(The Nation, July 30, 2024)
By Wole Olujobi
Nigeria, again, is on the tenterhooks. After a cliffhanger poll that returned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the February 25, 2023 presidential election, the pre-June 12, 1993 presidential poll subterfuge and tactics that denied Nigerians the best electoral process and claimed the life of the winner, the late MKO Abiola, are being resurrected to give effect to the scheme of the Nigeria’s mafia that runs the nation’s political economy.
For these partisan taskmasters and their collaborators in the dark world of oil business, it is a matter of life and death in the business of holding the levers of power to enjoy the monopoly of interests.
Like the Al Capones, Pablo Escobars, Lucky Lucianos, Sammy Gravanos and Tony Accardos of the mafia world, all fused into one in Nigeria’s cartel, their brotherhood is well-knit in an almost demonic fraternity in a confederate of blackguards that thrive on the pains of the majority of Nigerians.
The method is holding the nation to ransom by crippling the economy, create conditions for unrest, use the negative and often the intended effects of their evil schemes to manipulate the civil society to an act of rage, create conditions for mass poverty among the productive segments of the society, fund the youth groups to become despondent and willing tools against their own fortunes, create a large pool of hell-raisers and let out these dogs of war to fight a battle they don’t stand a chance to benefit anything. That is the tactic of the mafia groups all over the world in their evil plots.
Organised crime is a highly centralised enterprise that seeks to infiltrate politics and extract public resources for private benefits.
In Italy notorious for cell crimes, for example, the mafia frequently threatens politicians to obtain government contracts that pay handsomely. Individual politicians or businessmen who threaten those business interests may find themselves in danger. Physical assaults, arson and threats are the mafia’s favoured tactics to drive their agenda. For intance, after the director of a Sicilian national park in 2016 in Italy strengthened anti-mafia checks on local firms applying to work in the park, he narrowly survived a night-time assassination attempt.
Mafia attacks on politicians are usually linked to the electoral cycle. Strategic political violence has a destructive effect on political life, as targeted political violence by the mafia distorts the electoral process, distracts the leadership thereby hurting service delivery and reducing the quality of the candidate pool while also compromising citizens, as can be seen in Mexico and Colombia, in particular in the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionariad de Colombia in 2002 among other notorious drug cartels who are often believed to be behind many assassinations that remain unresolved.
Unfortunately, as organised crime groups enrich themselves, they impoverish the people. Their tactics include using insiders to carry out their crimes and targeting people who are business competitors, just like the alleged involvement of stakeholders in the critical nerves of the nation’s economy, namely NNPC and Central Bank, among others, in the ongoing economic crisis allegedly fueled by certain interest groups.
Ordinarily, mafia has no interest in hurting ordinary people: they targeted their competitors and devise means to always have the upper hand. But again, ordinary people are parts of the tools used by mafia groups to achieve their plans.
In case of Nigeria, there are two competitors in the contest ring for power: the established authorities and the cabals that protect personal interest above state’s interest.
Unfortunately in most cases, the mafia often operate within the establishment or they have collaborators within the system. For the latter, like the ‘Ndrangheta’ mafia group in Italy widely considered the richest and most powerful mafia in the world, personal interest of members is far more valued than the collective interest of the public.
It is in this context that the current fuel supply brouhaha in Nigeria can be located in a contest between public interest and personal interest of the cartel.
The style, they say, is the man. For the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with the frightening records of sleaze and its offsprings in the Labour Party that thrive in mob tactics in driving their agenda, the manipulation of the pedestrian rabble into an act of rage against the opponent is the most clinical way of achieving predetermined ends.
Just like the mafia did ahead of the February 25, 2023 presidential poll, the target of the current mob tactics of the cartel is the resumption of subterfuge that played out ahead of the February 25, 2023 presidential poll to stop Tinubu from taking the nation’s presidential cake.
The tactics included SARS riots in Lagos with Tinubu’s assets, real or imagined, as objects of mob attacks, fake opinion polls predicting Tinubu’s loss, unfounded certificate forgery allegation and allegation that Tinubu planned to foist his family members on government’s establishments to hold the most strategic positions in government. In the SARS mob action in Lagos, government and selected private assets, including LAGBUS public transport vehicles and terminals, were set ablaze as if SARS operatives, who the mobsters were protesting against, were the owners those assets, all in a calculated assault on Lagos and Tinubu in particular.
For the mafia, those who stole their states’ assets to acquire private properties around the world or who held one of the biggest stakes in Panama Files saga and those who used Special Purpose Vehicles to steal the country blind through the Obasanjo’s fraudulent privatisation programme, to acquire public utilities, were better than a man who turned Lagos State to the third biggest economy in Africa.
Now the beat is changing to alter the dancesteps of the nation in a hurry for growth in a world wracked by universal economic meltdown that is stifling the most developed nation’s of the world, but which Nigerian cartels are painting as Nigeria’s sole local crisis.
After years of fuel subsidy chaos that saw a few Nigerians stealing billions of dollars that left majority of Nigerians in poverty, Tinubu’s solution to the theft has reawakened the mafia to bare their fangs, incinerate the nation and distract the President to fail in his development agenda and, ultimately, to see his untimely exit from the Aso Rock in order to install a contraption that will protect the interest of the mafia.
Nigeria runs a mono-economy that thrives on oil production. To hurt Tinubu, degrade his capability and capacity to deliver on campaign promises, thus paving the way for his failure and forced exit from the Aso Rock, they ensured that the nation’s refineries are incapacitated, to cripple the nation’s capacity in the business of oil production that is the live wire of the economy.
Alhaji Aliko Dangote built one of the biggest and most modern refineries in the world that has potential to end fuel misery among Nigerians. But Dangote himself has since become the target of the oil mafia mob. After Dangote Refinery survived an outbreak of fire recently, his diesel was maliciously declared the worst around the world, in order to discredit the billionaire businessman that they see as a threat to their interest, even as Dangote, in overt conspiracy, is being denied supply of crude for his refinery in a country that ranks among the biggest in crude production.
The mafia do not stop there: they invaded the international community to launch a rebellion and conspiracy that will deny Dangote to source crude among top producers around the world. For Dangote, misery over oil among Nigerians must stop, but for the mafia, suffering among Nigerians must continue in order to discredit Tinubu and thus incur Nigerians’ wrath to cause national chaos, forcing Nigerans to violently call for a regime change.
Protest is a universal concept in civil demand for good governance. But when the import of civil protest is couched in fatality like the one being planned by the cartel in Nigeria’s oil business in cahoots with the failed candidates in electoral contests, the intent is other than noble and has the trappings of national combustion, the end of which may be difficult to predict. Yet, there is no let up in the impish plot to cause national uproar that holds no promise for the health of the nation.
The mafiosi of the right in their diabolical intents have invaded all the nooks and crannies of the country, plotting violent demonstrations, asking Tinubu to vacate the office. For them, unlawful and forceful take over of government is a viable option to take power after they failed to secure Nigerians’ endorsements at polls.
Just like the practice among the mafia worldwide, they combine these criminal acts with political blackmail by organising mobs across the country to stage protests asking Tinubu to abdicate office.
Like in Italy, Mexico and Colombia, Nigerian mafiosi have since compromised ordinary unwary citizens to rebel against Tinubu and Dangote, declaring that while Tinubu has run aground the nation’s economy, Dangote produces substandard oil not fit for the nation’s industrial machines. They won’t acknowledge that what Nigeria is going through today is consequent upon the effects of their past criminal activities, which forced Nigeria to a consumption economy instead of production economy that fuels economic development and prosperity among citizens.
After the mafia threatened to sabotage the Dangote refinery that has so far engaged over 40,000 Nigerians, Dangote himself has since insinuated alleged attack on his life by the mafia after calling him a monopolist, forcing him to declare that he was ready to self off his refinery to NNPC; the suspect in the illicit affair with the Nigeria’s mafia that has become a pain in the necks of ordinary Nigerians.
Dangote has also resolved to stop his plan for steel production business, which has potential to hire thousands of young Nigerians in productive employment.
As hinted earlier that mafia attacks on politicians are usually linked to the electoral cycle, the current mob attacks planned by the mafia tagged “Days of rage” commencing from August 1, 2024, speaks volumes of the intendment of the planners in cahoots with the mafia sponsoring them ahead of the jostles for the 2027 presidential ballot. Just like they called for Tinubu’s head before the election, they still insist on harvesting his head in a platter.
As things stand today with the cabal and oil mafia raving and raging with their sledgehammer ready to nail the nation’s economic coffin over the personal interest of the few, Nigerians must wake up from their inertia to take their fates in their hands to resist the mafia’s man’s inhumanity to man and claim their destinies in a prosperous nation governed by a visionary leadership.
* Olujobi, a journalist and Commissioner in Ekiti State Local Government Service Commission, writes from Ado-Ekiti