KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

Abusing a Sad Situation

M. O. ENE

egbedaa@aol.com

Sunday, January 10, 2010

The gist: A certain Nigerian-passport holder Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab (UFAM), 23, was primed by a Yemeni Al-Qaida offshoot headed by American-born radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki (another Osama bin Laden long in the making). They placed plastic explosives in his underwear or jockey. He traveled to Ghana, bought an air ticket to America, and paid cash. He boarded a plane in Accra, Ghana on Christmas Eve, connected in Lagos, Nigeria within 27 minutes, and flew into Amsterdam, Netherlands. He boarded Detroit-bound Delta Flight 253 on Christmas Day.

Approaching destination, UFAM allegedly detonated the chemical device in his jockey with a solution in syringe. It popped, but it botched. Passengers subdued him. Allahu akbar! Good is great! We should now let the judicial system take its course. He has good legal defense, thanks to US tax payers and a system that works generally. He is a jerk, no doubt about it, and he has jerked a great country’s course, but Nigeria must jump past this juvenile jockey jihadist.

UFAM has hewed headache and heartache for Nigerians. I don’t know about you, but I am happy! I am happy that no one got hurt… well, except the self-inflicted sore injury on the spoilt, bloody brat who probably blew up his private essentials. Didn’t he hear Osibisa’s “Don’t play with fire; fire will burn you”? I am happy that his father alerted officials that his son had left the screen of sanity for the lacuna of lunacy. I am happy that the domestic terrorism that drove many Nigerians into self-exile has exposed on international arena. I am happy that the frustrating flimflam fraud (419) has become “baby talk.” I am happy that the world now asks why Nigeria is falling apart 50 years after Chinua Achebe said things were no longer at ease.

I am only sad that Nigerians will not stand up and fight for the bigger picture. I am sad that Nigerians are looking for excuses to explain evil hoisted by this misguided miscreant, a British prep-school graduate, schooled and radicalized in London, and terrorism-trained in Yemen. I am sad that Nigeria may be missing the loaded lessons of the tragedy in a mad dash to deodorize a stinking situation. Just as Nigeria lost the lasting lessons of Biafra, Nigeria is again glossing over the revelations of a sinister stroke by engaging America on its new security measures with planned puerile protests. Instead of taking Madam Hillary Clinton’s call for the will to engage, Nigerians are chasing rats while their houses burn. This is an abuse of a sad situation, a waste of opportunities, and a diplomatic disaster.

I am amused that Nigerians express shock. I am amused because, though Nigeria does not sponsor terrorism and no one has said it does, terrorists crawl across the Nigerian landscape. Where do I start? For decades, Nigerians of mostly Muslim extraction have butchered mostly Christian southeasterners, especially the Igbo and those who look like them. Such dastardly acts peaked in the 1966 Pogrom and 1967-70 war, when THREE million people of southeastern Nigeria origin were butchered or bombed. The daredevils dissected pregnant women, terrorized and starved children, bombed churches and open markets. Eyes were gouged out, limbs dismembered, and bodies left headless. Women were raped and kidnapped for keeps. To date, not one person has been indicted. Wartime General Yakubu Gowon is still praying.

Nigeria learnt little after Cameroonian Muhammadu Marwa (Maitatsine) brought murderous mayhem to Nigeria starting from 1962 and ending in the infamous massacre of 1980? The homicidal riots continued ceaselessly and, 29 years later, we had Boko Haram with over 700 dead and the resurrection of Maitatsine sect as Kala Kato in Bauchi last December in which over 100 reportedly died. Compare with Kenya that recently deported itinerant and hate-full Jamaican-born Muslim cleric, Abdullah al-Faisal (Trevor W. Forrest). No one got hurt. That’s action, not reaction.

Okay, I am not really amused. While we weighed the actions of a lone and lost psychopath, fundamentalists were busy butchering people in Bauchi. While we wonder what will happen to Nigerians flying into America, young Nigerians seeking to reach Europe across lands and rivers are abused, raped, and or killed on their way across severely stormy Sahara Desert by bloody bandits and rabid rebels. To date, no one knows how many made it to Europe as street whores and slave laborers or perished, incarcerated, or are executed in Libya.

Instead of protesting Obama’s solemn duty to protect Americans, Nigerians should demonstrate their solidarity with America and target the thieving tribes and sociopolitical scoundrels who devastate Nigeria. Nigeria was not plucked out of thin air and labeled “country of interest.” Note that Saudi Arabia is on the list; no one says Saudis sponsor terrorism. UFAM just flicked a lighter for the world to see the refuse we have been rebranding in darkness.

Nigerians may worry about the safety of scanners, if they are as dangerous as the spraying unknown chemicals in British planes leaving Nigeria, and for which nothing was done. However, if you go to someone’s house and he says you must remove your shoes, you comply or stay home. We must wonder why Jamaica or Britain, from where Jamaican-born shoe-bomber Richard Reid came, is not mentioned; or Ghana, where UFAM bought his ticket; or Holland, from where UFAM took off to America; or even Czech Republic, where they knowingly load explosives into luggage of unsuspecting passengers. Some blame American CIA for not stopping UFAM (Obama has accepted blame); but, has anyone wondered why Nigerian SSS didn’t stop him: the father had alerted them too? Don’t forget that $20.00 in your passport can buy direct access to the plane via VIP lounge!

Nigerians are good people. Nigeria is a great country. I agree. Alas, supposed leaders create impossible conditions for constructive coexistence, candid comings, and good goings. In 50 years of independence, illiteracy still simmers. Beggars are all over a country awash with petrodollars. In three months, no minister has heard from nor seen the president, yet he “signs” budgets from a sick bed in Saudi Arabia! What a fraud in high places that people tell white lies so blatantly? What a shame that a country of 150 million living souls, with the best medical doctors all over the world, cannot treat its president at home!

The only good thing out of Nigeria recently is Nollywood; even that is being killed by Nigerian pirates on the ground and on the Internet! Besides the stellar successes of Ambassador to the UN, foreign policy is corruption-ridden and in comatose. There is still no Nigerian ambassador in Washington, DC; no president in Abuja. Jobs, water, power, roads, and security are luxuries. It is amazing how Nigeria functions and withstands all these internal iniquities.

Any pundit worth the name knows that American-Nigerian relationship is not at its Clinton-years level, when the boulevard from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja was named after Bill Clinton! Some say Nigeria’s multibillion-dollar oil-block deals with China rub America the wrong way. Wrong! Others suggest that the socioeconomic failure of Nigeria annoys Obama in a personally way. Maybe; we are all angry. Sincerely speaking, there is more to it. Yes, Nigeria is not kosher to Obama’s administration, yet he is doing a classy job in trying to work with Nigerian authorities, but there is no one home. For what happened during his campaign, any other person would have turned his back.

At an event in Nigeria last October, a top-ten prominent politician told how hollow heads in Abuja shunned Candidate Obama. Nigeria allegedly failed to facilitate a projected swing to South Africa, thinking that Hilary Clinton had locked the nomination, that there was no way Obama could cut it. That was a deep diplomatic disaster, even if overrated Andrew Young or hawkish James Carville had told them so. I will spare us the details here, but the visit through Abuja never came to pass. Obama became president. He chose to visit Ghana on his historic visit to Africa. You know the rest of the story.

Instead of greasy “gara-gara,” (boisterous braggadocio), Nigeria should leverage the sad situation, do mea culpa, start on a clean slate, and repair the ruptured relationship with honest, humble actions. There are available avenues, including doing the right things for Nigerians. Hiring ridiculously exorbitant lobbyists and talking heads, who know little about Nigeria, will not help. The do-nothing diplomats in Abuja could help Nigerians in Diaspora to organize, and stop castigating them as “self-exiled spoilers” and “pathetic pariahs.”

Nigerians need to take a chill pill and tackle unending normal surprises on this 50^th year of independence. I say “normal” because Nigeria is a county where strange things happen normally. AbdulMutallab (UFAM) was not a complete surprise. We live in denial. We believed that no one will board a plane with an explosive, which is why passengers identify their luggage before loading. We forget that almajiri from local madrassa can elect to board with a bomb; the only problem is that they cannot afford airfares. UFAM could, and here we are.

Nigerians abroad need to come together and do something… anything but differently. They need to organize, not agonize. No one does anything until someone pushes the envelope beyond the “expected” executive extortion, the “customary” crude corruption, the “common” kidnapping craze, the “regular” robbery with AK47s or with pens in high offices, and … “just” as a January 5, Jerusalem-bound charter plane with 420 Christian pilgrims ran into electric poles on takeoff at the airport in Abuja. Think: what were the conditions in Nigeria by January 10, 1966 or December 25, 1983? If Nigeria loses the current democratic dispensation to military musclemen; if “like play, like play” the Fourth Republic is lost to knee-jerk reactions, lethargy, and tactlessness, forget the Fifth in a lifetime. For now, someone should spare the world all the piercing, porous prayers; even God must have had it with Nigeria.

Everything else is embellishment.