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ORGANIZED
CRIME, ORGANIZED RELIGION AND POLITICS
by
Emmanuel Onwubiko
Generally, it is
agreed that societal values like respect for elders, honesty, hard work and respect for the sacredness of life are all but fast
disappearing in Nigeria of the twenty first century. This negative
tendency is attributable to the inability and failure of the adult
generation/population of Nigeria to internalize, and
externalize these cultural, traditional and societal virtues/values
to become sacrosanct in the daily life of all and sundry. These
societal ills are at the private, individual or what I have chosen
to call micro level. At the institutional, Governmental or what I
have chosen to call Macro level, the collapse of the relevant
institutions charged with the constitutional duties of promoting,
protecting and enforcing the principle of Rule of law has
progressively made Nigeria to become a nation whereby regime of
impunity, lawlessness, avarice, greed, political corruption and
economic crimes have become increasingly acceptable and/or
permissible.
Weighed down by these
torrents of existential crises characterized by general state of
insecurity and near-anarchy, some rational minds have raised
questions on why the situation has so degenerated even when the
country habors some of the World's largest concentration
of religiously -inclined people but these same analysts have
neglected the notorious fact that some of these problems afflicting
the modern day Nigeria could be located appropriately within the
framework of organized religion and this organized
Religion has conveniently provided the perfect cover for
members of the organized crime syndicates who have largely invaded
the political terrain in Nigeria and are therefore the persons
holding very important offices. The former President who also
retired as a full time military infantry General, Olusegun Obasanjo
recently informed Nigerians that the National Assembly is populated
by "Armed Robbers and Fraudstars". Armed robbers and
practitioners of advanced fees fraud [419] are members of organized
crime gangs. Professor Pat Utomi of the Lagos Business school also
was reported in the media to have confirmed that a suspect still
undergoing police investigation for allegedly duping him of some
princely sum is now a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
For the fact that these
persons who are members of the organized crime syndicates have
found disingenuous and creative ways of masking
[masquerading] themselves as patrons and/or members of these
organized Religious groupings in Nigeria, the largest population of
the Nigerian people who are also professed members of one organized
religion or the other can not easily discern the fundamental
cause of the crises of underdevelopment, poverty, social crime and
general state of insecurity that have enveloped the entire country
currently. Nigeria's problems can only be solved when the civil
populace resist the invasion of the political environment by
members of the organized crime gangs who use organized religions to
cover their criminal tracks and confuse the docile public.
Take for instance in
Northern Nigeria shortly after the 2011 General election, sporadic
riots spread all over the North resulting in the killings of
scores of people made up mostly of people from the Southern parts
of the country and for more than a year, the Federal law
enforcement agencies and its counterparts in the states ministries
of justice in active conspiracy and collaboration with some persons
in the Nigerian Police Force have spectacularly failed to arrest,
prosecute or punish any of the culprits most of whom were
caught in the media cameras of the international and local
journalists that covered the unfortunate violence.
The grand cover up is a
regular pattern whereby persons in high offices at the Federal and
state levels use their influential positions to shield culprits
indicted for mass murder from eventual prosecution and sanction in
accordance with the due process of the law and even when the police
and legal authorities decide to arraign the suspected mass
murderers, they often walk away free because the investigative and
prosecutorial processes would be so compromised that the judiciary
would have no choice but to set all the accused persons free of
those heinous crime against humanity. Such is the level of
conspiracy and compromise so much so that impunity is
increasingly becoming the order of the day and this compromised
situation is the tonic needed by persons who have armed themselves
with sophisticated weapons of mass destruction including bombs and
other improvised explosive devices [IEDS] in Northern Nigeria
resulting in the killing of thousands of innocent people who are
usually caught up while worshipping in accordance with their
religious convictions. Those armed splinter groups who go from
Church to Church to detonate bombs or to ram explosive ladden cars
into packed Churches in the North have appeared
on International and local media to own up saying they
are championing the cause of Islam and that they are indeed on
a mission to establish Sharia Islamic law across Northern
Nigeria. The moderates among Moslems like the Sultan of Sokoto have
so far denounced the killings of Christian worshippers. Such
is the extent of the encroachment of organized crimes into the
nation's political space hiding under the platforms of
organized Religions. In Southern Kaduna state, some persons claimed
to have armed themselves with the mission to protect Northern Christians
from the incessant attacks of the armed Islamic Religious
insurgents. Because the political environment are populated in
Nigeria by persons drawn largely from the organized crime World who
even rigged the electoral process to capture political offices,
these so-called political elite benefit essentially from the
ongoing violence and are watching as innocent unarmed citizens are
wasted by different armed groups and they can only pretend to be
using the armed forces to fight these terror-related crime gangs
who are engaged in the orgies of senseless mass killings.
The unfortunate scenario
in all of these crises of insecurity and collapse of Rule of law
facing Nigeria is that not too many persons are prepared to
accept that the root of these problems spring up invariably
from the members of the organized crime syndicates who have
infiltrated the Political institutions in Nigeria and are hiding
under the support of leaders and members of organized religions to
unleash these circumstances that give rise to unprecedented
insecurity, lack of enforcement of rule of law, impunity, and
bloody violence.
Organized Crime or
criminal organizations, according to Wikipedia, the online
encyclopedia, are transnational, national and local groupings of
highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purposes of
engaging in illegal activities, most commonly for monetary profit.
The United States Organized Crimes Control Act [1970] defines
organized crimes as "the unlawful activities of a highly
organized, disciplined associates".
Flowing from the above
definitions of organized crime syndicates, observers may note that
since 1999 when the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] won elections to
occupy most Federal and state political positions like the
Presidency and the offices of Governors and Ministers, Nigerians
have largely not benefited from any ideological implementation of
policies that are progressive and developmental in orientations
even with the huge externally generated revenues from the export of
Nigeria's rich mineral resources like Crude oil and liquefied
natural Gas. What Nigerians have essentially witnessed is the
uncovering of one monumental corruption or the other involving most
of these high profile political office holders produced by the
different political parties including the Peoples Democratic Party,
All Nigerian Peoples Party among a few others. These political
parties registered under the constitutional provision to seek the
popular mandate of the electorate most times fail to understudy the
criminal records of the candidates they present during elections
and the so-called ruling party at the federal level uses the
control it has of the national electoral commission to manipulate
the electoral process to put in these misfits some of whom get into
political offices and do nothing else but to engage in brazen
looting of the resources belonging to their people. To cover up
their tracks, these political office holders will in the word
of the legendary Musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti will befriend religious,
media, Labour unions, civil society and traditional leaders
through a carefully coordinated regime of bribe distribution
to these key players to buy them over even as
these politicians would divert significant amount of public fund
to erect places of religious worship to show to their largely
docile civil populace that these political leaders are with
them in the celebration of their religious beliefs. In Nigeria, the
Karl Marx explanation of religion as the 'opium of the people'
holds sway and is for real.
Readers can now decipher
that Nigeria's problems are located around the negative
manipulation of organized religions by people mostly with doubtful
backgrounds and indeed most of these political jobbers belong
to one organized crime gang or the other and once they begin to
spend stolen funds in building places of worship in their
respective states, the people would automatically be carried away
forgetting their existential problems of poverty, insecurity and
unemployment even when some of these bad politicians fill up their
pockets with public funds to the detriment of real development of
those states.
In a news report of June
17th 2012, the Niger State Government was quoted to have voted
a princely sum of N2.4 Billion to be spent before the end of the
year to build two places of worship for Christians and Moslems in
the state capital and that these places of worship are aimed at
promoting peace in the state. I ask, how can the building of places
of worship for only two organized religious groupings promote
peace in a federating unit that harbors persons who have
chosen to remain Atheists, and/or worshippers of the African
Traditional Religion that are largely not organized? Again, why
will a state Government that follows the constitution of Nigeria so
flagrantly breach section 10 of the constitution by elevating
certain religions as state religions? This religious bigotry is at
the root of the sectarian violence in the Northern States and these
state Governors will never learn to obey the tenets and letters of
the constitution. The laughable thing about Niger State is
that there are places like Madala, Suleja and other rural
communities whereby rural poverty has become serious and the basic
infrastructure like electricity, educational facilities and health
facilities are all but absent in these areas and the people are
left at the mercy of untimely death and crass ignorance. Does the
Niger State Government not know that the greatest threat to peace
in the society is the lack of social justice symbolized by the
total absence of these basic facilities that ought to promote the
enjoyment of the provisions of the fundamental human rights as
enshrined in chapter four?
At the national level,
on the same June 17th 2012, the local media were replete with
stories that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party has worked out a
blueprint for becoming a commercial venture. The current leadership
of the political party that control the Federal
Government stated that it would soon metamorphose into a blue chip
company and that it would go into obtaining telecommunications and
crude oil licences through 'friendly entrepreneurs' and that
when they begin these business ventures, the profits would be used
to cater for the problems of the political party and the members.
Apart from the legal questions that may trail this apparently
illegal move by the Peoples Democratic Party, there is also the
question of the propriety of a political party in power at the
national level whose members are appointed into the banking and other
financial regulatory agencies and even the law enforcement agencies
such as the governing boards of the Independent Corrupt Practices
and other Related Offences Commission and the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, go into business venture and expect
Nigerians to believe that when they breach or violate the laws
guiding such enterprises that their members who control these
regulatory agencies will be impartial and independent in the
discharge of their regulatory and enforcement duties? This is like
a man becoming both the accused and the judge in a case with his
enemy. If the Political party in power is allowed to change into a
business concern, what happens to the constitutional provisions
that mandates the Independent National Electoral Commission to
monitor their incomes when the leaders now championing the
proposed commercial ventures for the political party have said
that they will use anonymous business executives to run these
enterprises substantially? This is like truly transforming the
Peoples Democratic Party into an organized crime syndicate similar
to the Italian mafia.
Nigerians should speak
out in condemnation of this move because this is surely the first
step towards making Nigeria a one-party state because the
politicians who now have the power to give crude oil licences and
the telecommunication licences will simply award the juiciest operational
platforms to the Peoples Democratic Party and other political
parties will simply fizzle out and the people of Nigeria will
become slaves in perpetuity.
18/6/2012
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