GEJ? Yes, but What About the Rest of Us?-----Imo Ben Ubokudom Eshiet

Prof. Imo Eshiet

When I was a child, my mother was fond of saying evil men were very much part of creation. In other words, God uses wicked people to punish the wicked. I believe she was right for no good people would do evil. Let's extend the metaphor. Nigeria is decidedly a seething seismic and churning cesspool. Put simply the place stinks much like the frothing and unsightly open gutters so commonplace in the nation. And inevitably governments at all levels in the nation suck. 

Everyone lashes out viciously at GEJ conveniently forgetting local government chairmen, legislators and assembly men and women who all make up the government. Sure enough a fish begins to rot from its head but the fish is a system and so the rot and dysfunction like a disease that afflicts a baby cannot spare the baby sitter. GEJ is often lampooned as clueless but what about the rest of us who watch helplessly as elections are rigged under our noses? What about those who scheme and collude for appointments into governments we know are worse than unkempt latrines?

Where can we find sanity in the country? Is it in churches where the clergy rat and prey on the poor and gullible members to whom they sell prophecies of unmerited uplift? Is it in the markets where scales are tilted to cheat or gas stations where meters are adjusted to brazenly steal from customers or in schools where grades are for the highest bidders? Is it in courts where justice is openly traded and battered?
In offices, post office, airports and seaports, everywhere the rot is ever present. Anyone one even an amateur terrorist can carry any explosive device through any airport in Nigeria. Ask Abdul cooling his upscale but burnt heels in a US prison.

When last did anyone stop to ask how someone who just yesterday walked around in stinking rags but suddenly, all too suddenly started driving armored limos next day?
Yes Jonathan is our dump man but we are certainly the lavatory he dumps. The North that retails and exports terror now because GEJ is in power easily forgets it has been in power for over 40 odd years with nothing but a legion of almajiris to show for it.

And now a line about the National Conference. We are as usual very hasty to condemn the initiative. If at the end GEJ achieves nothing but at least makes the center less attractive especially to those who bring nothing but greed and rancor to the table, he would have indeed succeeded tremendously. It sucks to see a Niger state governor or any of those career abeg- bring- make- we- chop governors opening their beggarly leprous mouths and throwing bombs and tantrums and forgetting that they were the very ones who brought the nation to its present crippled condition.