I have been thinking about the Naija project. In the light of the recent debates concerning the Nigerian government response to the IPOB issue, i must admit that evolution kind of made a full stop in Africa.
I don’t have time for a sermon today. Prof Pius Adesanmi has done a brilliant piece on TRANSCENDENTALISM and the application of knowledge across generations. If you haven’t read it, do the needful.
Doctor Femi Adebajo also has a fantastic piece, albeit cryptic message about how REFLEXIVITY can become a culture in our national life. Go to his page for ‘Irohin ni ekunrere’.
Dr. Seun Kolade too has put up brilliant summations about the need for CRITICAL REFLECTION as a leadership trait. Lookup his posts too.
My widow’s mite is this: Illiteracy is not Nigeria’s problem. The cancer we have is pseudo intellectualism. As they say, little knowledge is dangerous.
One of the great lesson of EVOLUTION is the ability to develop ADAPTIVE MINDSETS and VARIATION to how phenomena progresses.
1. Adaptive mindset suggest you have the intellectual wherewithal to understand complexity and change. If you have depended on the use of force to build a country since 1960, and things have largely remained the same, you should do Evolution a favour, evolve to the mindset which is non-binary.
That could mean that i detest IPOB and Kanu but will stand up for him if his constitutional rights are impinged upon.
Smart people would have realised that his Youtube and Facebook video threats have yet to kill anyone. Fulani herdsmen however, have sacked villages, committed murderous pogroms and are likely to result in the direct death of some of the hordes baying for violence.
Smart people will realise that the cost of arbitrariness is more than power grab and authoritarian. It is essentially a veritable tool for underdeveloping a nation. As an example, if you insisted, according to the constitution that the military never be used against citizens to perpetrate the slightest from of oppression, what you are doing is not only maintaining the professional integrity of the army, (which will be maintained by properly equipping them for defending Nigeria against external aggression), you’d also be indirectly forcing the hand of government to modernise and improve the police to enforce law and order internally.
How childish is the act of sending the Nigerian army to ‘show force’ to one fugitive? Are you for real? What a waste of brains! If we wanted development, we will expect the Nigerian government to train and equip the Nigerian police to have special branches able to perform on the same levels with the regular army, using civil police tactics.
A lot of you guys grew up watching the Police Academy movies but learnt nothing from it. You watch Homeland, CSI, Criminal Minds, NCIS e.t.c but take nothing educational away from it!
I am sure that the so called Operation Python Dance has no intelligence on the IPOB group and other subversive groups in Nigeria! Otherwise we would have built up a total picture and taken apart the groups by selective arrests of the criminal members.
2.
I heard one of Buhari’s apologist alluding to some infantile and emotional idea that they want Kanu dead because they want to ‘live in peace’.
By now, if you read Pius Adesanmi‘s piece, you would understand ho silly that honest wish is.Totally naive. Even with justice as a bedrock of society, you can only live in relative peace. Let alone a country where there is no justice at all and our embassies aren’t ready to grant him/it/her a visa.
In a nation where the 1% don’t give a hoot about the lives and destinies of the 99%, there WILL be no justice. If you thought killing Kanu is going to bring you justice, you are a MOFO of the first order.
The Killing of Adaka Boro. Did it bring you peace? Some of you lot cannot even relate your struggles in life to such events. If the oil was well managed, you will not need to spend half your life in the church or mosque fighting the devil on weekends and going to lick asses in the office on the weekdays.
The killing of Ken Saro Wiwa. What peace did it bring to you?
The killing of 2 million Igbo in the civil war, has it stopped the likes of Kanu and IPOB to keep emerging?
The killing of the original Boko Haram leader, has only made the cash that should be available to build roads, hospitals and schools for buying guns, copters and ammunition. You are paying more than money though.You are paying with lives of soldiers, citizens and paying away your peace.
Back to my evolutionary qualities of adaptation and variation. When a certain way of life is going to lead you on a path of entropy and extinction, you adapt, you vary your genetic order.
SO, I ASK, HAS THERE BEEN ANY TIME THAT NGERIANS GENUINELY SAT ON A TABLE AND DISCUSSED HOW WE SHOULD ORGANISE AS A PEOPLE?
No. But we get these hollow shouts of ‘One Nigeria’ from those who benefit from the chaos. This is where i think anyone who can Google up Nassim Taleb’s ANTIFRAGILITY theory should. The management thinking of normalising or straightening out any and every kink in the system largely contributes to the embedded weakness in the system.
Taleb should be one for you lot who live abroad and reason like stone agers to consider. No military enforced order anywhere in the world has brought about the type of normality the planners of such ‘certainties’ conceive.
Not one. Not ever.
At the end of every war, you still have to sit down with the enemy and talk.
That the so called ‘intellectuals’ cannot see that there are certain ‘absolute minimums’ is a shame.
You can all enjoy your Pyrrhic ‘show of force’. The Nigerian pythons of INEQUALITY and CORRUPTION, is already slowly asphyxiating the life out of you. In a thousand ways.
I do not like Kanu. I think he’s a sociopath. I think he violated his bail conditions. I think he should be in jail. BUT I THINK THAT HE SHOULD BE ARRESTED BY THE POLICE, TRIED IN A COURT OF LAW, READ HIS RIGHTS AND BANGED UP. NOT MADE A MESSIAH BY A BUNGLING GOVERNMENT.
That Kanu and IPOB and other subversive groups appeared on the scene and are this popular, widely popular enough for the Nigerian Army to dance grotesque dance for, in an exhibition of shame, IS A TESTAMENT TO THE FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP AT THE FEDERAL AND REGIONAL LEVELS.
That any maniac could form a band of lunatics and chance in on legitimate issues such as self determination, endemic poverty and chronic lack of growth SHOULD ORDINARILY ALARM AN EDUCATED POPULACE MORE THAN THE SYMPTOMS OF THAT ILLNESS.
You jump up and down because the Army got Kanu. How pathetic. How many times did you jump at the announcement of the death of Shekau under GEJ?
Your binary minds are just too small to process the complexity of resolving the UNDERLYING ISSUES to make the SYMPTOMS disappear.
And this is what worries me. Pseudo-Intellectualism.
