The chaos is complete – a fraudulent and mercenary executive + a dysfunctional and credibility lacking legislature + a compromised and irresponsible judiciary is equal to a banana republic. Thank you the elites for completing the bananization of the Nigerian state.
By Achike Chude
How did Karl Maier, that American journalist, get it so right in his description of the Nigerian state as a criminal enterprise about two decades ago?
What made his dark prediction about the future prospects of the country so remarkable was that he made his prophesy at the dawn of the 4th republic in 1999 when optimism was naturally supposed to trump pessimism.
His seminal work ‘This House Has Fallen’ was eloquent testimony to his dispassionate study of the diverse realities, strengths and weaknesses of the country. His study of the country’s elites, state institutions and the various fault lines led him to only one conclusion: the country was doomed.
For sure, there could not have been any other conclusion.
His problem with the country was not in the lack of economic development and growth expected of a country with endless possibilities and potentials. It was essentially that Nigeria lacked the most important element of national power that defined countries and peoples – the kind of elites and political class that had the capacity in spite of inherent contradictions, to form some sort of meaningful consensus for positive governance and relatively good outcomes.
But no! Everywhere he looked, Karl Maier beheld wolves in sheep’s clothing masquerading as leaders of the people. He knew that if they were not outright bandits and criminals, the elites he saw exercising powers and influence on behalf of the people at best had the mindsets of criminals and bandits who were either running the country, on the verge of running the country, or aspiring to run the country.
So why are people still appalled at the criminality of the Nigerian state? Why are they surprised that the state manufactures corruption, breathes corruption and spreads corruption – right from the labyrinths of the serpentine structures of the highest executive office in the land – to the highest executive structures of the federating units?
What is the benumbing reason for people’s angst against a naturally crime-disposed legislative structure at all levels, federal or state? What else do they expect from an institution peopled in the main by mercenaries and men and women of dubious criminal persuasions and moral dispositions? Did a stunned National Assembly member, a former Deputy Inspector General of Police, not tell a non-bemused nation that some of his then Senate colleagues were investigated by the police for all manners of fraud and sundry crimes?
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And as for the Nigerian judiciary? Lord have mercy on us all!
The oft repeated statement of the judiciary being the last hope of the common man now seems to be the mere imagination of a cynical person intent on playing a joke on our national consciousness. The glory days of Nigeria’s judiciary are long gone.
The decline of this once-revered institution followed the same pattern of general decline of the state – gradual and inexorably consistent. Now our judiciary has in general terms become the refuge of the enemies of the Nigerian state. It is now the first and last stop for the socio-deviant rich, powerful and influential. It is the first and last hope of the criminal and criminally minded with enough dollars and pounds in his or her pockets.
Recently retired Supreme Court Justice Muhammed Dattijo could not have been more scathing in his attack of the institution he had represented for over three decades: “In some quarters, the view is strongly held that filth and intrigues characterize the institution these days! Judges are said to be comfortable in companies they never would have kept in the past.”
Writing recently in his column titled ‘Powerful Lagos, Powerless Osun,’ Lasisi Olagunju argued about the new found clout of Nigeria’s judiciary: “Conquest used to be by the force of arms; now it is mostly through the courts. In Nigeria, the courts are the new military; they take and distribute power to politicians.”
As for the former chairman of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Olumide Akpata, the danger could not be clearer: “The courts are under threats of abduction,” he warned at the International Bar Association (IBA) conference in France last week.
He described the selection process of Nigerian judges as “bizarre”. He said there was “a deliberate attempt” by the Nigerian political class “to capture the judiciary.” He added that they are “achieving results.”
Fiery lawyer and political affairs commentator, Chidi Odinkalu, perhaps tired of his usual detailed description of the rot in the judiciary recently described some of the judges as “crooks.”
So the chaos is complete – a fraudulent and mercenary executive + a dysfunctional and credibility lacking legislature + a compromised and irresponsible judiciary is equal to a banana republic.
Any wonder that Nigeria has continued to flounder almost irredeemably on all scores.
Thank you, Karl Maier for the sad, tragic, but true description of Nigeria as: “A criminally run corporation where the leaders are armed and hidden in the vault.”
Thank you the elites for completing the bananization of the Nigerian state.
Thank you the pauperized, hungry and ignorant Nigerian people for allowing them to ride roughshod over you and destroying your hopes and dreams, even though the true power to change your destiny lies with you.
The last chapter on Nigeria is yet to be written.
Hope, though fleeting and flickering, still endures.