First published in 2008, and everything said here then in terms of politically rotten society, remains the same in 2024 as I repost this here on our new site
No Bullshitting!!! (By Harry Agina)
Greetings!
I am Harry Agina, the human body who hosts my spiritual journalistic alter-ego, ‘Mr. No Bullshitting.’
In a philosophical song written a few years ago, Jamaican Reggae Music icon, Peter Tosh laments, “everyone is crying out for peace, but none is crying out for justice.” The song calls for “equal rights and justice.” However, condemnation of propagation of peace in the absence of justice is not a Peter Tosh philosophy. It is the philosophy of every fair-minded person on earth. The Reggae icon only lent his music talent to popularize it.
Of course, every sane person understands that it is only fair to give a man what is due him, before asking him to be peaceful. Every sane person does understand that denying a man what is due him, and then turning around to ask him to be peaceful, is tantamount to mischief making. Unfortunately, this has been the stock in trade of Nigeria’s ruling political party in the past eight years. It frequently denies Nigerians justice and fair play, and then it turns around and bombards us with propaganda for peace. What an insult!
“Ghana-Must-Go” Journalism: More insulting to me, personally, is the bad influence of PDP’s propaganda machinery on some members of my professional constituency. I am totally miffed that PDP entices some communications/ media professionals/ journalists with so much money that they do not mind selling their souls to the party. They are willing to propagate whatever ideology PDP pays them to support, no matter how ridiculous or unethical it may be.
My ailing professional brethren are probably fewer than the ones with integrity, but the bad ones are very loud because their employers have the nation’s entire wealth at their disposal to play with. Money is no object, as they say. They can buy up every air space on every television channel, every radio channel, and the newspapers, too. They can even hop around the world in a few days whenever international propaganda is necessary.
Nigerians Are The Problem: Ultimately, my blame for whatever goes wrong in Nigeria is always on the entire population. PDP’s propaganda of peace-without-justice has thrived so long in Nigeria because Nigerians have a chronic weakness of complacency in the midst of rot. The PDP propaganda strategists only capitalize on that national weakness to perpetrate their unpopular agendas. They are aware that a typical Nigerian is always quick to accept any condition or situation foisted upon him. Consistent with this shameful debilitating complacency, are some nonsensical idioms in Nigeria’s political vocabulary, all designed to get unscrupulous politicians off the hook each time they cheat us. Among the popular ones are: “let peace reign,” “in the interest of peace,” and “for our nascent democracy.”
It is so ridiculous that each time we ask PDP for fair play, equal rights, and justice, it orders us to stop agitating, “in the interest of peace.” In essence, they are telling us that we must allow them to continue stealing from us, cheating, and oppressing us, if we want peace to reign. They are saying that we must allow the continuation of their undemocratic practices if we want democracy to grow. What a nonsensical perversion!
The propaganda can hardly be said to be smart or intelligent since everybody knows that it is all bullshit. What it does possess is abundance of Obasanjo’s dictatorial audacity, which is fueled by the presumption that Nigerians would accept any bullshit any day. He knows that a typical Nigerian does not insist on his rights. Rather, he is quick to tell us “let peace reign,” at the expense of equal rights and justice. Obasanjo knows that Nigerians do not insist that there should be equal rights and justice before peace can reign. We do not insist that any so-called peace built on fraud would eventually crumble.
Armed with this knowledge of characteristic national weakness of complacency, PDP consistently employs its Ghana-must-go propagandists to shove their unpopular agendas down our throats. With their current assignment to propagate peace-without-justice, they are busy campaigning against the overwhelming public outcry against PDP’s recent electoral fraud. Once again, they want us to forget all about the fraud and “embrace peace.” Once again, they are parading some of those criminally bastardized parlances, such as “olive branch,” and all the other Nigerian political mumbo-jumbo.
They rub a man of his right, and then they ask him to accept an olive branch. What arrant nonsense! Give me justice, and I would not mind a mango branch any day. The olive branch bullshit is a smoke screen anyway. The military and the police are always standing by to “crush” us if we reject the unjust autocratic, so-called “olive branch.” Notwithstanding, many Nigerians are beginning to say that it is high time we started combining peace with justice. It is high time we jettisoned Obasanjo’s gangster-style, oppressive quest for peace without justice. It is high time we said ‘no’ to PDP’s ridiculous, unscrupulous, undemocratic approach to democracy.
Going down memory lane I recall that General Babangida and his co-kingmakers picked Obasanjo out of prison deathbed and made him president in 1999. Our excuse for complacency was that anything was better than the continuation of military rule. I had to agree that the excuse made a little sense initially. It was great to get out of military rule and gradually refine our democracy. But we should have removed Obasanjo and the other autocratic rulers in our new democracy from their own military mentality and start leading instead of ruling us. We do not need a continuation and even worse form of military rule in our so-called democracy, which is better called demo-crazy.
Obasanjo’s first term governance was a humongous failure, characterized by his nauseating highhandedness and uncouth behaviors. Yet, he rigged himself in for a second term in 2003, along with many undeserving governors and legislators who are better called legisla-thives. We were quick to accept the ridiculous “olive-branch” bullshit as soon as some well-paid fast talkers told us not to rock the boat, “in the interest of peace.”
Naturally, the beneficiaries of the electoral fraud did not feel obligated to do anything good for the people. They knew that they did not need the people’s votes to get in power, and they would not need the people for re-election into the same or subsequent office. The logic is quite simple: if the voters are irrelevant, then there is no need to please them, period. So, they certainly made no effort to please us. Rather, they oppressed us, robbed us blind, and wrecked our economy.
And now, though Obasanjo could not rig himself in any longer, he did the next best selfish thing, which was to rig in his stooges in the 2007 elections, which have been condemned by the entire world as the worst in the history of democracy. In essence, Obasanjo finally indirectly perpetuated himself in office despite the failure of his third-term bid, just like the people who know him well had predicted that he would. He desperately needed the self-perpetuation, not only to cover his wrongdoings during his reign of terror, but also to continue protecting his interest in the corridors of power. As usual, the PDP propagandists are feeding us the nonsensical argument to forget all about justice and embrace peace. This time, their catch phrase is, “in the interest of civilian-to-civilian-transition.”
Some of the arguments pursued by PDP propagandists are absolutely, ridiculously stupid, which makes them very insulting to the intelligence of Nigerians. The party is not even smart enough to come up with anything that can make a little sense to anybody. Its propagandists often sound as though they are talking to a bunch of idiots. I read one of such rubbish in the Daily Sun of May 22, 2007. Titled, “That Senate Probe Of INEC,” the article attributed the agitation against PDP’s massive electoral fraud to “tiny but vocal losers.” Insultingly and stupidly, Mr. Kalu, the writer, told us that a few paid propagandists like he, are in the majority; and the rest of the world who cry foul against the fraud are “tiny minority losers.”
I wonder what school Mr. Kalu attended, where they did not teach him simple mathematics and logic. I wonder what school taught him that the European Union, the United States government, Nigeria’s own monitoring groups, and indeed, the generality of Nigerians and the world at large that have all condemned the fraud are in the minority. His reasoning has Obasanjo’s mentality written all over it. There is yet another reason why Mr. Kalu’s teacher should be put in prison for teaching him nonsense. And if they plead not guilty of teaching him badly, then Kalu should be jailed for failure to learn well. For another instance, Kalu does not understand the simple logic and mathematics why the Senate is probing INEC’s financial accounts. He posed the question: “What has finance got to do with the system employed by INEC for voting?”
Well, I will teach Kalu the simple logic that he should have learned in secondary school. Now hear this: poor or inferior materials do affect productivity and efficiency, not only in elections, but also in every sphere of life. Lesson number two: Professor Iwu spent much less than his budget, which means that he embezzled funds, unless, of course, he returns the balance to our treasury. Mr. Kalu posited that “it would really be tragic if Senator Nnamani is driven by bitterness” when he called for a probe of INEC’s accounts. I say that it is more than tragic that paid half-baked propagandists are parading themselves as members of the press…and that’s a lot of bullshitting, meeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!
Harry Agina writes from the USA
LINK TO SEQUEL SERIES ON “PEACE-WITHOUT-JUSTICE”:
GOVERNOR WIKE FIGHTS EVIL QUEST FOR PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE IN NIGERIA, 1