Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. We must never give up even as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are added to the two million+ displaced and the 25,000+ dead from the Fulani Herdsmen War.
In The Nation May 15 2013, I wrote on Widows of violence, lamenting those violently slaughtered on a daily basis in the brutal herdsman’s war against the farmers from many states on the North-South cattle corridor. We add the families of those killed almost like clockwork at the rate of ten murders a day in the well-engineered bloody Fulani [herdsmen] Vs indigenes Plateau State crisis. Unchecked, the terror has multiplied confirming a hidden domination agenda.
At last, following more unnecessary security personnel deaths, government is stepping in. But whose side is government on, ‘the wrong’ of cattle barging through your farm or ‘the right’ of the farmer to protection? Most Nigerians say ‘No’ to grazing areas across states and ‘Yes’ to Northern ranches for growing cows at ‘point of origin’ in the North and when they are fattened, a 1-2days shipping by trailer and train to ‘point of kill’. Who believes that Nigerians are so stupid as to take an agriculture loan, buy seeds, plough, fertilise, plant, water, weed and tend fields and employ farm hands for months just to prepare ‘lunch’ for someone else’s passing cattle leaving NOTHING but COW DUNG, a gunshot wound or even a grave and orphans?
Why do the Fulani herdsmen’s employers not pay? How can this be ‘right to passage’? How would you feel if cows were herded through your livelihood- children’s bedroom, office, clinic? Buhari is fighting The Boko Haram War and the Anti-Corruption War. The Buhari tenure will be judged by 100+ million non-Fulani Nigerians on the Third War –the Fulani Herdsmen’s War. Will this be President Buhari’s finest hour or his Achilles Heel?
The signing of ‘BUDGET BUHARI’ instead of ‘BUDGET NASS-ty’ is a multifaceted victory for democracy change putting politicians in their place. It is a victory in the budget fight saving lives and the quality of life. No money changed hands where it used to cost Nigeria billions in bribes. No illegal secret promises were made, replacing past selfish horse trading. ‘Padding’, though criminally practiced for 40 years by politicians, civil servants and contractors, finally entered the Nigerian political lexicon of corruption and happily was exorcized whereas in the past, ‘padding’ allowed billions to be stolen. Civil servants involved in the ‘2016 Budget Padding Scandal’ must be prosecuted, not dismissed. The scandal must be taught in every university department and course. We hope their military, Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) and National Assembly (NASS) collaborators are dealt with as many are specialist ‘Political Padders’. The ‘BUDGET PROCESS CLEANSING SUCCESS STORY’ victory will be complete only if repeated at the state level by all parties. The governors of all parties must seize this moment of change to change their own budget process. Nigeria must move forward as a whole away from corruption. But are they and their parties clean enough to come clean?
Remember also that we are used to heads of state taking 50% of the budget themselves, not to talk of lesser thieves. The budget is lean and mean without built-in ‘10-100% contract slush money for the political party boys and girls’. As much as one third of the budget, N2trillion, may have been saved from theft now, and in the next one year, by the Buhari government securing the budget. Wow!
Do we at last have that essential democratic tool – a dichotomy, a separation, of party funds and funding on the one hand and the federal budget on the other? This ‘HANDS OFF THE BUDGET’ by all political parties is the key to the anti-corruption war. The extent of damage by illegal party access to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other budgets 1999-2015 is clear from a study of the massive corruption cases exposed daily.
The Buhari Budget has to make up for that 1999-2015 mega-theft with ‘recovery’ and ‘prevention’ of 2016 ‘budget abuse’. In addition to the terrible travails of IDPs, we face the results of a 30+ year epidemic of ‘dispirited, disillusioned, disgusted and disgruntled children of their ‘+chronically wageless and perennially pensionless’ parents. These pauperised Fellow Nigerian Children come from a heart-breaking past, face a bleak present and frightening future. They have been forced into an adulthood of lower-than-expected achievement. They have achieved less academically and in the workplace because their parents, due to the then-prevailing corruption in pension scams and schemes, could not afford educational institutions of their choice. Nigeria’s greedy political class, a major cause of social unrest, joblessness and kidnapping, owes citizens a big apology and a massive N100 billion naira refund for failed democracy. Were Nigeria’s children not ‘kidnapped’ long ago and held ransom by evil politics depriving them of their inheritance?
Meanwhile is ‘Sinate’ an unnecessary body comprising many who presided over the rape, destruction and robbery of federal and state treasuries, siting in the grandiose delusion, arrogantly dispensing ‘Death Penalty’ to kidnappers as curative medicine? Was this ‘sponsored’ by the kidnap of a ‘Fellow ex-Sinator’? Using the Sinate’s own punishment scale, should some members face ‘CHARGES OF KIDNAPPING PARTS OF NIGERIA AND THE POPULATION THEREIN AND DEMANDING AND RECEIVING RANSOM FROM THE TREASURY’ – a capital crime? Are ‘Sinators’ worthy of Nigeria’s trust and confidence? We demand a Salary Allowances Perks, SAP, reduction and even a refund –since 1999 to date!
