Let me tell you people something I have repeatedly said on this app, Abacha is directly the reason we have many churches in Nigeria today.
This man ruled in terror for 5 years to the extent that Nigerians had no other option than to turn to God.
The Fulani Man Who Defeated His Own Party To Rule Enugu Again
Malam Umaru Altine was a Fulani man from Sokoto Province. He was not from Enugu but he made history there.
He came to Enugu as a cattle dealer and settled at Coal Camp where the coal miners lived. There he married an Igbo lady named Esther, and that made him even closer to the people.
He entered politics through the Zikist Movement where he served as Secretary General and later became Vice Chairman of the NCNC Youth Association in Enugu. He was a loyal member of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe's NCNC party.
Because he was loved by the ordinary people at Coal Camp, the NCNC nominated him to contest for Mayor. He won the election in 1952 and became the first elected Mayor of Enugu Municipal Council. He served from 1952 to 1956.
When his first term ended, some leaders in the NCNC decided they wanted an Igbo man as Mayor.
They asked Altine to step down and they brought out a new candidate named D.T. Inyang to replace him.
Altine refused to step down.
He resigned from the NCNC and contested as an Independent candidate. To the surprise of many, he defeated the NCNC candidate and won his second term.
He was re-elected as Mayor and served from 1956 to 1958.
He was known for wearing his babban riga and turban to office, sometimes a suit, and for going to church and football fields whenever his duty as Mayor required it. He grew up in the palace of Sultan Siddiq Abubakar of Sokoto who reigned for 50 years.
He is remembered today as proof that Nigeria once practiced politics without tribe.
Everything one does in life comes with a certain amount of risk and guts.
Taking low risks might limit your outcome you may not lose much, but you may not win much either. Taking high risks can bring bigger rewards, but you could also lose it all.
The real flex isn’t being fearless or taking the biggest risks. It’s knowing how much you can afford to risk, what you’re risking it for, and when the potential reward justifies the downside.
That ability to take calculated risks while protecting what you already have is one of the things that separates highly successful people from the rest.
If your daily diet is Peller and Cater Efe brainrot, you have no business holding a voter’s card. Your political thinking is too primitive for the responsibility of selecting a leader.
One thing you must know is that it’s too late to enjoy shows like the wire, the sopranos and breaking bad to their full potential, the ship has sailed the communities have already been built, go and watch beauty in black like your peers
The United Kingdom.
Nobody voted for its Industrial Revolution. It was forged by a centralized military machine that violently monopolized global trade.
Through undemocratic monopolies like the East India Company, the British Crown drained trillions in raw materials from foreign territories.
While terrorizing the world through the 18th and 19th centuries, back home, less than 5% of its own domestic population could vote.
Universal suffrage was only granted in 1928 — long after Britain locked in its status as the world’s wealthiest empire.
So it killed, looted, enslaved, stole land, got wealthy — then became "democratic."
The United States.
Marketed as the ultimate triumph of democratic capitalism, its foundational wealth was actually built on two violently undemocratic pillars: the bloody seizure of Indigenous lands and the enslaved labor of millions of Africans.
This grand, militarized takeover of human flesh generated the capital that built Wall Street. When slavery ended, they didn't embrace a free market. They used aggressive state protectionism and massive tariffs to force development from the top down.
In America, only wealthy white males were originally allowed to vote. Everyone else — poor whites, every woman, the Indigenous, and Black people — was excluded. Poor whites could vote by the mid-19th century, and women finally in 1920.
If they had waited just four more years, America would have put a man on the Moon before Black people could vote — but thankfully, by 1965, the protected right to vote arrived.
America spent nearly 180 years building its global economic dominance before it ever allowed all of its adult citizens to vote.
Western Europe.
From France to Belgium, the story is identical. The beautiful architecture, the 'sovereign' wealth funds, and the stable institutions of Western Europe were directly subsidized by the violent, centralized extraction of the Global South.
France, for instance, ran its colonies through brutal, absolute military dictatorship.
In places like Haiti, the entire population was legally designated as property to maximize sugar output.
Western Europe did not become wealthy because it was democratic. It became democratic because the immense wealth stolen from Africa, Asia, and the Americas allowed them to eventually build a stable middle class that could finally afford the sport of political debate.
Africa, do not be deceived — you absolutely cannot afford democracy.
Mo n bo na.