Not my heads of state
By
THIS article will start with an aphorism "Look at an anus and you'd see that it smells". Many things in our world define the sense of mankind's response to them. Here are a few. Different things are not the same things. Criminals are not free of crime. Thieves steal.
Liars steal the truth. And they are many things. They are cowards. They are cunning. They know the truth and have mastered the art of lying to contradict it. These truths remind one of the happenings at the sittings of the Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission (HRVIC) and the efforts of a few to avoid them.
That anyone tries to run away from the sittings of the HRVIC, is not the disaster. A liar would always run away from the truth. It is in the nature of man. If one had committed murder, would one not be scared to go before a probe panel? The disaster is that we have courted the wrong so long that we know not the right anymore.
The Ironsis, Gowons, the Murtala Muhammeds, the Muhammadu Buharis, the Ibrahim Babangidas, the Shonekans, and the Sani Abachas did not seek the votes of the people to rule this country. That is right and the truth. But rule they did by force of arm. And that is criminal. That, too, is right and the truth. As they and everyone know, their rule violated the law of the land. Let us tell it like it is. They committed acts of treason against the state.
To be fair, it is not their fault that they bestride the land. It is the way we are. Those who did the same in Ghana did not live to know the price they paid. Here, one may be an idiot. But, have money and one would be here at the heart of power. Does it matter how one came about it? Let one be an armed robber, a drug dealer, a civil servant or bureaucrat steeped in graft, or a thieving head of state, who cares? Once there, will others not flock around for a share of the benefits? In that state who would dare one? One quickly learns to use the swagger stick. And the arrogance that comes with it would wear like it were a trim uniform of gold.
Many have said that some civilians asked a few of the generals to come into government because those who ruled did badly. If the military did not have a like mind, it would have dismissed the call. It knew that the oath it took was not to rule, but to protect the state from external forces. Yet, it came, it rules, some of its members stole the tills empty. And it broke the country into states that lack the resources for growth and peace, too. It made the centre strong and had it as the country's vault. Did it not share the country's resources robbing Peter to pay Paul? And were it and its minions not Peter's kin, too often.
Like Father Christmas, did these generals not make gifts of the country's money to their kith as they pleased? Did they not set up security votes, and did some not turn them to taps that poured money into their pots? Did they not change the country into the most corrupt on earth? And did the judge, Transparency International, not have the sad duty year after year to hand it that trophy? Accursed, what manner of people would have their country so debased?
The evidence that there is, tells us that they had the country on the road to ruin. They made sure that the schools, the colleges and the universities that were once the pride of the country perished. They set up many more and ran them to the ground. Professor became a carrot and they gave it to many. Has it not become the other name for titled village elders and town criers. Degrees come cheaper these days. Now, they can release graduates to the job market. What people we have trained to run our future!
Farming is dead and farms are no more. What once passed for factories, are now noisy rusted junks. Now only the generals, their minions, and their agents can buy many of those things that make for a good life. They jet in and out of the country and would have the rest of us line the route to the airport to wave them on. Thanks to Europe for their junks vehicles, the rest of us would have had to walk wherever we have to go. After all, they made us believe that a bicycle was a lurid signpost of a past of want. Or why would they build us roads without room for them?
So inured to the use of corrupt power are we that we aid, abet and defend the generals. Forty-one years after British rule, we try to learn how democracy works. And who are the students? The known agents of the vampire that rule our darkest days? The followers of the ogre that ran the people into their grave across our land? The disciples of the Alibaba of our time that opened the country's till so that his son, his kith and his kin could have what money they wanted? What a crowd and what icons if they could learn anything.
Dear God, May we have no darker scrolls in our history! But how could He answer our prayer if we extolled those who committed acts of treason against our land? How could destroyers be builders? How can a corkscrew be straight? Why do we think that we cannot do anything without them? What a country we have?
One has no quarrel with the professors if they burnt the midnight oil to defend them.
The best of these professors might have ended up as readers in real universities. The agents and the minions of the generals would praise them until they die. For, as flies do not see anything the matter with open sores, they cannot see their men do wrong. If one had an evil intent, one would be the devil's ally. Those whom they have made rich would buy acres of newspaper space to praise them. Would they not have ended up as paupers? And does it bother them now that they are moral lepers?
But what sense is there to call a felon or a thief a head of state? Why do we permit them in meetings of our Council of States? Are they wise? Or is it for their lack of wisdom that they attend? Is it that we want to learn the formula they contrived for our decay? Jesu! Would we have had Abacha in the council if he were alive? What we condone that what we have may pass as a country?
It is not in our will to try them for treason against the state. Such is beyond us. We have never had such courage. If we changed, what country would we have? A powerful and just one? A country whose people could practise what faith they like? A country at peace with its people? Perhaps a nation? A country that respects the will of its people? That would be the eighth wonder of the world. Until then, please give me a chance; those Generals were never my heads of state.
December 2001