Safety for the Soul - Jeffrey R. Holland - October 2009

MARCH 28 2015 ELECTION - IT IS ABOUT POLITICAL PROCESS DEVELOPMENT

It is about the political process development of Nigeria which previous gladiators and ruiners (rulers) of Nigeria have not allowed to happen. It is happening with Jonathan.

Nigerians really need to open their eyes and know that opportunity is always disguised as work. So when the lazy look at opportunity, all they see is sweat and work and they faint. Whatever you see as wrong in President Jonathan’s administration is the disguise of opportunity. It is all good because it gives Nigerians the opportunity to make the hard choice associated with socio-political development. Making the right choices in life is always a hard thing.

If you want to achieve growth and development without a germane environment for the evolution of the process, it is like expecting your pregnant wife to deliver a child the same day you found out she is two months pregnant. What would come out is not a baby.   It is called premature. Voting anyone other Jonathan on 28 March 2015 would put in the hands of Nigerians an aborted fetus. Voting other than Jonathan make Nigerians out as the proverbial tortoise that has been in toilet for 40 years and is asking the people to hurry up (on the day he is being brought out) to bring him out before the smell of shit kills him.

Claims of anybody even Buhari fighting corruption is futile and falsehood. It is not tenable to fight corruption. You cannot fight corruption. Not even in America.  We can only outgrow corruption. Though the APC and Buhari are mouthing corruption, they do not have the philosophy and the moral bearing for dealing with corruption. The anti-corruption egghead of the Buhari military regime was late Tunde Idiagbon.  With the exception of Buhari who worked with Idiagbon, which other APC member is not among the corruption problem of Nigeria? 

More importantly, corruption is not among the tenth real problems of Nigeria in hierarchy. Even if America or others mouth corruption which is neither spelt in Ibo, Hausa or Yoruba but in English, it does not make it a Nigerian. Truth is that there is corruption everywhere. It is only institutional and moral strength of the people and country as a collective development in their consciousness that can deal with corruption. President Jonathan is the only Nigerian ruler that has given that power to Nigerians by creating an enabling environment for people to challenge the wrongs of rulers.  He has created the opportunity for an opposition with mouth to speak without having their banks and other businesses crippled or killing them for question rulership. He has allowed Nigerians to have a voice over their affairs. My calculation is that Jonathan's next four years will seal it for Nigerians - making democracy a government of the people and not of a small cabal of insensate rogue men. The next four years with Jonathan would provide Nigerians with the opportunity to outgrow corruption.

Not voting for Jonathan on 28 March 2015 is to orchestrate miscarriage which would lead me to accuse those who caused it of sponsoring and procuring an abortion which is still illegal in Nigeria.

I personally invite Nigerians to rise up with a vision of tomorrow and vote for the future and not for the past.  Jonathan represents the future.  Buhari represents the past.  We must move forward in this country if Nigeria is to be a nation. 

Nigeria has remained too long as a concocted country.  It needs to grow up into a nation.  March 28 2015 date is that day when the impetus to give hope to that growth and development into nationhood for Nigeria would be established.  It is only a vote for President Goodluck Jonathan that would ensure that.

We have had too much bad luck in the hands of past rulers of which Buhari is one.  Let us get one more four years of fresh GOOD LUCK.  This is our chance to have a Nigeria which everyone would feel is their own and not a country people see as a huge hippopotamus meat lying on the ground for thieves to come and cut from without thinking about tomorrow.

REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA: BITTING THE FINGER THAT FED HER

The World Press, electronic, social and hard copy are replete with news of the $9.3 million seized by authorities of the Republic of South Africa from a private jet flown by two Nigerians and an Israeli for breaching the South African law on cash movements in foreign currency into the country.

Photo Credit: Daily Trust

Before the dust could die down on this one, the case of another $5.7 million dollars being transacted through a bank in South Africa was also seized by the same authorities of the Republic of South Africa and this regardless of the fact that this was being processed through the bank.

NEED TO URGENTLY ABOLISH THE MONTHLY NATIONAL AND STATES ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION EXERCISES

Monthly national and states sanitation exercises, one of the relics of the infamous Buhari/Idiagbon military administration in Nigeria 1983-85 has continued to hang as an albatross over our necks regardless of the fact that it was a failure from inception.  It is the product of the Machiavellian thinking that attempted to make people believe that the only way to make Nigerians behave well is when you stamp your booth on their neck with gun and koboko.  Talk about the gun and koboko mentality and leadership which the military instituted in Nigeria and worked hard to infuse same in our mentality which is the major bane of Nigeria today.

None of our leaders have bothered to teach us character and nationalism.  All they have done is to sit or stand over us with gun and koboko and riding a  roughshod over us.

Some State Governors in our typical crowd mentality quickly added their own monthly environmental sanitation exercises which only increased our traumas.

After three decades, the only people who benefit from the monthly sanitation exercise in Nigeria are touts and the dubious revenue contractors who pay money in advance to equally dubious government officials and then hire Policemen and recently Civil Defence personnel to harass, attack, arrest, detain and extort money from the ignorant among us.

The question that some people would ask is ‘how come you claim that the policy is wrong when it has lasted for such a long time, a whopping three decades”?  This is a valid question, especially as only few laws are ever remembered in Nigeria immediately after they are made. How come this got stuck with our people?  The answer is ‘because some dubious officials of local and state governments are making a lot of money out of Nigerians through extortion, bribes illegal fines and other charges.

The very fact that the programme has lasted for so long a time is the very reason why it should be immediately abolished without further delay.

On a typical national or state sanitation day in Nigeria is a day when touts, robbers and dubious contractors reign supreme and make a lot of money from bribes, robberies and fines, all obtained from the people under duress.  The very fact that they make so much money on this day to sustain the barbarism they visit on Nigerians is evidence that the exercise has failed to make Nigerians conscious of the need to keep their environment clean.  The reason for instituting the exercise was ostensibly “to instill ‘by force of arm and koboko’ the consciousness to keep our environment clean”.  Thirty years down the line, more and more people are caught deliberating flouting the order to stay at home and clean up their environment. 

On a typical sanitation exercise day in Lagos, usually the last Saturday of each month, you have heavy traffic jam and serious road blocks as early as 4:00am.  The reason is that people are rushing to beat the 7:00am start off time of the exercise during which vehicular movement is restricted except for those on essential services.

People traveling long distances start very early in the morning and driving as close as possible to their destination and then park their vehicles somewhere on the road where the 7:00am startup time met them.  By leaving their homes too early in the day, they expose themselves to criminality and harm and loss of their hard earned money and property.

Those who remained at home just sit by to loll, sleep longer than necessary and waste a whole of three-hour block when so much would been accomplished.

The worsening environmental situation of our cities is evidence that the national sanitation exercise is not working. The fact that after thirty years of the law and its forceful implementation, people are still being caught, harassed, maltreated, beaten up, temporarily imprisoned, and robbed of their money by officials using guns purchased by tax payers money is evidence that the sanitation exercise is not working, will not work and should, therefore, be abolished.

Abia state observes the state and national sanitation exercises on the first and last Saturdays of each month.  In spite of the double dose of the wickedness of the so-called environmental sanitation exercises observed in Abia State, the state is still the dirtiest places in the whole wide world with heaps of refuse covering dual carriageways in the middle of the city of Aba.

This is to call on both the Nigerian and state governments to immediately and as a matter of urgent national concern abolish the national and state sanitation exercises wherever they are observed in Nigeria.

It is heartwarming to know that the national sanitation exercise does not hold in Akwa Ibom State and Uyo, the capital city of Akwa Ibom State, is cleaner than Abuja Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria.

SAVE OUR SOULS.

EBOLA IN NIGERIA: HAVE WE QUARANTINED THE MONEY INSTEAD OF SUSPECTED VICTIMS?

Following the calculated premeditated infestation of Nigeria with the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) by the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer July 2014, Nigeria has been in state of medical emergency.  In appreciation of the great dangers to the whole world if Nigeria ended up with an escalated Ebola Virus Disease epidemic, the World Health Organization declared a state of medical emergency in West Africa.

So far, if the daily briefings of the Minister of Health of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Lagos State Government are anything to go by, our response to the EVD imported in to Nigeria by Mr. Sawyer and his evil sponsors has been commendable.  The Federal Government ‘voted’ a whopping N1.9 billion in the first instance to enable surveillance, quarantine and treatment of suspects and victims.

Photo Credit:  Google

It is disturbing to learn that in spite of the above efforts and huge sum of money voted, some of those who had contact with the devil Sawyer who are supposedly, or are supposed to be, under surveillance and quarantine, had successfully evaded these critical stages in the management of the crisis.  Well known suspects and victims had surfaced in other locations in Nigeria in a manner indicative of a written script being played out.  See the triangle of Lagos/Port Harcourt/Enugu. 

A nurse who worked on the Sawyer case at First Foundation Hospital was heard to have successfully evaded ‘surveillance and quarantine’ and traveled to Enugu and met with her family members leading to twenty people being quarantined in Enugu.  To date we do not know how it came to be that she was able to leave to the East under the circumstances.  Is there a chance that there is a clearly written script that she had a copy of that required the whole Nigeria to be infested?

Now the news is awash with one of the primary contacts of Patrick Sawyer who is clearly infected having evaded surveillance and quarantine and traveled to Port Harcourt where he secretly obtained treatment in a hotel room leading to the infection of the Doctor that treated him who has now died.  The doctor’s wife has also been infected.  The question that shoots very sharply at us now is: “how about the doctor’s children, house girl and house boy, brothers and sisters, friends and may be parents that he had been living normally with and having contacts with while playing his game of death with this Patrick Sawyer’s primary contact?”

Is there a chance that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) or elements of its workforce in Liberia and Nigeria are embroiled in a complicity to bring this deadly EVD to Nigeria and to what ends was this evil hatched?  These questions have come to the fore given that Patrick Sawyer, a while known Liberian EVD carrier, who had been in isolation in his country where the EVD had already become an epidemic and, who has been denied access to his offices and premises by the company he works for, was sponsored by ECOWAS with approval of the Liberian Government officials that know his condition, to come to Nigeria ostensibly to attend a conference.  How come he was traveling with a number of ECOWAS officials who had all contracted the disease now and one of who had died in Nigeria along with him?  Too many questions to be ignored.  May be these questions would be the subject of other discourses on this subject in future.

The other day, some friends and I were discussing the EVD problem in Nigeria.  When we came to the good efforts of the Federal and Lagos State Governments in this matter, one of us expressed his worries that instead of mounting surveillance on all suspects and putting them in quarantine to ensure that the disease is contained, a typical Nigerian official would prefer to put the money voted under surveillance and, quarantine the funds in their private bank accounts and other ways they use in stashing stolen public money while allowing the suspects and victims to run free and infest everyone they meet with the deadly virus.

There were quite some complaints last week by families of the EVD suspects and victims that their relations who caught the disease are abandoned to die.  The Lagos State Government has also reported at a time that they had not received the N200 million that the Federal Government promised to provide to the State Government to support its laudable efforts and of course, the burden to deal with the EVD emergency in Lagos.  With the huge sums voted, one expected that the suspects would be provided with enough opportunity to stay alive if they are not infected with the deadly strain and if so infected, to be supported to die in a happy state of mind.

What the Nigerian Federal and the Lagos State governments had done so far as we have learned in the pronouncements are commendable.  I plead with officials assigned with the responsibility to manage the Ebola Virus Disease health emergency funds in the West African sub-region and Nigerian officials in particular to PLEASE not put the funds voted for this emergency under surveillance and quarantine.  Quarantining the money voted for this medical emergency would certainly bring curses worse than EVD on them and their families. 

Remember the servant of Elisha in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

RE: GOVERNOR SHETTIMA AND HIS WITCH CRIES

I read with shock and disbelief the article with above title in Punch Newspaper viewpoint of June 25, 2014 written by one Law Mefor out of Abuja.

Given the accuracy and immediacy of the occurrence of every prediction made by Governor Shettima, it is clearly obvious that the conclusions I made in my article “What If No Girls Were Kidnapped At Chibok?” about the agenda of the Northern political elite being the same as that of boko haram is simply the truth.

Instead of condemning only President Jonathan for failures, let us condemn and also prosecute Governors of the North East for waging war against the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

Contending with a daredevil criminal and terrorist organization backed by a wealthy state governor, how can the Nigerian military be expected to be effective?  Even the United States military would be nothing but a crate of eggs inside a rickety pickup van on a rough Vietnamese road vis-à-vis the less motivated Nigerian army in the circumstances where some state governments are the ones sabotaging their efforts.

I have always felt that what we are facing in the North East is the beginning of a Northern rebellion.  President Jonathan himself has said that the boko haram insurgency is worse than a civil war.  I agree with him.  What worries me is that an attempt by people of South-East and South-South to secede 1967 as a result of the genocide visited upon them by the Hausa-Fulani people of Northern Nigeria was visited by an all-out war in which millions of the people of the two geopolitical zones of the country were murdered without mercy by the Nigerian government and military.

Today, we have in our hands a clear armed rebellion by the people and governments of the Northern Nigeria and we are calling it insurgency and dealing with it with kid gloves.

The highly mouthed weakness of President Goodluck Jonathan is nothing but an attempt to beguile and intimidate the President from using the state power available to him to crush this rebellion which is an obvious attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government of Nigeria, truncate our developing democracy and enthrone evil, anarchy and religious bigotry against the Nigerian state and citizenry.  President Jonathan is obliged to act against the forces of evil and anti-democracy with all the power available in the constitution of Nigeria. It is better than one man should perish than for a whole generation to dwindle in unbelief.

Goodluck Jonathan need to appreciate that the desire in man to seek for political office is the hand of God pushing a man whose destiny would achieve the greater good for the society to take control of things.  He should stop feeling alone.  He should move forward to do what he must do – lead this country to the destinies that God has ordained.  His stepping out should not be seen as his personal agenda.  It is a divine agenda.

All well-meaning Nigerians should help President Jonathan make decisions that Divinity has put his hands and mind to make for the progress of this country which can only work if the witches are destroyed.  Even Europe had to destroy the witches before they received the vision to colonize the rest of the world which saved them from dying of hunger and from extinction.

If you would like to have Francis O. Nmeribe speak at your event reach him through fnmeribe@outlook.com

WHAT IF NO GIRLS WERE KIDNAPPED AT CHIBOK? BY FRANCIS O. NMERIBE

I do not expect this article to be popular with anybody.  I do not expect any accolades either.  But in security, perception is reality for the person involved.  Most Nigerians’ reality today is that 200 plus girls were kidnapped from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State some 77 days ago while in their boarding facility while preparing to write their West African Examination Council (WAEC) Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination.

As a person who lives by my analytical skill as a security practitioner, I have been following the whole saga and trying to read between the lines.  I am beginning to feel that there is strong probably no school girls were kidnapped in reality and that the whole issue has been a written piece of drama which the authors are set to keep updating to ensure there is no end as an end would expose the possibility that no one had been kidnapped.

If you have not gotten too angry to continue reading this piece, I would provide you with red flags which show that the equation does not fit together and therefore, grounds to question the story of kidnap of more than 200 girls from a school boarding facility at Chibok, Borno State.

One, so far, nobody has given an exact number of girls who were in the school that night and exactly how many were abducted and the exact number of girls who escaped before they were taken away.  Everything about the numbers have been conjectures of about 200, 274, 300 girls kidnapped or 20, 40, 60 girls had escaped.

Two, the principal of the school Mrs. Asabe Kwabura had given two different versions of how the kidnap incident happened.  In one account, “she said that she was in Maiduguri for a medical checkup and her daughter called her to tell her insurgents are attacking the school”.  In another account, Mrs. Kwabura “said that the insurgents had come to her in the guise of soldiers and told her that they need to move the girls to a safer location and she allowed them”.  Who did she call to confirm the need to move the girls?  Who did she call to tell what the “soldiers” had told her before permitting them to take the girls, should that be the true story?  If the school was not safe for the students, why and how come it was it safe for Mrs. Kwabura and her daughter that resides with her? Is it not interesting that such a begging muddle would be in place and we are ignoring it and playing into the hands of Boko Haram and all those in the same ship with them.

Three, when the first video of the “abducted girls” were shown, we were shown video of chubby happy Islamic girls who were reciting the Koran and Hadith perfectly “though they were just forcibly converted to Islam only a few weeks earlier”.  What magic did the busy Boko Haram fighters use in achieving such a feat impossible for even Albert Einstein?  If they can do that magic, we had better allow them to come and teach our children science and mathematics.

Four, on the first day when the parents of the “abducted Chibok girls” were asked to identify them from the video; the news report was that none of the girls were their daughters.  By the second day, the identification parade moved to the governor’s office and 4 girls were identified.  By the third, fourth, fifth days, we heard, 20 girls, 40 girls and 60 girls had been identified.  And that was the last we heard about identifying the girls.  What about the remaining two hundred and something if 274 or 300 girls had been abducted?

Five, a sixty year old woman was listed among those that were abducted.  Even if we assume that she is doing adult education, how come up to date, nobody has come forward to say that his or her sixty year old mother or sister or aunty was among those kidnapped if she were to be childless at that age which is possible.

Six, Mrs. Asabe Kwabura in one news report said that 43 of the girls had been accounted for and 230 are still missing.  But every day, the report in the media is that 274 girls are still missing.

Seven, some Northern leaders are already preparing us for the inevitable – the time when there would be no real girls to use in proving some girls were ever kidnapped.  Sani Shehu was quoted by the Nigerian press to say that “by the time the girls are released, they would not know themselves again and some of them may become militants”.  In the business of persuasion, that statement is tantamount to ‘preparation’ – getting us ready for the day that we could not have any girls who can vouch to being taken. Then it would be said, “They have been so confused, they cannot remember who they are anymore”. And also as soon as more female bombers join the boko haram terrorist group, it could be said that they must be the Chibok girls who have been indoctrinated.

Eight, Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the marauders of Nigeria that I distrust greatly joined forces with the North and said that “he is afraid that before long, all the Chibok girls would be impregnated by their captors”.  These are all preparations.

Nine, check it out – no single parent or parents or relations of the “Chibok girls” have come forward to discuss about their ordeal to the Nigerian press.  All that has been heard were from parents that spoke through governor Shettima of Borno State or other governor’s office officials.

My security background and instincts find it difficult to stay comfortable with these obvious conflicts and misleading statements preparing us to accept what next lie that could be sold about the Chibok school girls’ abduction.

Therefore, my imagination is running riots presently and if you have liberty to create so much embarrassment for the Nigerian nation and government, I am at liberty to imagine that the true situation is that we are being beguiled by a ruse calculated to embarrass the Nigerian government and people and also achieve sinister agenda clearly connected to the Boko Haram Agenda.  My grounds are adduced below.

One, it is not hidden anymore that the Boko Haram programme is an agenda planned and executed to bring home the threat made by no less than three eminent Northern politicians including Junaidu Mohammed, Atiku Abukakar, Muhammadu Buhari to mention but a few, that they would make Nigeria ungovernable for Jonathan if he wins the elections in 2011.  This threat has been repeated in several other ways and guises especially with the learning that President Jonathan might want to contest for a second term in 2015.

Two, when you listen to ‘Abubakar Shekau’ talk, the same statements he makes is the same that all Jonathan’s opponents are making.  After each terrorist bomb attack on the Nigerian soil and people, ‘Abubakar Shekau’ boasts how he is better than Jonathan.  He boasts that Nigerian security forces and the President are weak.  It is this same statement that the opposition and most northern elite use.  Even the failed governors’ of the North-East talk in exactly the same language and term of how Boko Haram fighters are better than the Nigerian soldiers just with the same words ‘Abukakar Shekau’ would use when boasting about his successes.

Three, since the 1950s, the United States of America have always wanted to have a military base in Nigeria.  So far, this has failed through the efforts of Nigerian students in the 1950s and 1960s and the military leaders of Nigeria and current leaders to resist the chocolate coated sword from America. An embarrassment like the kidnap of so many girls and apparent failure of Nigerian soldiers to rescue the phantom girls is enough to announce shame on a leadership and force their hands to accept help of American troops.

Four, a year or two ago, the U.S. Intelligence predicted that Nigeria would disintegrate in 2015.  Is there a chance that all that is in motion is an operation to actualize that prediction?

My counsel to the Northern peoples of Nigeria – this country is better than anything else.  If you do not live and let live, you would lose the oil money that has served you so well in the past.

To America, my counsel is that it is a wiser step to support and help Nigeria to stand in an equitable manner.  If Nigeria disintegrates, there would be no space in America regardless of you’re the efficiency of your immigration security officials and apparatus.

My one counsel for President Goodluck Jonathan, and he needs to do this before his luck runs out.  “President Jonathan should realize that we have a civil war on our hands with boko haram being the armed forces of the rebel North.  He should put on the cap of a President at war and go ahead and prosecute the war against boko haram as a war”.

Good luck to all.