FEATURE ARTICLE

Babs AjayiSunday, November 20, 2011
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Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

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MEN OF HONOUR TURNED DOWN WORTHLESS NATIONAL HONOURS

chebe turned down the honour again!"

"Who told you that?"

"I read it in the newspapers. He said the honours are worthless."


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"Did he use that very word 'worthless' to describe the CFR offered to him?"

"What is CFR, is that what they offered him?"

"Yes they offered Achebe CFR, and CFR could be an acronym for Commander of the Fools' Republic or even Crooks Full Republic."

"But why didn't they ask him first before making the announcement?"

"I don't know, but now they must bear the shame of rejection and I can see it hurts badly."

"I know the rejection hurt so badly, but the whole nation is behind Achebe. What will he do with a worthless honour like that when things are no longer at ease in the land?"

"I heard he rejected the honour because he feels things have fallen apart and the centre cannot hold."

"Jonathan should not bother, at least Allison-Madueke will accept. Any award or honour is welcome and the more the worthless an award the better than no award."

"Why bother about those who least deserve our national honour? I think that is the more reason respectable and worthy men and women won't touch the national honour."

"I wonder why the national honours are dashed out to every lowlife and the very worthless in the land, all because such people hold positions they are least qualified for."

"That is Nigeria for you. Nothing has changed even with a few new faces in positions of authority; it is still business as usual and who-you-know, not what you bring and what you can do."

"Achebe said nothing has changed since he first rejected the award in 2004."

"I agree with him, or has anything changed?"

"Well, you see, I think there was no Boko Haram then and there was no good luck to hope for."

"Are you saying we are now in luck even as Boko Haram is ruling the land and has remained unstoppable? Do you remember that even the last independence celebration was moved from Abuja to the TBS in Lagos after Boko Haram threatened to unleash bombs on Abuja?"

"I remember and noticed that even the president is careful where he goes and appear confined these days."

"Who wants to die, my brother?"

"We are in a sorry pass and something must give."

"What must give? The polity is in disarray but looting goes on and the person who cannot account for our oil wealth and whose integrity has been called to question repeatedly has also been offered one of those worthless national honours."

"It beats me. How do you honour a minister that most of the nation would rather have removed for incompetence and various acts of dishonesty? I just cannot imagine Achebe agreeing to share the same platform with such a questionable character."

"She is not the only one with dubious and questionable character on the honours' list."

"Then the honours' list is unworthy of true men and women of integrity and solid achievements. In one word, the Nigerian honours have gone to the dogs."

"The list was supposed to be a mixed bag of worthy achievers and pretenders to worthiness; that is the way we do our own thing."

"Even the Inspector General of Police and the other service chiefs - some will say service thieves - were all dashed high honours at a time when the average Nigerian can hardly sleep with both eyes closed and Boko Haram has taken over, literally."

"But that is not a good way of doing things - no integrity, honesty or candor in the whole process, which is why Achebe will not accept the paper-weight honour, and I don't blame him. Even Femi Gbajabiamila has also rejected the OFR offered to him."

"You mean someone else has also rejected one of these worthless awards? Who is this Femi Gbajabiamila and why did didn't he accept the award?"

"He is the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives and he is a member of the ACN, the Action Congress of Nigeria."

"I have never heard of him, but why did he reject the honour?"

"He said he has not done enough to merit the award of OFR."

"I think the IGP and the service chiefs believed they have done enough, I am not surprised because that is what they live for. Do you also ever wonder why names of elected and appointed officials are always included in the list? Why must someone be rewarded with national honour just for the mere reason that he or she occupies a position?"

"I did not expect Jonathan to continue that meaningless tradition. Everyone who occupies the post of president, vice president, senate president, speaker of the house, chief justice, and such positions are dashed national honours, why?"

"It is part of our entitlement mentality. We are a people who put so much force behind the attitude of entitlement."

"It is for this particular reason and other related reasons that many do not consider the Nigerian national honours worth the paper they are written on and �."

"Just imagine some of the people who hold our national honours: Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Obasanjo, Jeremiah Useni, Ismaila Gwazo, and their ilk. You just don't want to be on the same list with these people."

"I know you don't want to find your name on the same list as the people you listed because you may easily be mistaken for a thief and a coup plotter."

"Oh, you are right; the list resembles a who-is-who in the mismanagement and looting of Nigeria, however, you forgot to mention Atiku Abubakar, Umaru Yar'Ardua, Shonekan, Akhigbe, Aikhomu, Inde Dikko, and many others. I am not even sure if James Ibori does not hold one of those national honours as well."

"I don't think so, because that will make my stomach turn in disgust."

"Are you not sick the way tings are already? If you are not let me tell you that I am very sick of everything."

"Someone even told me the other day that he felt sick and fed up with the no-action plan of Good Joe. He said the guy has done nothing since he took over."

"Has he done anything meaningful? Tell me one single thing he has done."

"I don't know. I wasn't expecting him to do anything."

"Do you think the masses of Nigeria weren't expecting him to do some things to make their lives better."

"I think he's planning to do something for them in January 2012. He wants to prevent Nigeria from crashing and going into extinction."

"And what is that?"

"He is planning to remove subsidy on petroleum products and introduce fair pump price. He will remove subsidy from kerosene and every other petroleum product."

"Is that how he plans to improve the lives of our people? Is there a way getting Good Joe to know the cost price of those products now and the pain involved in getting these basic products?"

"Does he even know the state of the refineries?"

"I think it is a clever ploy. A government fails its people by not being able to manage refineries and instead buy refined petroleum products from overseas at above market value costs, and then vowed to remove the subsidy on the fraudulent prices he is selling the products to the people!"

"That is a mark of a genius. For a nation that produces crude oil and is selling more than two million barrels of crude oil a day but it cannot refine a fraction of that for local consumption, it is nothing but failure at national level. But for those who failed the people to now want to make the same people pay exorbitant prices for products that should be very cheap and very available is singularly Nigerian."

"Good Joe and his legion of advisors must return to retreat in Obudu to rethink the logic and argument Otedola offered him, because it is not making sense to anyone beside Otedola, and Allison-Madueke and her media mongers."

"I do not even think Nigeria should be selling crude oil at all; we ought to focus on selling refined petroleum products only, which will bring us more profit as a nation, create hundreds of jobs, and we can then sell at competitive prices."

"There are too many rotten eggs in our system and they are responsible for the huge poverty in the nation."

"Hmm, have you read Gbajabiamila's press release when he rejected the national honour and pleaded to be allowed to contribute something before he is honoured?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you sounded like him - almost verbatim as what Gbajabiamila said about rotten eggs on the national honours' list. He then said the whole thing has been reduced to a national joke."

"I agree with him; it is all a huge joke and the joke is on the worthless and rotten eggs on the honours' lists, current and past lists; people who looted the nation and loathed its people in equal measure."

"It is only in Nigeria that a national honours' list is essentially made up of those who have not distinguished themselves in any way. We have chosen to reserve our national honours exclusively for lowlifes and losers."

"It is a list of thieves, robbers, fraudsters, four-one -niners, national cheats, part-time officer holders with full-time looting careers, other miscreants, sidekicks, and a sprinkle of highly successful men and women."

"The list is a shameful one and you would expect Good Joe to move away from such jokes."

"He is not different from those before him, or how do you account for his appointment of nearly two dozens of special advisers and some despicable ministerial appointments such as Allison-Madueke, who is also unfortunately on the honours list! It makes Good Joe look very bad in the eyes of decent people."

"Some people don't turn anything down; they just accept it and wish for more, even when they don't deserve anything, but I think Achebe needs to rewrite or at least update his book, The Trouble with Nigeria."

"I agree since our troubles have mounted and there are no honest and sincere solutions in the horizon. Achebe needs to proffer solutions to the nation's problems because those who hold offices for that purpose are either inadequate, dishonest and/or insincere about solving the problems."

"It is good he turned down the worthless honour."

"I agree with his decision; he cannot let men of questionable honour grant him national honour in the company of other men and women of dishonor and thieves."

"Essentially you cannot give what you don't have; neither can you offer a product you don't stock."

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