On 29/5/23, PMB returned to his beloved cows in Daura, which are more obedient than Nigerians. He also warned that if we ‘disturbed’ him, he would ‘Andrew-Out’ to the Republic of Niger, where a warm reception awaited him. Of course, ‘I will go to Niger’ is among his quotable quotes, like ‘lazy youths,’ ‘Dot people,’ ‘ze oza room,’ et al. A week before that, his disengagement, Martins Oloja, a cerebral journalist, presented PMB’s report card thus:
‘In the last eight years, the best for most jobs in all the strategic sectors are not only from the North, they are Muslims… These were the ministers of Police Affairs, Defence, Aviation, Transportation (after Amaechi), Petroleum, Communications, Power, and FCT; the IGP; the Chiefs of Army and Naval Staff; the DGs of SSS, NIA, NITDA, NCAA, FAN, FIU, and NIMASA; the CGs of Customs, Immigration, and Prisons; the CEOs of NCC, TCN, NPA, NNPC, EFCC, FCDA, TCN, FCC, and REA; the Attorney General; and more than 90% of Heads of Departments and CEOs of FCT agencies (Sunday Guardian, 21/5/23).
Today, I just want to pay a deserving tribute to PMB, and my best tribute is to reproduce an article published in the Guardian on 31/5/17. That was 6 years ago, when the Niger Republic dimension and the ‘Kastinarisation’ of everything had not gotten to the worrisome dimension. Here is the 2017 article.
If I had been around when George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, I would have advised him to title it ‘The change that was not’! Most of us know about George Orwell’s animals and their utopian farm. At his inauguration, PMB made one resounding statement: ‘I belong to nobody, and I belong to everybody.’ I interpreted it as an equivalent of ‘all animals are equal,’ and I thought that PMB had repented from his days at PTF, when the North, and particularly his political zone, cornered everything. Two years down the line, I am doubtful.
It was misleading for our president to claim that he belonged to no one when he is the grand patron of the Myetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association. He is even a member because his key assets are cattle. That is why there has been a declaration by actions that cows are more important than humans and that herders have power of life and death over others, as evidenced by how herdsmen brazenly wreak havoc in the South, East, West, and non-core North. Whether it was in Agatu or Nimbo, the security operatives acted as if nothing happened, and our PMB, who belonged to everybody, could not utter any word, though he would quickly commiserate with other nations even when two chickens died in a road accident!
For cattle hustlers, the action is decisive and clinical. The Niger State Police Command just recovered 28 cows from Kamache Forest, and on 4/5/17, Justice Majebi of Kogi High Court sentenced two murderous cattle rustlers to death. How many herdsmen have been arrested and tried? The Benue State CP, Bashir Makama, who watched while Fulani terrorists turned Benue people into refugees in their own land, boldly declared that Governor Ortom could not banish Fulani herdsmen from Benue, and that was just after another bout of herdsmen brutality in a state where herdsmen now control 12 of the 23 LGAs.
Our people say that the person oppressing a widow does so boldly because he knows where the husband has gone. The herdsmen are behaving with the impudence of a person dealing with widows! But even if we leave the herdsmen out of this nauseating equation, there are several factors reminding us that Nigerians are not equal. In the last police recruitment, Kano State had a haul of 396, but Bayelsa got 72. In the last DSS recruitment, Kastina State had 51, Southeast 44, and South-South 42. The cut-off marks for the so-called unity schools this year were 139 for Anambra, 131 for Ogun, and 4/2 for Zamfara. And they will write the same WASC/JAMB and face the same labour market. In the recent ‘two fighting’ Ife crises, only ‘one’ was swiftly arrested. It has been arrogantly shown to us that some Nigerians are more equal than others; that even the cattle are more important than the people. I hope that does not mark the end of the real-life Nigerian farm. This is the end of that abridged 2017 article.
For PMB, the end was worse than the beginning. However, I am GLAD that I survived these 8 Buharistic years, the badness of which was caused by unparalleled incompetence, mindboggling corruption, first-class parochialism, bitterness towards fellow Nigerians, especially the dot-people, and an I-don’t-give-a-damn paradigm.
To celebrate his exit, I queued for hours and received the certificate of survival. I queued longer because I refused to settle with those who wanted to make last cash under the outgoing regime. Even Nigeria as a country deserves the certificate for still remaining a country after these disastrous PMB years!
Ik Muo, PhD, Dept. of Bus Admin, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625
