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Opinion: Dasuki, Dokpesi and the degoatification of Nigeria

“The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid dens of crime that dickens love to paint” wrote C. S. Lewis. “It is not even done in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see the final result. But it is conceived and ordered, moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”

We naively thought with Abacha went the imperviousness of men. The man whom Wole Soyinka described his honour by the government of Goodluck Jonathan as “a century’s degeneracy in one preeminent symbol, then placed it on a podium for the nation to admire, emulate and even – worship,” sat on our commonwealth and looted so much that the United States Department of Justice called his frozen loot of $480m the “largest forfeiture in the Department Of Justice history.”

But recent revelations are beginning to sound as though the shadow of the late despot still hover across the country for one is left with no choice other than to wonder what knowledge or sophistry of weaponry Raymond Dokpesi has to place him in a position to supplier arms!

Can the media mogul differentiate between a gun and a microphone? Not forgetting that DAAR communication owes several of her staff salary arrears running to several months, Raymond Dokpesi’s company has failed to communicate to its shareholders since they invested in his company.

I recall expending all of my savings (N12 000) to purchase the DAAR shares almost ten years ago and since then, the only feedback I got was a copy of my certificate. As I write, not a single correspondence has been sent to me from the company of Raymond Dokpesi. That this man steals from his employees, milks his shareholders, and now, has a hand in the continued terrorisation of the country is enough to forget him behind bars.

He has come out to inform the nation that the N2bn he got from Dasuki was strictly meant for projecting the image of the PDP and by implication, soil the reputation of the then opposition party, the APC. How laughable! When has the office of the National Security Adviser become an appendage of the PDP that doles out money to media organisations to sell candidates?

The $2.1bn arms scandal—more than anything else—should instigate a fresh appraisal of one’s loyalty to Nigeria. For a scandal aptly linked to the case of an onion whose continued intervention by the knife only exposes layer upon layer, the arms deal can be summarily linked to a tree having former President Goodluck Jonathan as its root, the erstwhile NSA, Mr. Sambo Dasuki ($2.1bn) as its trunk, and, Messrs. Raymond Dokpesi (N2bn), Attahiru Bafarawa (N100m), Isah Yuguda (N1.5b), Bukola Saraki (N250m), etcetera, occupying varying positions on its stem.

They see every opportunity as an avenue to enrich their pockets. The bombing of torsos and tearing of limbs neither deterred them nor made them have a rethink about their crimes against the Nigerian people. The world is yet to come to terms with the Chibok abduction, neither have the families of the slain soldiers who lost their lives defending their country.

This is why some of us knew that Candidate Buhari’s vacuous words during electioneering of not probing previous administrations were only a tool to comfort the political class. With scandals falling over each other, even nature would not forgive Nigeria if she looks the other way by equating the peaceful handing over of power to waiving the treasonable acts of these men; for their acts of larceny is humongous, their crimes, fictitious; and their contempt for the laws of the land scares the shit out of the devil.

That the worth of a Nigerian life is not worth a cent is daily magnified by the inhumane acts of Boko Haram boys. It is though not surprising why the war on terror has put Nigeria in the trenches even as the defence budget keeps rising.

Between 2011 and 2014 for instance, a total of N1.488tr was budgeted for defence but instead of getting commensurate results, the terror boys grew fangs and feathers, will and might, attacking and looting with little or no barrier between them and their victims.

We are yet to hear a thing. This is the very reason why every Nigerian as a matter of necessity should throw their full weight behind President Buhari. The dividing issues of religionism and spiritualism, tribalism and political affiliation should not surface if we are to regain the country back from these charlatans and evil men.

As a youth corps member presently teaching mathematics in Jebba, Kwara State, I teach students whose destinies have been forever tainted by a government who prioritises frivolities to educating the populace; senior secondary school students who finds it impossible to add 2+2, spell their names correctly and understands basic English not because they were born handicapped, but for the singular fact that they found themselves in a society who has leaders whose sense of reasoning is restricted to the lining of pockets.

The degoatification exercise has come to stay irrespective of the distractions the loss of the PDP is causing – the latest being the struggle for a sovereign state of Biafra – or the recent rumbling of one Bruce Fein, a United States lawyer who saw no reason to write Barack Obama on his country’s foreign policy of annihilation and imperialism but was quick to address the Nigerian president.

Thousands continue to die annually from childbirth as millions remain out of school; bombs go on every minute killing thousands of able men, women and children in the north east yet, public officials, politicians and businessmen failed to rise up to their selfish interests to protect their people.

We die from preventable diseases as small as malaria all in this country that has got both human potential and material resources to the envy of other nations of the world.

Television was in our homes way before the French ever dreamt of owning one. Place Nigeria beside France today and you’ll see clearly what has made them surpass us: the Diezanis’, Dasukis’ and Dokpesis’.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Modiu Olaguro teaches mathematics at Jebba. He shares his thoughts on www.ghettosassembly.wordpress.com Email: [email protected] and Twitter: @ModiuOlaguro

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