MDadmin
TWO weeks ago, President Goodluck Jonathan’s Labour and Productivity minister, Emeka Wogu warned the Nigeria labour movement not to “overheat the system”, with threats of a general strike and mass protest over plans by the administration to remove fuel ‘subsidy’.
Chief Wogu said the labour movement was ‘merely acting on speculation’, saying there was no sufficient reason to go on strike: “…they (NLC/TUC) are going to go on strike because of anti-people policy, the big question is: does it qualify as a condition to go on strike?
You know if a strike is declared, people will not go to work, so does this contemplation which you mentioned qualifies [SIC] the NLC to go on strike?”
Chief Wogu must certainly reside in cloud cuckoo land, not to know that central to the economic policy of the administration he serves as minister, is the removal of fuel ‘subsidy’, which even his principal accepts will engender discomfort; ‘yes, we know there will be little pain’, according to President Jonathan.
So the chief has tried to be clever by a half, by claiming that those planning to resist the unpopular policy are about to ‘overheat the system’.
Significantly,, the base of opposition to the fuel ‘subsidy’ removal plan has broadened to take in practically all the leading lights of Nigerian civil society; with notable individuals and even the CNPP having signaled their intention to join the working class in the planned movement of resistance.
If the system is becoming ‘overheated’, the culprit is the administration itself; ‘freed and faired’ into power, but has frittered away the trust and support of the Nigerian people. Even the old despot, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was reported to have cautioned against removal of ‘subsidy’, warning that the move could ignite chaos. President Jonathan’s inaction has become a major butt of jokes around the country!
And central to the present situation in Nigeria today, is the increasing rollover of the state into a more openly national security state. The 2012 budget plan allocates a whopping N921.9B to security. In a recent article for Africa Confidential, of December 16th, 2011, titled ‘The Business of Terror’, long time Nigeria watcher, Patrick Smith, described the “staggering sum” as “a BOKO HARAM campaign bonanza for the generals and private security companies”.
Smith added soberly, that “the huge diversion of resources will not achieve its aims without a clear strategy to address the grievances that the militants exploit”. It is significant that Patrick Smith locates as central to the grievances of militant anti-state organisations today, as “Nigeria’s winner-takes-all capitalism, in which the winners are always the same”.
And all of us know, that even blindfolded, we literally can reel out the list of the perpetual winners that Smith has talked about: beneficiaries of ‘subsidy’ and perpetual donors at PDP fund-ri
sing dinners!
Ever since President Jonathan scampered behind the rocks at the Aso Villa to celebrate Nigerian Independence, it became clear that regime survival is the most important piece of the jigsaw of administration in Nigeria. Our national security state depends more and more on Zionist Israeli security personnel.
Patrick Smith said “we hear that Israeli intelligence experts (mostly ex-Mossad officials) may be retained as security consultants….Nigerian (and Kenyan) officials have also been on counter-terrorism trips to Israel”.
But in this “business of terror”, Nigeria also bleeds huge sums of money that could have been ploughed into the development process which might stem the terrorism which the administration is throwing huge sums of money at.
Patrick Smith said further that “the fight back against BOKO HARAM has been hugely lucrative for some. Contracts for training and security equipment are heavily inflated. So-called security officers and associated political appointees sell questionable services to security agencies.
Private security companies such as the USA’s re-branded Blackwater, operating in Iraq, Pakistan and the Middle East, are doing business in Nigeria, along with those who were fighting the insurgencies in the Delta. So dear Chief Emeka Wogu, it is not acts of resistance by the working people that will “overheat the system”; the regime you serve as minister poured petrol and dollars on the fire of the national security state a long time ago.
That is the ghost haunting the Nigerian state; not resistance of anti-people policies.
