Jan. 31, 2014
I was having a debate with a Nigerian friend, resident in Nigeria, recently and he bemoaned their fate, complaining there was no light, bad roads, no decent hospitals and most towns have no portable drinking water. I asked him: “why do you have so much corrupt, semi-illiterate leaders across the board, from the presidency to your local government chairman fleecing you in such reckless manner and you can’t asked them the simple question why they and their families are enjoying so much at your expense, yet you lack everything a government should provide to her citizens?.”
And his answer portrayed helplessness and hopelessness: “What can we do, we vote for someone else and they announce result, saying the crooks we rejected at the poll won the elections, and you can’t protest because they will shoot you, if you do? Really I quipped, shoot you because you protested vote rigging and imposition of criminals as your leaders? And he went, yes, because you are alone protesting! And why are you alone, you have a PhD and a lecturer in a Polytechnic, and you can’t mobilise your fellow “long-suffering” Nigerians to protest the imposition of the wrong candidate on your constituency, and yet you complain that the leaders are corrupt, have you even tried a one-man protest,? I asked. And he went mute, no answer because he has not even tried to protest continuous vote rigging, let alone mobilize the illiterates and ignorant around him on the need for letting their votes count!
I was arguing with another London-based Nigerian that the so-called Nigerian 419ers are “semi-morons” when you compare them with English crooks? I told him that if you take the crooks from London alone- forget Manchester, Liverpool or Lancaster, Coventry, Leeds and Birmingham- and take them to Nigeria to operate, they will finish the whole of Nigeria in 5 days, come back to London, and the only way the “mugus” running Nigeria will know, after the London crooks have returned to England, is that the half-idiots running Nigeria will not have a Kobo left to spend! These semi-idiots, from the presidency to the Federal ministry of Finance to the Central bank of Nigeria don’t have any clue how to checkmate the London crooks, the way the British leadership elites checkmate the British crooks in their society. Watch the British leadership from David Cameron, the Prime minister, to Nick Clegg, the Deputy prime minister to Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and you will see very smart brains operating at the very top echelon of British bureaucracy. All of them, including the headship of most British quangos are all products of either Oxford or Cambridge University, or it will be Kings College, part of the University of London. No idiot is allowed to run even local Boroughs (Local government area), not to talk of ministers and head of government at the national level of statecraft.
Some average London crook(s), tried to play a fast one at me recently! They sent me a mail to my email inbox stating that my NatWest credit card was going to be cancelled if I do not do an update and make my January payment on account. Incidentally I have a NatWest bank account and own a NatWest Credit card, so the rogues were almost on target! They created a link to a fake three layer Websites- all scams- and targeted at me to release my NATWEST Card details to them and bingo, they would “clean-up” my accounts. Tell me if Nigerian 419ers could go that in ingenuity to scam an innocent “get rich quick buffoon?” Do Nigerian 419ers have any clue that you have to put in “serious efforts,” to be able to scam the very smart British person?
Sometime in November 2013, some idiotic Nigerian 419ers hijacked my email address system and wrote email in my name to everyone in my contact address list built over the past 12 years or so across the globe my contact-list. They were all Nigerians, and one of them is of Ndokwa background that lived here in London, with a few Ibo dumb accomplices in Nigeria. All they could conjure was: “Tony Ishiekwene is stranded with his family in Philippines, because they have robbers have stolen my credit card and mobile phone… bla bla bla…please send me $1,800, otherwise I will miss my night flight back to London, and I can’t pay my hotel bill… and more meaningless blabbing!” How those idiots still survive on that type of very dumb 419ing template, I do not know. Look those 419 plonkers, all my mates are clever, much smarter than the idiots you are. It will take something far more to scam my mates across the world, and that’s why you didn’t get a dime when you tried in November 2013. But be warned because the next time you try Met Police and Interpol will pick you up like the “little rats” that you are seeking to tarnish my hard-built reputation across the globe. Do not say I did not warn you!
And you wonder why the Adenugas, Dantatas and the Otedolas are making tons of money in a country occupied by mostly morons! In the country of the blind, one-eyed man is the king. The sages are always clever, and they got it spot on with that proverb. Yes, the Otedola’s are the one-eyed guys in a country occupied by 75% of “imbeciles.” Some will argue with me about being so insolent; but is it not true that from top-to-bottom, Nigerians have the largest concentration of fools in one geographical cosmos? Ok, how come your pastors are the richest in the world? Some of you pastors have private jets, some with 3 in one go, how are they able to own and run jets year-after-year, and build expensive universities, that the church goers and “tithe giving” morons cannot send their children to because they are priced beyond the rich of the church congregants?
Let’s move the argument a bit further: How come your president (Nigerian) has ten presidential jets, and he wants to acquire the 11th one as appropriated in this 2014 Budget, yet you have no functioning hospitals across towns and villages in Nigeria, and Nigerians allow such madness, “praying and fasting,” and playing “dumbo” before some semi-smart pastors every Sunday, who skin them with “tithes and offerings,” that the clever pastors “take straight to their private bank accounts the next Monday?” Look, in Malawi, Mrs Joyce Banda, the current president of that “blessed” country came to power in April 2012 and discovered it cost an average of $1.5million annually to maintain and run the single Presidential jet the former president, Bingu Wa-Mutharika acquired to show-off at African union meetings and similar places that African moronic leaders meet every now and then, to discuss bullshit! Joyce Banda was infuriated when told her about this exorbitant running cost of a jet and she ordered they should sell the only jet the country has immediately and they did, because she felt that money could provide cottage hospital in the villages of Malawi. Who knows whether one semi-idiot Nigerian pastor or “money-miss-road” rogue may have bought it off the Malawian government to “show-off” with it and probably parked it at MMA, Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport in Abuja incurring heavy parking costs in dollar terms. Very wasteful and corrupt country with too much free money to be acquired or stolen and no one asks questions in Nigeria. The lawyers and Accountants are even worst in terms of stupidity compared to their counterparts, even in third world African countries like Ghana and Sierra Leone; they do not understand Taxation- neither direct taxes on personal and company income nor the indirect taxes, like VAT and Excise taxes! The Otedolas and the Dangotes, and even the Indians and Chinese smart people resident in Nigeria make huge amount of money and hardly pay any taxes on these massive free earnings, because Nigerian Accountants and Tax authorities have no clue what corporation and income tax is about not to talk of the more complex indirect taxes, like VAT.
I think Fela Kuti got it right since the 1970s when he sang about Nigeria as: “ one big blind country.” Had Fela being alive today he would sing about “Too many mumu for one country when dem call Nigeria, yepari pa..ooOooo!”
Tony Ishiekwene
