IROHINOODUA EDITORIAL August 09, 2018

Nigeria: Issues Beyond the DSS invasion


A generation that lacks honest leaders, yet blessed with people with poor sense of history

Armed Directorate for State Security, (DSS) in the early hours of Tuesday invaded the National Assembly. Different interpretations: Senate President Abubakar Bukola Saraki said the plan was to remove him. The ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC) said it had no hand in the plot. Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo reacted by sacking the DSS Director General, Lawal Daura.


It was the second time Daura would be sacked. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had sacked him. Due to pressure, his sack was converted to resignation. Daura is a man of many parts: he is from Daura, the President Mohammadu Buhari’s hometown. He is his cousin. He has 42 wives and numerous children. President Buhari went into the dust bin and brought him back to lead one of the most sensitive institutions in the country.


No doubt, faced with a porous leadership that lacks a think-thank, Saraki is ahead in twisting or presenting his own side. But the issues remain deeper than the public is made to believe. Saraki group said the plot was to remove him, but why was the National Assembly that morning occupied by PDP lawmakers alone? Was it a plot to remove President Buhari and the DSS acted to halt the move? Did Saraki collaborate with the DSS to create a scene so as to win public sympathy? Unfortunately, facts have been subsumed by a media that is equally corrupt, lazy and come to hasty conclusions based on the sly and deceitful statements of fraudulent politicians.

The invasion has polarized Nigerians along various leanings: Divergent views, however, converge somewhere: If there is anything Nigerians should agree on, it is the fact that the cycle and nature of political conflict since independence is similar, if not the same. Nigeria has never had a smooth sail on the democratic space since 1960, when the country weaned from British rule.

The second convergence is the fact that the rogue actors since 1960 and their current allies, are products of the same political tradition or their offspring, or of their tendencies. One other fact is that Politicians have managed to bewitch Nigerians to coward submission and trampling. The country is bedeviled by a succession of carefully hatched troubles, to the extent that the earliest one is never resolved before it is overwhelmed by a fresh mayhem, only to be subsumed by another, and yet another, in an endless vicious agony engineered by a political class that sustains itself by keeping hope in perpetual suspense leaving the people thoroughly agonized, traumatised, bruised and most unfortunately, hopeless.

In the past six months, major crises have been initiated in quick secession to cover up potentials for meaningful resolution of any of them. Nigeria carries a huge deficit of woes to the delight of the ruling class but to the perpetual suffering of the people. Barely four years ago, it was first the backdoor, treacherous entry of the Senate President Saraki, then the horrendous corruption associated with the 4.8billion-dollar security slush funds-one politician took 2 billion for “prayers”, then corruption in the National Assembly running into billions, the NNPC scam of over 10billion dollars, then the illicit funds associated with the current Saraki, who has successfully maneuvered himself into heroism, then Boko Haram onslaught, then the Benue killings, then the Plateau and Taraba massacred.

These horrific scenes were followed by the kidnap of 108 Dapchi girls, then lately the buying of votes, inglorious and self-serving defections and now the DSS invasion. Next week, this will expire to be replaced by a new twist. In all, none of these major contradictions has been resolved, except that Nigerians have been programmed to forget immediate past misery in the razzmatazz of tribulations that keep the country perpetually in the filthy dungeon of underdevelopment. At each turn, the masses cheer and jeer, pitching their tents behind two evil blocs. The country is trapped and caught in the inglorious web of cyclic engagements by reprobate leaders behind which many Nigerians have pitched their tents shamefully. We may need a little lesson on where we are coming from at least since 2011. Bandits took over the country, public funds became a bazar. More than 100 billion dollars ended up in private hands. Spurred by public outrage, a section of the scallywag class realising the inevitability of a great fall of the rotten building they had helped to create in the first place, sought alliance with other interests, searched for a man with public goodwill as at the time and declared themselves as the new messiahs. A public that suffers continuous imposition of limited options, lost in the euphoria of a Buhari magic quickly voted to see exit of the criminals.

Today, there is a regroup of the obnoxious men, a realignment of evil forces bent on staging a comeback riding on the inept leadership and the ecstasy of public disenchantment with a rotten system carved by the same characters.

But in reality, nothing has changed. Nothing positive will ever come so soon. Of what benefit for Nigerians if the Saraki group come to lead Nigeria again? Saraki is in fact one of the most notorious rogue politicians that thrives on illicit funds, with the background of a family reputed for sleaze. Again, it is unfortunate that many Nigerians have failed to appreciate the frivolous reasons being advanced for the cross carpeting, either by APC or the PDP. There is nothing that suggests any love for the common man. If there is any disagreement at all, it is on the scramble tactics for the forbidden public funds and who should get what.

We must also admit that the reasons for the cross carpeting are not the same. Largely behind the motive is personal ambition and under what platform such could be realized. We cannot but admit the genuine grounds of some defectors like the Benue State Governor, Sam Ortom, whose territory has been turned into the land of blood, with the government turning its back. But for the Saraki ilk, the issue has nothing to do with the future of the people. His flirtation and blood-bound affinity with Ibrahim Babangida tell more chilling narratives.

In a sane society, Saraki should have resigned after the cross carpet. It is both a political, legal and moral issue. Morality has more strongholds on decent societies than law. That is why responsible leaders resign immediately a moral question is placed on their head. In a decent society, Saraki should not have become the Senate President in the first place with all his mucky past. Saraki represents the worst form of darkness and retrogression in any known political context. The dilemma of Nigeria is that democratic space has been seized by villainous and most undemocratic bigots who have now strengthened their criminal network using legitimate means and legal state structures.

Unfortunately, the past four years have seen complete neglect of the biggest affliction the country faces, which is The Need to Restructure-the root of many of the country’s infirmities. The masses should never be deluded to think the Saraki group will ever address this problem.

Let us look at the other side: Since 2014, we cannot deny some advancement in railways, revenue generation, neither can we claim ignorance that there is a real intention to fight corruption by President Buhari. But intentions are mere wishes. Yet the truth is that more stolen funds have been retrieved than in the past years. Also, since 2014, Nigeria has been compounded by a weak, uninspiring and ethno-centric leadership surrounded by people who think like those in the medieval age and whose most important agenda appears the domination of the country and the primitive control of all political institutions directly or by rookies. Buhari’s narrow prism of what Nigeria political structure should look like in the new century is characterized by obsolete ideas that could not even have been useful in the 1930s not to talk of the new millennium. However, it will be death-defying for Nigerians to forget about the past by opening up the space for the likes of Saraki and his pals with all the known evil they represent. Nigeria will move further backwards with the triumph of the new musketeers represented by the current Senate leadership. There can be no pathway to freedom than for the people to seize their own destiny in their own hands.