by OGAGA IFOWODO
And so King Goodluck “Rehoboam” Jonathan of Nigeria, having got a foretaste of the anger of the people over his decision to sell their blood for more money to service the insatiable greed of his government, has procured a black market order from an inferior court to stop the full fury of the people on Monday, 9 January, in the year of the Great Phantom Subsidy Withdrawal.
How the tricks of the oppressor never change! Remember a similar order, suitably obtained at or near midnight by General Babangida, to stop the announcement of the 12 June 1993 elections? But that failed and so too will this.
Since when, anyway, did Jonathan, whose PDP routinely ignores court orders; since when did Jonathan who has presided over the destruction of the judiciary by literally sacking Justice Salami, President of the Court of Appeal while his suit against Justice Katsina-Alu, then the retiring Chief Justice of the Federation and Jonathan’s chief legal enabler, become a knight of justice and the rule of law? Oh, he is a desperate man all right, if he will stoop to such low heights in the vain hope of stopping the tidal wave of anger about to be unleashed.
Today, I have no better words of solidarity with the people of Nigeria, now awakening to reclaim their country from the strangle-hold of its rulers, than these which I commend to all at home, at work or in the streets:
“The future will have no pity for those men [and women] who, possessing the exceptional privilege of being able to speak words of truth to their oppressors, have taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, of mute indifference, and sometimes of cold complicity."
— Frantz Fanon, in “Letter to the Youth of Africa”
“Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse—to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement.”
— Chinua Achebe, in “The Novelist as Teacher.”
“Justice is the first condition of humanity.”
— Wole Soyinka, in The Man Died“Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?”
— Lord Byron
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