₦airaland Forum

AYEKOOTO:THE RULE OF THE SWORD
The arrogance of our political elites reminds me of feudal Europe in the middle ages. This was a time when classism was at it’s peak and the aristocratic class believed they had nothing in common with the poor masses; derogatory names were coined to address them and as such we have words like ‘commoners, peasants and serfs’, there isn’t much difference in the Nigerian political landscape as new names have been coined by the political tin gods. This trend of name calling by the political elites in Nigeria did not start today, it started long ago with the British colonial rule- derogatory names like ‘apes obey’ and ‘bloody natives’ was passed down and inherited by the recruits into the Nigerian army and was later coined to ‘bloody civilian’ or ‘civilians can only grumble’. The trend never stopped in Nigeria and soon became the mannerism of some of our political representatives; it has taken a new coloration and these days of democracy, the new names for the poor people of the land is no other than ‘Gutter people, inconsequential people, minions, Wailers and mad people’. These words are constantly dished out by many political representatives that even the people seem to have gotten used to them.

The irony of the Nigerian situation is, whilst medieval Europe wasn’t chanced to have a system of democracy and the colonial times or military era can be termed a time when there was the rule of the sword, one finds it hard to understand why a feature of these times is pervasive in a democratic setting. In a democracy, there is a social contract between the leaders and the led, certain dictates or absolutes govern the system and one can refer to the arguments that led to the American type of democracy- according to John Wise an American congregation Minister and political thought leader during the American colonial period ‘democracy is the form of government which the light of nature does highly value and often directs to as most agreeable to the just and natural prerogatives of human beings… the natural equality amongst men must be duly favoured…government was never established by God or nature to give one man a prerogative to insult over another’. This is the type of arguments that led to the establishment of the American type democracy and as such, I implore the reader to understand why I get piqued when a member of the political elitist class decide to take the route of arrogance like name calling- in the recent past, we have seen the spokesman of the President call Nigerians ‘wailing wailer’ and we also had another presidential Aide state in his tweets that ‘Nigerians are mad’ and more recently, the son of a governor in the Northern Nigerian state of Kaduna in his tweet referred to some segment of Nigerian people as ‘gutter people’, this got me infuriated, I had to send written projectiles in form of tweets his way before he finally succumbed. These type of attitude isn’t what should be exhibited in a democratic system, it is fit for a system of the rule of swords and not modern day democracy or any sort of democracy at that. In a situation where the ‘rule of the law’ dictates actions of the ruling class , every citizen turns to the protection by the constitution of his inalienable rights and such rights exists in the Nigerian constitution, ‘ a right to live and equality before the law’ means being a citizen is the highest privilege that can be accorded any individual and not perks of any political office, so it disturbs the mind as to where or how our political appointees get the notion that the citzens are lesser beings than they are.

Furthermore, like it has been stated above that in a democracy the rule of law is the guiding torch. I often times wonder if what we practice in Nigeria presently can be called a democracy especially under this administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Permit me to state that most people who are ignorant may not understand the full weight of abuse of the law under President Buhari but I will try to highlight just a few. Let’s start with the killings of the Islamic Shiite communities in Kaduna and how that violates the inalienable right of these Nigerians murdered in cold blood by the same set of people who have sworn to protect them. The killings of Shiite muslims did not start with the Buhari administration, we have had incidence of such during the Jonathan administration but what makes the event of Saturday, December 12th 2015 notorious was the excuse given by our military for the fatal assault on citizens of this country where it is claimed that about a thousand people were killed. The excuse given was that ‘The shiites made a particular road inaccessible to the Chief of armed forces, hence the need to kill, maim and slaughter them’. The mind begins to question ‘ is the COAS a god or a citizen? Does his office make him higher than any other being or person? Does he have the right to order for the killings of Nigerian citizens at will? These are questions which Nigerians fail to ask and these type of questions can point to the fact of what type of system we operate; is it a democratic system or a autocratic or dictatorial regime? If the rule of law is the guiding torch of democracy shouldn’t the ‘right to live’ of citizens be sacred to military men and paramilitary men alike? But I guess we are in a rule of the sword and I am sure the words that was spewed after the order to kill Nigerian citizens was ‘ Bloody Civilians!’.

The words of a man, shows what he thinks of those around him. The way the Nigerian political class address the poor people of the society shows that there is absolutely no respect for the citizenry. In a recent interview by Garba Shehu, an Aide to the presdent of the federal republic of Nigeria, he stated that ‘anyone who is impoverished in Nigeria should go and work harder’ and a nutshell, he just implied that the poor people of Nigeria are lazy. Permit me to explain the Nigerian situation to you. The minimum wage in Nigeria is pegged at 17,000 naira but very few state Governors pay based on this rate. Most of them pay lower than that. This therefore means that an average civil servant’s take home salary in Nigeria is around 65000-70000 naira monthly. The exchange rate of the naira to dollar is $1-360naira which means that the average civil servant lives on 194 dollars monthly. He pays for house rent, electricity, security and even clean water from this paltry sum much less the fact he has to feed himself/herself and family; kindly tell me, is this particular person lazy or just plain unfortunate to work for a government that doesn’t care about his/her welfare? The words of Garba Shehu shows how insensitive and arrogant our political representatives can be in Nigeria. It shows that their minds has been polluted with the belief that we do not operate our system of democracy by the rule of the law. Most of them believe that the people they are supposed to serve are no better than serfs or fiefs to them. They move around and talk carelessly with the gait of feudal lords, they address the citizenry with derogatory names and the citizens cannot do much. Yes, I mean the citizens cannot protest for fear of the gun. What we have in present day Nigeria as manifested under the leadership of President Buhari cannot be termed a democracy, we do not seem to respect the rule of law any more. The people have been oppressed to the point they have accepted cowering as a way of life. We have no laws with which we are being ruled with, our only guide as we speak is the gun and as such I term this present day government as ‘one that rules with the sword’

An article about Lagos please read

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1951910255096650&id=1776807805940230

An article about Lagos state. Click on the link and read.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1951910255096650&id=1776807805940230