by Moses Oludele Idowu
The recent exposure of the forfeiture of 48 massive properties in high brow areas of Abuja to the Federal Government of Nigeria by the former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami must be seen as one of the confounding and depressing things in recent time but also a vindication of my oft- repeated thesis that the fundamental trouble with Nigeria is absence of a _culture of honour_ . For umpteenth time I repeat, the trouble with Nigeria is not the corruption or leadership or ethnic rivalries or Constitution; those are the effects. Not the trouble. The real trouble, the crying evil that is assailing this wobbling and fumbling nation dying on its legs today is that there is an absence of a Culture of Honour in both leadership and followership. Nigerians can do anything for money and for property. They can compromise anything and everything.
Malami was at the head of the Investigation Team and Asset Recovery Team of that hypocritical administration headed by Muhammadu Buhari. Most of the properties were recovered from previous looters and he acquired them under a Government that claimed to be fighting corruption. No transparency, no accountability.
Soon too the new looters in Government from another segment or gang of the same APC will share the same properties among themselves just like before and we won’t hear anything again.
With Nigerian politicians especially of the APC, it is “ole gbe, ole gba”- one thief grabs it and another thief collects it from the grabber. No accounting or accountability. Just sharing and distribution.
This is what you have when you have a leadership and an elite class that knows nothing about _culture of honour._ Nigerian elites are not better than okada riders in terms of their depraved mentality and mental depravity, they only wear tie or coat and speak English. These are not the class of people that will build a nation or cause a Singaporean experiment or phenomenon of turning a third world to first. These are not the people that would lead a revolution of national renewal or revival like the Sons of Liberty in America or the Jacobins in France or the Puritans in England.
We are dealing with a debased segment of humanity devoid of all high culture and moral sensibilities, honesty of purpose or patriotism. We are confronted with a people enslaved to animal greed and insatiable propensity for primitive accumulation. Even animals do not acquire what they do not presently need. We are dealing with an elite class that has descended and debased even beyond the animal species; a people beyond the redeeming graces and restitutive and recovery and transformative powers of Religion. People who patronized religion but whose minds are already closed.
Our man goes to mecca every year and must have stoned Satan a couple of times. He probably prayed 5 times a day and never missed a Ramadan or Jumat service. Most likely each of the properties has a mosque built inside or a church.
This is Nigeria and Nigerian elites. Religion is not about character amelioration or moral reformation, just a tool for control, manipulation, domination and enslavement and subjugation of others. Everything is Haram and forbidden except the stealing and looting of public Treasury. The elites’ religion does not forbid that. It does not stop them from taking what does not belong to them.
These are the people who will fight for religion, issue fatwa for blasphemy against a prophet and threaten everyone in the name of religion while leaving double lives in contravention of that very religion. These are the ones who would plunge a nation into war if necessary to establish Sharia Law but they know their hands will never be cut by the rule of Sharia for their stealing. Only the poor deluded slaves of a religious culture they know nothing about will suffer that fate.
Thieves.
Enemies of God and Man.
Enslavers. Agents of colonialist perpetuation and enemies of Blackman’s emancipation.
Stinking hypocrites.
They will tell the world that the North is poor and the children of the north are neglected when they are the reason for that benign neglect and the cause of that mass poverty and collective disempowerment and immiseration.
We do not yet have an elite class in Nigeria. None. If these are the type of people you expect to build a nation you will end up soon as Afghanistan. These are not better or higher morally or in their thought process than okada riders. They may clutch many University degrees and qualifications but they are yet to evolve mentally and spiritually. These do not yet know that real development and progress are what you do for others not of a common patrimony that you are able to corner to yourself. Our elites lack honour.
The other day a captain of industry was ordered by the court to appear over swindling of others. A very notable industrial elite in Lagos. And what did he do? He ran away from Nigeria not through the airport lest he be arrested but through bush path. Didn’t I say that your elites are not better than okada riders? These are your elites.
They use the courts to obstruct justice rather than to dispense it. They manipulate the nation and its system to favour them and their elite interest . No thought for tomorrow or the next. No attempt to build an enduring culture that will serve everyone. No place for building a lasting and strong institution that will serve generations. And they can bend any rule to favour them and their children.
The counterpart of Abubakar Malami who was in Aviation on the eve of departure of Buhari even rented an Ethiopian airline plane to deceive Nigerians and painted it in Nigerian national colours as the new Nigerian Airways under that ignoble and hypocritical administration that claimed as its primary motif and foundational basis the fighting of corruption. These are your political elites – thieves, robbers, scallywags, cant and humbug.
We have wasted too much time asking the wrong questions and looking for wrong answers. Nigeria does not have a leadership problem to begin with, it has an elite problem but this elite problem is anchored on the lack of a culture of honour. Yes, it is true Nigeria’s problems began with leadership and cannot be solved without leadership but this leadership problem actually began when we lost a culture of honour and cannot be regained until that culture returns and resurface.
Nigeria does not have a leadership crisis, it has a “culture of honour” crisis. Once you miss it here you miss it everywhere. This is the cruz of the matter – Honour..
Until this culture is fixed and Nigerians begin imbibing the culture we may as well accept Dante’s verdict for national renewal in his immortal classic – INFERNO: –
“Abandon all hope all ye that come hither.”
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July 16, 20226
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