₦airaland Forum

You guys should go and read this awakening piece by Prof. Pius Akinasanmi, rather than posting things that are not beneficial to an average brain dead Nigeria http://saharareporters.com/column/2015-i-endorse-you-spectocrat-pius-adesanmi

Please read the commentary below by Prof. Pius Adesanmi.

http://saharareporters.com/column/2015-i-endorse-you-spectocrat-pius-adesanmi

We are a nation of 150 million spectators. In political discourse, we are arguably the world’s largest spectocracy. Our spectocratic tendency may be music in the ears of the English Premier League and other European football leagues which serve as national diversion from our sorrows, in the domain of political agency and participation, however, it makes us a thing, that insulted thing which is the exact opposite of a citizen. When next you call yourself a Nigerian citizen, you lie. You deceive yourself. You are not a citizen, Nigerian, you are a spectocrat and here’s why.

You are a spectocrat because the validity and legitimacy of your country’s political process do not inhere in you, your choices, and your preferments. It is precisely because these things inhere in the citizen in genuine democracies in Africa and elsewhere in the world that the citizens of such countries are referred to as an electorate. You, Nigerian spectocrat, are a member of a spectocrate, Africa’s largest spectocrate, because all political choices and options are rammed down your throat in a top-down process. Your ability to even be a spectator of how your life is run and ruined is further dependent on the benevolence of PHCN or your generator. Otherwise, you are in total darkness.

It is from the pit of this spectocratic darkness that you grumble – in your living room, in beer parlours, at Premiership viewing centres, on commercial buses, on social media – that your vote does not count during elections. Actually, you are making a mistake by focusing on your worthless vote at the election. You are underestimating the condition of your sorry ass. It’s worse than you think. There are other things that did not count before your vote did not count. You just didn’t realize this because you are used to being a spectocrat. And a spectocrat, like I told you already, is a thing, not a citizen.

So what else did not count? Check out these scenarios from two responsible democracies. You know already that in the build-up to the last presidential election in France, Ségolène Royal lost out in the race for her party’s nomination to François Hollande, the man who eventually ousted Nicholas Sarkozy. What you may not know is the scenario she describes later in interviews about her preparations for the party primaries. She talks about some four to five years of crisscrossing France, selling herself, her vision, and her programmes to the people: townhall meetings, focused-group meetings, meetings with all kinds of organized professional bodies, labour unions, associations, organizations, rallies, debates, advertorials, etc.

Mind you, she is not the official candidate of her party yet. Why is she doing this? Let’s go to America for our answer. Those positioning themselves to run in the Democratic or Republican Primaries also begin the race, like Ségolène did in France, by trying to sell themselves to the party base and to the country. Then the media comes in, playing a civic role by constantly relaying news about who is polling well in which critical states and among which critical segments of the country. Who is polling well with – women, men, young, old, whites, blacks, latinos, rich, poor, middleclass, students, teachers, industry workers, trade unions, Christians, gay rights advocates, civil rights advocates? Who is polling well with all these critical demographics and why?

You can see that Hillary Clinton (you know why she is leaving the State Department), Chris Christie, Paul Ryan – indeed, anybody with a potential for 2016 – has already begun this critical process of trying to poll well with the electorate. Meanwhile, what are the party leaders doing as Wolf Blitzer, John King, Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews (and even racist lunatics like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh) begin to relay analyses of who is polling well and where?

Party leaders are listening and watching very carefully. They are plugging in because that is how they eventually gauge who is sellable, who is a viable candidate. In essence, whether it is in France or in the US, the process begins and ends with the electorate. I am not saying it is perfect. Money and other factors do come in, by and large, but you do not stand a chance of getting your party’s nomination if you have not gone through a grueling pre-electoral process of selling yourself to the electorate and polling well.

What do you have in Nigeria? It is an arrogant and frustratingly insulting process in which the spectorate – I insist that we don’t have an electorate – considers herself grateful if she is even accorded the privilege of spectatorship at all. And our media is complicit in this process of national insult. It’s always the same ritual, at least since 1999. Two years to an election or so, Obasanjo, Babangida, Tony Anenih, Tinubu and all kinds of risible godfathers, corrupt stakeholders, and yeye elder statesmen will wake up and begin to announce who they have decided to endorse. The media falls in line and the spectorate is treated to haughty headlines: “Obasanjo Endorses X”, “Babangida Opts for Y”, “Governors’ Forum endorses Z”.

Then these characters will spend the next year treating us to catfights, mudfights, and roforofo fights. Mind you, nobody has yet asked us our opinion. We are spectocrats. Then they will kiss and make up. They will align and realign. They will enter into every manner of agreement. They will zone, re-zone, de-zone, and unzone. They will share offices. They will then organize primaries and announce to you who the candidate will be. Nobody has consulted you up till now. Nobody has tried to sell any vision to you. You do not matter. They know that they have produced three generations of Nigerians who lack civics and therefore will not ask critical questions about why they are spectocrats. It is only after this stage that a general election is announced and you are told that you have now qualified to go and cast votes that will not count because the winner of every election is always already pre-determined.
2015 is at hand and you can already see this insulting scenario unfolding. Which presidential hopeful have you seen crisscrossing Nigeria since 2011, selling a carefully-calibrated vision to students, farmers, traders, market women, etc, in the hope of polling well, preparatory to contesting his or her party’s primaries? Which presidential hopeful has been selling himself to NURTW, NUT, NUPENG, PENGASSAN, (we can’t mention NANS, can we?) and other critical national unions in the hope of polling well with them? Which presidential hopeful has been grilled by socially responsive media outfits such as Punch, Premium Times, Sahara Reporters, Ynaija.com, Omojuwa.com and a host of others? This will not happen because you do not count. They do not need to poll well with you. All they need is a war-chest built with the proceeds of corruption and the blessing of Obasanjo, Babangida, Anenih, Ahmadu Alli, Bola Tinubu, and patati and patata.

If you are tired of these insults as we approach 2015, then you belong in the category of Nigerians that Tunde Fagbenle, Okey Ndibe, and yours truly want to work with as we map out strategies to break the jinx of spectocracy in the weeks to come. Tunde Fagbenle has already kicked off what we plan to do in his Punch column last week. Please check it out here is you have not already read it: (http://www.punchng.com/columnists/tunde-fagbenle-saying-it-the-way-it-is...).

Nothing is cast in stone yet. We are still discussing. And we are under no illusion that the task ahead is easy. We are merely powered by the conviction that we are neither voiceless nor powerless. And we believe that there is a sufficient number of Nigerians out there whose anger and frustration could be harnessed and conjugated into a movement towards 2015. We believe that we have the numbers to confront the corruption and insults of the current crop of players and their godfathers who are already preparing to ram candidates down our throats top-down. We believe that we do not have to accept their choices, their arrogance, and their rudeness. We believe that if we build a movement powerful enough – powerful only in numbers for we have no money – our largely docile and complicit media will resign from their vocation of merely reporting the choices and preferences of corrupt godfathers and yeye elder statesmen and begin to focus on the preferments of the people. We believe that we are the only ones who can transform ourselves from a spectorate to an electorate.

Our strategy for now – we are open to suggestions. Just join us first and let’s start the movement – is to see if we could collect five million signatures in support of a candidate we would have agreed upon through a process we shall make public in due course. We are thinking of drafting a credible, patriotic compatriot with solid personal capital, who would not come from the ranks of the current jokers running Nigeria. We are thinking of massing at least five million or more of you behind this choice. Personally, I have expressed my preference for Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah and Tunde Fagbenle has supported it. Okey Ndibe will also let us have his own suggestions in due course. When we open a Facebook page for this project, you will be able to let us know who your own choice(s) might be and what strategies you envision going forward.

Please do not join us if you are wearing tribal or religious blinders. We are reaching out to kindred spirits hungry to become an electorate beyond the limiting and destructive faultlines of our national experiment. We are not interested in the ethnicity of the next President. We are not interested in his religion. We are not interested in quota and zone talk. For all we care, if he or she is your choice, has credible personal capital, and has not been tainted by dalliances and alliances with the current crop of corrupt rulers, s/he may even come from Otuoke. In essence, there is nothing inherently wrong with an Otuokean succeeding an Otuokean in Aso Rock so long as the new man is not cut from the same clueless, corrupt, and incompetent cloth as the incumbent. In essence, do not bring religion, tribe, zoning, and quota talk into our conversation. We have serious work to do and we have no time for distraction.

As discussions proceed and as we refine and define our strategies, please stay tuned to the three weekly columns of Okey Ndibe, Tunde Fagbenle (Punch), and yours truly for periodic updates. Let me leave you for now with this parting shot. For 2015, I endorse you, spectocrat, to become a democrat. I endorse you, spectorate, to become an electorate.

Yet, none of you critic have been able to produce a bible verse that says otherwise!

Una dey waste una time on some concocted lie.

Good God, most Nigerians are now brain dead because of what these pastors are feeding their brain with. PASTOR Bakare speaks the truth, i agree with him. What did baba Adoboye tell GEJ when he stopped by at the last unHoly Ghost congress? nothing! rather they have him speak from the pulpit to further lie to Nigerians.

Cornel88: The friendly match that was played against Cape Verde was played at the very day Christian Chukwu was to submit his final 23 man list, thereby making all the players to be underpresure to impress. Let us wait and see how far they can go.

Na Christian Chukwu be Eagles coach again? na wah for this "1st to comment" people o, dem no dey think before dem type again.

Really...i am so SURPRISED we won't win o!!!!...win ko, win ni. Good Preparation and good management wins.
Keep on relying on your prayers and luck and see how long the trophy will elude you.

PhysicsQED: Nigger has other meanings and connotations that are acknowledged in even the most basic dictionaries, such as meanings associated with a lowly and inferior status. Words evolve over time.

And no, there is nothing to suggest that Arabs, Indians, and 'mongols' are more racist than whites, even if some or all of them are as racist. You have done no studies and have no evidence regarding the degree of racial hostility and hatred among entire racial or cultural groups toward different racial groups so let's not pretend that you have.



I have to comment on this stuff about "blacks are more racist" especially when you go as far as to claim whites would somehow be extinct if the situation was reversed in America. That's just a bizarre claim. What historical evidence is there of significant discrimination against other races from blacks? Anything you can find would be minor and limited to some obscure occurrence in one brief period of the history of only one black group, at most. Black people anywhere have never historically made a big deal about race prior to interacting with whites. I don't know why some people are so caught up in self-loathing that they can make claims about blacks being more racist. The only black groups where you even find any significant amount of racists - and even then, the overall numbers and the degree of their hatred and racism is actually rather limited - are those black groups that have been exposed to racism (against them, from whites or other groups) to a very significant degree.

There is no Nigerian equivalent of the various racist skinhead groups in parts of Europe, no Nigerian or African political party that really holds positions like those of far right political groups in Europe or the U.S., no majorly black website which is the real equivalent of chimpout or stormfront, and there is not hateful or bigoted racial literature from black racist writers which even begins to rival the worst produced by white racists in terms of volume and severity. I don't know what group is "most racist" in the world, but what I do know is that there is nothing I've seen to suggest that black people are more racist than other groups.

And Spike Lee is not a dumbass. He is a bit obnoxious but the man is certainly talented as a director and his resume definitely speaks to that. Watch Malcolm X, Clockers, He Got Game, Crooklyn, 25th Hour, Inside Man, and Do the Right Thing. Being obnoxious does not somehow negate a person's artistic ability.

Samuel L. Jackson has criticized Spike Lee in the past and I don't know whether the two get along even though Jackson has worked with Lee before on one of his movies, but I think that since Lee has a pre-existing grudge against Tarantino, he would go after the person that really annoys him and the guy that he sees as the brains behind it all or just go after the film in its entirety, rather than the individual actors. Not to say that I agree with his dislike of Tarantino - I actually don't - but there's really just not as much motivation for him to go after the actors.

I must admit, you seem to be the first intelligent person that argues with points (devoid of cursing or name calling) on NL even though i disagree with your view. Others should take a cue from this, you don't have to resort to name calling to make your point.

koonbey: 4th to comment..I'd keep it

Am i the only one comments like this annoy?

If oyinbo call you Smelly Nigerian, call am back smelly Oyinbo! shikena!
If he's mad about been called smelly and he is not smelly ,i can understand...but getting mad for been called what you are, i don't get it.
But you don't hit a woman for any reason.

LesbianBoy: RUBBISH house jor! This DWARF that sings as if he is crying called wizkid abi na wizpikin should STOP COPYING davido a.k.a ''son of a rich man'' jor! Davido bought brand new SUV last year, him sef buy him own(at a far cheaper price though) davido buy house N140million, now himself don go buy him own house too! Copy cat........Nansense!

lol....this copycatting is very very OK!
You sef try copy cat this kind thing rather than spewing rubbish!

Ninilowo: WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN IF HE GAINS THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSES HIS SOUL OR WHAT CAN A MAN GIVE IN EXCHANGE FOR HIS SOUL?

Time to have your head examined!

maggilove: Nice one, but he shd plan to in vest for his future, music and musicians dont last in nigeria, only few of dem are evergreen

House no be investment?

ask4double: BIG FOOL.

Thank you, i was about to comment same.....are there kids on this forum?

...And he has been released.
http://247nigerianewsupdate.com/lamidos-son-granted-bail-over-crashing-a-man-in-kano-to-death/#comment-295985

Kano police command has released on bail, Aminu Sule, the eldest son of Jigawa state Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido detained in connection to a fatal auto crash that claimed the life of a middle aged man in Kano, Wednesday night.

The release by the police came on the heels of unconfirmed report that parents of the auto-crash victim had been convinced to drop legal procedures against Aminu Sule amidst juicy promises to settle out of court.

Aminu Sule in a SUV sports car was alleged to have crushed to death a middle aged man along BUK road by Rumfa College Kano around 8.55 Wednesday evening and was arrested on the scene by security agents.

His detention by the police in Kano is coming barely a month after operatives of Economic and Finance Crime Commission arrested him at Malam Aminu Kano International Airport over alleged money laundering.

The Police Public Relation Officer, Kano police command, ASP Magaji Musa Majia told newsmen in Kano that the case has been referred to the Director of Public Prosecution for appropriate action.

http://247nigerianewsupdate.com/lamidos-son-granted-bail-over-crashing-a-man-in-kano-to-death/#comment-295985

abrat: Chief, I'm not a fan of GEJ or Buhari but a concerned Nigerian
The question remains why would a respected Leader say Nigeria would be divided, that nobody would claim victory unless the election is free & fair in 2015. for God's sake where in the world is election free & fair? Nigeria is still developing & there is no guarantee that election will be free & fair in the next 20yrs. What I can read from the man is simply desperation.You let pple speak for you if you are for the majority.
www.blueprintng.com/2013/01/buhari-nige...

The recent US presidential election is free and fair! No ballot stealing, no bogus figures e.t.c

This ain't nothing about good command of english or not....this couple are simple greedy and unintelligent.
You don't have to speak good english to be smart. BTW, most graduates from Nigeria can neither speak good english nor write it, that at least they learnt from their teachers(Likes of Dame), attributable to the falling standard of education in Nigeria.

OMG, look at what the great Abati that used to write those excellent pieces have been reduced to...attack dog!
Well, Mr Abati, let me assure you that you are the casualty here. You'll soon be rendered irrelevant, m.u.m.u.
Both OBJ and GEJ will both be accountable for their shameless deeds soon.

Nigerian leaders are just a reflection of the Nigerian people. Quit whining about them, you'll do exactly or worse than them...going by the thought some of you display on this forum.

It is a Moooooovie!!!! common y'all. I have seen so many movies where whites have been depicted as being stupid and gullible. BTW Spike Lee is a d.u.m.b a.ss that is always quick to criticize other people's movie. If he's so aggrieved, he should criticize Samuel Jackson(another loud mouth),Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington that took roles in the movie. The truth is that we blacks are even more racist....we even do it to ourselves. There is still no justification for the name (BET - Black Entertainment Television) for example.....why didn't the white named ABC, NBC, FOX e.t.c White Entertainment Network or something!
I am not denying the fact that racism exists...but it's a human thing. Imagine if America's situation is in the reverse and the Black are majority...OMG, i'm sure the white will have been an extincted race.

Gentle Naaz: Am a final yr ABSU studnt. Skul said we shud pay skul fees b4 dy wl allow us cross d gate. Our skul fees is #83k. I need a gud nigerian hu cn help me pay my final yr skul fees. Pls i need help me. My number is 08165699700. I hv hussled n pay last session' fees but nw i cnt hussle agn cos i hv IT defense sooner

...case of a misplaced priority, you need to save the money you pay on your internet service toward the payment of your school fees first.

Shame! Shame!! Shame!!!
Two Nigerian citizens like you that happens to be wives of thieves in Government are fighting over your collective wealths and yet some of you are writing comments such as "first to comment".
What an aberration!

With the mindset of people leaving comment on NL, i doubt if 10% of Nigerians are sane. Where dem go put all of una?

Everything that happens is tied to some black magic (jazz). I blame those English wey give us independent...we surely was not ripe for it. Our inside is blacker than our skin.

That's what you get when you allow stack illiterates to rig themselves to power without you standing up for your right.
But seriously, are Nigerians really this s.tupid? all these regional, tribal and religious internet war....is this really the crux of the matter?
Naija is in serious trouble ooo! everybody don kolo finish!

El Caballa: 3rd to comment.God knows why..

...irritating!