Economic warlords.

Several Billions of Naira are reportedly embezzled, misappropriated, missing, or out rightly stolen every day. And this kind of news, sickening and bizarre, is no longer received with shock.

When Nigerians hear that their money is stolen or their Commonwealth robbed, they simply shrug their shoulders and move on. Stealing has become so blatant, so maddening and so shameless that one is left to wonder whether those who steal these humongous sums are actually sane.

But they are quite sane!
What Nigeria is creating, without really saying so, is a culture of economic warlords. The same kind of warlords you create with the militia, or various forms of muscled men who terrorise society and hold their fellow citizens in bondage.

We must go back to those who mounted the saddle of power in 1999 on the platform of a clueless Constitution. That horrible Constitution empowered whoever became/becomes Nigerian president to be above board and to have dominion over every living and non living creature in the land.

The wobbled Constitution which we still operate, allows the President to virtually hold the power of life and death in his palms. He, and he alone, decides who becomes the Inspector General of Police, the Chiefs of the army, navy and the Air force. He alone decides who becomes the chief Justice. He chooses whoever tickles his fancy as the Governor of the Central Bank. He creates extra judicial Agencies and unleashes such agencies on his perceived enemies. In fact the Constitution places the president next to God, and here on earth, he actually is god.

He has the power to enrich or impoverish whoever he pleases. And with a stroke of the pen or a pronouncement with his roaring voice he can make a nonentity a trillionaire  overnight!
We are in trouble.

With this prevailing environment a bicycle repairer who used his muscle to get elected as Councillor suddenly found himself a proud owner of Lincoln Navigator! And our Legislators became unquestionable LEGISLOOTERS!

While we have militia men terrorising Somalia and other lands where formation of a central government has been rendered impossible, Nigeria is developing a powerful hierarchy of economic warlords that would make credible elections totally impossible, and would in no distant future create pockets of warlords in every local community that would scare life out of daylight. There would be men and women who would be so brazen in their conduct such that no law enforcement agent could ever challenge them.

What economic warlords do is to shut the mouth of every agency with money. All authorities such as Environmental Enforcement, Civil Defence, Lands and Surveys, Police, Road Safety, Vehicle Inspection and many others would be neutralised with bribes, or damned with private militia owned by the economic warlords.

We have started seeing traces of this epidemic. There are people in this country who are transparently above the laws of the land, and they flaunt their acquired status.

The Nigeria Police decreed that no police man or woman should be found in the employ of private citizens. But as you read this piece there are economic warlords who carry a whole troop of police with them anywhere they go. And no one can stop them.

When one considers the incredible amount of money lavished on the last elections, especially the presidential elections by the Peoples Democratic Party, one is left in no doubt that economic war lords have indeed descended on our shores. And when the PDP arrogantly declares that their party would rule Nigeria in perpetuity, they surely know what they are talking about.

With contracts awarded to companies that had no address, or to non-existent individuals, and Pensions Funds flagrantly removed from the national kit, or oil blocks allocated to concubines and prostitutes, what else is there to be done to create a league of economic warlords?

We should all brace up for the season of extreme lawlessness which usually trails the emergence of economic warlords. With economic warlords, rape is a play thing. Murder is a pastime. And snatching of other people’s wives will be a toy. What will compound Nigeria’s emergence of economic warlords is the level of poverty in the country. A huge chunk of the Nigerian population of 167 million has already been hammered to sleep under the bed. Economic warlords would now have the entire Nigerian space as playground.

The immunity currently enjoyed by the elected Governors will be inconsequential compared with the imposed immunity which economic warlords are going to ascribe to themselves.

We are in trouble.
This country is going to go to the dogs. It will be survival of the fittest in an arena where there will be no contest at all. It is the lavish life style of the economic war lords versus the crushing poverty of the rest of us. And when a society goes that way, the only certain consequence is the collapse, the likes we had in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. As it is often said, when the poor cannot sleep because of their groaning stomach, the rich can not enjoy their snore.

Something will have to give. The economic warlords and their mansions have no antidotes for remote controlled devices. And they can not keep their entire extended families in bunkers.

But, really, is Life worth all this squander mania?? In local parlance; they say : Remember six Feet!!