By Igbotako Nowinta
Having presided over the affairs of Nigeria, more than any other section of the country put together, this fact is evident: the Northern political elite has failed woefully and miserably to take care if its own, such like the battalions of street urchins (amalgiri). Unfortunately, these poor Nigerians of Northern extraction are now being pushed or driven desperately to the southern part of Nigeria, even down to the Niger Delta states, where crude oil is being pumped to lubricate the engine of the nation’s economy. The influx of amalgiri boys and girls to our own backyards, even after what the ‘Northern rulers’ have done to us, is a graphic demonstration that they are absolutely shameless and worthless. The bastardization of the spirit of our collective patrimony or nationhood by a corrupt and resource- grabbing machine that double as a sinister cabal in Nigeria today, was further confirmed with the empowerment of 20 Northerners, and only 3 non-Northerners into the management team of the NNPC.
In one of my recent frequent appearances on ‘air live,’ via the Independent Television (ITV), Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, as a guest, where l discussed “The Nigeria Infectious Diseases Control Bill,” l made it abundantly clear that Nigeria’s underdevelopment is dialectics.
And the chief component of the underdevelopment of Nigeria is: a barbaric, praetorian and hopeless leadership system; selfish and capricious to the core.
Therefore, recently, when the management of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), embarked on the engagement of twenty three management Staff, with twenty of them coming from the Northern axis, while only three were non-Northerners, l was not surprised at all, but saw it as one development of too many.
That unfortunate scenario easily draws my mind back to the last book written by the late legendary novelist, Professor Chinua Achebe, which he titled: ‘There Was A Country.’
How could the nation’s most juicy financial behemoth tell us that twenty (20), out of the twenty three (23) Nigerians, from the Northern axis of the country are more qualified than the rest people in that category, with only three (3) non-Northerners making the list of the management staff, recently engaged by the NNPC?
The May 24th, 2020 announcement made by one Kenny Boater on behalf of the NNPC, that the organization adhered “to the principle of merit, transparency, accountability and placement of square pegs in square holes,” is not only laughable, an affront, but insultive.’
Kennie Obateru, certainly is not to blame at all, he was simply revealing or reading out the script carefully packaged for him by his superiors, whose only credible credentials that brought most of them to where they are today is their ‘Muslim names.’
Now, how would only three non-Muslims make it as management staff, that is to say that there had been a most vicious and carefully wrapped and secretly designed policy of ostracization or denial of a chunk of non-northerners from gaining employment into the rank and file of the NNPC for decades now?
Because going by the rules of staff engagement and subsequent promotion via the nation’s Civil Service statutory provisions, staff are promoted gradually before they graduate into the management cadre.
If that is the modus operandi within the NNPC, then they are telling us that majority of non-Northerners who were duly employed for decades now, were not promoted, as at when due, or were deliberately stagnated, thereby making way for twenty Northerners to rise above their colleagues, which made the recent most lopsided engagement of management staff a stunning reality?
For me, there is no way the NNPC can explain, rationalize or propagate this recent staff engagement to convince any objectively prone critic.
Something fundamentally, institutionally and politically is wrong in a nation of about 200 million people, that 20 citizens from a section of the country are superior and more industrious than the rest individuals from other axis, in a fabulous entity like the NNPC.
This stark treacherous scenario is making me to conclude that the cabal absolutely calling the shots and brazenly determining the pace of things in our country is deliberately insulting all of us, and most painfully, those of us who inherently came from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, where the gigantic pipes supplying petroleum to every nook and crannies of the country are stationed, since 1956, when crude oil was discovered in Oloibiri.
Quite interestingly, these insults started long ago, in the name of ‘one Nigeria’, which had been used, and is still being used to cajole, deceive, deny and destroy the mass of the millions of ethnic nationalities, in favor of a small group of individuals. Why was Isaac Boro, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and others murdered in cold blood?
The quota system and the federal character clauses in our constitutional provisions normally come into play strictly and glaringly during placements into Nigeria Defense Academy (now University), Unity Schools, Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and so on.
But when it comes to juicy employment opportunities in places like NNPC, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), plumb political appointments, Federal Scholarship Programs etc., sultanism, nepotism, ethnicism, and religionism are considered above anything else.
Having presided over the affairs of Nigeria, more than any other section of the country put together, this fact is evident: the Northern political elite has failed woefully and miserably to take care if its own, such like the battalions of street urchins (amalgiri).
Unfortunately, these poor Nigerians of Northern extraction are now being pushed or driven desperately to the southern part of Nigeria, even down to the Niger Delta states, where crude oil is being pumped to lubricate the engine of the nation’s economy.
The influx of amalgiri boys and girls to our own backyards, even after what the ‘Northern rulers’ have done to us, is a graphic demonstration that they are absolutely shameless and worthless.
The bastardization of the spirit of our collective patrimony or nationhood by a corrupt and resource- grabbing machine that double as a sinister cabal in Nigeria today, was further confirmed with the empowerment of 20 Northerners, and only 3 non-Northerners into the management team of the NNPC.
This is the acme of the brazen insults and premeditated effrontery being poured on those Nigerians, qualified, as usual, who are bonafide owners of the crude oil, discovered in their own backyard in the Niger Delta.
The Niger Deltans and the army of neglected millions in Nigeria are by this piteous spectacle, some of the most exploited slaves in the whole world that have submitted their political and economic rights to an ungrateful and over pompous enemy called the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
What a paradox? The present system is built on the most cruel suffering of the masses; because what we have here is a grand deception; a nauseating, repulsive and debasing federal system that must be overhauled for a better nation, characterized by fairness equity and justice.
There was a country according to Chinua Achebe. Who are those that will shelter the mass of our people from the ruthless convulsions being manipulated by the nation’s demented cabal?
Most Nigerian voters expected that the horrors stage-managed by Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari (1983- 1984), Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdusallami Abubakar, etc., during the years of the locusts before 1999, were lessons learnt in the course of nation building.
But, what we see today shows that nothing has changed, and nothing will change soon. We are seeing a full blown hideous policy of marginalization and impoverishment of the mass of the people; we see a winner-take-all democratic atmosphere by the elite and for the elite.
This is not what we bargained for in 2015 when Nigerians overwhelmingly voted for President Muhammed Buhari. On that note the President must do some introspection with a view to reversing this ugly trend.
Nowinta Igbotako wrote: Where we are – A call for democratic revolution in Nigeria.
