The pot at the rainbows end by Is’haq Modibbo Kawu

IT took the WALL STREET
JOURNAL, WSJ, last week, to lift
the lid on the murky world of
payments which the Nigerian
government makes to Niger
Delta warlords.
The report, appropriately titled,
“NIGERIA’S FORMER OIL
BANDITS NOW COLLECT
GOVERNMENT CASH”, tell the
tale of how lumpen criminals
took up arms against the
Nigerian state and successfully
went for the economy’s jugular
and came close to bleeding it to
death.
A weak and near-prostate state,
rolled over by corruption sued
for peace, using an amnesty
programme that worked so
remarkably well, since oil
production went back to
‘normal’.
The price paid for normalcy,
was the huge transfer of funds
to the former warlords; these
include Asari Dokubo who “once
stalked the mangrove-choked
creeks of the Niger Delta, a leaf
stuck to his forehead for good
luck, as a crew that he ran bled
oil from pipelines and sold it to
smugglers”.
By 2011, NNPC “began paying
him $9 million a year”. It was,
therefore, no surprise, with
hindsight, that Dokubo became
a rabid defender of the
Jonathan administration,
hurling abuses and threats of
war at imaginary ‘Northern’
enemies of the regime that
pays him so much from the
nation’s coffers.
These payments for the crime
of treason do not stop with
Dokubo. Two others, ‘Generals’
Boyloaf and Ateke Tom collect
$3.8 million annually, while the
most important amongst the
Niger Delta warlords,
Government ‘Tompolo’
Ekpemupolo, in the words of
WSJ “maintains a $22.9 million
a year contract…” with the
Jonathan administration.
Rabid defender
As the WSJ report noted, “the
gilded pacification campaign…
has sent young men in Nigeria’s
turbulent delta a different
message; that militancy
promises more rewards than
risks”.
And if anyone doubted that, the
fact that oil theft has reached
over 150 thousand barrels per
day now, only confirms the
worst case. Those who indulge
WSJ’s bandits probably have
‘good intentions’ but as we all
know, the road to hell has often
been paved with such good
intentions!
Nigeria has deteriorated so
badly, especially since the
mid-1980s, as a combination of
the corruption of military
dictatorship and the economic
doctrines they imposed
unleashed the worst excesses of
criminality in our society.
Many individuals and groups
correctly saw that the state
itself has morphed into an
instrument aiding the
perpetration of crime in the
hands of criminal elite groups.
These individuals and groups
also began anti-state acts of
criminality, which grew in
increasing sophistication.
In the Niger Delta, with a
history of neglect and the
combustible but lucrative mix
of oil, criminals and bandits
could exploit genuine
grievances about the state of
neglect to organise very
successful activities that nearly
paralysed the Nigerian state.
Two groups of criminals: those
that control the levers of state
power and needing to oil those
levers with oil money and their
criminal allies and adversaries
(the relationship continuously
evolves depending on
circumstance) who burst
pipelines to steal oil, with ‘leaf
stuck on…forehead for good
luck’, actually represent all that
is wrong with our country
today.
Both groups live on unearned
money taken at the expense of
the genuine needs of the
Nigerian people. The two
groups of bandits also do a
serious damage to the ethical
basis of our society; they
subvert hard work, as the basis
of advancement in society.
It is not surprising that those
who consciously chose to
commit treasonable crimes
against Nigeria’s economic
wellbeing get paid millions of
dollars annually as a pension
for their lives of crime. These
funds are taken directly from
the NNPC.
But if we feel angry about that
fact, in which way is the
absurdity of the situation any
different or less annoying, than
the fact that since 1999
especially, we have had high
positions in government
occupied by fraudsters,
certificate forgers and
barefaced thieves?
Haven’t our legislative houses
become redoubts for armed
robbers, drug barons, thieves
and certificate forgers? What is
the quality of a lot of the
people we have recruited as
local government councilors and
chairmen; or state governors?
In a sense, we could extend the
absurdity of the situation, by
saying that the Niger Delta
bandit ‘Generals’ receiving
millions of dollars as payment
for their treasonable acts even
‘worked harder’, endangering
their lives in the creeks, than
those who sit comfortably
inside air-conditioned
government houses, legislative
chambers or offices just to
fleece all of us!
But beyond such absurdity, is
the fact that between the two
groups of bandits is a country
left prostrate and citizens in
dire straits, while they steal
resources that should be taking
the country away from chronic
underdevelopment. The ethos
of hardwork has suffered
almost irreparably in our
country, with young and old
alike, looking for miracles to
short circuit genuine effort.
I recall two similar tales of
search for wealth without
hardwork; that about the
rainbow that appears after
rainfall as a huge serpent; the
dung would turn to gold if one
somehow, could collectit. And
the other was the migrant
goblin with a mat and his
eternal cry; snatch the mat and
you would become rich!
In secondary school, I once saw
the futility of such an effort to
snatch the goblin’s mat by a
fellow student. But the ease
with which the Niger Delta
bandit ‘Generals’ are collecting
millions of dollars from state
coffers as reward for treason
and the related manner our
thieving elite loots the country,
one would be right to conclude
that there is reward afterall, in
spending time looking for the
gold pot at the rainbow’s end
or looking for mats to snatch
from goblins.
But in truth, no nation can
prosper by appeasement of its
bandits; neither bandits in the
creeks nor those in
airconditioned offices. If we do
not re-instate the ethos of
hardwork and honest labour as
well as recruit responsible
leadership to lead the process
of development, we will literally
kill our country!
Cynthia on our hearts
WHEN the story of the tragic
killing of the beautiful Cynthia
Osokogu broke last week, it got
a deserved place on the front
page of practically every
Nigerian newspaper. The sheer
tragedy of the killing of a 24-
year-old, with a whole lifetime
ahead of her, was so heart-
rendering in the first place. But
as the story unfolded, there
were many related issues which
made it so compelling and sad.
How did she become so trusting
of people she hardly knew
beyond the virtual, make
believe world of FACEBOOK?
Why did she accept a flight
ticket, was received at the
airport by the crooks,
accommodated in an hotel and
the tragic sequence of sedation,
chaining, raping and tragic
killing?
I ask those questions as a
parent of young girls too and
these questions must trouble
every parent about the way our
children socialize in the context
of the milieu that post-modern
capitalism has fostered around
the world. In the advanced
capitalist countries, there is a
deep-seated alienation and
atomization of the individual.
The eternal invention of gadgets
and make belief, help to make
the individual a consenting part
of the process of capitalist
exploitation. Freedom has
turned into an illusion and the
citizen has morphed into just a
consumer; he/she hasn’t the
luxury of a pause as he is
inundated with credit, with
goods, with services and ever
more spaces of delusion and
fantasy to keep abreast with.
These societies use these
enveloping world of fantasy as
escapes for the atomized
individuals, but often even
these do not last. There are
regular orgies of violence;
individuals go loony and
sometimes carry out incredible
crimes.
Incestuous relationship
There are incestuous
relationships; ever more
sickening acts of sexual violence
or attraction to exotic religious
experiences.
But the state is very strong and
the hegemony of the ruling
classes is upheld. Individuals
are not allowed to be more
powerful than their society; and
even the scions of ruling
families will be sharply
reprimanded or punished for
the sake of the survival of their
hegemony.
Our post-colonial, neo-colonial
society carries the baggage of
underdevelopment, not just of
its productive forces but a
troubled mélange of traditional
norms and an eclectic
expression of modernity.
For the young people growing
up in our society, they were
born within the context of the
violence and corruption
associated with military
dictatorship; they have also
come to adulthood within the
irresponsibility associated with
civilian rule in the past 13
years.
There are very few positive role
models for a lot of the young
people growing up in our
society today and since the
Nigerian mutant strain of
capitalism does not valorize
hard work, young people
attracted to the glittering world
of capitalist consumerism, also
want a bite of the cherry, any
which way.
So while the ruling elite loots
the state, these young criminals
carry out scams on the internet;
rob or as we saw with Cynthia’s
tragic fate, set up young ladies
for fleecing after drugging and
raping them.
I honestly do not think we can
understand Cynthia’s tragic fate
and the boom in sexual crimes,
cultism in schools, the
expansive use of drugs and the
associated violent crimes among
young people, without placing
them in the necessary
sociological context.
So when universities deny that
the individuals arrested for the
tragic killing of the young girl,
are their students, they miss
the point.
The criminal actions of those
individuals do not only indict
whichever institutions they
attend alone, they indict our
society in general; the break
down of the family structure by
the rapacity of our version of
capitalism, where parents are
unable to provide for children
who now fend for themselves
using the proceeds of crime and
prostitution; the privatization of
the state as vehicles for an
elaborate process of corrupt
enrichment by a ruling elite
with the consequent institution
of an uncaring ethos of
individualism where it has
become legitimate to prey on
the neighbour.
These take place against the
background of the worldwide
dominance of post-modern
capitalism and its consumerist
appeals to people, especially
the young. Our society is
indicted that we have produced
the types with the criminal
mind to do all they did to such
a promising young lady.
And because we are parents, or
have sisters and friends, who
we don’t want such to happen
to, we need to be more
responsible parents, citizens
and leaders for the sake of
those we love. We should give
our hearts to Cynthia and the
family of General Osokogu in
this trying time for them, with
hope that we will learn and
teach lessons to all those we
love.

#CONSENSUS 2015