Of Adenike Grange and co: A national malaise

If there is anything the latest corruption scan dal in the Ministry of Health has demonstrated, it is that this country, in the words of my friend, retired Col. Dangiwa Umar, is rotten through and through. Coming on the heels of, and taken together with, the disturbing revelations on the monumental mess in the power sector during General Obasanjo’s government, it is easy to come to the conclusion that there is no hope for poor Nigeria.

What makes corruption endemic and possibly uneradicatable in Nigeria, in my view, are two things:

The first, and foremost, is that we are yet to have a nation we all can believe in and love. Maybe we have a ‘country’ in name, but we have no Nation! Yes, we may mouth ‘loving’ Nigeria, but it is merely the sort of love one may have for the chicken – eyed lovingly only for its reserved place in the soup pot! The love we have for Nigeria is for the wrong reasons: we love her for the endless opportunity she provides of easy money; we love her for the mindless power game that prevails; we love her for the jungle land she is, where we can do anything and get away with it; we love her for the lawlessness that abounds. When we are outside of Nigeria, we are like fish out of water and we rush to get back – simply because Nigeria is where “it is happening” – the big peculiar mess!

Nigeria is like a big whale stranded in shallow water and washed ashore. Everyone brings out the cutlass, the axe, and the knife to get his or her own slice of the poor alive animal! In saner climes, the concerted effort would be to help the poor whale back into the sea, and free!

Second, is the total collapse of moral values in Nigeria. This is not the place to trace the genesis of it, but somewhere along the way, those values that are cardinal in the sustenance of a nation – work ethics, dignity of labour, pride in honesty, dedication to duty, sacrificing for the common good – have long gone to the dogs. In their stead have we embraced the dogma of the “end justifying the means”, worshipping the god of filthy lucre such that, rather than boo and ostracise the rogues in our midst, we hail and welcome them with open arms. We crown them and reserve for them a place on the “high table”.

The measure of Man for us has become the number of his mansions and the array of his limousines. Our youth stand by watching and imbibing what they see as the dominant values!

What lessons are there to learn where and when those governors and their cohorts who have stolen billions of naira (in some instances, of dollars!) still strut about like lords, are given bails and even allowed to go on holiday abroad; we stand up and offer them our seats in public places? What lessons are there to learn where and when those who have wrought so much misery on us are still left to be BOT chairmen of political parties and toasted here and there?

Health minister, Dr. Adenike Grange, and a number of her team, may have gone down today, but it is meaningless. Obasanjo also sacrificed Professor Osuji, then Minister of Education, over even lesser crime. Who could have imagined the leprous rottenness in which all of the Obasanjo government was embroiled while showing off the eczema that Osuji was? We are talking of corruption in the billions of naira, here, there, and everywhere!

We hope Yar’Adua will not let the Granges be mere scapegoats while worse things are being perpetrated. I wish Yar’Adua well in his fight against corruption, but the hydra-headed monster would have to be fought on all fronts. First we need a Nation, we need moral rebirth.

But, importantly, unless we begin to distance ourselves from, and ostracise, the rogues in our midst, sad to say, we strive but in vain!

Re: Victor Banjo, wherein lies the truth?

Dear Mr. Fagbenle,
I had read some of the stories about the tragic end of Lt. Col. Victor Adebukunola Banjo. It has been unfortunate that his perception of the Nigerian political situation as of then was wrongly or rightly understood first by his superior and later by his peers.
It was an unfortunate situation that he was imprisoned by his boss only to die in the hand of his friend.

However, your analysis deviated from the issue of Victor Banjo to attack on personalities that are not part of Victor Banjo issue. You, as a typical Nigerian, never divorced yourself from the hatred of old. You treated the Jan 15, 1966 killing of the Nigerian Prime Minister and other leaders of Northern extraction and their allies with little concern.

This is evident from paragraph 7 of your article, where you stated: “Lt. Col. Banjo certainly wasn’t part of the Ifeajuna-led military putsch (emphasis mine) of January 15, 1966 of which Major Kaduna Nzeogwu was a “hero” of sorts.

Here clearly, the January 15, 1966 killing of Nigeria leadership was only a putsch instead of an unfortunate killing.

Down the line in your article, your hatred found another Nigerian of Northern extraction in person of Lt. Gen. T.Y. Danjuma. As you stated, “Within a month or two of this warning, Gen. Ironsi and Fajuyi fell victim to Banjo’s prophesy, arrested and murdered by treacherous officers led by one of the evilest officers ever produced by the Nigerian Army, a then Major Theophilus Danjuma………”

This shows your type and the continuous hatred for some set of people within our nation. How come Lt. Gen. Danjuma became one of the evilest officers ever produced by the Nigerian Army? Basically because of the anger of July 29,1966.

The major problem with most of us in Nigeria is that we deliberately close our minds to the root cause of the anger that led to the unfortunate killing of July 29, 1966.

Let it be known that life is life, all equal before God, whether Commander-in-Chief or any other Nigerian. The lives of the Nigerians that died during the civil war were at no instance inferior to those leaders that died before them.

Therefore, if people were killed and nothing happened, others felt betrayed and carried out revenge, how then will the lives of those that died later become more important than those that died before them? How then Danjuma became evil and Nzeogwu became a hero of sorts. This is the unfortunate character of people as shown by you.

It is my belief that until people like you genuinely feel the way Northerners felt when their eyes were being plucked out, your continuous hatred will lead us to nowhere.

The hue and cry about the July 29, 1966 is taken too far. If there was no killing on January 15, 1966, there wouldn’t have been killing on July 29, 1966.

It is unfortunate that during fatal crisis, people died and Nigerians painfully died on January 15, 1966 and July 29, 1966; and sadly for three years innocent Nigerians died as the result of your “putsch” of January 15, 1966.

Finally, let us use our energy to discuss issues of human importance and not to be fanning hatred against groups or individuals.

Thanks and I hope to see your response.
Agbudada Jibatswen (agbudada@yahoo.com

Dear Agbudada,
I think I made it clear that though the need to rescue the country from the drift of the time had sympathy of a number of Nigerians, the manner of executing it by those five Majors and their abettors on January 15, 1966 was, in the words I used, abhorrent.

I did not and could not have condoned the killing of innocent lives. And if Nzeogwu was a "hero" of sorts (even the Nigeria military government of General Gowon gave him a hero's burial of sorts though he died fighting for Biafra), so was Danjuma, I'm sure, at least to some people like you.

Nigeria Army has unfortunately produced soldiers who were evil, officers that were not gentlemen. Those who carried out the killings of Jan 15 were as much evil as those who carried out the "retaliatory" attack of July 29, of which Danjuma numbered one. I have no apologies for that.

What makes Danjuma the worse is his hand in many other actions that have placed Nigeria in the horrible and ignominious position she finds herself today, not the least his helping to foist another evil, Obasanjo, on us.

Nigeria Army and Nigeria have been the worse for having the likes of these two, amongst others of their ilk. Everything that the army stood for was eroded and destroyed, and the rot began way back upon the July 29, 1966 counter-coup when a corporal refused to take orders from a Brigadier (Ogundipe) on account of the brigadier belonging to a wrong ethnic group. And the Danjumas of the time encouraged the insubordination and tribalism from which the Nigerian military has not recovered.

Lt. Col Victor Banjo’s lament throughout the period of his unjust incarceration was on the palpable ruin being visited upon the Nigeria Army, an institution in which he had invested so much faith and hope.

I read lately General Danjuma’s diatribe against his erstwhile military colleague and friend, General Obasanjo, and my tummy churned. His vituperations were shameless, jilted-lover stuff worthy of the “school for scandal”; not one to be associated, under any circumstance, with a military general of another military colleague. It is just not done.

But I can imagine an Obasanjo vomitting similarly upon Danjuma or anyone else. They are two of a kind, the more pity for Nigeria.

The Danjumas of the Nigerian Army have to explain how they came about the billions of dollars they own today and use to our peril.

If killing the Army and killing our economy is not evil then I wonder what is.
Thanks.