By Jaye Gaskia
For a regime that suffers from gross trust and confidence deficit, barefaced lying is not the way to build confidence or restore trust! And certainly not ‘see through’ lies and deliberate distortions of reality by the head of such a regime!
How can a regime which came out whimpering all through its campaign to ‘remove fuel subsidy’ in the second half of 2011, with the story that there was a cabal in the oil sector, which alone was benefiting from the subsidy and which it was unable to deal with now come out in September of 2012 to say that an uprising organised essentially to force the same regime to expose and deal with the cabal was a sponsored and stage managed uprising?
Why did the regime enter into discussions with the Labour-Civil society joint delegation, if it believed they were being sponsored? Why not simply negotiate or deal directly with the sponsors and not their messengers?
Was it not the same regime that initially said it was not going to prosecute anyone based on the HoR probe report? Was it not the same regime that went to court to negotiate a no trial, no fund recovery deal with marketers indicted in that probe report?
Was it not the same regime that initially said it was not going to prosecute anyone based on the HoR probe report? Was it not the same regime that went to court to negotiate a no trial, no fund recovery deal with marketers indicted in that probe report?
Did the regime not deploy hundreds of heavily armed anti-riot police, and undercover secret service agents as well as 2 surveillance helicopters [in Abuja] to disperse protest rallies organised on April 23rd (Lagos & Abuja) and June 28th (Abuja) essentially demanding that the cabal be fully exposed, apprehended, tried, punished/jailed and looted funds recovered from them Immediately? Was it not same regime which while deploying armed police to disperse the April 23rd protest, on the same day deployed equally armed police to protect another rally which demonstrated at the NASS calling for the probe report to be discarded and for no one to be punished?
What is even more appalling is the lie from a president who together with his household is fed to the tune of N1billion ($7million) annually from our public coffers; that the millions of Nigerians who protested for 10 days across 55 cities and towns were bribed with food and bottled water; food and water that he claimed people in his village and the poor in Lagos and other cities could not afford on their own!
And unashamedly he dared to explain his ‘food bribery theory of protest’ with the level of poverty of the people! Are you kidding me? A president who in spite of the fact that his every expense is paid for from our public treasury, has presided over the increasing impoverishment of our people, can actually talk about the poverty of the people? A president from a party whose 13 years of power holding at the center has seen poverty rate increase from 54% to 60%? Why not ask himself why millions are so poor that they can be easily bribed with food and bottled water? In any case it is not surprising coming from the president and leader of a party whose power holding strategy is the combination of making people poor and then proceeding to buy their votes with money, food etc at general elections!
The tragedy though is that a president who told us he grew up in poverty, who claimed he had no shoes (although more discerning minds have actually said he meant he had no clues), is now so alienated from the poor that he no longer recognizes nor understands the condition of the poor; and all he can do as president with power through his policies to transform their condition, is to mock them!
This was why they could not understand the anger in the land in January, nor the ongoing rising popular anger at impunity and corruption; and it is this inability to understand poverty and the condition of the poor, this alienation from the reality of existence of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians (the 70% living in poverty + the 25% living the uncertain live of a precarious middle class) that is the bane of this government, and the political elite of Nigeria in general; and it is why We The People must rise up and TAKE BACK NIGERIA NOW!
Those whose path out of poverty have been through the continuous pillage, looting and pilfering of our national wealth and public treasury, cannot understand the anger of those whose hard work, sweat and sacrifice does absolutely nothing to lift them out of poverty!
The interests of the exploiting and treasury looting class and those of the exploited victims of treasury looting is now becoming not only antagonistic, but also irreconcilable!
The interests of the exploiting and treasury looting class and those of the exploited victims of treasury looting is now becoming not only antagonistic, but also irreconcilable!
Our Destiny Is In Our Own Hands. Let us Collectively rise up to the challenge to Organise and Mobilise the Alternative Political Platform to Chase These Vagabond Ruling Class Out Of Power and TAKE BACK NIGERIA.
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