispers allege that he will make Nigeria a Sharia nation. Dr. Okadigbo will be watching, impeached and exiled or killed silently and no one will question. Buhari will be a collective instance of intimidation, isolation and a magna of Fatwacracy.

What of Ike Nwachukwu, Ojukwu and so on? God will tell us, and well Pastor Chris Okotie did on form to run for his life by resigning immediately after he saw both the numerator and denominator of Fatwa in the scheming. We will seriously recommend to all these Ex-generals that the best place for them to start practising democracy which the military force eluded them are from their local government areas. The experiences they would gain at that level and the commitment and responsibility to the local people will certainly serve them and their people well. It is after many years say about twenty years of scaling and immersion into civility that they can come up to the national level again to mean something relevant. At least, after twenty years, we will all know that their political power crimes and injustices will not be signalling the same forces in their demented heads and networks. We do not think any ex-general will perceive Nigeria today as turning into a rascally mogul of lawlessness other than the one built into it by they themselves.

There is everywhere poverty in them of a positive mind and favourable approaches to salvage and realize the goals of one Nigeria, for one nation. Out there today is one Nigeria, several nations. The perpetrators are no other than the Ex-generals of the Nigerian profile. Would they change their spots? That is a big question. Did Ex-general Obasanjo change to imagine that the others would change? We leave you to ponder over it. We must think. We must act. We must shame exgeneralfatwacracy as political gaming and torturing of the Nigerian life and culture.

But if eventually the political process in Nigeria will be worked out only through military experience, to clinch the presidential position, let the doors to military schools be declared open and made to function in line with JAMB for entry and graduation. Of course, we should be mindful about the quality of secular education cum military skills to survive in all given pursuits and callings. We once also recommended for a Centre for Independent Political Creative Leadership for Nigeria in the light of globalization (Dec. 21, 2002). The vision out there is meant to rework Nigerian minds towards a collective goal under a studied approach and responsible strategy. Okezie Chukwumerije, we also think captured this feeling in his 'Nigerian Imagination and the State of the Nation' (Jan. 13, 2003). It is also unfortunate this will not happen since because the ancient Khaki Boys are so impoverished to think for Nigeria. Such ex-generals allow Nigeria to think for them and they will act through Fatwa, capacity to malign and destroy the beauty of democracy for Nigeria's urgent and deserved sociocultural order (not military order) and development process.

The essence of any military and allied forces for peace and order is to help democracy thrive. That is creating opportunities of the people, for the people, and by the people to think and act for themselves. It is the opportunity through which the entire people will define and explain themselves, whereby a systematic belief about what the people are and mean for themselves will play out continuously. A good example for this is the US democratic system as well as the British parliamentary political ways of thinking and acting. In these two examples, every citizen knows what he is to his country and what his country is to him. We talk of national orientation and whatever in Nigeria. The result of which is what we now experience as exgeneralfatwacracy. It is quite bizarre.

Other than Fatwa being a sole death code of Islamic religious duty, it is by extension a codicil doorway of defining who should be considered culturally human, politically governable, and socially acceptable or not in the Muslim unconscious in the Nigerian political dispensation of the Ex-generals. Fatwa as we argue, quips nothing good, nothing sensible, nothing secular, and nothing culturally African in belief sensibilities to life and sociality. If religion, be it animism, Christianity, Hinduism, Shintoism, Neo-Christianism or Born-againism, and so on, is an act of seeking peace, true God. Perceptively, exgeneralfatwacracy is the act of seeking disorder, non true God. It is opposed to Nigerian reality for serious good governance. True God is found in true total personhood. In honest people and good leaders, God incarnates His essence, vitality, providence and peace. Exgeneralfatwaticians are short of political skill and goodfaith. Of course, they cannot give what they do not have. President Obasanjo, for example, cannot offer more than what he is endowed with and skilled for through exgeneralfatwanism. Anything less than good cause mirroring the true God through significant good governance is al Qaedarian celebrity. Less than seeking excellence for Nigerian cause, exgeneralfatwacracy, is quintessentially death, no more any less.

We have been killed and deformed enough. These Ex-generals are simply politicalfatwas we all must further resist. In short, granting exgeneralfatwacracy through presidential medication, in the years ahead, is seeking the death of Nigeria, one, as a nation, and two her life and culture as a heritage. Of which, her peoples would be further made unable to see eye to eye, or work together and express themselves within the Nigerian social cosmology.

In the earlier and up to the 19th centuries scholasticism and exploration of leadership, in particular, in the Athenian complex, classical philosophy saw that Athenian lexicology lacked the term 'race'. But they knew the merits of classification. Plato telling the tale of Socrates and class noted that stable society required three 'enwisdomized' (Prof. Pantaleon's term) classes. Gold, those having a golden soul will be rulers. Those having silver soul will be administrators and officials, and those whose soul is blended in brass and iron will be farmers and craftsmen. Athenian society knew well about class and inequality. But they believed and practiced the philosophy of having their leaders to be of the best of the minds, skill and responsibility. For the Nigerian exgeneralsfatwatician, it is not the case. This is where the brass and iron symbolism are their leaders. The symbolism of this 19th century development somehow showed when President Obasanjo established his Ota Animal Farm. He had the intuition of where he should retire and belong, including all his likes. But he cannot, up until now realize and reconcile himself in political time and history. Drawing out the caveat of the above philosophy ties in with this. That people should keep their places and positions of calling in society, for when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed.

Let us not loose the sight that people can work their way up, diffuse and build classes for themselves, including leadership networking. But it must be responsible leadership to build, and foster life and culture, not destroy the same. A military man is trained to destroy. He thinks about strategies to do so at all given times. That is in political arena; they quickly become a mismatch, seeing political opponents as enemies, including any community and their leaders as sources of threat and must be fatwa-ed summarily.

Denoting the underlying senses and sensibilities of exgeneralfatwacracy sends a strong message of unshareable cultural sense and the impossibility in any attempt to soften matters so as to essentially offer Nigerians a responsibility. The flooding of the presidency by the Ex-generals, even as General Ojukwu is now telling it, "you know I am also a general and a more senior one for that matter", is chilly and sickening to the psyche of nicely Nigerians. All these obsessive and psychotic attempts to rush into the Aso Rock are indicators that Nigeria as a growing nation is, probably, coming to an end. The goal of exgeneralfatwacracy is to realign, to racket and to kill. That is what we mean by how these Ex-generals are zealously ceasing the present Nigerian Democratic Fear Factor to re-enter the Aso Rock. In the clothing of exgeneralfatwacracy, they are nothing short of the fact that Nigeria should divide, to each ethnic group, large or minor, Oil blessed or Cattle rich, Palm tree Environmentalized or Cocoa Ecologized, Ground nut Pyramidized or Palm nut level landed Ethnoscaped, Riverrine colonized or Sahara and or Sahel desertificated, to inevitably head on to their own fated tents. Tufia, God forbid bad thing.

We have often heard and participated in talks about healing the wounds of war. Soldiers are often treated of posttraumatic stress, warring communities or countries continue to perceive one another with hurt pride. You cannot heal the wounds. Rather efforts are made to build in some levels of tolerance and continuity. No one can tell us that if you kill someone's father in a war, and you approach the one concerned with a political package to heal the loss, the one will become healed. It is far from easy and may not be attained at all. We can only forgive for physical mutual co-existence, but it is hard to forget and, indeed, no one forgets the injuries of warring and killing. The same applies to political leadership creativity and approaches to responsibility.

The episode of Biafran war, the relived killing of Ogoni People, and repeated ethnic cleansing of non Northern settlers in the North are just representations of what is waiting to occur in Nigeria. The Ex-generals will anticipate this. In new forms, disintegration may be imminent. Politically, there is increasingly round fear. Religiously, big question! For unity, Nigeria it is repeatedly asserted has no reliable basis to be one under exgeneralfatwacracy (credit to General Gowon). Economically, it is just a mere playing ground to grab and go. Here Social Darwinism rules. The Ex-generals are Dr. Charles Darwin's high species that emerge and re-emerge for survival. So they are the fittest or the deadliest. As the survival of the lethal smartest, they are thereby digging social capital holes for the less capable, and the unacceptable species, e.g., pure civilians, the Igbo and the Christians, all non Muslims so to say, to die off naturally or become botched and scavenged over - resonating the life and behaviour of the old stone age proto humans of the time.

Even more appended to illustrate the concern is the fact that since after declaring Fatwa on Isioma Daniel and by extension on the life and culture of non Nigerian Muslims by a democratically elected Deputy Governor of Zamfara Sate, Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi. A politically elected public officer sustained by the tax payers' wallet, and who has been indicted as a common criminal setting himself in a nightmare to be hauled up for criminal crime for incitement to murder. Up until now, no serious known action, despite all calls and insistence to arraign and prosecute the traitors, the Obasanjo Administration has kept quiet over the matter. As usual, the issue is being treated as if nothing had happened, to let it just melt down ordinarily. This mannercum to roll back into the Aso Rock has become clearer. It will be so unfortunate. The so much why things have been treated as such is because; the unacceptable Ndi Igbo (Igbo people) and Christians were involved in the Kadunna mayhem. Neither Fatwa in itself nor the Ex-generals in themselves is a good choice for free people, political entity. Ex-generals in Nigeria constitute a fatal doing equated to Fatwa, hence exgeneralcracy for Nigeria.

exgeneralfatwacracy coined as a word is rather one, which can be seen as a fossil code of terrorism for a head hunter to hunt his human-infidel-big civilian politician game down. Fatwa is a political witchcraft hunt complex veiled in religion and military inhumanity. It is all that it takes to factor negativism, kill and kill really. Muslim political moguls will be failing alike the military Ex-generals if religious duties or military bothers are delayed and eventually unfilled. So having declared Fatwa, religious and military, there is every alarm for all non Muslims and civilians in the life and culture of Nigeria to watch diligently every move of every Muslim and every Ex-general in Nigeria, in particular the North and in the so much hot-combed and denied Southeast political zones. exgeneralfatwacracy expresses the Devil Politics, whereby the leaders refuse to look beyond the cultural obstacles religion imposes and the military exercises against radical but useful development, and so resort to using and hiding behind the same religion and Ex-generals to propagate military and Islamic Nationality in Nigeria. Now the famous Alibaba is set for the trash pan and must be totally thrown out and dumped into the waste pan. In order to do that credibly and successfully, we should resist solicitations from these ex-general presidential flag-bearers and thereby deconstruct their exgeneralfatwacracy.

As we should resist this ugly emergent twist from real democracy to exgeneralfatwacracy. History teaches, as it is often said that the worst civilian government is better than any kpletocratic institutionalized governance. It is true as demonstrated in the African context, and particularly Nigeria. We have to shift to some of the political parties whose presidential flag bearers are real civilians who satisfy the credibility and sensibility of pure micro-political races. As such, a coalition is calling. Kenya did it, it worked and amazed the world and reinforced the fact that power belongs to the people and will be given by the people. Kenya realized that it was the only all-inclusive option to diminish and clamp down arap Moi and his Kanu society. It took them three successive regimented elections and losses to realize and pull their forces together to achieve that positive goal. Today, Kenya is hurrahing, fostering new hopes and opportunities for themselves. They have broken away from Moi's evil forces and underworlds. That responsible commitment is deserving of trial in the present setting of exgeneralfatwacracy in Nigeria. We have no option than to do something about it for all the freedom that Nigeria wants.

We now also realize that people's travelling passports are being withheld in Nigerian ports. Allying together will route this evil treatment out. It thus should no longer be confisticated by the SSS for all these successive exgeneralfatwaticians. OBJ is loudly on it again, with mind-boggling impunity. We must arise as we did against the notorious Babangida and Abacha to stop these shameless Buharis, Abdusalams, Babangidas, Nwachukwus, Aikhomos, and the all. We should instead, as it is right to do so, look for the pure micro races of politicians, support them and turn them into Aso Rock. They will serve us better than any military grounded politician. The permutation for military and civilian combination is wrong since it has not helped matters. The Atiku and Obasanjo gaming is illustrative. Any exgeneral-political president will tell you what stuff he is made off and the need to rather keep hushed. Participatory governance is seriously limited. Fatwatism will be played.

As Nigeria was made to be one polity with the merger of 1914 by the colonial government, since after that, the total parts of Nigeria have refused to be engineered and wired into an atmosphere for growth and thereby a viable nation. There is no way, and there is not going to be anyway in this era of globalization that exgeneralfatwacracy will succeed in forcing the sensibilities of the Nigerian civilians, the animist as opposed to Islamic forces to adopt the military style of gullible and blinkered governance. The Arabic made forces originating fatwa should understand, since time that the Southern Nigerians are true republicans in their lives and cultures and consequently had resisted to be politically tainted with Islam. Why should they continue to attempt even when it is clear they will never succeed? We cannot fight war we will loose flat, over and over. We will set out time to rethink and find a more probable best compromise. That compromise, many are calling secession, others call it National Conference or referendum.

Yet others whisper playing political cards on a daylight long-table to decide and act. North for the North political yelling and South for the South typology characterize the politics of exgeneralfatwacracy in the present dispensation. If these political ex-generals power maniacs will do all the intoxicating economic looting carnage again, although they will remain being sons of butchers, and human scavengers, the civilians will fight with their collective blood for retaliatory importance. And thus do and show that the significance of what it takes to say Final Halleluiah over the EVIL geniuses and their smack for exgeneralfatwacracy. It will be Fatwa for Fatwa in mouth and in action whereby each popular political zone will bow down to become a republican compromize.

Some Freudian like churning write ups associated with social Darwinian calls flood pages of magazines and, including internet website publications, suggesting punitive and drastic measures against these ex-generals who are back in politics. The voices shun whatever we might think of these ex-general but only to have them indicted as it is being done, but in more constituted legal and political framework. In the face of anger and disquietness, some brush out that they be chased around, stopped, re-looted, charged, and hauled to the court of law, prosecuted, jailed, killed and all that just like they killed others. Opinions such as we have mentioned may not be very superfluous. The bother of such voices is to give social order, some atmosphere for creativity and development a good chance to thrive. All this we hope corners the point they are raising. We can deeply see the manner and level of their frustration and the way in which they considerably dish out their concerns.

Radical exgeneralfatwacratic politics being flagged through the presidency is a bad thing to occur for Nigeria and so urgently call for something to be done. The end equation for the fear of exgeneralfatwacracy, call to dominate, and systematize coup de force, destructive tendency, and further alienate the civil society, is Change. Rather than this old and new brand of Ex-general politicians to challenge themselves and spin growth to become part of successful leadership, they have untrustworthily evolved the most basic forms of insecurity, deformed peace and inverted economic development as basis of social agenda. Out they had successively shown the spirit to wipe off the unacceptable doings of the civil society and ethnic members on their estates. Fatwa, though a death threat, is a serious challenge in today's Nigerian political development.

No unnecessary silence! As we view the trend of the hurt of the pure micro-races of the civil Nigerians, the likelihood that this pronounced ex-general self-lording politicians will cease is not far away. As it has only been tested and the pause of the Nation taken, we look forward to what will happen on the 19th of April 2003 when the post of the president will voted for. The civil society, given the numerous political parties, should invent a collective tent and show that Nigeria requires pure micro-races of civilian politics to lead and serve them. It is the responsibility of the central government to boldly do permit freedom and opportunity. But it is so unfortunate that that is neither the immediate priority nor somewhat a foreseeable distant one since President Obasanjo is undemocratic, ready to spill more blood to re-capture the Aso Rock.

If we can go by the common metaphors we live with, and by extension extrapolation of the implications on the issues affecting Nigeria. Fatwa is not only a consequence of religious matter; it is also economic and political when viewed against the backdrop of poverty level and disease in the life and culture of the Nigerians. Fatwa is political poverty that kills and brings all forms of social and economic injustices and deprivations. Since once Fatwa is declared on someone, alike the military might, he must run to safety, get exiled, and take to hiding until silent death rules over. In the same vein, economic and political poverty of the mind combine to chase Nigerians away. For over four decades, this has turned the way in which the country had been militarily marched around in such a manner showcasing a hypodecent drill, that one drop rule. And a hypodescent mannerism is fatwa, no choice. In all this, the worst is any intractable bad governance that sounds more Fatwa than anything else.

Segun Fajemisin (April 15, 2002) writing on poverty states that one item that conspicuously dominates conversations is the issue of poverty at home. He argues that it may strike one as a complex subject, but is equally worthwhile to tackle its forms and delusions as a tool of political empowerment for poor people. This is especially so when the question of pauperization of the larger majority is pitched against the fact of the country's wealth being shared among a tiny few of the privileged ruling class and their cronies. Life and culture under the banner of poverty is a denial of the restoration of human dignity.

Two kinds of poverty, namely material, hinged on financial definition and mind capacity, tied to positive thinking have been made to face Nigeria by the so-called Ex-generals, the third, if we may add it, developed on ethnic and religious conflicts and the inability of the leaders to confront and solve them. The most alarming therefore is what Segun Fajemisin calls poverty of knowledge, thought and ideas. The fundamental problem with Nigeria lies in this with the Ex-generals who in the process of thinking so little, act so fatwally. By extension, poverty is an insidious enemy, so ludicrous, so damning and so daunting, it is a national stigma. We view with Segun, and conclude, that poverty is a comic strip and failings of the original development politics of man, life and culture so futilely exacerbated by the Ex-generals. At the level of presidency, they are misfits, and should be denied further opportunity to occupy that post. Instead of trashing them by way of death to the bins, we suggest that they be rather utilized as Ombudsmen, in other words, as members of the old guard for some considered related duties in their field of lives when it is necessary. Let their intrusive roles not be considered in the way responsible ex-generals live, such as in Israel, the USA and elsewhere.

Let us tease out the notion of poverty a little further and weigh the state of Nigerian governance through it. A tale of some memoir. First, this is important because the Nigerian people were promised of poverty alleviation by the present government. Second, the successive governments in Nigeria had each in turn considered the poverty question and failed. Third, the international donor community is outraged for the non performance of the various governments in Africa regarding the persistence of life and culture below the poverty line. All these culminate in a definition of economic Fatwa imposed by poverty of leadership since the ultimate consequence is death. Haba, the so-called religious Fatwa is troubling because a hungry man does not worship, if he does, it is to act out the tensions of life, power and distinction imposing that hardship. Self-stomach leaders of distinction and power are perpetrators of economic Fatwa. They are in some way the non-uniformed soldiers of economic terrorism, trained in the dreams and sweet ways of inventing time and again broken down promises to raise the poor man's hope, and thereby turn around to diminish his personhood and development. The hard issue is this. Poverty like Fatwa shortens lives and at the end of the day kills.

A Nigerian, in the light of the above, does not require a dictionary to be explained poverty. We won't do that here either. Yet poverty is generally defined in popular Nigeria language as a contagious affliction. One that is poor is the one that is deprived, materially, culturally, and politically. Such a poor one when structurally made to remain underprivileged; and moreover, conditionally limited to think and act boldly is said to have no voice in the scheme of the society. Poverty turns someone into a social mannequin piss or dummy. That much is known. And that much also is a discomfort made to occur by the instrumental forces of poverty. Start from a family household and down to the maximal community. Ability to eat the number of relevant and necessary square meals, actively participate in social and cultural activities, attend school, gain employment, hold leadership, serve and become served, take titles that promote the redistribution of wealth and social capital, are meant to serve good life. But what is good life when the Nigerian electorate is educated to ask for fertilizer, rice and salt during political campaign?

Merely, it is because for long, those items are the only visible items that come their way, the rest is history. So they ask for them. When a politician is consistently distributing rice and salt to beg for votes, and obtains the votes that start him off in office, the rest is also story. The elected all of a sudden becomes the Big Chief and the electorate as usual remains a beggar to the promises he had been made. Unfortunately, there has never been an empowered youth and stable adult social and political institutions to call the likes of non performing government to order without being abused, labelled and victimized. Credibility is not built on systematic and consistent performance but rather on how many rituals; bags of reciprocity and rigging accords are struck, policed, monitored and executed.

Rethinking all these and acting right in time to throw out all these frustrating perpetrators of our hardship is now through the up-coming elections in April 2003. Responsible display of collective action and coalitions to march with the dominant forces should be taken seriously.

(To be continued in Part 2)