Leaders Who Loot Us Blind Are Encouraged & Defended

The astronomical increase in food and cement prices are cases in point. When the Government banned imports, gave fertilizer, loans and grants to encourage local production, local farmers and dealers raised prices above imported goods. Their greed and excessive profits did not benefit the locals. So it is not only the leaders or politicians that steal legally and illegally by padding salaries and allowances, big and street traders hoard goods making them too expensive for the common man.

It is a political malpractice to blame the populace for voting against their own self interests. There is the fear they would double down. But the truth must come out somehow, the populace deserves the leaders they nourish. Leaders do not come from Mars. Leaders are responsive to the community culture, upbringing, our educational systems, the individual family members and cronies who get or eagerly expect returns from grossly obscene gains.

Look at the three leading Presidential candidates produced by the so-called Giant of Africa! Their politics have been updated to whose brand of cocaine peddlers is worse. African leaders like some world leaders ride and depend on loud gullible populous to govern. They gain assurance from the approval of shortsighted immediate pleasure seekers that vote against their long-term self-interest. Instead of draining the Augean Stable, they hold their noses and swim along. Ignoring reasonably clean candidates because they had no looting experience.

It is difficult to fish out a live fish in a swamp when most people just want a piece of the National Cake they think must not disappear before they get their chance as cronies of corruption, spending ostentatiously on conspicuous foreign goods like Nigerians. Recently one of the senators Abdul Ningi from Bauchi Central Senatorial District blew the cover over the padded Budget. He was suspended by his colleagues in the Senate for three months!

Some of us still remember fake charges against the most revered African leader, Kwame Nkrumah when he was overthrown while he was on a Peace Mission in Asia. Western and their African enablers claimed he was corrupt, swimming in money, properties with exotic girlfriends. Came to find out he did not even have properties or money as claimed. Nkrumah's family had to be rescued in Egypt.

Somehow, the initial gragra of military instinct is to clean the Swamp, not only from the top down but from the grassroots up. So Jerry Rawlings, like Major Nzeogwu's derailed motive in Nigeria, was to hold leaders of the coup against Nkrumah accountable. Rawlings' second coming as civilian President is a different discussion.

Patrice Lumumba was duly elected in Congo but was overthrown by Mobutu, a military buffoon unfit to rule over informed people. Lumumba was paraded and humiliated to death in a manner that still shocks the conscience till today. Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki and Nelson Mandela were incarcerated into their old age until they became too weak and feeble to rule as a Nuclear Nation. Maybe, just maybe the names of these selfless heroes may revitalize our brains.

Nigerians loved the Buhari/Idiagbon Military Regime so much because they instilled discipline from the grassroots up. When Buhari later came back as a Civilian President, little did we realize that Buhari himself is the face of terrorism and corruption! We got it so wrong because of Idiagbon that was the brain behind Operation War Against Indiscipline while Buhari got the credit. Oh boy, were we fooled. The strongman we thought we knew could not even go after Babangida that overthrew him.

Eminent Professor Babalawo Abimbola was a Senator briefly until Abacha sent them packing. During his time as a Senator, his constituency was surprised he did not bring any loot home. They consider frugal because he took public transport home from Abuja since he had no official car, Personal Assistance and other paraphernalia benefiting a Senator.

Olusegun Obasanjo succeeded Murtala Mohammed after his assassination as the Nigerian Military President. He is known as the most detribalized Nigerian since he would go out of his way to support other ethnic groups other than his own Yoruba. He handed power to a Civilian Government after a controversial interpretation of two thirds of a state by the Supreme Court.

Obasanjo was later thrown into jail by successive Military President Abacha for daring to speak out against him. He barely escaped the death sentence: at the demise of Abacha, he was released from prison. Needless to say, he became sober and broke like Nkrumah but was lucky to escape death like Lumumba. His Military colleagues later put him forward as civilian President and sponsored his campaign.

Obasanjo ventured for a third term and was rebuffed, led by his Yoruba ethnic group. Some Nigerians claimed that his terms as a good and competent President that paid off the country's debts has not been equaled since he left in 1983. He also learned his lessons after being jailed and broke. Never to be broke again, he looted his share of the National Cake!

The Minister of Communication during the time of Shagari was so strict and impartial, he cut off electricity to NPN Headquarters for nonpayment of bills. The Chairman of NPN was so furious he wondered what was wrong with that boy. After the Military coup, he went back home as a lecturer. People in his hometown ridiculed his broke-ass.

Professor Osuji refused to accept bribes or bribe the Representatives in Charge of Education to get his budget approved. When he relented in order to rescue his Ministry, they used it against him. The same is true of Professor Adenine Grand when she panicked about not returning the Ministry of Health unused allocation back. She put her Secretary in charge and ran. The Minister of State and Secretary shared the booty, then absconded. She was held responsible and spent time in jail.

Be careful what you pray for, you may be granted what you will regret. Until the masses at the grassroots level stop obsequious glorification of their leaders, they are equally to blame for idling competent people around while calling reckless looters for salvation. This is why Balewa was overthrown in Nigeria, Nkrumah overthrown in Ghana, Lumumba in Congo and Gadhafi in Libya. Even the Morocco uprising failed to produce the desired results.

Unlike the dedicated founding fathers whose goal was to liberate a Dark Continent from subjugation and Slavery, their children relaxed on their laurels while our individual countries slipped back into abysmal disarray of corruption and ethnic violence.