NOTE: First published on October 23, 2020. The “Published” date on the tab is the date that it was uploaded on this new site. Though some issues in this piece may still be current (depending on when you read this), this note is to avoid mistaking this piece as current news.
No Bullshitting!!! (By Harry Agina)
- NIGERIA’S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IS TO BLAME, PART 3
- APPLAUDABLE NEW WHOLESOME DIMENTION DEMANDS BY THE YOUTHS
Greetings, folks!
I am Harry Agina, and this is No Bullshitting, the radical Socio-Political Critic of African. Before condemning some evil officers in Nigeria Police, I’ll talk about the huge injustice done to all the officers by Nigerian government. If you are my regular reader, then you already know that, as far as I’m concerned, the federal lootmakers who are called lawmakers, are the cause of all the problems in Nigeria. Yeah, I know, I do sing the wrongs of our lawmakers like a song. Do forgive me, I can’t help myself. I do so because their role is so, so, so important. If we will ever have true democracy and good governance in Nigeria, they must first become democratic and acquire some decent, Godly characters. A good starting point is the roguery that they call remuneration and operational funds. They amount to about N30 million for one senator every fucking month…an abomination!!! We must force them to cut it down to N3 million, or less. They don’t even deserved N1m. By their own confession, they are working for “Babylon” (Buhari’s government), and against us and our interests.
Repetition is a key Advertising and Public Enlightenment technique. It does a good cumulative subliminal job on the human mind to act on the message. There, now you have my ‘excuse’ for consistently putting the matter of our lootmakers on the front-burner. It is part of my own contribution to fix Nigeria. Our youths are currently doing their own applaudable bit to contribute through the EndSARS protest. If you’re Nigerian, are you contributing in your own way, huh? Or, are you one of those people who act as if aliens from other planets will come to do our fighting for us to fix Nigeria? Or, worse; are you one of the fucked up Christians who call on God to come down and fight for us? I always mention Christians in this foolish mentality because Muslims are not stupidly religious in this sense. They don’t hand everything to God in prayers. That particular stupidity is a Christian thing.
Too bad that, on the other hand, some extremists among the Muslims go to the extreme opposite of fighting for Almighty God. So, out of our two major religions; fools of one religion want God to come down and do all the fighting for them, and the fools of the other religion actually go out to fight for the Almighty God…hahahahaaaaa!!!!!! So, which of the two extremists do you dig their style, huh…be sincere? You know what I think? Maybe we can borrow some of the energy from the extremist Muslims and their burn-them-down and mash-them-up mentality, and lend it to the extremist Christians and their fucked-up prayers. Then, we borrow the excessive sentimentality from the fucked-up Christians, and lend it to the seemingly heartless extremist Muslims. If the two extreme opposite forces would mix up and undergo some form of chemical or spiritual or mental reaction. We’d may come up with a moderate hybrid, or mixture (or compound) that is neither too radical, nor too weak to protest for our rights.
In essence, believe it or not, the foregoing paragraph is my own silly way of applauding the current #EndSARS movement of our youths, with their unfolding wider dimensions. I am so proud that they have mixed the extreme-radical mentality and extreme-docile mentality to come up with a powerful-effective-moderate-mentality. Agents of evil tried to implicate them in crimes and discredit them, but they are too doggone organized to be distracted, or implicated. Instead, the evil agents ended up disgracing themselves, in clear view of the entire world. I love our peaceful revolutionary youths like cooked food, meeeeeen!!!
Whereas some Nigerians are calling for a unicameral National Assembly whereby we would have only one House, instead of the present bicameral legislature of Senate and House of Reps, I actually say that we should simply scrap the entire fucking national assembly, meeeeeeen!!!
Don’t ask me how to do this, because I haven’t even given it any thought yet. All I know for sure right now is that anything, whatsoever, is better than the crop of lootmakers that we have now, who are in cohoots with members of the other branches of government to turn us into their slaves. The NASS is SUPPOSED to be our checkmate mechanism against the other branches of government. we give them the power to represent us; but, rather than checkmate the other branches for us as they should, our motherfucking lootmakers are busy checkmating us on behalf of those branches that oppress us. In particular, every Nigerian, indeed, the world knows that the present 9th Assembly is a rubber-stamp of the present presidency.
Hey, don’t accuse me of anything about this fact ooh. I didn’t say it; do remember that the Chairman of the 9th Assembly, our Senate President, declared it himself, in his own bullshitting political propaganda rigmarole way. Again, that’s part of my anger with impunity among leaders in Nigeria. The motherfucker looked us (his employers) in the face and told us with so much impunity, in his own fucked-up way, that our own 9th NASS must be Buhari’s rubber-stamp, and we can’t do shit about it. He came short of adding something like…‘after all, you so-called electorate did not really elect us; we rigged ourselves into the office, including rigging our internal leadership into power, too.’
As silly as it sounds, if the entire population has to try the impossible feat of representing ourselves via virtual assembly, then I say that it is worth trying. Maybe we can persuade the geniuses who made Social Media possible to create a revolutionary app. Give us something that can make it possible for all Nigerians to assemble and represent ourselves. I repeat, anything is better than those crooks doing it for us, meeeeeeen!!! They are totally fucked-up, and that means that we may never have a true democracy if we are too fucking weak to stop their evil. When we reform our electoral system, and votes begin to count, then we may bring back the parliament that we can elect and control with our votes.
Certainly, election-rigging is the source of our loot-makers impunity in disregarding everything that Nigerians want them to do for us. They are doing everything to impose evil laws on us while they are evacuating our treasury to their banks. We can’t vote them out, because our votes do not count. Election-rigging through murdering Nigerians puts them in power. An evil man who doesn’t need your vote to get into and stay in power does not have to please you, period!!!
ABOMINATION REASONS TO START THE REVOLUTION WITH THE NASS:
Let’s get back to the specific topic of the abominably-poor salary and welfare of our police officers. The entire blame of which I lay on Nigeria’s Federal Lawmakers. If you ask me, and even if nobody asks me, I still state that the current revolutionary campaign by the youths should have actually started with forcing the fucking national lootmakers to cut the tens of million naira that each of them takes every month in the name of salaries and allowances, drastically down. Can you believe this; those motherfuckers have “Hardship Allowance” in their thievery list.
Police officers, the real people in hardship, are earning less than 50 thousand naira total monthly pay, and those motherfuckers who are doing nothing for us and draining our treasury, have the audacity to tell us that they are going through hardship, and deserve allowance for it. It is their job to fight for better pay for our police officers. Instead, they are happy that one senator’s evil “hardship allowance” (N1.24 million) per month is more than the entire package of a police officer for 24 months, two whole fucking years!!! This is demonic of our lootmakers, meeeeeeen!!! The motherfuckers go to sleep during so-called plenaries in the chambers, after their nightly parties; go on vacation each time that trouble erupts in the country (like now); and have the stupid sense to tell us that they are going through hardship…what a fucking insult to our sensibilities, meeen!!!
The senators are taking home a total of N30 million every fucking month; the so-called Reps are taking home a little less than the senators, and the officers who risk their lives to protect them take home less than N50 thousand…abomination of the highest order!!! So, an American Facebook “No Bullshitting” fan asked me just few days back, thus:
“If some police officers must go rogue, shouldn’t it be against their oppressors, the lootmakers as you call them? Why is it that they decided to descend on the masses that are suffering with them under the oppressors’ evil leadership, huh?” For legal-correctness, I had to sarcastically tell my fan not to incite or instigate violence against my lootmakers. A lot of the federal leadership sins in Nigeria today stem from our fucked-up National Assembly. So, yes, they are the reason that our police officers are treated so horribly by our government. Of course, by extension, most of the bad leadership of the states come from the failure of the state lawmakers, many of whom are bought by the state governors to endorse their misrule.
However, my position against the mistreatment of police officers must not be mistaken as justification for the evil deeds of some police officers to the citizenry. If you ask me, if there is ever any good reason to institute capital punishment in Nigeria, this is it. If I had anything to do with it, every SARS and any other police officer who has ever killed a Nigerian extrajudicial, must be executed. “An eye for an eye” is the only effective deterrence that most of such evil persons understand. I emphasize ‘most’ to underscore the fact that not even execution can deter some born-evil humans. But, at least, let’s cut it down to the barest minimum with appropriate punishment, and not some stupid sentences, which criminals scoff at as they commit crimes with impunity.
Surely, police Brutality is global, and not a ‘Nigerian thing.’ The problem here is that the Nigerian way, and the way of the rest of the world are different. “You guys are exceptional in everything,” said my same American fan, “including, unfortunately, ugly things! Unlike the rest of the world, the more Nigerians cried, the worse some officers of Nigeria Police force became. I emphasize ‘force’ in order to bring in a conversation that I had with Captain Bruce Williams of Houston Police Department, Houston, Texas, back in 2013. Captain Williams was my point-man in a mentorship program for Nigeria police by Houston Police Department. I was consulting to the “National Mentorship Department” of the Office of The Presidency of Nigeria, which was run by Her Excellence, Serah Jibril, during President Jonathan’s tenure in office.
All that is just to tell you what Captain Bruce said to me in his office: “Harry, that name “Nigeria Police Force” is terrible, to start with. You guys’ve gatto first remove that word ‘force’ from the name. It’s already scary to me, and it can actually have psychological effects on some officers who may want to live up to it, and also the psyche of the public, too.” My point here is that the problem of Nigeria Police force has lingered for too long, and the reasons are all linked to the Nigerian factor, by which I define the society as one where shit always happens, and packs of flies always flock around the shit. Many projects and reforms are pronounced, and some even initiated, but MOST are never followed up and concluded. So much “Talk-Na-Talk, and Talk, and Talk. No Talk-Na-Do, meeeeeen!!!
Lip service and foot-dragging are two of the components of the “Nigerian Factor” in the case of Police Reform. The Houston Police Mentorship project had several reformation elements, but it died the same way that other reform initiatives have always died. Meanwhile, my relationship with Captain Bruce Williams went comatose for a couple of years because I was too embarrassed to call him when Jonathan’s government suddenly abandoned the project, which Houston Police Chief already embraced and approved for me in writing. I would not be surprised at all if all the promises being made now by various authorities are abandoned as soon as the #EndSARS protests stop. I least expect the pronouncements of Nigeria’s lootmakers to amount to anything. They are rubber-stamp toothless bulldogs who can only bark and never bite. We only hope that Buhari means what he says about reforms this time, because our so-called lawmakers cannot do shit if he reneges on his promises. If you don’t believe me, then tell me what the lootmakers have done after barking with threats of fire and brimstone over the sack of our Security Chiefs, huh? Buhari told them to shut the fuck up, virtually, and, they simply shut the fuck up; that’s what they did…no biting!!! If the compromised Speaker tries to bite, for instance, he may end up in prison in a flash, and we all know why.
Mind you, nobody is talking about complete elimination of crime among Nigeria Police officers, no, sir/ma’am!!! That is not possible in any police unit around the world; simply impossi-can’t. We can only speak of cutting down Nigeria Police crimes to minimal level, and, importantly, reduce their reckless impunity. That ugly word again, ‘impunity,’ which is my cue to bring in some of the factors that have kept SOME officers of “Nigeria Police FORCE” so forcefully criminal, with annoying impunity, meeeeeeeeen!!!
Impunity in crime in any society is entrenched when there are no consequences that are strong enough to scare ENOUGH people off crimes. I say ‘scare enough people,’ because, again, we can never scare everybody off crimes, no matter what punishment that you may impose. The ‘do-or-die’ hardened born-criminals will always be in every society and in every agency such as the police. The peculiarity that makes Nigeria so terrible is that the wheel of justice in Nigeria turns so fucking corruptly, so inefficiently, and so slowly. Hence, citizens are not scared away from crime anymore. Hey, let’s face it, bad police officers know that they can easily get away with murder, so they do it, period!!! In fact, one VERY COMMON THREAT to citizens by the criminal officers is: “i’ll kill you and nothing will happen.”
Most sane humans would not kill somebody premeditated, if they know that they would be executed for it. Okay, for the sake of people who disagree with capital punishment for any reason; let’s forget execution and talk about other serious punishments that can discourage police brutality and murders. Most often, there is little or none, period!!! We hear of probes of evil officers and their activities every fucking day, but we never hear the conclusions and the punishments. Indeed, we know of officers who got promoted shortly after evil acts. So, we are actually rewarding evil in Nigeria…un-fucking-believable, meeeeeeeeen!!!
Same goes for Nigerian politicians; they know that they can loot our treasury dry, get filthy rich, and all that they have to do is spend a small fraction of the loot to sort things out. Many Nigerians can still recall when Cecilia Ibru was convicted for billions of naira looting, and, supposedly ill, she only served six months in the comfort of a hospital in the name of prison sentence. More recently, Senator Godswill Akpabio who was indicted for stealing N801 billion was promoted to the rank of a Minister of one of the most “lucrative” agencies in Nigeria. And, he has allegedly stolen again already, within few months in that office. So, with such travesty of justice, why would criminals not loot the treasury with impunity, huh? And then, their impunity continues in the way that they flaunt or show off their loots with god-like pageantry and extravagance, intimidating and oppressing the citizenry with the citizens’ own stolen wealth. The authorities that should query the sources of the stolen wealth look the other way.
In comparison, China has stiff prison sentences for smaller corruption cases, which many may not survive; and immediate death sentence for higher corruption convictions under “Embezzlement” Capital Punishment Law. Whereas Nigerian looters openly flaunt their stolen billions of dollars with impunity, their Chinese counterparts are being executed for few thousands of dollars. Hence, the difference in corruption impunity between China and Nigeria governments is as clear as the difference between day and night.
THE “RETURNS” FACTOR:
Finally, I will briefly touch on another factor that encourages criminality among some Nigeria police officers in the streets. It is systemic, and it is infamously known as “returns.” Yes, sir/ma’am; the officers in the streets are said to be under the obligation and pressure to pay (or return) specified sums of money from their extorted or stolen funds, to their Divisional Police Officers ( DPOs) in their offices, daily. Why do you think that nobody is ever punished, huh? If the officers in the streets go down for the crimes, then their recalcitrant bosses, the DPOs will go down with them, too. So, the DPOs have the self-preserving duty to protect the criminals…and, I ain’t bullshitting ya, meeeeeeeeeen!!!!!!!!!!!!