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Corruption by Nations’ Leaders-Impact on world poverty index

Since the British PM could throw all diplomatic niceties to the lagoon and describe Nigeria leaders as “Fantastically Corrupt”! That is the first time I am hearing such from a highly placed foreign figure to another, so to discuss the impact of corruption on the world poverty index I will sure start from Nigeria my apologies to my country but we know how we arrived at this precarious bus stop. However for the younger Nigerians and perhaps most foreigners I will tell the Nigeria journey to a completely  system sustained status.
I will start with these quotes;
                                       The greater the number of
                                    Statutes, the greater the number of
                                    Thieves and brigands’ (30)
                                    Lau- Tzu
‘Although independence means freedom, it
                                 Is not freedom of the jungle
                                 where might is right.’
                                    Sir Ahmed Bello
‘A democratic culture can never
                    Be laid on an autocratic foundation’
                     Adebayo Williams

                                         “ While we are failing the lest of the
                                  World is succeeding, yet Africa is not
                                  Less endowed as other part of the world.
                                  I believe one word answers that question
                                  LEADERSHIP.”

                               Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
                               (Before he went in again as a civilian president)
                                   Author’s note






Many concerned citizens and outsiders have wondered at what time in the nation’s life this ruthless, senseless and irrevocably selfish circle of people took over the government and resources of this country. It is not exactly certain when the urge by a few people to mindlessly usurp the resources of this nation started.  But it was clear that the root of what led to the emergence of the cabal was first, the distrust and hatred amongst the ethnic groups in Nigeria and of course partially deepened by the British through their divide- and- rule tactic which was generously applied whilst they were here. The hatred came to a climax with a bloody civil war which wouldn’t have been fought at all if it was not for the fortune which the oil found in the East of Nigeria promised. The war was not fought because rest of Nigerians loved the Igbo man so much that they couldn’t stay without the Igbo man! In the other word the cessation of Biafra would have been warmly welcome if not for the implication to the forces that are that that also means losing all the great fortune oil promised. After all the North was the first group that earnestly sought for the split of the Nigeria state but of course they were wisely guided by their British supporters to see the foolishness of that and eventually when the government of the country was in there hands, Northern intellectuals realized with deep satisfaction that what there Jihadist forefathers had wanted to do with blood and iron has been given to them on a platter of gold without even a swing of a machete by the jihadist, other than leverage of the Nigeria army. So the war which was fought with zeal by the Sokoto power house and others were for two main reasons: First was to ensure full control of the oil fortune and the second was to keep faith with the wish of their Jihadist forefathers.
Following the eventual loss of the civil war by the Igbos and others (The difference between the Igbo man and the others in the East are only understood by the Igbo man and the concerned others as far as the North and others are concerned they are one and the same people). In fact as far as the ordinary Northerner and Westerner are concerned once you reach Benin from there down wards are all Igbos! Though The General that has no money problems and his associates in their ridiculous and deceitful announcement of “No Victors, No Vanquished” tried to create the impression he meant what he said. But he obviously said what his British advisers asked him to say. However there was a clear victor and there was a clear vanquished! The victors were first the North led by the Sokoto power house and a much lower victor, the West. The vanquished were first the Igbos and several other tribes that dot the landscape of what is called the South-South now which actually contain the bulk of the oil in contention – the actual price of the war. Despite the fact that many South-South people supported the Nigerian State at the infamous civil war they soon realized that the victors didn’t actually know the difference between the Igbos and others. Late Ken Sarowiwa, Ogoni 9 and the Odi community can explain this better.

However to expose the cowardly deceit of the “No Victors, No Vanquished” the then federal commissioner of finance, a prominent politician from the West immediately swung into action to implement the phase two of the vanquished people’s punishment- Every Igbo man, that by extinction, everybody in the East with possible exception of those who did outstandingly during the civil war campaign would only receive twenty pounds no matter how much one had in his bank account pre civil war. This same man was the man that advised that hunger be used on the Igbo man apparently to bring the war to an early end, One would wonder since the war had come to an end most likely by the hunger he unleashed; whether by this new action whether he also want hunger to kill the survivors of the civil war. It may not be unlikely that part of the secret desires of the victors particularly those from the North could have been a total wipeout of the survivors by hunger if the statement of an assemble member from Kebbi state on the floor of the house 40 year after that; “It would have been better to wipe out 20 million South- South people for the remaining 120 million Nigerian to live” is anything to reckon with. Now if someone has confiscated the little money you have in your bank account do you now expect him to contradict himself by selling crude oil he mines at the back of your house and gladly turn the billions of dollars to you for your development? Impossible! The victors didn’t waste time a tall on the issue of confiscated monies because it was nothing compared to the main prize of the war – The proceeds from the black gold!
Quickly the revenue formula which was carefully arrived at by the federating units were immediately changed from the 50/50 to as low as 10/90 and even there was a time it was even3/97 between resource owner and government respectively! This means that a partly 3% was paid to the resource owners and a whopping 97% of the revenue dumped at the mercy of few individuals at the center. The central government was of course controlled by the victors with almost a total exclusion of the vanquished. Note that the 50/50 sharing formula was a decision reached on mutual respect by the federating regions and all commissions that worked before or after independence reached the same conclusion including the Binn’s commission. This is a decision based on equity. However when the entire East was vanquished and effectively put out of circulation the victors flexing new found muscles felt there was no more need to ask the East what they feel or what they did not feel after all it was an outright vanquish! It was just the victors deciding for them how much they want of the resources of the conquered people and then appropriates it as simple as that! This is not much surprising considering the level of animosity amongst the ethnic groups. The East was so unlucky to have been consumed by the enemies it would have rather kept at bay! Why did I say that it was not surprising? The East may probably have done the same thing with its ally if it were to be on the other divide that is a victor. However what is wrong with the  whole issue is that 40 years after the civil war the revenue formula which was punitive victor’s hand out to the vanquished people is still prevailing and any attempt made to have it redressed is stoutly resisted by the cabals even at the point of continuous blood shed! Except the continuous surcharge of 40% that is actually 80% of what should have been going to the East is a war punishment and the prize for cessation of hostilities! If this is not war punishment or war reparation then what could it possibly be if it is not a fraud for a handful of khaki wearing officers and a few civilians to have sat down in one room and decide for nationalities how their resources are to be shared especially where the owner of the resources in question was excluded completely from having an input!

Now if this is a war punishment the talk by Gen. Gowon of “No victors, no vanquished’ is definitely not worth the paper it was written. It was a fraudulent deceitful talk. Most importantly, why should this war punishment or tribute be extracted for nearly 40 years? A war tribute or reparation cannot be extracted for 40 years in the 21st century! The Nigeria government must consider seriously the refunding of at least half of this extraction of 40% that is 80% of the supposed resource allocation back to the resource owners of the South- South and South- East! On the other hand if this 80% surcharge is not war extraction then it is not only fraudulent it is also illegal for a handful of armed men and some civilians to decide without even consulting the owners of the resource to slash their resource allocation by 80%! Accordingly to ensure equity and fairness the 80% surcharge must be returned to the owners of the resources covering the period from 1970 to 2010. Thereafter if the federating units feel that they are tired of 50/50 sharing formula they should meet in an appropriate conference and reach a mutually respectable and equitable agreement. I believe that if this is done that the South-south would drop demand for outright resource control, because the main reason the South- south is asking for outright resource control is because this war tribute or fraudulent revenue formula has lasted an incredible forty years even longer than the war reparation of first and second world war joined together! The Nigeria government should pay this indebtedness to the resource owners. The civil war is over for a very long time the nation can’t move forward with the vestiges of the civil war induced imperialism showing its ugly face even in its minutest form!

As if the above is not enough this was also topped up by the land use decree implemented by the Do-Or –Die man. The land use decree was an instrument of major assault to the East, Any land the federal government touches becomes as a matter of right that of the federal government! Just like a leper. The lest of the land legally owned by the governor of a state, that is why you need a certificate of occupancy (C of O) to legally own the lands your ancestors left you before you can claim legal ownership! Even at that should the federal government or the state government need the same land any time‘t’ in the future your CofO would be revoked faster than you can think. The land use decree was mainly put in place to legalize completely the takeover of peoples land in the oil producing Eastern states. That was what the decree primarily aimed to achieve. That may have accounted for how the environment of the oil producing communities was treated with utter disregard of all conventions that occasioned all the environmental disaster in all the oil communities. The land use decree was responsible! The government treated oil lands and waters as their own property and they can do anything they want on it and that is why gas flaring has not stopped and may continue for many more years!

Then finally, the first and partial assault on Education on the Nigerian people was initiated. The East has to wait for the North to catch up with it educationally or even pass the East before the East can be thinking of any further intellectual advancement! This was the beginning of the De-intellectualization of the Igbo people which would be extended to the, lest of Nigerians some years down the time line by the cabal to enable them keep at looting in perpetuity! For now the victors know that the only way the Igbo man was able to occupy the position he did occupy pre-civil war was because of his educational preponderance, so the Igbo man must be destroyed intellectually !
The implication of this now means that if you are a student for medicine in the East and you score 280 marks for instance in JAMB, you are most likely not going into the university that year if many people scored high like yourself and had filled your regions quota. However someone in the North that sat for the same exam and score just 180 marks is definitely going in for the same medicine without any stress and what is more he would be welcome with pump and pageantry and to cap it all he would also be given a scholarship by the government!
Like I have said earlier this is the beginning of what the victors would do on education. We will see more in this narration, how bigger assaults were practiced on the entire country to ensure the perpetual exploitation of the nation’s resources by this circle of victors. However it is said that you would use the smell of a mess to predict how the test of the shit that occasioned it would be.

Considering the tone and severity of the open protocol, you don’t need a soothsayer to know there was a more heinous secrete protocol for the vanquished people. Though the victors were savoring their victory but they are not that daft not to know that you may vanquish a people today but that no matter the pain and subjugation placed on those people; with time they would resuscitate and may even agitate for freedom and ask for a return of their stolen resources! So it is simple. The secret protocol is to explore the precious black Gold as quickly as possible both legally and illegally. That was the reason why they didn’t see any reason for environmental assessment of the exploration and the gas which even though could have been bottled to make more money for the victors was most likely deliberately being flared to ensure the destruction of the environment of the resource owners. Why not? If it were possible, to exterminate the entire population of the irritating people disturbing the smooth business of the victors that would have been done. Since the victors can’t do that without international outcry then the destruction of the environment was a small price as far as the victors are concerned. Otherwise how do you describe the devious destruction of the ecosystem of the oil producing communities that even after 30 years of the end of the civil war gas is still being flared by all the oil companies, and Nigeria is not the first place oil was explored and these oil companies have been operating in many other places and observe all conventions on the preservation of the environment. How come Nigeria is probably the worst hit on environmental matter as regard oil exploration?

Let’s get back to how the Godfathers or cabal or sacred cow emerged. With virtually the entire oil fortune now at the center, it means the handful of victors of cabal now control the resources of the nation amply aided by the land use decree now dish out the oil money to the so called states as they deem fit. It is this circle of victors consisting then of the leaders of the Sokoto power house, emirs, top military officers, Obas, top politicians from the North and West and of course some few selected politician and chiefs from East who did lend their unalloyed support to the victors during the civil war but of course they are in utter minority and takes whatever that is given to them. In any case this exclusive group became the masters of the Nigerian state which eventually with ever increasing greed metamorphosed into the Godfathers or the Nigerian cabal!

Though, at first this exclusive group’s preoccupation were one: to ensure the absolute implementation of the open protocol destined for the vanquished East. This was to them very important because any sudden rise of the Igbo man intellectually or economically may completely over turn all the clandestine agenda of the cabal. They succeeded in the intellectual destruction of the Igbo man, that was how every other south easterner is a trader and every other illiterate trader is a South-Easterner! Even then the Igbos did not have peace because the ordinary citizens from the victor’s side encouraged by the cabals continued the process of sustained and systematic annihilation of the Easterners and later even Westerner and their properties. The second preoccupation of the cabal and most vital was the unwritten protocol to get the oil at all cost and pay the money to the center where the cabal would have absolute control of the great fortune.

At first the Godfathers used the money to develop cities in the North and then the West, mainly Lagos. The money was also used to give a lot of free education to selected Northerners, most especially military training. Later when the money got outrageously stupendous, and also for the North to show who the real victors were decided to move the capital of Nigeria to the North. There after the ancient forest of Abuja was gorged by thousands of bulldozers and earth movers to elect an entirely new city. This lent its support to the statement credited to the General that have no money problems. “Nigeria problem is not money but how to spend it”. All this while, the Godfathers had not started outright looting of the nation’s resources. They were content with the benefit of joint alliance against the owners of the resources who reel in poverty and deprivation assisted by environmental decay. They were happily exploiting the oil to the detriment of the vanquished people and of course precede, from possible contract inflations, most of these contracts they give to themselves or their associates abroad. Wait a minute! You may think that ha-this is an Igbo man writing; no! I am not holding brief for the East or the Igbo man. Considering the level of distrust and hatred amongst the ethnic groups, if it were the East in alliance with any of the group had vanquished another group they may have done the same thing this set of victors have done or even worse. After all if Elechi Amadi’s book is anything to go by, the war had not even ended and the Igbo man was already threatening the other minority groups around them that all the lands were Biafra lands and that they would see when the war ends!

Let’s get back to the cabals; it was clear they decided what happens politically and economically. They decide what gets built or destroyed or who gets what. Even the little thing paid to resources owners; they don’t even get it in time. That was how the former governor of Imo state, late Sam Mbakwe became the weeping governor. Because, he has to go begging every time to get his state allocation from the godfathers.

To start with it didn’t take much time for everybody in the North and West (the victors) with reasonable degree of intelligence to realize that the great wealth for beyond their wildest imagination was being dumped at the center at the mercy of few numbers of people. People abandoned their groundnut farms and tractors, their cocoa farms and equipment and head to the center for the big pie! Some got into ministries, some as one type of politician or the other. It didn’t take time before the circle of the cabals increased exponentially and with diverse interests and motives; of course they were not all equals. The big lions were there, the hyenas, the leopards even the squirrels. This abandonment of farms was the beginning of the end of agriculture in Nigeria and perhaps honest enterprise, but the enlargement of the cabal was to prove more faithful to the entire country and eventually to total disaster. The enlargement of the cabal circle brought about a violent random movement within the circle of the cabal. All the various coups and counter coups were as a result of this random movement. One group of greedy detachment of the cabal would watch helplessly as another detachment through their military government eat to stupor, then that detachment would get their allies in the military and stage their own coup and if it was successful would mount the nations treasury followed yet by another group that would surely topple that one and establish their own siphon network. If a detachment stages a coup and fail the one in power would get them all eliminated without even betting an eye lid because that would mean lesser number of people sharing the big cake! After this random movement and also for the fact that military adventurism became almost unacceptable to many developed nations the cabal settled into this monstrous force ravaging the nation. Despite their uncontrollable greed they realized that they could somehow meet their ever increasing quest for the resources of the nation by doing to the entire country what has already been experimented on the East. After all since what count to the cabal is money does it matter who they get it from even if it is their own mother! The cabal now created more states and local governments where they selected appropriate members to mount the treasury of those new creations and the siphon network becomes total and comprehensive. Looting has become institutionalized and systemized!
The cabal has finally vanquished the entire country just like Her Hitler and his cronies; before they could embark on the conquest of the world they had to first conquer the German Nation!
The cabals got so enlarged that the biggest and most powerful of them took a complete grip of the center and that means also all the colossal resources dumped at the center. The lesser cabals operate at the State level and yet the much lesser cabals operate at the local government. The ones operating at the state level siphon and remit a percentage to the big cats at the center whilst the one at the local government level siphon and remit percentages to the state and to the cats at the center that is how it came to be that they determine who would be Governor of the state from Abuja as well as the local government chairmen. It has become complete network of incredible siphon system!
Here, is one staggering evidence of this monstrous exploitation of the citizens. Out of about 50 years of our nationhood the North has ruled for nearly 40 years and yet the North account for nearly 80% of open street beggars. In fact they are so many that there are no places that can accommodate all of them in their respective states that as of now they are located in virtual every state of the federation. There is no state without one kind of settlement for Northern beggars! In some states they have formed an exclusive community of beggars! (18)

No body though has thought how come this mammoth cloud of beggars. The deceitful Northern cabals blamed Islam for this staggering number of beggars. This is very annoying because it is not only in Nigeria that Islam is being practiced as a religion. Pakistan and India each have almost twice the size of adherent of Islam as Nigeria but none of them can account for up to one tenth of the beggars Nigeria has! So Islam has nothing to do with this enslavement of a people by their own devious brothers.

This staggering number of beggars was occasioned by the wicked anti-people policy of the cabal governments in various Northern states. First of all, a mammoth set of beggars were thrown into the streets when several big Northern farmers left their farms in a mad hurry to go and eat the great cake at the Lagos center. Someone in the past asked how the groundnut pyramid vanished. Simply, when the major groundnut farmers realized that a great cake was being shared at the Lagos center they abandoned their groundnut farms and equipment and moved to Lagos for their own loot. Just one bunkering load of crude would account for several pyramids of groundnuts. When the big groundnut farmers left, what happened to thousands of illiterate non skilled workers they employed, ground tillers, loaders, tractor driver, lorry driver and other host of non-skilled workers? You guessed correctly they all lost their jobs and since they didn’t have any kind of formal education, many moved into streets for begging! Some of their adventurous looting masters came home they built mansions and every day they cook large pots of “tuwo” and “burukutu” and serve to their former now jobless laborers. However a little percentage of the old masters ever had time to come home often and feed former laborers like this. Some of the masters invited some of their former laborers to come and continue serving them in Lagos where food are served them in their big mansions in some part of Lagos. With ever increasing amount of money at their disposal and a particularly high test those masters moved to more serene part of Lagos abandoning once again their old laborers who couldn’t now get even daily food had no other option than to move into Lagos streets.

Another major reason why this mammoth cloud of Northern beggars came to be was following continuous looting of money meant for power  instead of the figures for the watts to be going up considering increasing population and industrialization it was even going much lower than original. That is in inverse proportionality! The result many industries with several hundreds of thousands of semi-literate  workers couldn’t have power to operate even if the industrialist has money to buy generators the price of gas continue to rise to the high heavens worst still it was not readily available. Final results: many factories closed down and since most of the workers are semi-literate or outright illiterate they can’t get work anywhere. The farms they could have gone back to work had long closed down. Few could get a place to fix themselves somehow. A few went back to subsistence farming and majority went into street begging swelling the number that was there occasioned by farm abandonment by big time farmers. The few that went into subsistence farming joined the multitude of other subsistence farmers in hunting for fertilizer since the average soil in the North need fertilizer support absolutely. Now, subsistence farmers, in the North and everywhere in the country rely on the ‘subsidized’ fertilizer to operate for some time. Later the lesser members of the cabal realized they could make good money from the ‘subsidized’ fertilizer. So the subsidized fertilizer first get into the hands of one kind of politician (godfather) at the state, he adds a tidy profit to it and sell to several other lesser godfathers in the local government who now resell to the farmers at a tidy profit, Do not forget that the big cats at the center that had also added their own profit before dispatching the fertilizer to the states. And, the result of all these stages of profit adding; the fertilizer even end up selling more than it would have sold if there were no subsidies! So at the end of the line the farmers can’t afford the final price some just buy a little and give up and that was how a large number of subsistence farmers left the farms for good and where do they go to you guess it into begging! These are the major reason why there are large numbers of Northern beggars and never Islam.

It is only the uninformed or outright fool that would take the development of these generations of beggars as an exclusive ”rights” of the North’s under privileged alone! No! This would be the eventual fate of all underprivileged Nigerians if the cabals are not checked and they continue this devilish rampage to the suicidal end!
This is the Nigeria story on journey to corruption, other nations particularly in the third world have their own tales even in the advanced world occasionally you hear some tales of corruption but there is no way you can use corruption in the advanced world to that of third world nations. In fact most of the wars in third world were occasioned by corruption of the leaders most time it may be rigid positions of the highly corrupt leaders of who is going to be in charge of the cash box for the sharing of the resources that result in war where hundreds of thousands of people are killed! Whenever the war is over the corruption of course continues.
Back to corruption by nation’s leaders. You have seen the manner of emergence of Nigeria cabals who have institutionalized corruption as a way of life to the extent it is now the system and capable of picking out those who are not corrupt and punish them accordingly! This is the very devilish opposite of sane nations where the system is so good that it is capable of picking those who are corrupt and punish them! The manner a handful of persons in various country coverts the resources of their respective countries to themselves differ from country to country but most obnoxious are in Africa and other third world countries/ Sometimes the sure struggle amongst the lording class, WHO WOULD BE IN CHARGE OF THE CASH BOX FOR SHARING leads to very heinous  disagreement  and consequences sometimes balkanizing the nation into ethnic or religious divide that eventually lead to civil war or tribal genocide as had been witnessed in many African countries and other third world countries  with several hundreds of thousands of ordinary people killed and property damage and looting enormous where this extreme point has not been reached t leads to systematic looting of treasury. Each year such country announce the budget, in the announcement all amounts are accounted for but before the announcement each block of the cabals had already known in which sector of the economy they would syphon from into their never filled bank accounts at home and overseas. The midpoint of their disagreement is where the disagreeing party would stage coup and mount the cash box only for the other block to stage counter coup and when successful mount the cash box and looting continues. Whichever of the activities of the looting cabals you look out directly points to the reason why so many citizens across the nations are impoverished because money which ordinarily would have gone to provision of vital infrastructure would find their ways into private bank accounts. That is how Nigeria cannot have power for even private use let alone for industrial power-up as well as continued importation of refined crude while even country like South Africa without any crude refines for its domestic use and Nigeria kept importing refined crude and host of other wastages of nation’s resources.
Exporting looted resources to foreign banks is a huge business and involve thousands of individual and several hundreds of banks across the globe to the extent that some banks and countries in the advanced countries rely on the criminal transaction as their major source of revenue. It is a huge syndicate! Come to think of it while the cabals in various third world countries are guilty of looting their respective treasuries individuals, governments and banks in the “less corrupt” advanced nations are guilty of facilitating the looting and are equally guilty of driving the global poverty index to this breaking point it has reached! So the British PM calling Nigeria “fantastically corrupt” while Nigeria (The Cabals) deserves it Britain is equally corrupt in the sense that British nationals, perhaps even government and British Banks facilitated the transfer of the huge resources to Britain not only loot from Nigeria of course loot from several other third world country are trafficked through Britain and so many other European countries and America. I do not know whether the corruption summit held in Britain  was prompted by Nigeria President or not but if it is Nigeria President he should be commended for the huge diplomatic manipulation to discus looters and loot keepers the two arms of evil that has spread poverty to millions of people across the globe. If it was that on their own the loot keepers felt guilty of their inhuman and extremely corroboration and decided to summon courage to confess their evil manipulations of third world resources well and good but the only thing being expected of the wicked loot keepers is enumeration of loots kept and immediate and unconditional repatriation of the illicit resources back to the respective nations! Anything short of this would be hypocrisy of the highest order and history will never forget nor forgive!







 

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