A Memo to Nigeria

On the security situation in Nigeria:

Last Thursday, unidentified persons detonated a bomb at the police headquarters in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. According to press reports, 8 people were killed including an alleged suicide bomber. Many others were injured.

The audacity of the attack, on the Nigerian police itself, suggests that the bombers intended to send a clear, explicit message to their target audience: 

• To the world at large, the message was simple and stark: “Nigeria is in crisis”.

• To the Nigerian government, the message was expressed as a direct challenge, an open declaration of war. Basically, the bombers told the government of Nigeria: “You are weak. Pitifully weak. And we know it. That is why we can attack you and humiliate you before the whole world like this. That is why we can rub your face in the disgrace of your utter helplessness and your absolute incompetence. We are stronger and better organised than you – and we mean business, serious business. We will continue to destabilise Nigeria with these bomb attacks and by so doing, subvert your power and authority in Nigeria. Your days are numbered; it is only a question of time.”

• To the general population, the message was: “Be afraid. Be very afraid. You don't have a government. Not a functioning one anyway. We can strike at any time and anywhere in Nigeria. No government institution or agency in Nigeria can protect you. No government institution or agency in Nigeria can guarantee your safety or your personal security – certainly not the police whose headquarters we have just bombed. Nor the army whose Mogadishu Barracks we bombed on New Years Eve. Nor the SSS which has failed to mount a credible investigation into any of these attacks or produce a single suspect after several years of such explosions in Nigeria. You are completely on your own; completely isolated, completely exposed and completely defenceless.”

It is plain to see that Goodluck Jonathan and the government of Nigeria cannot respond to this threat in any way, shape or form – effectively or otherwise. They are at a complete loss as to what to do or how to react. Everyone can see that Jonathan and his government are flustered by these events, that the so-called authorities in Nigeria are marooned on the same old platitudes, stuck in a rut of mouthing the same old garbage about their intentions to "investigate the immediate and remote causes of the blast", "fish out" the culprits, etc. 
But the population has tuned out. In their panic-stricken millions, Nigerians no longer believe in the empty promises and false proclamations of an apparently incompetent government, of an egregiously incompetent government. Not the intelligent ones anyway.

The frequency of these bomb attacks and explosions means that millions of so-called Nigerians are now waking up to the fact that Nigeria has a very serious problem, that a violent insurgency appears to be threatening the government of Nigeria and the continued existence of Nigeria as we know it. Don't get me wrong; I am all for the destruction of Nigeria because Nigeria is a colonial prison, a colonial institution, but that is a topic for another day.

Today however, millions of so-called Nigerians are beginning to understand that what used to be far away, in distant places like Beirut and Baghdad, is now on our doorstep. And the PDP government of Goodluck Jonathan is absolutely clueless. Absolutely helpless.  


Nigeria can be compared to a drunken man walking home late at night. Suddenly, he is felled to the ground by a series of devastating blows to his head, chest, stomach and all over his body. As if someone were punching him. Hard. But there is nobody around, no one on the deserted, moonlit street. He is not so drunk that he cannot see and he can see that he is alone. There is no one there. He gets up and tries to continue but the same thing happens again. More blows. Invisible, sledgehammer blows out of the darkness. From the darkness.


O fe se lu! Ayakata! 
O fe se gbon! Ayakoto! 
O fe se won! Ayakiti! 
O fe se gbin! Ayakutu!


He is being hit left, right and centre but he has no idea where the blows are coming from or who is hitting him. Just like these bombs. Just like Nigeria. Absolutely clueless. Absolutely helpless.

Ironically enough, during a visit to his American puppeteers in Washington DC last week, the presidential clown Jonathan bragged that Boko Haram was a minor problem which Nigeria could handle without foreign help. However, the Nigerian press published a story two weeks ago revealing that the PDP government had invited Israeli experts to fix Nigeria's terrorism problem. (You may remember that the government of Jonathan's political godfather, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, signed a $260 million dollar contract with an Israeli security company Aeronautics Ltd in 2006. Under the terms of that contract, Israeli agents tracked the emails, phone calls and movements of Nigerian citizens in Nigeria). 

Imagine that! 
Inviting the agents of a foreign government to protect you from bombers in your own country. Think about that for a minute. Here we have a sovereign nation, a supposedly independent nation, asking another country to provide security for your own citizens in your own territory. And you were sworn in as president only 5 minutes ago! Did an Israeli win the recent presidential elections in Nigeria? What does the constitution say about this? What are the responsibilities of a government? Does the Nigerian government exist only to embezzle public funds? Is that it? Nothing else? Are the so-called elites in Nigeria so fractured, so weakened and so debilitated by the ongoing orgy of corruption that they cannot even muster the resources to confront this threat to their own existence? Have these bomb attacks not exposed our so-called elites as incompetent, good-for-nothings - as fraudsters and parasites feeding on millions so-called Nigerians? Have these bombs not exposed all those ex-generals and politicians in Nigeria as helpless crybabies, hopelessly useless at anything apart from “authority stealing”, as Fela called it?

If the government of Nigeria cannot provide the most fundamental need, the basic need of adequate security in Nigerian society without recourse to foreign governments (imported security, anyone?), why don't we hand over the administration and government of Nigeria to the Israelis and let them run the whole thing? Instead of security alone, they might as well manage our economy, run the army and take over the country. Why not? If Jonathan and the PDP are slavish or treacherous enough to hand over the internal security of Nigeria to outsiders (to the Jews of all people!), why should it make the slightest difference if those outsiders take control over other aspects of our lives or openly run the government of Nigeria?  


But that won't happen for a while. Not yet. Because it would be the final straw, the last gust of a truthful wind - a truthful wind which would expose the anus of a colonial fowl called Nigeria, and the sham of our alleged independence. And the puppeteers aren't ready for that. Yet.