Pius Adesanmi to APC: 27 million naira for forms for Presidential Candidates is madness!
Pius Adesanmi to APC: 27 million naira for
forms for Presidential Candidates is
madness!
Written by Pius Adesanmi:
If you are in your thirties and above and anybody is
deceiving you that the just and fair Nigeria we are
struggling for will happen in your life time, please do not
deceive yourself. Struggling for the dreamable, refusing
to relinquish the imaginable, hanging on stubbornly to
the possible, as some of us are doing 24/7, are all
praxes that must be rooted in pragmatism and an
acknowledgment of the degree of the rot. The rot that
will prevent you and this writer from seeing a reimagined
and remade Nigeria is not corruption. It is not Boko
Haram. It is none of the unending dysfunctionalities and
irrationalities of statehood that have turned the Nigerian
tragedy into a nightmare from which Africa struggles to
awake.
The rot that will prevent the Nigerian renaissance from
happening in my life time is not even summed up by the
fact that we have now effectively surpassed every
available model of the corruption, abuse, and misuse of
sovereign statehood known to man. Although I will not
hold my breath, I want to wager all the same that the
record set by an irresponsible sovereign state when she
goes to the doorstep of another sovereign state to claim
and own such grievous crimes as cash trafficking and
gun running, all in the bid to shield powerful
interests, will not be broken quickly. And if this record
will be broken at all, it is safe to bet that it is only this
international crime-owning state that will ultimately beat
its own prolific record in the manufacturing of horror.
Again, this is not why I will not see the Nigerian
renaissance. I will not see the Nigeria of the promised
land because we have too many citizens who have been
so deprived of civic education that the mere mention of
the crime owned for the Nigerian state in South Africa by
Nigeria’s irresponsible rulers is sacrilegious and
unpatriotic. The mind that has been manufactured to
constantly justify, rationalize, explain, and identify with
every horror while criminalizing the faintest
manifestation of critique is the greatest threat to the
emergence of a new Nigeria. The mind that mistakes a
fetid personality cult of the incumbent for patriotism is
the greatest obstacle to national becoming. It has taken
the rulers of Nigeria some five decades of abject
postcolonial statehood to produce this mind. It will take
four to five generations to undo the damage because it
is easier to destroy than to build. I repeat: if it took them
five decades to destroy the Nigerian psychology and
produce the mass mumufication we witness today, it will
take five generations to demumufy the Nigerian
psychology. And that is where there is the will o.
I have written time and again that the collapse of
Nigeria’s educational system is not an accident. It is
deliberate. It is purposed. A state that is going to be run
based on ethos and practices deemed crude by the
standards of Orangutan society needs a sedated and
diseducated citizenry that is hostile to critique in order to
survive and perpetuate herself. And when that state
succeeds in manufacturing a critical mass of consent
and conformity such as we see in Nigeria, the
triumphant ruling class has only one responsibility unto
itself: the sustenance of a wrongly-wired psychology in a
vast majority of the citizenry.
That is why I pity members of the Nigerian community of
conscience who are fighting corruption without paying
attention to public instruction. Without civics, the
diseducated – and I have deliberately created that word,
diseducated, to imply deliberateness on the part of those
doing the diseducating – citizen is in the pocket of his
oppressor. He will identify with his oppressor on the
basis of ethnicity, faith, language, etc. If you insist, he
will abuse your father and abuse your mother. He will
ask you: “wetin be your own sef? Na your money e
steal?” You struggle for Nigeria in vain in the context of
this sort of mass psychology.
I issued a statement on my Facebook Wall condemning the
fee. I zoomed in particularly on three of the party’s
aspiring candidates: General Muhammadu Buhari, Comrade
Adams Oshiomhole, and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah. If these men
succeed in paying twenty-seven million naira, I enjoined
the party to insist on an open declaration of the source of
the money as a way of showing that they are different from
PDP.
Public instruction is therefore the place to start. A
sustained struggle in the arena of public instruction may
create the conditions that could facilitate the emergence
of the Nigeria of our dreams five generations from now.
Time is of the essence. Every teachable moment must
be grabbed to work on the Nigerian psychology. Yes, it
has been so damaged, so corroded, so wrongly wired
that you don’t even know where to start. But start we
must.
An occasion presented itself to me today. In the fevered
brain of the leadership of APC, it is somehow okay to
ask aspiring presidential candidates to cough out
twenty-seven million naira for nomination forms! I
thought this was madness. I thought that this constantly
fumbling political party has bungled yet another
opportunity to stand apart from the ways of PDP. I
issued a statement on my Facebook Wall condemning
the fee. I zoomed in particularly on three of the party’s
aspiring candidates: General Muhammadu Buhari,
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah.
If these men succeed in paying twenty-seven million
naira, I enjoined the party to insist on an open
declaration of the source of the money as a way of
showing that they are different from PDP.
As reactions flowed on my Wall, one compatriot
preferred to send a private note to me by email. He
identifies with the spirit of my argument, he says. In fact,
he likes my submissions a lot. But, as a Buhari loyalist,
he is somehow irked by my suggestion that “General
Buhari, a whole former Head of State”, may not have
twenty-seven million naira and may need some help to
find it. Haba Prof, he says. Twenty-seven million may
sound like big money to you guys out there, he
continues, it is weekend party money for boys “around
here”. Of course, I am familiar with the fact that certain
layers of Nigerian society crawl in loads of easy, free
money.
I pondered what to say to him, realizing the immensity of
this teachable moment. I wondered where to start since
the opinion he expressed is a window into a mindset that
is deeply rooted in the Nigerian psychology – and there
can be no progress until we reteach and rewire this
psychology. Do I begin by telling him that in responsible
democracies, the fact that General Buhari has held that
office is the first and loudest reason why he should find
it difficult to afford twenty-seven million naira? Do I tell
him that the fact that Generals Ibrahim Babangida and
Abdusalam Abubakar occupied the same office and
ended up with hilltop mansion way beyond the totality of
their entire earnings in their military careers is the first
reason why they both ought to be serving life sentences
in Gashua prison? Do I tell him that public office is a
huge sacrifice in responsible democracies because you
foreclose the possibility of making money? Do I tell him
how long it took the Clintons to get out of debt after
office? Do I tell him about the student loan and Chicago
mortgage of the Obamas? They finally paid off their
student loans but I am not sure about that Chicago
mortgage.
Do I tell him why people resign after a short stint in the
cabinet in serious democracies? They resign to go and
make money. They cannot make money while serving in
public office. Ask Ari Fleischer how much he was making
on the podium in the White House and how much he now
makes as a conservative pundit. Do I tell him that Karl
Rove makes more now than he could ever have made
working in the White House? Do I tell him that in France,
our friends, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, are
struggling with legal bills – and all kinds of bills?
Do I tell him that if anybody comes out of public office
rich and comfortable, it is your duty as a citizen to raise
eyebrows and pester the tax authorities until they open
an investigation? Do I tell him that the mindset which
produces that famous Nigerian sentence, “a whole so
and so cannot be expected not to have such and such
amount of money”, is a function of the psychology that
the Nigerian ruling class is sustaining in order to mass-
produce a citizenry that permanently justifies looting?
Haba!, goes the Nigerian, how can you expect a whole
State Governor not to be able to afford such and such?
How can you expect a whole Senator not to be able to
afford that house? The man don arrange o. You better
keep quiet, you hater!
And we ask no questions even when they brandish stuff
beyond their legitimate income in the public sphere. Not
so long ago, the outgoing Governor of Ekiti state, Dr.
Kayode Fayemi, made a lot of noise about students he
was sending for University education abroad from his
own pocket. More than a dozen or so students enjoyed a
personal scholarship of Dr. Fayemi to go to OxBridge in
Britain and Ivy League destinations in the United States.
People who ought to know and people who don’t know
went to town celebrating and praising Dr. Fayemi.
Nobody bothered to think about a year’s tuition as an
international student in an American Ivy League. Nobody
bothered to weigh the tuition fees of the students he sent
to Britain and the United States from his own private
pocket against the backdrop of Dr. Fayemi’s legitimate
monthly income as a state governor. Why did it not
occur to anybody to ask questions? You guessed right:
howu, how can you say that a whole state governor
cannot afford it? Na poverty mentality dey worry you!
So, dear friend, when the candidates of APC begin to
pick up presidential nomination forms for twenty-seven
million naira, your responsibility as a Nigerian citizen is
to ask questions about the source of the money. And if
any Stockholm Syndromed compatriot abuses you,
saying, “how can you expect a whole Lagbaja and a
whole Tamedun not to be able to afford twenty-seven
million naira”, do not abuse him or her in return. Show
some sympathy. Show some understanding. Show some
love. Show that you know the origins of his or her
psychology. Remember, unless you act and teach this
wrongly-wired psychology, you will not witness Nigeria’s
renaissance in your life time. For the greatest tragedy is
that the consequence of ignorance is democratically
suffered. Those who know suffer the consequences of
the ignorance of those who do not know in equal
measure. Alakoba ni won.
Therefore, you must educate that psychology so that
your children’s children may stand a chance of
witnessing the beginning of Nigeria’s renaissance. And if
they abuse you as you try to educate their psychology,
shake off the dust of thine feet in testimony against
them.
forms for Presidential Candidates is
madness!
If you are in your thirties and above and anybody is
deceiving you that the just and fair Nigeria we are
struggling for will happen in your life time, please do not
deceive yourself. Struggling for the dreamable, refusing
to relinquish the imaginable, hanging on stubbornly to
the possible, as some of us are doing 24/7, are all
praxes that must be rooted in pragmatism and an
acknowledgment of the degree of the rot. The rot that
will prevent you and this writer from seeing a reimagined
and remade Nigeria is not corruption. It is not Boko
Haram. It is none of the unending dysfunctionalities and
irrationalities of statehood that have turned the Nigerian
tragedy into a nightmare from which Africa struggles to
awake.
The rot that will prevent the Nigerian renaissance from
happening in my life time is not even summed up by the
fact that we have now effectively surpassed every
available model of the corruption, abuse, and misuse of
sovereign statehood known to man. Although I will not
hold my breath, I want to wager all the same that the
record set by an irresponsible sovereign state when she
goes to the doorstep of another sovereign state to claim
and own such grievous crimes as cash trafficking and
gun running, all in the bid to shield powerful
interests, will not be broken quickly. And if this record
will be broken at all, it is safe to bet that it is only this
international crime-owning state that will ultimately beat
its own prolific record in the manufacturing of horror.
Again, this is not why I will not see the Nigerian
renaissance. I will not see the Nigeria of the promised
land because we have too many citizens who have been
so deprived of civic education that the mere mention of
the crime owned for the Nigerian state in South Africa by
Nigeria’s irresponsible rulers is sacrilegious and
unpatriotic. The mind that has been manufactured to
constantly justify, rationalize, explain, and identify with
every horror while criminalizing the faintest
manifestation of critique is the greatest threat to the
emergence of a new Nigeria. The mind that mistakes a
fetid personality cult of the incumbent for patriotism is
the greatest obstacle to national becoming. It has taken
the rulers of Nigeria some five decades of abject
postcolonial statehood to produce this mind. It will take
four to five generations to undo the damage because it
is easier to destroy than to build. I repeat: if it took them
five decades to destroy the Nigerian psychology and
produce the mass mumufication we witness today, it will
take five generations to demumufy the Nigerian
psychology. And that is where there is the will o.
I have written time and again that the collapse of
Nigeria’s educational system is not an accident. It is
deliberate. It is purposed. A state that is going to be run
based on ethos and practices deemed crude by the
standards of Orangutan society needs a sedated and
diseducated citizenry that is hostile to critique in order to
survive and perpetuate herself. And when that state
succeeds in manufacturing a critical mass of consent
and conformity such as we see in Nigeria, the
triumphant ruling class has only one responsibility unto
itself: the sustenance of a wrongly-wired psychology in a
vast majority of the citizenry.
That is why I pity members of the Nigerian community of
conscience who are fighting corruption without paying
attention to public instruction. Without civics, the
diseducated – and I have deliberately created that word,
diseducated, to imply deliberateness on the part of those
doing the diseducating – citizen is in the pocket of his
oppressor. He will identify with his oppressor on the
basis of ethnicity, faith, language, etc. If you insist, he
will abuse your father and abuse your mother. He will
ask you: “wetin be your own sef? Na your money e
steal?” You struggle for Nigeria in vain in the context of
this sort of mass psychology.
I issued a statement on my Facebook Wall condemning the
fee. I zoomed in particularly on three of the party’s
aspiring candidates: General Muhammadu Buhari, Comrade
Adams Oshiomhole, and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah. If these men
succeed in paying twenty-seven million naira, I enjoined
the party to insist on an open declaration of the source of
the money as a way of showing that they are different from
PDP.
Public instruction is therefore the place to start. A
sustained struggle in the arena of public instruction may
create the conditions that could facilitate the emergence
of the Nigeria of our dreams five generations from now.
Time is of the essence. Every teachable moment must
be grabbed to work on the Nigerian psychology. Yes, it
has been so damaged, so corroded, so wrongly wired
that you don’t even know where to start. But start we
must.
An occasion presented itself to me today. In the fevered
brain of the leadership of APC, it is somehow okay to
ask aspiring presidential candidates to cough out
twenty-seven million naira for nomination forms! I
thought this was madness. I thought that this constantly
fumbling political party has bungled yet another
opportunity to stand apart from the ways of PDP. I
issued a statement on my Facebook Wall condemning
the fee. I zoomed in particularly on three of the party’s
aspiring candidates: General Muhammadu Buhari,
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah.
If these men succeed in paying twenty-seven million
naira, I enjoined the party to insist on an open
declaration of the source of the money as a way of
showing that they are different from PDP.
As reactions flowed on my Wall, one compatriot
preferred to send a private note to me by email. He
identifies with the spirit of my argument, he says. In fact,
he likes my submissions a lot. But, as a Buhari loyalist,
he is somehow irked by my suggestion that “General
Buhari, a whole former Head of State”, may not have
twenty-seven million naira and may need some help to
find it. Haba Prof, he says. Twenty-seven million may
sound like big money to you guys out there, he
continues, it is weekend party money for boys “around
here”. Of course, I am familiar with the fact that certain
layers of Nigerian society crawl in loads of easy, free
money.
I pondered what to say to him, realizing the immensity of
this teachable moment. I wondered where to start since
the opinion he expressed is a window into a mindset that
is deeply rooted in the Nigerian psychology – and there
can be no progress until we reteach and rewire this
psychology. Do I begin by telling him that in responsible
democracies, the fact that General Buhari has held that
office is the first and loudest reason why he should find
it difficult to afford twenty-seven million naira? Do I tell
him that the fact that Generals Ibrahim Babangida and
Abdusalam Abubakar occupied the same office and
ended up with hilltop mansion way beyond the totality of
their entire earnings in their military careers is the first
reason why they both ought to be serving life sentences
in Gashua prison? Do I tell him that public office is a
huge sacrifice in responsible democracies because you
foreclose the possibility of making money? Do I tell him
how long it took the Clintons to get out of debt after
office? Do I tell him about the student loan and Chicago
mortgage of the Obamas? They finally paid off their
student loans but I am not sure about that Chicago
mortgage.
Do I tell him why people resign after a short stint in the
cabinet in serious democracies? They resign to go and
make money. They cannot make money while serving in
public office. Ask Ari Fleischer how much he was making
on the podium in the White House and how much he now
makes as a conservative pundit. Do I tell him that Karl
Rove makes more now than he could ever have made
working in the White House? Do I tell him that in France,
our friends, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, are
struggling with legal bills – and all kinds of bills?
Do I tell him that if anybody comes out of public office
rich and comfortable, it is your duty as a citizen to raise
eyebrows and pester the tax authorities until they open
an investigation? Do I tell him that the mindset which
produces that famous Nigerian sentence, “a whole so
and so cannot be expected not to have such and such
amount of money”, is a function of the psychology that
the Nigerian ruling class is sustaining in order to mass-
produce a citizenry that permanently justifies looting?
Haba!, goes the Nigerian, how can you expect a whole
State Governor not to be able to afford such and such?
How can you expect a whole Senator not to be able to
afford that house? The man don arrange o. You better
keep quiet, you hater!
And we ask no questions even when they brandish stuff
beyond their legitimate income in the public sphere. Not
so long ago, the outgoing Governor of Ekiti state, Dr.
Kayode Fayemi, made a lot of noise about students he
was sending for University education abroad from his
own pocket. More than a dozen or so students enjoyed a
personal scholarship of Dr. Fayemi to go to OxBridge in
Britain and Ivy League destinations in the United States.
People who ought to know and people who don’t know
went to town celebrating and praising Dr. Fayemi.
Nobody bothered to think about a year’s tuition as an
international student in an American Ivy League. Nobody
bothered to weigh the tuition fees of the students he sent
to Britain and the United States from his own private
pocket against the backdrop of Dr. Fayemi’s legitimate
monthly income as a state governor. Why did it not
occur to anybody to ask questions? You guessed right:
howu, how can you say that a whole state governor
cannot afford it? Na poverty mentality dey worry you!
So, dear friend, when the candidates of APC begin to
pick up presidential nomination forms for twenty-seven
million naira, your responsibility as a Nigerian citizen is
to ask questions about the source of the money. And if
any Stockholm Syndromed compatriot abuses you,
saying, “how can you expect a whole Lagbaja and a
whole Tamedun not to be able to afford twenty-seven
million naira”, do not abuse him or her in return. Show
some sympathy. Show some understanding. Show some
love. Show that you know the origins of his or her
psychology. Remember, unless you act and teach this
wrongly-wired psychology, you will not witness Nigeria’s
renaissance in your life time. For the greatest tragedy is
that the consequence of ignorance is democratically
suffered. Those who know suffer the consequences of
the ignorance of those who do not know in equal
measure. Alakoba ni won.
Therefore, you must educate that psychology so that
your children’s children may stand a chance of
witnessing the beginning of Nigeria’s renaissance. And if
they abuse you as you try to educate their psychology,
shake off the dust of thine feet in testimony against
them.
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