I will start this piece of literature with a kind advice, from a full blooded Nigerian citizen to his Inspector General of Police:
Ranka ya dade oga Ibrahim Idris. Please be selfless, civil and courageous in discharging your duties as the Chief of the Nigerian Police. As a citizen who has followed policing in Nigeria for a long time, even daring to write President Buhari on “redefining community policing in Nigeria”, and knows very well how too bogus ensuring security in Nigeria is for our policemen, and women. We have our first problem with “law and order” in our country – this term is strange to many Nigerians, and especially strange to our political elites. Our political office holders and their hangers-on are the worst offenders of “law and order” in this country. This is discuss-able sir.
If a lawless citizen would dare say and I heard him very well, that “nothing will happen…is it not the police…? I will only spend 3 days in the cell and I will come back again”. This very pathetic oga Idris, sir: not pathetic for the police, which you head, though, but, first also, for the citizen who thrives in lawlessness and is hardened in it – how do you begin, as a police officer to address a clear spiritual disease in a physical man when you are not the Almighty God? Nigeria is one country in the world on the watch list of global security. This is not due to foreign troubles, but to the challenges we face of, and in self defense – we hardly can protect ourselves, Nigerians are vulnerable to death and to misuse, by the fellow citizens and by their police – this is how bad it is sir.
We have shown a gross lack of capacity to police ourselves. This is where the failure of policing in Nigeria stems” – it is called “you are on your own (OYO)”. The complainant who lodges a complaint at the police station in Nigeria is a courageous man, and she is a courageous woman. They return with tales. Only the politicians like the police, this is why they have mini police barracks in their backyards, and enjoy policemen and women as errands boys and girls. The victims show they like their abuse and misapplications. Some expatriates who fear their own homeland police use our own police as bodyguards. Oga Idris, I know how huge the problem of policing is in Nigeria. I do not envy you.
In concluding my words to you oga Idris, let me chart the course for my small essay by asking you to tread carefully with the complaint Bukola Saraki, our Senate President, has taken to Mr President about you. I am aware of how much trouble you have had in the chambers of the Nigerian Senate for a long time. Senator Misau could be telling his friends: “let it happen to him; when I was complaining about this IG, our oga was taking it for granted”. You may never know. Now they have a complaint made in Kwara State a matter of the Nigerian Senate instead of allowing Saraki fight his battle until he is victimized. This is why true police duty is impossible in Nigeria.
It is unfortunate for you, oga Idris, because your work is not cut out for politics, and the crime field been cleared in Kwara State for the political game that is aching for play out in Abuja may not favour you sir: you are a law enforcer but Bukola Saraki is a politician. You could be accused of fighting back clumsily. You are not allowed to dribble in the game ahead, but Bukola Saraki is allowed, permitted, and will be foul-less when he scores his goals against you by “the hand of god”. Just be selfless, resolute on doing good and right, and be very courageous, even if you have to die fighting. It is more honorable sir.
Bravo Mr President. Bravo for excusing Abubakar Baraje and his nPDP nomads. It is political grazing season for them, and as political herdsmen who have no flourishing ideologies to feeds their political herds with, they have begun to prepare for their roaming again. Why did Abubakar Baraje wait until it was 3 years of this administration, and at a time when his complaint smacks of “scrambling for the Nigerian cake”, that he is remembering that he, with his gang of roamers, is marginalized by the APC government? I commend Mr President for turning a deaf ear to such philosophized hypocrisy and a deadly political ambush.
I feel like being harsh but I will just remain critical. I am sure that President Buhari knows that Abubakar Baraje is from Kwara State, and owes his political ascension to Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki and his son Bukola. He is a Bukola Saraki’s boy and this is unfortunate, when a slave serves a father and his son in 2 generations., not one. Some people indeed were created to be servant. As may be poor but my loyalty is to God. We have heard Saraki’s message and of course Baraje has announced their calling it out with the APC, and this makes Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s job easy.
When Mr President set up the “Asiwaju Reconciliation Committee” for the APC, I showed how Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s job is more anti-typical than prototype of the usual reconciliation we have been blessed to follow – how diGod he most aggrieved member of the party become a justice-able negotiator of his claims from his worst offender?
He has been cultivated to send some members of the APC out of the party, especially those who stink of the PDP. Bukola Saraki must be disengaged from the APC, Yakubu Dogara should be asked to disembark from the APC. Both men never deserve to spend a day longer than the night of 8 June 2015. Oyegun was bought with their PDP money and he floundered, after wasting all his life as a progressive but he turned out a liar. He should be ready to join the PDP train out of the APC. President Muhammadu Buhari can do without them.
As President Buhari mulls of cabinet replacements, he must of necessity excuse Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi from his cabinet. That man works for the PDP while serving this administration. As Director of the Buhari/Osinbajo Campaign Organization in 2015, his claim to expenditure and his need to repay contributing partners during this period, he annexed all the political appointments tgat came to the South South for men who, like him, were frustrated out of the PDP.
Today, they are trying to wreck the APC to provide a strong platform for any other party because no one among them want President Buhari back. We never needed a senate president who can sneaked into the premises of a national assembly on valedatory recess at night, hid himself in a small car to complete his night rest, and woke up with un-brushed mouth to assume the leadership of the 8th National Assembly.
The leadership of the national assembly is the biggest lie of the Buhari administration. No wonder Nigerians are suffering today. Bukola Saraki is a mismatch of President Buhari and I blame Mr President for this gross lack of capacity to know how politics works in Nigeria against Nigerians.
Today, he has seen how Nigerians have consigned him to the Fulanis, exposing his lies that he is for “nobody”. You are stuck with the Fulanis Mr President, they own you as their son. And of course, you are not for “everybody”. Its another lie you told: you cannot claim to be for “looters”. You have shown that you cannot be for them, hence your claim of being “for everybody” is yet a lie too.
You would have clearly seen how democracy is a big lie in Nigeria. And the lie beginning with having a clearly impossible clause in our law book, unless our leaders, beginning with Mr President, understand how no one politician in Nigeria is fit for office, in the face of Section 16 Subsection 2(c) of our constitution.
Our national lawmakers would rather argue for the increase in their welfare provisions, while labour organs argue for an “increase in minimum wage”, yet nobody cares about what that section of our law says. Our leaders and their bureaucrats are our problem in this country.
They are selfish and self-centered. Thank God that I feel the pains of poverty too: I am multiplied by it, and i feel content with the grace of God that I gain by it. I pray Nigeria continues like this without a natural disaster, otherwise, I am sure, they will all leave the shores of this land and return to be strangers in their fatherland.
So goodbye Abubakar Bukola Saraki, goodbye Abubakar Baraje, and goodbye “Abubakar” nPDP. Let all the “Abubakars” leave the APC and prepare for their nomadic trots. APC never needed nPDP, even when they have been quick to tell of how they “made Buhari President”. If Buhari needed Atiku Abubakar’s private jet and it was not available, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu would have provided one.
Muhammadu Buhari never needed the nPDP to win his presidency in 2015, it was the nPDP that needed the APC for political relevance. He never needed Rotimi Amaechi to be the DG of his campaigns to win his presidency in 2015, Olurunimbe Mamora would have done better. President Buhari will do better without them in 2019: let them all go or Buhari leaves the APC for them.
If there is anything Mr President must do at this time, it is to ensure cultism and money are not allowed in our democratic process. No manner of “campaigns” should be allowed on election day. Our politicians have recruited and trained gun welding miscreants to interfere with our electoral processes, and this is the time they are mobilized.
If Bukola Saraki is in anyway responsible for any cult related offence in Kwara State, he should respond to any complaint against him. It is good he had alerted Nigerians about his ordeal with the Inspector General of Police, we will cry out when he is victimized, and we will support his prosecution if he is somewhat related to cultism in any way.
The Senate has some members who like to cry wolf about the Police but we would not like to see another “jumping off a moving police vehicle”. That was too dramatic, and I hope Nollywood would get their acts right when they dramatize “Dino the Nino”. Now let us face Bukola Saraki and his nPDP nomads. Drama never end.
God bless all Nigerians, Amen.
Ini Akpan Morgan is an architect, writer, and an activist par excellence. He writes from Uyo via “time.subsidaries@gmail.com”
