This week, I have observed with deep concern two notable media appearances: one by my brother, Mr. Peter Obi, and the other by the family of Malam Nasir El-Rufai.
In his interview with Mr. Chude Jideonwo, Mr. Obi voiced serious worries about his personal safety and the adverse impact his role as an opposition leader has had on his businesses. Even more troubling was the Federal Government’s response, which resorted to personal insults and derogatory language instead of the restraint and maturity expected of a democratic administration.
Let me state clearly: like every Nigerian, our presidential candidate and all of us deserve the full protection of the state, not ridicule for raising legitimate concerns.
Democratic leadership requires fairness, justice, and restraint.
A government entrusted with protecting citizens should not dismiss or mock credible calls for help from any individual, including Mr. Peter Obi.
On the other hand, it was distressing to watch the wives of Malam Nasir El-Rufai publicly express the family’s anguish over his prolonged detention.
Regardless of political affiliation, Malam El-Rufai, like every Nigerian, is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by a competent court. The continued delay in granting him bail through what many perceive as stringent and unreasonable conditions is deeply concerning. As an unconvicted citizen, he deserves a fair and expeditious trial, while his health and that of his family are adequately safeguarded.
I therefore join well-meaning Nigerians in urging the Federal Government to handle these matters with transparency, accountability, and justice. These issues must not be weaponised to settle political scores.
For our democracy to truly thrive, every citizen; young or old, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or political persuasion must receive equal and equitable treatment under the law from the government that exists to protect us all. - RMK
That is precisely why a country going through a socioeconomic transition needs stiff, firm, authoritarian, nationalist bastards as its leadership - not "democratically elected" people who are subject to votes from these miserable idiots who go digging for gold on an expressway.
Lee Kuan Yew told us decades ago that when his government built high rise apartments to take poor Singaporeans out of bamboo shacks, they deliberately began peeing in the elevators and taking countermeasures against the government's attempts to stop them from messing up their own infrastructure. They had to humiliate and punish people brutally before they started acting in ways that were beneficial to their own lives.
If you want to uplift poor, colonised people, you will have to do it AGAINST THEIR WILL. Colonised people are not sane and a revolutionary must not pretend that he is up against sane, rational people who want a better life. A colonised man will steal expensive paint and empty it out into a river so that he can sell the plastic buckets and use the peanuts to play BetPesa. He will dig up his country's first high speed motorway that is going to add hundreds of millions of dollars to everyone's collective pocket, so that he can find gold nuggets and sell them for $650. He will vandalise railway lines that are meant to improve his own life so that he can sell the metal to a scrap dealer and use it to buy some pussy that night.
Colonised people are among the biggest dangers to themselves and the countries they inhabit, and any leader wishing to improve his country's material conditions despite the presence of millions of colonised people who are out of their natural minds, must be prepared to go the Stalin, Mao and Lee Kuan Yew way. Re-education camps, public flogging and forced labour so offenders can repay their debt to society.
China was once burdened with millions of useless idiots like this, but deliberate state policy removed them from the census and transformed China into the world's most successful civilisation. Hard decisions must be made in pursuit of development.
The Communist Party of China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Meanwhile, in capitalist USA, billionaires are becoming trillionaires while 70% of Americans struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and groceries.
This is like a massive, stinging slap in the face of every self-righteous proponent of the free-market economy who works tirelessly to brainwash the entire planet into believing that limited government intervention is inherently good, that state regulation is evil, and that prices will always magically find their true, natural value.
If the state does not decisively intervene to stop corrupt oligarchs, private equity firms, and global investment giants from buying up every single affordable residential home, real estate prices will never find a value that respects basic human dignity, local communities, or the working class. Instead, they will only ever find a highly inflated, artificial value that strictly protects the greedy corporate interests, profit margins, and portfolios of multi-billion-dollar venture capitalists.
Socialism works and will always work. Even the most ruthless capitalists on Wall Street still desperately lobby for massive government tax cuts, multi-billion-dollar state bailouts, favorable regulatory loopholes, protectionist trade tariffs, and direct central bank interventions, which is basically nothing but a highly customized, tax-funded communist manifesto designed exclusively for the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected.
Choose your allies wisely.
Some give you physical infrastructure, mass transit technology, and the possibility of a better life for your children in their own country.
Others give you Powerpoint NGOs, social media skit contests and 96% visa refusal.
Whoever the shoe fits...