Area boys in Politics

A million $ question,indeed how did it get so bad.... Adeibu,Asari,Gani Adams,and dare i say even Ken Saro-Wiwa,How did it get so bad?????

it very unfortunate that any informed or sane reader would drag the name of ken saro wiwa in a discourse like this.

That has always being the million dollar question.I think our politicians can answer them very well:until the use of thugs for political supremacy are checked in this country,until government takes sincere charge of all aspect of its duty to the society,and not allow anyhow union to snatch the job of the gov.untill our politicians stop living for themselves alone and start thinking about the next generation.Untill we learn how to question the many breakthroughs of our leaders.we will be the most hit by their actions.Bob Izua is just one of them.so sad.

@ Enigma:I agree that your list is misleading, if not absurd. You start with an illterate tyrant cum politican godfather, then jumped to an educated freedom fighter, who happens to be an oil thief. There is a leader of the cult arm of a group with nice intentions, who, I dare say, has played a powerful role in breeding people's mistrust in it, making it impotent. Lastly, a hero, who was martyred at the altar of his refusal to watch his people raped with impunity. I really think you should redo your list, mate.

You can't beat Edo state in 'agbero' motor-park politics. Killing off political rivals like chickens does not mean anything to them. 2 visits to that area was enough. One of the most uncivilized/illiterate groups of people in Nigeria I must say, without the slightest hope of salvation. That Benin-city of a zoo is something else. Specialists in fighting in bus stops stark naked. Sanusi Lamido obviously never encountered these ones. . . .these are the real "bolekaja" people.

@ Gbenga and ANON :My list is perfect,thank you very much.

Chxta, nice one using the man Bob Izua as a metaphor for the rise of the area boy in Nigerian politics. @Simbili...I'll advise you to measure your utterances and not resort to making blanket unfounded condemnation of people. Read the article for what it is and not bring your childish immature rants you spew on the NVS site over here, ok?

I think Edo State simply is a microcosm of an emerging trend in Nigerian politics and society....a trend that has killed productive entreprises in nations states that pretended that the trend was not important enough to devote quality time to. We have unwittingly adopted what for want of a better term, I will refer to as the Jamaican model of politics that catapulted Prime Ministers Manley and Seagal repeatedly to power in Jamaica in the last quarter of the 20th century. In this model, educated politicians make flowery speeches to a clapping world and appear on the front pages of newspapers smiling like statesmen. Then when elections approach, they employ the services of thugs, give them guns and send them out to shake down voters and rig elections. In Jamaica, the place from where these thugs were hired was the slum areas of Kingston known as Trenchtown...a slum worse than New York's Hells Kitchen...and even worse than our own Ajegunle and Ijora Badiya.Trenchdown sits right in Jamaica's capital city called Kingston. Bob Marley lived in Trenchtown, sang about it, spent his entire life fighting for its improvement and yet was felled by bullets from the guns of the goons that the politicians armed. Ditto for Peter Mackintosh. When the politician Manley and his people left power, these gunslinging goons turned their weapons against society and exacted maximum capital from them via drugs, robbery and civil violence, ensuring, in the process, the collapse of Jamaica's once-propsperous tourism industry. Today, everybody in Jamaica wants to leave its shores...to any other country but Jamaica, despite their love for the country, its rhum, its patois and slang and its reggae music. Nigeria seems to be heading in Jamaica's direction. Our flowery-mouthed politicians say the right things to the public and then visit occultists at night for spiritual power and thugs even during the day for vote rigging. They arm the thugs with advanced guns and use them to rig votes and get them into power. They never ask these goons to turn in their guns. In the Niger Delta area, these thungs and goons are drawn from NURTW-run motorparks for land areas and from villages in the creeks for riverine areas. Bob Izua, Alhaji Tokyo, Adedibu etc are only outward proofs of an inward rot created by those in power. Once elections are over and the politicians sit in government houses, these goons turn their guns firstly on themselves to determine who is king, then on civil society via armed robbery and kidnappings and lastly on organized business. Because this problem is national in scope, Bob Izua's type can be found in every state and in every local government area. These thugs know about most robberies occuring in every state and on every national and local highway. The case of the Niger Delta has simply gotten complicated because the thugs, having seen how cowardly the civil society gets when faced with guns, and having tasted big and easy money from politicians, decided to go for the broke by hijacking an otherwise noble quest for economic freedom put forth by indigenes of the the area, owning it and making private wealth from it...like Manley's thugs did in Jamaica's Trenchtown. Ateke Tom, Tombolo and many others are, I am sure, well known to politicians in Abuja and in the Niger Delta Area. And these politicians know what to do to arrest this decline...beyond the general amnesty currently being granted to them. I say "arrest the decline" because I believe it will take a generation to fully terminate this cankerworm. Adegoke Adelabu trained Adedibu. Adedibu trained Tokyo. Tokyo obviously has a whole generation of young men waiting in the wings to fill any vacuum being created....just like Bob Izua has his followers who are currently lying low waiting for the right time to strike out on their own. Bob Izua is a product of a motor park culture whose roots lie in the weakness of the public school system and the government industrilization and economic development program which was rubbished more than a generation ago under army rule. Our leaders should not be afraid to rethink our entire development paradigm in order to solve things. Now is the time. Like Rober Kennedy once said "If not now, when; if not us who; if not here where?" If we rely on just amnesty without any funadamental rethink of our entire development template, we might go the way of Jamaica....and risk losing our entire petroleum industry and one of few resources whose returns have helped keep Nigeria one.

Simbili, You don't write about a people or a state in a very myopic way there is no issue you reflected intelligently, besides they do happen in most if not all states or countries.

Good piece as usual. Unfortunately this is what politics in Nigeria has become. Editor - I thought you were moderating readers' responses. Some of them seem longer than the main article. Over sabi is still a major problem for us Nigerians.

"Why are we even interested in what happens to someone who is nothing more than a motor park boy?" Why not? Because someone is a motor park boy does not make him less human than anyone of us. An individual was kidnapped and you don't see any reason why anyone should be concerned and you want true democracy in Nigeria? Cheta, your mentality of neglecting some members of the society because of their "social status" is one of the real problems we have in Nigeria. That is exactly how some things got so bad.

I believe this is not only Edo thing but it is very prevalent in Major Nigerian cities! Nigerian Polity gets this bad because we allow incompetent people to get to sensitive positions in the society and they are ready to do anything to keep themselves in such posts! They can kill,maim,kidnapp,take oath,rape,do rituals etc to keep themselves in positions as they never thought of getting to such higher pedestal in life!

@ orjioke, that was really an intriguing insight to the state of things in the country right now, your comparisons are on point. Thugs in politics, what a sight.