Nigeria is celebrating her 66th Independence anniversary, and it can best be seen as a ceaseless sojourn in scandals, scams and slavery.
The leader of the country can disappear anytime he likes, and visit his country once in a long while. He can rule the country from even outer space. It’s just all so normal to hear of the country signing off her mineral resources worth $700 billion to the United States.
It’s held as divine achievement when the claim “oil subsidy is gone” is made, especially as it is followed by the purchase of a super-duper presidential plane and yacht. A coastal road contract is duly awarded to a pal without any bidding whatsoever, and unprecedented borrowings are the everyday orders. This sing-song rules the waves: “On your mandate, we stand!”
In a word, Nigeria is a scam. It did not start today. Everything about this nation is shrouded in the kind of mystery that underscores the 419 phenomenon. Nobody can tell for a fact the accurate population of the country. Literally all elections in the country are rigged. The very idea of democracy in Nigeria is fraudulent. The leaders cannot spell “Democracy” even if one borrowed them all the vowels and consonants.
Now that the country is marking her 66th Independence anniversary it is indeed apt to highlight the season as a celebration of Advance Fee Fraud, alias 419. What greater Advance Fee Fraud could have been arranged on God’s earth than the so-called Amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 by Lord Lugard from which our colonial master Britain continues to reap from bounteously to this day?
It was classic 419 that the British inaugurated when they merged three unequal regions into the wobbly patchwork now known as Nigeria. The country inauspiciously began life somehow managing to stand on three unequal legs. It is a miracle that it is still standing today, no matter how staggeringly, with the resourceful southern “lady of means” arranged by Britain to feed the arid north.
The dubious intentions of Britain on Nigeria started quite early. The very first census figures were doctored by the colonial powers to favour the North; the facts are there in the uncovered archival materials in the British library. The 1959 elections were rigged in the interests of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) as opposed to the more broad-based National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) by the selfsame Britain.
Early joiners of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) which later metamorphosed into the Nigerian military were encouraged by the British officers to learn Hausa as the language of power as far back as the 1940s and 50s!
Citizen Adesugba who was one of the recruits of the military back then revealed this to me while I was writing his biography in his country home at Ogbagi in Ondo State.
From the very beginning, everything was packaged as a kind of 419 that would in latter time blossom into something else!
Unknown to many, the first coup in Nigeria was staged by the British no less. After the massive rigging of the 1964 elections, the then President Nnamdi Azikiwe stoutly refused to announce the fictional results. In what would amount to a coup, the British prevailed on him – some would swear at gunpoint – to announce the results just the same!
It would not make sense if Nigerians think they are the inventors of 419. They were schooled in the art by the grandmasters of Britain. When Nigeria was embroiled in crisis in the 1960s, especially in then Western region, Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa deigned to organize a conference to settle the quarrel in faraway Rhodesia.
While engrossed in the scam conference, the army struck, killing him for his efforts, and sweeping away his government. The British crept in quickly by labelling the putsch as “Igbo coup” and helping the Northerners who were asking for “Araba” (secession) to stage a bloody revenge coup.
The Nigeria-Biafra war that the country fought between 1967 and 1970 ended up as a classic scam with the Reconstruction-Rehabilitation-Reintegration project promised by General Yakubu Gowon coming to naught.
The “No Victor, No Vanquished” slogan became just that – a mere slogan. Marginalization is the rule rather than the exception in Nigeria. Gowon’s promise of returning power to the civilians turned into a 419 ruse until he was overthrown by General Murtala Mohammed in 1975.
Murtala Mohammed was himself shot to death in Col Buka Musa Dimka’s “we are together”, “dawn to dusk” 419 coup in 1976, and he was mourned by the musicians Oriental Brothers with the song that said “Ogba egbe g’esi n’egbe la”, that is, “He who kills with the gun will go by way of the gun”!
General Olusegun Obasanjo who took over and fulfilled Murtala’s promise of handing-over power to the civilians in 1979 foisted on the country a great 419 caper in the Richard Akinjide-manufactured Twelve Two-Third legal arithmetic.
The President Shehu Shagari civilian government initiated in such a dubious manner came to a tacky end in 1983 when the military struck on the last day of the year after a disputed 419 “moonslide” re-election gambit. When SG Ikoku learnt of the dramatis personae of the coup led by General Muhammadu Buhari he told his wife: “There is no coup. Let’s go back to sleep. Only the military wing of the ruling NPN has taken over.” The prayer is that history should not repeat itself.
Well, Buhari got toppled by the past master of the 419 art, General Ibrahim Babangida, in a palace coup. Babangida swore “Insha-Allah” at the end of every sentence only to end up doing the exact opposite of whatever he promised as per transition to civil rule!
As an unelected president, Babangida ended up in utter disgrace with the greatest fiasco in 419 capers such as the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election became. Babangida would eventually up the ante of 419 in foisting the over-matched Chief Ernest Shonekan on Nigeria before Gen Abacha came with fire and force to break all the records of 419 scandals.
The rehabilitation of Obasanjo who could not win an election in his local Abeokuta ward into the Nigerian civilian presidency gave democracy a 419 slap.
Obasanjo tried a shameless 419 Third Term bid, failing quite woefully. He did succeed however in the 419 election scam of installing “Umoru, Are You Dead?” Yar’Adua as the President of the country. There were many disappearing acts of President Yar’Adua from the country, gravitating between life and deayh, until death supervened, and the so-called “Doctrine of Necessity” put his deputy, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, in power.
The ill-fated Goodluck Jonathan got ousted by former military leader Buhari as civilian president, and the disappearing acts of Yar’Adua somewhat resurfaced, but he somehow survived to hand over to President Bola Tinubu who is now in the Nigerian saddle celebrating sixty-six seasons of scandalous scams and slavery upon the $700 billion contractual slavish scam with America that kicked off this 419 article.
