₦airaland Forum

I'm not holding brief for David Mark but this is extreme journalism at its peak !

What is your take on this ?

“We need to change our attitude on how we report things about our country and we should emulate the foreign reporters who never report negative things about their countries."   David Mark, Nigeria's Senate President, complaining about social media being used to insult Nigerian leaders in a speech to reporters covering the Nigerian Senate. 

 

 

I’m going to use some bad words in this column. If you cannot stomach them, please stop reading.

Right now.

Thank you.

 

I do not waste my thoughts on some Nigerian politicians. Despite their antics and cries for attention, I dismiss this bunch of political actors. Some are so rotten that I consider them irredeemable. Some are so insignificant in the overall reformation scheme that I feel they will wither away as soon as the cord of corruption is cut off. Some are nothing but stagnant balls of smoke made of sheer ignorance. Mr. David Mark was one of them. But he shouldn’t be.

 

On a second thought, David Mark is much more than all of the above. He is not just irredeemable. He is also contaminating. He is not just insignificant. His dirty fingers are scratching the canvas of Nigeria. He is not just a stagnant smoke of ignorance on Nigeria’s sky. He is also in motion.

 

In short, David Mark is a lucky bastard. And nothing is scarier than a government of lucky bastards in the life of a nation.

 

Mr. Mark went in front of reporters that cover the senate, men and women that he has pocketed, to complain that the social media is used by faceless people to insult Nigerian leaders like him. He grumbled that these disgruntled operators of social media have no way of retracting their stories. His solution: that the government should control social media to stop its users from insulting leaders like him.

 

What the likes of David Mark do not know is that social media does not operate in a vacuum. It needs content to exist. And social media content is provided by people like David Mark.

 

Social media thrives on the idiosyncrasies, excesses and stupidity of politicians and celebrities. Those in the limelight who do not wish to be in the spotlight of social media should retire to their villages and wait for death. For instance, nobody in social media is losing sleep over Arthur Nzeribe, who is currently at his Oguta home awaiting death. David Mark can do the same in one of his homes in Benue, Ghana, Caribbean, the US, Belize, the UK, Ireland etc.

 

For those unfamiliar with the pedigree of the senate president, here is it in brief. David Mark is a leader in that class of miseducated men and women who rode the wave of unaccountable leadership, looting and ruining Nigeria until the nation became a failure. These are the men and women who failed Nigeria with such a staged craftsmanship that the nation they failed works perfectly well for them. If Nigeria were a tree, these men and women cut the tree and told it where to fall.

 

For those who need more details, this is the essential biography of David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark. Born on April 18, 1948, in Otukpo, he joined the Nigerian army and became prominent as a Major when he was named Secretary of the Abandoned Property Implementation Commission after the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War. In the 1980s, he reemerged as one of the so-called Babangida boys. He became the military governor of Niger state from 1984- 1986. When Babangida took over as Nigeria’s military dictator, he brought Mark close as his Minister of Communication. He played a prominent role in the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election. He headed the gang that threatened to kill M.K.O. Abiola if the military had dared to hand power over to him. He fell out with Gen. Sani Abacha who retired him from the army and he went on exile. At the beginning of this current democratic dispensation in 1999, he became a senator representing Benue South senatorial zone. He supported Obasanjo’s effort to amend the Nigerian constitution to serve a third term. For that effort he collected the lion share of the billions that Obasanjo’s supporters used to bribe senators. He became the Senate president in 2007 as a reward for his loyalty to the PDP.

 

David Mark is a lucky bastard. Not even one of the 400,000 people of his other country, Belize, will nominate him to be a janitor for their senate.

 

Even though he believes that a sergeant in the army is better than a university graduate, nobody knows if Mr. Mark can write his name. But we know that he can open offshore accounts in New Jersey and the Cayman islands. We know that is the place he hid most of the Gulf oil windfall for himself and his boss, Babangida. We know that is where he hid proceeds from NITEL deals he cooked up as Minister of Communication when he famously said that poor people had no need for phones and as such he siphoned the money allocated to his ministry. We know that he spent about 6 million British pounds sterling to purchase significant interest in the 18-hole St Margaret’s Golf Club in Ireland. We know he owns a 2.5 million British pounds sterling home on Thames River in London. We know he has millions and millions of pounds sterling in trust for his numerous children and wives all over Europe and America. We know this because his nasty divorce from wife number five, Victoria Preye, exposed some of his hidden investments.

 

Despite his enormous stolen wealth, here is what David Mark’s epitaph will say. “Here lies a man who admired the trappings of Western civilization but was ignorant of its tenets.” It is the same epitaph for Idi Amin, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga.

 

On top of David Mark’s head roves a giant question mark. When he opens his mouth remarkable gaffes gush out. It is a mark of complete genuflection of a nation that such a scion of corruption is at the head of the upper house of the people’s assembly. His bland mind marketed as diplomatic is impervious of his environment. Otherwise he would have noticed from his hospital bed that it was Israeli media that kept the heat on until former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was sentenced to seven-years for rape.

 

David Mark is a shameless hypocrite who has absolute disdain for Nigeria. That such an uninspiring character is angling for the presidency of Nigeria is a testament to the hopelessness of the Nigerian project. Put aside his pedigree, Nigeria’s number three man is as shallow as they come. Otherwise he would have heard that it was Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post newspaper that singlehandedly exposed President Richard Nixon as a crook and forced him to resign.

 

David Mark is old enough to know that “the only countries where newspapers are full of good news are those countries where the prisons are full of good people.” If David Mark is just ignorant, I won’t be scared. I will simply hope that soon, like other ignoramuses like him ruining Nigeria, he will die off with his stupidity and leave Nigeria to its fate. But David Mark is much more than ignorant. He is deliberately manipulative and mischievous. And that is dangerous.

 

David Mark is a lucky bastard. If an American newspaper places its searchlight on him for just 24 hours, as soon as the report comes out, Interpol, FBI, Scotland Yard, KGB, SSS, MSS, BNI, ICPC, EFCC etc will all be fighting over whose handcuffs will be on David Mark’s hands, legs, waist and ankles.

 

Mr. Mark hates a marketplace of ideas because he has no confidence in his own opinion. So he dislikes any media that challenges his opinion and tries to hold him accountable. He has been so used to being worshipped that any deviation from that is considered demeaning and insulting. For Mark and his likes, not appending to their names their fake doctorate degrees or their worthless grand commander of a corrupt and crumbling federal republic is already an insult in and of itself. But Mark is perfectly retaining his right to insult Nigerians, disrespect them and treat them as imbeciles who have no idea what one plus one is.

 

This is why David Mark does not like the social media. He cannot buy them over. He cannot pay them retainership to publish only favorable stories about him. He cannot get them to submit drafts of their stories to his office for approval before publication.

 

He cannot fly them to an expensive resort hotel and give them lectures on how to do their job as the Fourth Estate. He is mad because he cannot stop social media from writing what one of his six wives said in anger.

 

Mr. Mark loves the compromised media that does not ask him what he does for Nigeria for which he gets paid over N600 million a year. He loves the compromised media that will quote him as saying, “I will defend Nigeria’s unity with the last drop of my blood,” but won’t ask him why he renounced Nigeria’s citizenship to become a citizen of Belize when his investment in that country was threatened. He loves the compromised media that will not ask why he loves Nigeria so much but will rather go to Israel for a minor medical treatment.

 

David Mark is a lucky bastard. The best way to properly insult him is to ignore him. That is what I will go back to doing now that I have let out steam.

Happy buffday to sheih Sanusi Lamido Sanusi,the next emir of kano !

I pray he wins .Ondo,the last state standing in SW MUST not fall into Tinubu's pocket !

I got SMS alert from IFS Limited in Gbagada for an interview today .Is there anybody in the House who received message from this firm or can tell us what they are into should respond.

Thanks

I got an SMS message from this firm inviting me for an interview tomorrow . Does anybody in the house have an information about this company ? They are located at 5 Eunice College Close,Off Lanre Awolokun Street,Gbagada Lagos.

While congratulating Oshiomhole on his deserving victory,I think it's high time losers especially from ACN learnt to concede defeat and not see every election which they lose as being rigged !

Let's even imagine Senate impeaches Jonathan and Sambo takes over,how is he any different from GEJ ? Sometimes I think the hatred of GEJ has to do with his tribe ......

I sincerely hope he knows what he's doing !

GEJ is loose with words and I believe he goofed when he said the attack by boko haram will end in June but must we rejoice and gloat over that for political gains ?
Hmmmmm,every day I wake up and pray that God should expose those behind these attacks and also should intervene in helping us stop theses suicide bombings .I don't know but is this how we would keep to date and statistics and failure of GEJ to contain these attacks till boko haram attacks lagos and our eyes open to the glaring fact that we cannot put this responsiblity squarely on GEJ without decisive inputs from Tinubu,Buhari ......
I pray it doesn't get to that stage before our eyes be opened !

I love this family of God
So close knitted into one
They have taken me into their arms
And I'm so glad to be
A part of this great family

Do you still love this family ?
Hmmmmm,but for NCCF,I would have absconded when I was posted to Zamfara .Really made my stay in the wilderness of Maru worthwile !

Our own 'Mr Integrity', Farouk Lawan just walks into the National Assembly and continues business just like nothing happened .......

The purpose of the oil cartel has been achieved and I guess 'life'in the House continues as usual for the man except his governorship ambition come 2015 which has suffered a serious setback !

SO kini big deal. Get a life Gbawe. You are too old for this crap. Your mates are busy making money and taking care of their children you are here licking Tinubu's a/r/s/e at the detriment of your children's care. It is time you gave you children and wife your full attention, instead of ululating yourself hoarse on NL for 1 Naira per post.

At some point a grown a/r/s/e/ man must grow up and be his own man. I think it is time you became your own man Gbawe. You cant serve Tinubu and ACN for the rest of your life. . . Posting lies and rumors all over the internet is not what real men do.

Goshhhhhh,this is too gbaski, no comment men !

What's next is for me to see the modern market with my two 'korokoro' eyes when I visit Osogbo in december or how far the project has gone with structures on ground ....

O-jigbijigbi ! .......lol

Why don't you give it a rest buddy. He is obviously not interested in discussing with you.
This is a public forum for God's sake,find someone else to talk with.


***ignores another ranting of mr epistle***

Naija politics,the more you look and read,the less you see !

God save your soul gbawe ,because u are beyond redemption !

^

Guy,
If you are not lying,it doesn't take long epistle to make your points clear and God knows I have much stake in Osun than folks and party loyalists like you who will brand me an 'omo ale ' because I refuse to see things thru your ACN lensed eyes .
Hmmmmmmm,o-gbawe, tell us the last time you've been to osun and let's compare notes from there .

^^^

Bros,
When sir,are we going to see you post the 'achievements' of Aregbesola from punch,vanguard and thisday and not from silly osundefender ?

Which is why I am glad the House made it clear yesterday that the probe results remain valid, and reaffirmed their call for the executive to implement the recommendations.

How is the probe result valid when principals members of the committee has been indicted ? Funny how people think sha !

I just hope with all these scandals,frauds here and there,some people are keeping eyes on those military guys cos all these will give them perfect excuse to seize power !

Shameless legislooters !

This is hilariously shameful ,stuffing hard currency inside cap in this age . It goes to show that an aboki will forever behave like an aboki !

The funny thing is after all this faroukgate ,another committee set up to oversight or investigate government parastatal will still be indicted,because like police,they cannot do without receivin bribe .
Obasanjo was so so on point about them !

OMG. That's exactly what I'm saying. To argue about Osun you must be in the State of Osun.

Not necessarily be in Osun but visit once in a while to see stuff for yourself . I was in Osogbo last year Dec. and I saw NOTHING on ground . I stayed for a week but what I noticed is that electric supply is stable ....
I'll be there this Dec. God willing and I'm hoping to see those 'massive developmental roads ' posted on nairaland by someone I wouldn't want to mention his name lest he comes and bombard this thread with his long epistle .

I admire this initiative and I do hope Yoruba on nairaland will be able to emulate this .Journey of a thousand miles,starts with a step.....

The Chronicle According to Farouk Lawan!!!
Sunday: I did not collect any money from Otedola
Monday:The video of me collecting money was doctored
Tuesday:I collected money from Otedola
Wednesday:I collected the money to implicate Otedola
Thursday............

Stay tuned cos story continues....

I don't think the islamic fanatic can carry his madness to that extent .....

What's the name given to this 'laudable initiative' jare ? Is it O-learning ,O-curriculum or O-education ?

Is this garrulous man not tired of speaking at his age ? Always receiving boko haram foot soldiers who disguised as CPC delegates ?

Farouk Lawan fall my hand big time ! How could he played into their hands like that ? Did he forget what happened to Hembe ?
Now,nobody will care what will become of their probe again .