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Conspiracy Theories Of The Nigerian Kind By Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
How To Short-Circuit Reality Completely: "Everything is true, and yet everything is false". - from "The Book of Lies" by the Ancient Bavarian Order of the Illuminati; (4 July 1776). The governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are all corrupt dictatorships and tyrannies, run by shameless dictators, barbaric autocrats, and savage human rights abusers, yet US President George W. Bush, the self-conferred, defender, and proponent of democracy worldwide, openly cajoles, supports, promotes, and finances them. Why?
On Tuesday, 11 September 2001, for almost thirty minutes after he was told that the United States of America was under severe terrorist attacks, US President George Bush (The Younger) simply continued to sit in a primary school classroom, not surprised, but listening calmly to a second-grade pupil’s story about a pet goat. Meanwhile, four hijacked planes were able to fly completely off-course, across several states, without encountering any opposition from the most powerful air force on earth. Why?
Less than a month later, in apparent hot pursuit of a former US ally, Mujahideen Osama bin Laden, the Bush administration began what it called the "War against terrorism" (worldwide), on the already war-devastated, hopelessly impoverished, and completely talibanised banana republic of Afghanistan. Incidentally, that assault had been in the works long before Tuesday, 11 September 2001. Why?
Soon after replacing the Taliban government of Afghanistan, and coincidentally revitalising the world’s most bountiful source of high-grade opium, the Bush administration began to stir up global support for a similar and more devastating bombardment of oil-rich Iraq, although Mujahideen Osama bin Laden is still at large, and no link has been established between him and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Yet US President George W. Bush (The Younger) still yearns for a violent "regime change" in Iraq. Why?
For these and several hundred other reasons, the world has probably seen the most unbelievable proliferation of "conspiracy theories" in history. We will take a peep at some of the most alarming conspiracy theories currently in free circulation in Nigeria. Please feel free to accept them as serious, and authoritative, then study them carefully as symptoms of a severely traumatised nation, or, if you wish, trivialise them as anti-Obasanjo propaganda: We are only passing on the message.
A Beginner’s Guide To The Theory Of Conspiracies: The term "conspiracy theory" used to be reserved to describe a paranoid mode of explanation that does not allow fabrication. In this paranoid mode, positive evidence proves the thesis, but so too does any conflicting evidence that shows that evidence could have been suppressed or fixed. A conspiracy theory used to be a theory that postulates a secret and all-powerful conspiracy, while manipulating the rules of inference, so as to always reach the same predetermined conclusion, whatever the evidence.
In a trivial, though fundamental sense, any, and every decision taken behind closed doors is indeed a conspiracy. Any explanation that deduces such a decision from circumstantial evidence is thus a conspiracy theory. For example, the theory that the leadership of the Abdulsalami Abubakar junta conspired to eliminate Alhaji (Bashorun) M.K.O. Abiola (Aare Ona Kakanfo XIV) is a conspiracy theory, and so too is the theory that nineteen bearded gentlemen from the Middle East took down the Twin Towers, and the Pentagon on Tuesday, 11 September 2001. Presumably, Professor Jerry Gana, the Federal Minister of National Orientation, believes both theories, and so do most ordinary Nigerians.
Professor Jerry Gana’s theory that the usual "enemies of progress", and "saboteurs" of Nigeria’s "nascent" democracy, who, incidentally, are also his boss’s competitors for the Nigerian political pie, have stockpiled large inventories of very dangerous weapons, in readiness for the coming elections, even when there is no evidence to suggest that they have done so, is a very good example of the conspiracy theorist’s mindset. According to Professor Jerry Gana’s seemingly esoteric logic, the absence of such evidence is not evidence of absence of "saboteurs", but evidence of effort to suppress evidence of past, present, or future "sabotage". (Heavy!).
For Professor Jerry Gana, "conspiracy theory" is merely an insult one hurls against those who question the motives of God-fearing autocrats in power. If you believe that there is a massive difference between rhetoric and reality, that understanding politics requires more than mindlessly regurgitating the official lies of your President, if you believe that people are often motivated by considerations other than altruism, or that politicians often say behind closed doors, things they do not say publicly, then Professor Jerry Gana thinks that you are an "unpatriotic conspiracy theorist", and in fact, a "saboteur of Operation Consolidation, and Continuity 2003". Please, jõ, bíkó, I beg, beware!
Professor Jerry Gana never bothers to provide the necessary evidence. Instead of grappling with serious and profoundly disturbing national issues, like the unwholesome synergy between political tribalism, and the"Aso Rock" cabal, he prefers to conjure the notion that Nigerians are all about to fall head-over-heels, in blind support for the "Obasanjo/Atiku (meal) ticket"!
So far, he has not allowed Nigerians to carry out a coherent analysis of the roles of the AD, OPC, and "Afenifere" in Abuja, especially at this time of the year 2003. Professor Jerry Gana’s major argument is, as usual, radically flat, and indeed, a non sequitur. He dismisses the relevance of some damning evidence that some "Aso Rock insiders" actually advised General Obasanjo to recycle himself, especially during his moments of extensive teleconferencing and covert consultations with both earthly and heavenly entities, under the pretext of waiting of divine directives.
Guarding The Angels Of A Secular Republic: "First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi. It is hard being a parent in the Internet era. Information flows much faster than ever before. Worldwide, Nigerians have tended to dig up the very stories that both the Nigerian government and local media consider either too unsettling, or too hard to handle. People communicate across the globe at the blink of an eye. Stories about the "Abuja" connection in political intrigues, and tribal profiling keep circulating, with or without the parental consent of the"Aso Rock" cabal.
You would think that the Nigerian media exists to keep Nigerians informed. Interestingly, the media of the so-called Lagos-Ibadan, or Abuja-Kaduna, or Port Harcourt-Yenagoa "axes" perceive their roles as the guardians of the peace of mind of Nigerians. Like a morbidly patronising, paternalistic, and over-protective parent, they shelter Nigerians from the disturbing universe of adults. For them, questioning the motives and loyalties of "Aso Rock" insiders is just too traumatic for the delicately simple minds, fragile nerves, and tender hearts of most "law-abiding" and "patriotic" Nigerians. Ultimately, when/if the story gets too messy to ignore, Professor Jerry Gana simply changes gears, and switches strategy.
Recently, Nigerians were treated to one more of those patently paternalistic bouts of verbal dysentery about local and international "conspiracies" against General Obasanjo’s self-recycling scam, by Professor Jerry Gana, the official cheerleader of the organised supporters’ cult for the actualisation of the "Obasanjo/Atiku ticket". The crux of his diatribe was to remind Nigerians that they should not be talking to "saboteurs", because only his boss, General Obasanjo, is "credible", "dependable", "safe", and "incorruptible" enough for Nigerians to vote for, as their President, on Saturday, 19 April 2003.
Professor Jerry Gana’s arguments and reasons are all hogwash. His proclivity for bland propaganda and deception lies principally in his propensity for amplifying and manipulating the insecurity of Nigerians, with threats of ridicule and rejection. Professor Jerry Gana’s strategy is simply to play down the justifiable discontent of Nigerians worldwide, as part of a "conspiracy theory" against democracy.
Rewriting Nigeria’s Memorandum Of Misunderstanding: Nigeria is not insulated from the incipient global hysteria about conspiracy theories. Indeed, Nigeria’s so-called political elite, who ought to provide Nigerians with truthful information, effortlessly indulge in unabashed campaigns of crude propaganda, prefabricated deceit, hard-boiled lies, demagoguery, intimidation, blackmail, and blatant executive corruption. Paradoxically, Nigerians seem to thrive in the paranoia of conspiracy theories.
Tons upon tons upon tons of lies have been heaped on Nigerians about Obasanjo’s anti-corruption crusade, the real purpose of the national ID card pet project of General Obasanjo, the Minna Mafia, the Ijebu Mafia, the Port Harcourt Mafia, the Kaduna Mafia, the Langtang Mafia, the Sokoto Caliphate, Abacha loot, the "Child Care Trust", Babangida’s "open and hidden agenda", "marginalisation", WOTCLEF, Bakassi, "resource control", pro-democracy, "nascent democracy", "offshore-onshore dichotomy", "accountability", "true federalism", and so on, and so forth.
Nigerians have been injected with a massive overdose of very horrible lies about Nigeria’s actual population, the post-"Miss World 2002" London big girls’ scandals of scams, the status of Nigeria’s hopelessly decrepit refineries vis-à-vis fuel importation, privatisation, and core investors. Lies, damned lies, and bloody lies everywhere. Lies about Abiola, lies about Murtala Mohammed, lies about Shehu Yar’Adua, lies about Sani Abacha, lies about the real brains behind the detonations at the Ikeja cantonment, lies about Odi, Zaki-Biam, and anyone who dares raise a voice in protest about the lies about what caused their invasion. Lies about hired assassins, and lies about the famous market fires of Jos, Port Harcourt, Lagos, Bauchi, and Onitsha. Lies in Australia, lies in the United Kingdom, lies in Singapore, lies in France, and lies in the United States of America, while frequent-flying in hot pursuit of elusive foreign core investors for Nigeria.
Now, suppose you are a Nigerian, and you know that there would be general elections in Nigeria soon. Also, suppose that the outgoing administration openly forms a political alliance with another supposedly rival political party called, Alliance for Democracy (AD), for reasons best known to, or appreciated by the incumbent government, and their close clique of expert practitioners of political tribalism, permanently fixated on their pet ideology of benign or malignant ethnocentric chauvinism, but, sadly, to the complete consternation of Nigerians worldwide.
Suppose that other Nigerians find out that the decision to form such a strange alliance for their "nascent democracy" was not even reviewed or agreed upon in a transparent manner, according to standard inter-party horse-trading procedures, but was based on behind-closed-doors negotiations, and primordial sentiments alone. What would you do?
Maybe, you would make a quick list of the top "Aso Rock" people. Maybe, you would look at their CVs, or biographies, their antecedents, their temperaments, their public utterances, their wives, their families, and of course, their social, and business connections, in order to figure out their universe.
Suppose you found out that a high-ranking officer in the "Villa" is also a member of a tightly knit cabal, with very strong connections to a supposedly rival political party in Nigeria, and the officer, for example, was a board member of Transparency International (TI), would you not be very intrigued? Would you not want to know what obscure connections could possibly exist between transparency and national security? Could there possibly be a mystical biblical theory of probity, and accountability?
And would you not want to know who else is in the "Aso Rock" cabal, what the cabal does, and where the cabal’s budget comes from? Would your curiosity not be exasperated if you know that the cabal is brimming with top government and military contractors, key players in the Nigerian oil industry, retired customs, and police officers, ex-Julius Berger truck drivers turned political godfathers, former treasury looters, select traditional rulers, "elders", influence peddlers, clout merchants, and cronies, or that one of the several wives of the "born-again" CEO of the "Aso Rock" cabal also manages a quasi-governmental "charity" that promotes beauty to the point of civil disorder, in sacred months of the year, in secular Nigeria? Would you not want to know why the "Abuja" people frequently instigate, and abet blatant violations of legislative resolutions, including the Nigerian Constitution?
Suppose you discovered that the "Aso Rock" cabal openly lobbies a supposedly rival political party, AD, on behalf of General Obasanjo, would you not find it remarkable that the AD is the only party in Nigeria that is eager to form an alliance for Nigeria’s "nascent democracy" with Obasanjo, and that South Western Nigeria (the socio-economic and political stronghold of the Alliance for Democracy) is the only geopolitical zone in Nigeria whose leaders actually want to reap where they did not sow? Would you not want to know why?
What if you discovered that the cheerleader of the "Aso Rock" Official Praise singers’ Club (OPC) - whose name, by the way, is Professor Jerry Gana - seriously thinks that the pervading season of anomie of fuel scarcity, political assassinations, bomb blasts, and general mayhem, are designed to undermine the "consolidation", and " "continuity" of his CEO’s self-recycling project? Would you not challenge him to shed more light on those troubling insinuations about "saboteurs"? I bet you would.
But the Nigerian government-ran mass media, and other so-called independent press of the so-called Lagos-Ibadan, or Abuja-Kaduna, or Port Harcourt-Yenagoa "axes" would not want Nigerians to know. Not, as you might think, because they are very careful. Observe that the media of the Lagos-Ibadan, or Abuja-Kaduna, or Port Harcourt-Yenagoa "axes" had no problem wrapping themselves up in airs of "responsible journalism", and "patriotism" when they effortlessly published half-baked lies about their professional colleague, Ms. Isioma Daniels, in tune with General Obasanjo, even after her forced self-exile, post-fatwa. Of course, Ms. Isioma Daniels was just another disposable, marginal, ethnically challenged, and easily "fatwarizable" Nigerian: Different strokes for different folks. Different lanes for different brains!
The Microstructure Of "Consolidation" & "Continuity 2003": Somehow, it seems to be one those quirks of the human condition that, when we find ourselves on the same side as someone, we automatically assume that they must be just like us: i.e. "angelic", and very "decent". Conversely, our opponents, and anyone who sides with them, must be malevolent demons from the harshest, smelliest, and hottest furnace in the deepest corner of Hell. Nigeria is, at the moment, a very good example for both tendencies: Our friend’s friend is our friend. Our friend’s enemy is our enemy. Our enemy’s friend is our enemy. Our enemy’s enemy is not our enemy; (and so on, and so boringly forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseam). Unfortunately, reality is not quite that simplistic.
The pro-democracy agitators of the 15 years long Buhari-Babangida-Shonekan-Abacha-Abubakar transition to civil rule, who now find themselves in the AD wing of the so-called Ijebu-Igbo Mafia, most of them, unrepentant isolationists, or adepts in the arcane ideology of political tribalism, or hardened xenophobes, now suddenly boldly sing the praises of General Obasanjo, himself a retired tyrant, even though the rest of Nigeria thinks that General Olusegun Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo (GCFR) can do nothing right.
After all, some claim, General Obasanjo conquered "scarcity", launched a crusade against corruption, boldly privatised the same state-ran enterprises that he (probably mistakenly) established over quarter of a century ago, successfully laundered Nigeria’s putrid external image that he inherited from his "offshoots" (Generals Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, and Abubakar), by frequent flying, and graciously allowed Nigerians to actually see, feel, and use GSM handsets in their lifetime. (Oh! what a brilliant Messiah!). The Obasanjo Praise singer’s Club (OPC) even has the brazen impudence to disagree with the rest of Nigeria, and the overwhelming crowd of rational non-South Western Nigerian voters that General Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR) is rushing to self-demystify with uncouth alacrity.
One would never guess, from all these phoney clarion calls for Nigerians to show "gratitude" to the "winning team" of General Obasanjo and Alhaji Abubakar, that it was Nigerians, minus their compatriots in the AD-controlled South West geopolitical zone, who actually made it possible, more or less, by all means necessary, for Obasanjo to win the 1999 presidential selections, straight from Yola Prison, despite his laughable lack of political base, clout, or infrastructure. If it were not for those same other Nigerians, these clowns would not be sitting pretty in Ijebu-Igbo now, hallucinating about "power shift", or/and singing their very boring "consolidation, and continuity" mantra, in the spirit of classical sycophancy. In fact, perhaps, that is why other Nigerians hate them so passionately!
The Commander-In-Chief Loves Goat Pepper Soup: A reality check would be in order at this juncture. It is either that the AD, OPC, and Afenifere have all caught Acquired Intellect Deficiency Syndrome, or moral gonorrhoea from their undue proximity to General Okikiola Aremu Mathew Obasanjo, or that they are merely indulging in a slightly more sophisticated version of calling Nigerians "fools", "morons", "idiots", "mu-mu", or "suegbe". In other words, "if mugu fall, guy must wack!"
Personally though, with the benefit of hindsight, the only person that I think I can safely hold above suspicion in the matter of the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, 11 September 2001, is that serious-looking kid that was innocently telling the Commander-in-Chief of the USA, President George W. Bush (The Younger) a rather strange, but harmless story about a little goat, in the heat of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC.
Finally, apart from myself, I think the only person that I can safely hold above suspicion, in the matter of the recent bomb blasts in a high-density area of Lagos Island, is Mujahideen Osama bin Laden.
We hope the Federal Minister of Petroleum Resources, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, General Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR) is listening, because the Commander-in-Chief of the "War against terrorism" (worldwide) is definitely aware. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is about practical terrorism. Kòmbò Mason Braide (PhD) Port Harcourt, Nigeria. March 2003
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