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[email protected] Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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THE PRINCE OF THE NIGER:
HIMSELF FIRST, FOREMOST AND ONLY

The prince of the Niger knew our people. He understood the problems they all face: poverty and want. If only he can dish out a few leftovers here and there, they will all be his servants and sidekicks. All he needed are a group of eternally appreciative loudmouths who can chorus his wonder-deeds like parrots. He will take the lion share and leave the ant rations to the shameless louts who wants anything at all. He would take in billions of dollars and spread the thousands around. He did this successfully and was happy with himself, because he escaped, stepping aside across the Niger. He was never called to answer for anything, yet all the chaos and the logjam were traceable to his evil genius and maradona dribbles. The selfish can never tell when to stop and when to quit, at least the oil has not dried up yet and there is no one who can stop him from grabbing all he can grab.

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Then came Abdukarim Adisa, a badly trained and ill-equipped soldier. He had joined the Nigerian Army as an apprentice driver along with the likes of Sani Abacha and many others at a time no one well born and well bred will move near the barracks or have anything to do with it, as only bastards in those days join the army. Adisa made it beyond his wildest dreams and rose to become Works minister. Not a small achievement for a man who cannot write a good sentence of English and whose brains are as blank as his master's. Adisa was grateful and wanted to be eternally grateful to his master, so he initiated the Project 007. Remember James Bond? The James Bond tradition lives forever but Abdukarim Adisa is gone for good; he did not wait to die for the prince of the Niger, his promise to do so went unfulfilled by the intervention of the Supreme Being. He died from the wounds he sustained from a car accident some months ago. His master was there at his burial but there will be no Project 007 for Adisa. Now he will have to account for his stewardship and servitude to God and explain how important is the self-interest of his master more important than the collective will of his paymaster. He left behind a hotel and a community bank. The community bank he set up in the name of his father but with his own photograph and signature! When he decided to punish his employee, the community bank manager some years ago, the whole thing backfired and Femi Falana exposed Adisa to the world. In any case, Adisa did not live long enough to realize his 007 dreams. Of course not many take his like seriously, except in his exposure of the involvement of Oladipo Diya in the coup plot they both put together against Abacha. No one was surprised that Oladipo Diya prostrated before Abacha and begged for forgiveness, for his life to be spared. They all want to return to their loots and that is the way most Nigerians do business - eating your cake and keeping it, taking only the goodies and answering to no misdeeds.

The prince of the Niger shared the goodies and made a fraction rich while the populace went without - without food, water, house, road, school, hospital and electricity. He had taken the sick child of an editor and his family overseas for medical treatment, all expenses paid by the Nigerian taxpayer, not by the prince of the Niger. The editor became forever grateful to his Excellency. Some called it good work, but it is nothing but a shut-him-up effort. The best way to buy your way around editors is to give them something like a brown envelope or a big deal medical favour. Since the hospitals are not there (well, only there in name and without necessary equipment) and the child requires overseas treatment, how nice will it be for his Excellency to show some milk of kindness to a common citizen and editor! The editor remained forever grateful, but his conscience was mortgaged forever and ever. He did not publish the story and was unable to openly express his appreciation to the prince of the Niger.

While the prince of the Niger was "helping" a few and making life unbearable for millions, his spouse was busy stocking up on clothes. Her suppliers cannot sell any material sold to her to anyone else. She would have no one wear the same dress or shade/colour of dress with her. Her level of illiteracy was so unusual you won't want to cross her path. Her world and his were built around marabouts, juju men and their likes. Some Fridays were for sacrifices. The food is sent around the Dodan Barracks. Only the wise avoid it, only take it and later discard it on their way home. Monday/Tuesday circulates the news of the death of one or two sacrifice eaters around the same Barrack. The nice and generous prince of the Niger and his spouse are leaving behind deaths and doom for many, including the nation.

At other times, he gave notes to his friends for executive positions in banks and national agencies. The managing directors of the establishments received the notes asking him or her to "assist the bearer" with a specific job appointment. The message was clear: give the job to this candidate if you still hope to keep you own. In so doing, so many misfits found themselves into executive positions in major Nigerian banks. The good man image of the prince of the Niger went beyond helping his sidekicks with jobs; he generously awarded contracts to many of them and allowed others to steal while holding state offices. Carefully he kept their dossier should a sidekick turn rebellious. He kept enough evidence of their misdeeds and used his goons at the State Security Service (SSS) to monitor their every move - he does not take chances. Not taking chances is vital for gangsters and mob kings who in their very selfish trades and businesses of helping themselves to what belonged to others or providing deadly goods to the unwary would stop at nothing to eliminate -other choice words are fix, liquidate, take care of) imagined and perceived enemies and wayward sidekicks. That was where the likes of Togun and Akilu served meritoriously and were rewarded with a lot of goodies. The first was that restless, sharp-nosed American trained journalist who revolutionized the world of newsmagazine in Nigeria. In the "me first, foremost and only" world of the prince of the Niger no one turns him down; never accept no for an answer, you either play ball or brave the bullet, or the bomb. By the time the dust settled the rest of the band just went quiet and remained gentle forever. The agents did not give them enough room, regularly choked them, muffled their voice and squeeze adverts out of their business. Above all, they were not men enough to continue the struggle, and that was when they lost key colleagues who opted to be counted and gave life to Tell, Tempo and The News.

The generous prince of the Niger spread out his men across the nation. They had full impunity as long as they demonstrated full commitment and devotion to his majesty. Everywhere from government-owned newspapers to federal ministries, state governments and the federal agencies, he loaded with his boys, and they got a name for themselves after his initials, international bad boy. The signalman was in Lagos, a place considered strategic and a prime target for coup-happy soldiers. Raji Rasaki brought his troubled motor park boys English to Lagos state. He was a laughing stock and centre of all the jokes of Lagos State civil servants. Such phrases like "who bild dis gader" and "remaind me dat system again for hawa skols, oh yes, sixty-three, thirty-four", the blank-headed illiterate blurted out.

By 1993 the construction giant involved in most of the roads and bridges constructions in the state were literally flooding his building site in Ibadan with sharp stone, gravel and soft sand. For months a friend wondered who the rich man using choice sands and materials was, each time be drove by the site in Bodija, Ibadan. Then one day he saw the shun-of-the-shoil wearing a sport suit and standing beside an unmarked car. My friend was shocked: "The social misfit and bastard! He is the one building this house! He must be getting the materials for free from the German company." But that was the way things went then. The generous, gap-toothed guy well cheated by nature in the height department with oversize ego and huge appetite for greed. He empties and loot and allow his boys to take, shake and be happy. After Raji Eleran came the naval boy, who cleaned up the state's accounts and build his high rises off Osborne Road in Ikoyi. The story was similar in all the states. In Ogun another naval boy cleaned up and moved the cars and cash of the state to Ilorin, to live in opulence ever after.

Recently I went to one of our local libraries in North York in search of some magazines and books. Kept aside by the library entrance were some volumes, tapes, compact discs, DVDs, Maps, etc. the library management had withdrawn. Such books are offered for sale at next to peanuts. I moved closer to take a look at the books and my eyes fell on a book with the map of Africa at the centre. It was The State of the World Atlas by Michael Kidron and Ronald Segal. The book was subtitled The Unique Visual Survey of Political, Economic and Social Trends. It was a book that will bring any concerned Nigerian to tears. It provided a comparative analyses of the quality of life, illiteracy, life expectancy, breadlines, wasting lives, rich and poor, connections, body politics, plagues new and renewed, and several other topics and contents. It gave numbers to the years the prince of the Niger perched himself on the head of the nation, milking, crushing, spitting, gnawing, and brutalising our people. We were listed as a conduit for drugs, a trade the prince and his madam are said to know one or two things about. Remember how he came on the NTA around his last days getting taller and falling in height with a forlorn look? He was in another planet that day, far away from the people whose lives and future a toyed with.

The number of people per hospital bed by the time the son of perdition left office was 599 while purchasing power per person stood at US$310 from nearly US700 when he gunned his way to power! At the same time the national central government spending per head was US$200 and 30% as a proportion of output (GDP). Nigeria was ranked among the few nations running a maximum dictatorship. The prince of the Niger's big village fiefdom was listed among States with gross infringements of freedoms of belief, expression, communication and movement. The regime was regarded as "draconian, with imprisonment, or worse, for holding views hostile to the state or its representatives, or withholding public support for them". Other nations in that category then were China, Libya, Zaire, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. Regarded as "the three monkeys" of abridged citizens' freedom to hold opinions, to express them, and to travel, the prince of the Niger was an unusual pervert who smiled a lot while brutalizing and crushing innocent souls and impoverishing the masses at a time when crude oil price jumped to over $65 a barrel in the world market. In fact, that was actually the time Raji Rasaki cut stationery supplies to state government offices including the Teaching Service Commission.

Comparing nations under the subtitle "God and Caesar" in the early 1990s, the study grouped our nation under "states with no official belief" but with glaring "favouritism in practice". The prince of the Niger has no regard for Christianity and no respect for Southern Nigeria Muslims. When the new mosque in Tunubu, the Lagos Central Mosque was opened, the descendant of evil became an emergency imam because he and his northern fellows just could not imagine standing behind an inferior Southern Muslim to pray. Sadly that was a mosque in which Wahab Iyanda Folawiyo put in nearly a quarter of the total cost and a mosque owned and built by the Yoruba people of Lagos. It was surprising that the people there that day condescended so low to stand behind a dirty rag like the prince of the Niger, but I guess they all wanted connection, contract and access to the corridor of power, the three Cs of our society. Without connection to the prince of the Niger many felt they would not make it. Without his dirty contracts a lot fear poverty will be their lot, and many are desperate to gain unfair access to the corridor of power, which they thought was the only way to getting whatever they want. The backdoor mentality is destroying our nation but it is people like the prince of the Niger who rigorously encourage and made it a state policy.

"State Terror" defined as nations that "deal harshly with their citizens" and where the state terrorizes citizens features our nation prominently. Considered a state where killing is licensed, we were ranked among nations that retained and used licensed killings for ordinary crimes.

Funny Money was another subtitle. "Inflation", went on the authors, "victimizes the most vulnerable in society who lack the means and skills to exploit its distortions. It is a classic way by which the state effectively repudiates its debt". In this category, inflation and rising prices was put at over 50%. And to make matters worse, we were listed under "smoking guns" as a state at war, a continuing war. The wars we engaged in were man-made wars; wars made by the prince himself to keep the prince in power and to subdue the nation. These were wars he engineered to protect himself only. For these reasons and many more, we must be vigilant and careful, active and participative, ready to prevent the evil genius from moving close to any where else other than a single government institution, the maximum prison where he truly belong.