This SSS sef!

This SSS sef!

Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

Friday, September 24, 2004

“We are just interested in the peace and unity of Nigeria and if we see anything that threatens such, we must nip it in the bud."

– Unnamed SSS officer to ThisDay

The people who run Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) are funny characters.

How could they say on Sunday, September 19, 2004 that they want to nip in the bud the Biafran movement? Where were they in 1945 when the first killing of Easterners took place in Jos?

Ok, lets say their alarm clock did not ring all through the 40s and the 50s when the killing of Easterners began in the North. Did they really need an alarm clock to wake up in 1966 during the pogroms? Even the deaf were not told when war broke out in 1967.

Assuming that the SSS people were not born then, obviously they were up and running in the 80s and 90s. Did they not see it happen in Kano in 1980, in Maiduguri in 1982, in Yola in 1984, in Gombe in 1985, in Kaduna and Kafanchan in 1986, in Bauchi, Kastina and Kano in 1991? In 1992, it happened in Zango Kataf, in Funtua in 1993, in Kano in 1994, and in Kano in 2000. Lets not mention the beheading of Gideon Kaluka and many other individual savage murders. For sure, they saw the killings that followed the planned Miss World competition in 2002. What were they thinking when their agents were burying slaughtered Southerners in mass graves across the North? Were they thinking that the half a century old massacre would continue forever without any form of response by those who are prime victims of murder for silly excuses as bizarre as solar and lunar eclipse?

Where were the SSS when PDP rigged the 2003 elections in the Eastern part of Nigeria and refused to let the people of Eastern Nigeria have their mandate? Let us assume that the SSS people were busy drinking pepper-soup and eating goat head that they missed the action. Didn’t they hear Chris Uba, the friend and advocate of their commander in chief, announce to the world that he bribed INEC and had them announce a fake result? Didn’t the SSS hear Uba confess that APGA won 95% of the votes cast in Anambra State gubernatorial election? If they were asleep when he said so, let them ask and someone will help provide them with a taped recording of the confession.

Or were the SSS people thinking that “these people” who get massacred every now and then, and whose mandates get stolen as it pleases the boss would not one day be pushed to the wall? Or are the funny characters in the SSS totally ignorant of history? Do we have to remind them that “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth…?

This SSS sef!

I know that Ibrahim Babangida is a god to the SSS. I know that Buhari is likewise a god to the priests of SSS. I also know that Zamfara State governor is a newly minted god. What I did not know is that the SSS that cares so much about the national security of Nigeria do not care about what happens in the emerging country up North. How could it not matter to the SSS that ordinary Nigerians up in Zamfara and several parts of Sharia North are being crushed and squeezed out in a significant part of the country SSS loves so much and is doing everything within its power to protect and preserve?

Contrary to what many think, the SSS understands that we are in a democracy. The SSS knows that it means everyone has the right to say any crazy thing they want. The SSS embraces it. You do not hear of the SSS getting involved in barbaric acts of sealing off media houses that write crazy things. What the SSS does not like is people saying anything that resembles the truth to their god. It irritates the SSS. And you do not want to irritate the SSS for when you do, the service is not responsible for the things it does in return.

Forget about the unsolved political assassinations or the boss’s hotline that was breached by a man in prison! Those are not within the job specifications of the SSS. It is the responsibilities of NPF. Sophisticated outfits like the SSS would not reduce themselves to such dirty tasks. The SSS knows what is really threatening the unity and peace of Nigeria. And when SSS decides to go after those things, it does so at the right time, with the right means and at the right target.

Many who do not understand the clever style of the SSS may wonder why Odumegwu-Ojukwu and why now. They may say, ah, this Odumegwu-Ojukwu is an old man whose time is almost up. Why give him a chance to make his last hurrah? Why place him on the center stage again? Why let him say things that will in years to come define our time?

But the SSS is smarter than us all. What the SSS is not telling you is that it took the sophisticated agency just two years and eleven months to discover that Odumegwu-Ojukwu really opened a Biafran House in DC. The top-secret telegram arrived at Abuja headquarters of the SSS the same day the Igbo, under the auspices of MASSOB, observed what Obasanjo called a “new yam festival.” The SSS is closely monitoring all the malls of the world where this Biafran House franchise has been established. Being an agency that does not blow its own trumpet, the SSS is taking its marvelous accomplishment in strides.

But most importantly, the SSS recently uncovered a plot by some unscrupulous elements in our midst to rename Milliken Hill, in Enugu, Odumegwu-Ojukwu Hill. The SSS does not like the plan. In fact, what the SSS disliked most was the inscription some engravers are planning to affix on the hill.

The inscription says: At every critical point in Nigeria’s history, this man has emerged at the right time to redefine his era. Though it may take years for many to catch up with his definition, everyone eventual will. Some will not acknowledge it because they do not like his style but, most often, they are pleasantly surprised at the accuracy of his observations.

The SSS would have blinked and let it go without a response if it had not seen school children underneath Milliken Hill singing this song:

“The Federation of Nigeria is today as corrupt, as unprogressive and as oppressive and irreformable as the Ottoman Empire was in Eastern Europe over a century ago. And in contrast, the Nigerian Federation in the form it was constituted by the British cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered an African necessity. Yet we are being forced to sacrifice our very existence as a people to the integrity of that ramshackle creation that has no justification either in history or in the freely expressed wishes of the people.”

That one really tore their skin.