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It is really a sad
thing to say, but when somebody said we need to wipe out at least two
generations of people for us to ‘get it right’ I could not help but
agree with him. But when another person in an entirely different forum
now said we need to annihilate everybody in Nigeria and leave only
those from 10 years and below, I felt uneasy this time because dry
bones have been mentioned and the old woman cannot be comfortable.

It means if we agree to the second or even the first option, yours sincerely may not survive the pogrom.

It is this core
eruption of our moral fibre by the word ‘corruption’. Is there any
government office that does not practice corruption? Even the EFCC and
the judiciary that are the hope of the common man have often been
accused of corrupt practices.

Our case has become
like that of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abraham was trying to
plead for the Lord to spare the people. God said if he could find 10
righteous persons in the land, he would not destroy it.

Here in the FCT, a
particular church leader, with over 10,000 members, was said to have
entered the church one Sunday morning, crying and rolling on the floor.
When he finally spoke, he said God told him the previous night that if
the trumpet should sound, right now, they do not have 10 people that
can make heaven. If this is so, what do we expect from those who do not
know or fear God? So it is possible for one bad apple to spoil the
entire apples in the basket; with the hundreds of thousands of church
and mosque goers?

My thrust this week
is our youth that are supposed to take over from our present crop of
leaders. In Abuja, it is common to see near illiterates become rich
overnight. Some of them are the heads of mobilization for political
groupings and they come with different titles in different political
parties: youth leader, mama grass-root, youth mobiliser, head of
mobilization, women leader, market women leader, youth president and so
on.

Some of them have
been given permanent suits in highbrow hotels and to say they are
enjoying will be an understatement; what with the beehive of okpekes at
the snap of their fingers and the luxurious cars they now drive. A lot
of them now masquerade their activities with well registered NGOs and
business is booming as the election approaches.

The most painful
thing is that the same youth leader in party A, for instance, is the
Secretary for party B and the Treasurer for party C. All they need is a
‘face-cap’, dark sunglasses and an agbada to complete the
transformation, and they mobilize essentially the same crowd for the
different political parties. Some of them are honest enough not to
pledge their allegiance to any party. They have become professional
mobilisers. That is why it is easy to see the same set of women or
young men in not less than three different rallies by different
political parties.

Maybe we should advocate for simultaneous holding of rallies to discourage these ‘man must survive’ groups.

Ready for any rally

A friend of mine
said one young man’s speciality is to be ‘anti-anything’. That this
same young man was ‘anti-abacha’ ‘anti-atiku’ during Obasanjo’s time,
later he became ‘anti-third term’, he was ‘anti-cabal’ and now he is
‘anti-zoning’; that it is like the man has an octopus that tells him
which way the pendulum will swing because it always swings in his
favour.

He will mobilize
men and women for an ‘anti-anything’ campaign as long as he is paid. It
doesn’t matter if it is ‘anti-good’. Believe it or not, they are
beginning to have assistant professional mobilisers who can pull out
men and women who would easily leave their work places – okada riders,
farmers, mechanics, bricklayers, motor park touts, market women,
jobless people and even students.

The mobiliser takes the job, for N2,000 to N3,000 per person to
provide 2000 people during their rally, and goes to offer N1,000 to the
individuals per day. They provide maybe 1,500 people and then fill in
fictitious names to make up the number. In the heat of the moment, you
really cannot count to confirm if you have 2000 people. How do we
reverse this kind of thinking, knowing that their patrons are those in
the National Assembly or government houses. INEC and the rest of our
nation will have to reach deep into the solution box for a way out.