Us vs Them – Part 2

Continued from yesterday

Some months ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria and Federal Inland Revenue Service stealthily hired hundreds of people without following due process. Was your name on that list? I doubt it, but still let us assume your name made it there. Was it because you merited it or because you know someone who knows someone? If your name was not on that list, and you have asked the very pertinent and intelligent question “why,” I will give you an answer. Your name is probably Uche Nobody, Aliyu Nobody, Umoh Nobody or Yemi Nobody. The system is not for Nobody’s. It was designed to favour and for the use of the Somebody’s in the society. So you know those whose name appeared on that list, they are the friends and family members – or “candidates” if you choose – of the Somebody’s who are and will continue to game the system for their own benefit. Do not forget that these people are the THEM I am talking about.

Now, do you know what THEM have conjured and designed for US? N Power. It is the government’s grand idea of job creation for US. You will fill a form and probably be drafted to a school to teach and the government will pay you say twenty something thousand Naira every month for let’s say two years. They call US and ask US to bring our ideas – they can call it You-Win or whatever – but their children do not join US. Who has that time.

The people of Bayelsa loved Alamieyeseigha, but you see, he pillaged and looted money meant for them. He converted those monies into his own personal and family wealth. But when it got too hot for him, he made it an US vs THEM battle and he claimed to be a part of US. He claimed to be fighting for the Ijaw man, a fight that redirected millions of dollars meant for the livelihoods of those same Ijaw people he claimed to be part of, into his own pocket. Now Abacha and others like him are revered up North, but these are the same people who literally wiped the treasury dry with a towel. Abacha is dead, so we might never get to see the “They are after me because I am from the North” talk. But the other Northerners have played the same tape. The list is long and heart wrenching. Let me refresh your memory about a young man who campaigned vigorously for President Buhari. He must have thought he was a part of THEM since he campaigned and voted for THEM, plus he was from the North and Muslim too so I guess his mind was at rest that he was fully part of THEM. But you see, when the military came into Zaria late last year, all it took was for someone, a Nobody, to touch a General’s chest – a somebody’s chest – and the bullets brought down over 350 Nobody’s which included the young man who thought he was a part of THEM and his entire family. Now, do you think there would have been massacre in Zaria, if let us say a nephew or son of a Somebody was there? No, because the system was designed to protect the Somebody’s and not the Nobody’s like us or like those two young men in the East who were shot by soldiers while they were on their way from mass.

Sit down and think about why whenever there is fallout between THEMselves and they are being persecuted or what not, they all claim to be having health issues and need to go abroad for medical treatment. Sit down and wonder how people with no track record of running profitable businesses or being gainfully employed wake up one morning and own properties worth billions of Naira. So if you are still wondering who the US are and who the THEM are, I will finalise by saying; the US are the entire citizenry. The THEM are members of the political elite. The THEM are those politicians and thugs turned politicians, those who have roamed the National Assembly for years and have succeeded in doing what they had in mind to do, keeping us down. The THEM are those governors who with billions in allocations cannot pay salaries but their personal bank accounts keep increasing. The THEM are those current service men and former service men who now own houses in Dubai and other cities outside the shores of this country, houses that they cannot own with money earned legitimately. The THEM here are those politicians who build hospitals and still have to travel abroad for medical treatment because they know what they built is nothing but a death trap. The THEM are those who have diverted and keep diverting funds meant for our military. The THEM here are the people who have played a part in creating this system that has kept us the way we are, conquered us psychologically and as such made us amenable to the prebendalism and neo-patrimonialism that this system comes with.

Come 2019 it is going to be US vs THEM and we should be ready to take back our country from them.

Concluded
Saatah Nubari writes from Rivers State

He is also on Twitter @Saatah and can be reached on 08138024985