Opinion
NIGERIA! THE EAST/WEST ROAD; THE LAST AND ONLY ROAD NOT TAKEN (Part 1)
FUTILITY: THE SEARCH FOR HAMILTON ELDORADO MIDAS.
“By 1998, the need for federal character as a means of protecting the weak north had become, not only questionable, but a subterfuge for displacing southerners and political minority tribes from the fair benefits of the fruits of their land” Major General M. C. Alli.
He was appointed Chief of Army Staff of the Nigerian Army, by General Babangida and he served in that capacity between December 1993 and August 1994. He was an insider.
Subterfuge was the word General Alli used, it means deception!
Nigeria is like a car with multiple system failures, attempting to do a 3 hour trip in two hours, with an engine whose capacity can arrive at the 3 hour destination in 10 hours.
THE SEARCH FOR ENRICO FERMI:
We should be searching for an Enrico Fermi, the scientist who built the first nuclear fission reactor. The reactor where the ego of the Yoruba and Igbo elite and intellectuals will be blown off like the first Atomic bomb, tested on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico; at the Alamogordo facility of the United States Air Force.
The vibrations from that blast, the strength of which should at best be understood as nuclear fusion, will send a clear “balance of terror”signal to Buhari and his born to rule CABAL, with one clear message;
the game is up!
It would serve as the catalyst for restructuring and become the launching pad, for the new Nigeria.
The strategic reason for this position, are the very words of Major General M. C. Alli, Nigeria’s 12th Chief of Army Staff, (from Kogi state; from one perspective he is from the middle belt, but from another perspective when the core North seeks numbers to subjugate the South, he is regarded as coming from the North). He wrote on the 168 page of his Malthouse Press Limited published book, titled:
“The Federal Republic of Nigerian Army, The Siege of a Nation”: “Nigeria has been Northernized in every sector, a situation that has given eminence to calls for the restoration of, or restructuring of our federalism.”Major General M. C. Alli.
THE FUTILE SEARCH FOR LEWIS HAMILTON
Rather than fixing the faulty system which is the structure, we are in search of an efficient driver like Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton or Lewis Hamilton, to do a 3 hour trip in 2 hours, with a slow 10 hour capacity vehicle.
We are in a futile search for a Lewis Hamilton, a Sebastian Vettel, a Michael Schumacher, a Fernando Alonso, a Nico Rosberg and a Daniel Ricciardo all distinguished motor racing drivers, to drive us to our national eldorado, a faulty approach that focuses on the individual without considering the system that will bring about their optimal performance. We forget in our wild goose chase that El Dorado (the city of wealth, our dream goal) more conventionally understood as Eldorado, was at best a strategic leadership political economic blunder of a world power; the Spanish, just the way the domino theory was another world power’s bipolar blunder; the United States, in Southeast Asia.
El Dorado, was the place. But he was also a person, said to have covered himself with pure gold and plunged into Lake Guatavita, as his subjects threw ornaments of gold. The futile attempt at capturing El Dorado; the man and the land, understood as Eldorado, is the portrait of Nigeria’s futile quest for the man with the touch of gold; King Midas.
“SCARAMANGA THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN:
We thought we found El Dorado in 2015; only to discover what looked like gold was rust…..cheap rust of nepotism! He turned out to be James Bond’s Scaramanga, the man with the golden gun, the imaginary character. Buhari our Scaramanga, was the man with the golden gun.
With a reputation of marksmanship against corruption, he turned out to be a third rate anti corruption sniper, whose gold looking rusty gun was a well crafted diversionary tactic, to fool the Southerns; Major-General Alli’s Subterfuge! He is making a good job of it with his selective targets and media noise, the picture of a car with a faulty engine, that converts more energy to noise by the testimony of smoke, with snail speed motion for all the noise.
EL DORADO MIDAS?
Hamilton El dorado Midas? This unrealistic combination is the 2019 quest of many Nigerians. How on earth could Lewis Hamilton El dorado and King Midas be captured in one person? This ridiculous combination, best captures our futile efforts of seeking an individual and not fixing the faulty national structure.
In our futile search for King Midas and El Dorado, tied up in one individual, different pretenders and contenders claiming to be just that, have thrown themselves at us, the most disastrous of whom is Atiku Abubakar.
If his name, Atiku is understood within the context of Yoruba as A TI KU (interpreted as) WE ARE DEAD, he probably is telling us that we are dead on his arrival, still stillborn, never to be born, yet he seeks to be Lewis Hamilton, claiming to drive us to “Eldorado Midas”.
THE TEAM, OUR STRUCTURE.
We all seem to forget that the top performance of Hamilton, the British world class formula one racing driver is the function of his team; the Mercedes AMG Petronas team. The team for us, is the system….the structure.
ELDORADO “A BYWORD FOR FAILURE”?
Eldorado, the British soap opera was a sequel failure. Alastair Jamieson, in a 2008 report titled: “Set of TV’s Eldorado preserved as ghost town in Spain”, paints the shocking details of how Nigerians are reproducing the blunder of eldorado.
“The purpose-built site provided the backdrop to the doomed 1992 serial, which lasted just 156 episodes before being axed despite costing licence payers more than £10 million. Much of the money was spent on creating the set, which was supposed to replicate the sunshine and simplicity of life in Australian soaps such as Home and Away and Neighbours.Fifteen years after it was created, the set lies empty except for the former dressing rooms which are rented out to holidaymakers.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3362289/Set-of-TVs-Eldorado-preserved-as-ghost-town-in-Spain.html
The money that went down the drain, building the facade for the BBC’s failed serial, is indeed the portrait of our wasteful democracy, the market where corruption purchases poverty, creating vast extreams of Africa’s richest man and Africa’s poorest people . So much money went down the the drain under previously administrations this one has only reduced the stealing spreading it across fewer hands.
THE 6 ELDORADO SCENES:
SCENE 1: EL DORADO THE 1ST FAILURE: The 16th century Spanish error, was in search of El dorado, the man and the place. The editors of encyclopedia Britannica, captured it this way: “In 1538 Spaniards from the Caribbean and from Peru and Germans from Venezuela converged on the Bogotá highlands in search of the gilded man.No trace of him was found…..Eldorado was only one of the many mythical regions of great riches” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eldorado-legendary-country
SCENE 2: EL DORADO THE 2ND FAILURE…..THE 1992 BBC SERIAL.
Alastair Jamieson, would add: “Eldorado remains the biggest British television flop and became a byword for failure”
SCENE 3: EL DORADO THE 3RD FAILURE…..THE FAILED HOLIDAY CAMP:
Alastair Jamieson, would again add: “The site was briefly used as a holiday camp but that suffered the same fate as the programme”
SCENE 4: EL DORADO THE 4TH FAILURE…..THE 2014 AND OTHER NATIONAL CONFERENCES.
SCENE 5: EL DORADO THE 5TH FAILURE……THE 2015 RUST; THE SUBTERFUGE CALLED BUHARI.
The Eldorado called Buhari, is the rust under the false identity of gold. In his attempt to drive us to Eldorado with the skill of Lewis Hamilton, he has run us aground; leading us by belligerent irresponsibility of nepotism to a second civil war.
SCENE 6: EL DORADO THE 6TH FAILURE……THE EAST/WEST STRATEGIC ALLIANCE? Will the Yoruba and Igbo ever overcome their ego and present the world with the biggest black to black proactive alliance that would redefine development at a rate and pace best defined as nuclear fusion?
Continued.