Buy Valium Diazepam Uk

The saddest song to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk have come out of Africa in recent times was actually composed as a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk song of celebration, written to mark the ascendancy of an African-American to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the presidency of the United States of America. It was a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk musical tribute by a Kenyan, and the lyrics say simply: it Buy Valium Diazepam Uk is easier for a Luo to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk be President of the United States than to become the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk President of Uganda.

The Luo are, of course, one of Kenya’s minority nationalities. Obama’s triumph took place, it Buy Valium Diazepam Uk will be recalled, after one of the most devastating riots ever witnessed in Kenya. It lasted weeks, left entire townships wiped off the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk face of Nairobi and environs, claimed hundreds of lives, many of them through singularly bestial forms of butchery. The panga reigned supreme. Those days were reminiscent – minus the scale – of the Rwandan massacres. Among the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk walking survivors are men who are traumatized for life, having been Buy Valium Diazepam Uk subjected to forced sexual mutilation. The cause? Denial of a people’s right to choose their own leader through the ballot box – that endemic curse of the modern African state. Kenya nonetheless made a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk claim on Obama as the logical spot for his first presidential touch-down on Black African soil. It should have been an Buy Valium Diazepam Uk occasion to be celebrated in festive accents as the return of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk native son. If sentiment indeed weighed more on the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk scale of entitlements than humanity itself, the Kenyan claim would be Buy Valium Diazepam Uk universally unassailable.

The other, and indeed more presumptuous claimant to Barrack Obama’s recognition on his first presidential visit to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the continent is of course, mine, Nigeria. The Nigerian nation has Buy Valium Diazepam Uk not witnessed an uprising on allied scale to Kenya’s in the last few decades, not since in the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk mid-1960s when a similar, but far less wholesale, indiscriminate campaign of arson and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk killings took place in a region that an incoming Head of State came to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk designate ‘the Wild, Wild West’. There was also the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk more recent spate of butchery in a northern state or Buy Valium Diazepam Uk two, but neither came close to matching the sheer brutality of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Kenyan scenario.

Nigeria cannot be Buy Valium Diazepam Uk ranked, needless to say, any higher on the democratic scale than Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Kenya, even though electoral robbery did not result in such mayhem, any more than Buy Valium Diazepam Uk it has led to a protracted Civil War that devastated the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Ivory Coast in recent times. Nonetheless it is important to remind ourselves that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the Biafran war of Secession that began in 1966 did not lack for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk flammable tributaries from accumulated electoral injustices. Memories of that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk war, and the fear of an even more nation destabilizing repeat have Buy Valium Diazepam Uk contributed to the seeming accomodativeness of the Nigerian people towards a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk now deeply entrenched project of national disenfranchisement. Only the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk complacent however dare eliminate possibilities of an eventual explosion from the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk suppressed rage that stems from civic dispossession, and the air of impunity that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk surrounds the incorrigible perpetrators. Indeed, this inevitability is seen by many – both insiders and outside observers – as only a matter of time. Since the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk debilitation of civil society through decades of military rule, Nigerians freely use the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk expression ‘internal colonialism’ as the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk readiest expression of the continuing suppression of popular will, an orchestrated democratic denial that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk operates in relay, and is sustained by a select hegemony resolved to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk remain in perpetual control of the nation. Offering nothing in return, this Buy Valium Diazepam Uk unproductive cabal has become increasingly arrogant and contemptuous in its dismissal of even a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk pragmatic semblance of a gesture towards fair dealing that sometimes salves the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk pride and dignity of a people.

This, then, is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the background from which one listens to, or reads of, plaints of resentment and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk indignation from government cheer-leaders at Obama’s symbolic boycott of the ‘Giant of Africa’. They are Buy Valium Diazepam Uk lost to the irony of laying claim to recognition by a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk product of electoral equity, an African-American who came to power in a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk once openly racist nation through the ballot box. Such complainants are Buy Valium Diazepam Uk not stupid however, they are merely actors in a script of diabolical cynicism. How else it Buy Valium Diazepam Uk is possible for such politicians to conceive that a leader like Barack Obama, who Buy Valium Diazepam Uk has ascended to power through a respect for the manifested will of a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk people, would actually lend his presence to dignify any state that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk demonstrably rejects, indeed actively ridicules, the very means that brought him, Barrack Obama, to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk power? Blood, they say, is thicker than water. Obama’s gesture is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk intended to inform nations like Kenya and Nigeria that neither blood nor oil courses thicker than Buy Valium Diazepam Uk equity.

How sad it makes one – no, not the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk studied excision by Obama of those two nations from his itinerary – but the lack of objective self-assessment within the rulership circles of such ‘aggrieved’ nations! It evokes pity for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the continent as a whole, that such political leadership exists today which, sooner than Buy Valium Diazepam Uk retire into their gilded holes to reflect, have actually gone to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk battle on behalf over some mystic entitlement, since such is not sustained by any credentials in democratic and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk responsible governance. Of the two, the case of our own nation, Nigeria, is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk obviously the more pathetic.

Primary among the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk qualities that earned Barrack Obama the prized crown of the American presidency was the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk public recognition of his intelligent even-handedness, the recognition of a thinking, knowledgeable being, analytic by training and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk temperament. Anyone who has read his memoirs – Dreams from my Father – or Buy Valium Diazepam Uk has somehow come into knowledge of his trajectory through childhood, his intellectual and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk political formation, all brought in evidence throughout a grueling political campaign, would understand immediately that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Obama would sooner spend Thanksgiving Day with the genocidal government of Omar Bashir, or Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the throwback mullahs of Iran, than choose either Uganda or Nigeria for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk a first visit that not only pursues political and economic goals, but is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk profoundly symbolic.

The very astuteness of Barrack Obama, one that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk dictated the strategy of a political campaign that catapulted him to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk victory from the underdog position of a rank outsider, should have Buy Valium Diazepam Uk informed the ‘patriotic’ cheerleaders of African misgovernance that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk they can expect no preferential consideration from the 44th president of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk American nation. This, just to refresh memories, was a candidate who Buy Valium Diazepam Uk ensured from the beginning that he would break with corporate patronage and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk thus, indebtedness, and rely largely on the mass contribution of cents and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk pennies to ensure a mandate of maximum independence. By contrast, behold the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk permanent indentureship of the Nigerian power base, not merely to the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk moneyed oligarchy, but to the most corrupt, indeed criminal elements within that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk disreputable oligarchy. Nigeria is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk a nation that repeatedly blows its chances to stand tall, to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk present to the world a massively endowed colossus, bestriding the continent with the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk over-abundant productive genius of its people and the generosity of nature resources.

What, instead, has been the actuality? A plague of incontinent rulers in relay, some in military uniform, others in civilian clothing, but all clones of one another, united in a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk commitment to unabashed profligacy, mutually assisted corruption and, to add insult to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk injury, an obsessive hankering for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk self-perpetuation, necessitating the cultivation of outright disdain for the elementary right of their citizens to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk a voice in leadership choice. Is this Buy Valium Diazepam Uk truly a nation that deserves the recognition, much less a gesture of respect, from Buy Valium Diazepam Uk any democratically elected leadership of the world, and one especially of such unprecedented political significance for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the African continent itself?

A decade ago, needless to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk say, Ghana would also have been a non-contender. But the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk continent has witnessed, and remains envious of, the transformation that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk has taken place in Ghana, an internal process of self-recovery that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk nearly matches that of the United States in her transition from Buy Valium Diazepam Uk George Bush to Barrack Obama. Among the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk attributes of intelligence is the ability to create, or recognize the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk opportunity for self-renewal. Nigerians, at home or Buy Valium Diazepam Uk residing in the United States during the past decade, have Buy Valium Diazepam Uk not been slow to observe that the eight previous years in United States governance were uncannily paralleled within Nigeria – eight years of waste, deception, divisiveness and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk corruption, of advancing bankruptcy, eight years of arrogant subversion of democratic norms….all spearheaded by a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk man from whom the nation, the continent and the world expected so much, eight years that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk sent the nation spiraling into a reverse momentum that has earned it Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the humiliating designation of a ‘failed state’. Should an Buy Valium Diazepam Uk incoming product of the repudiation of such a shared past compromise his mandate by a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk significant visit to the other half, while that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk half remains fixated and unrepentant in its perpetuation of that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk disreputable past?

Of course if it Buy Valium Diazepam Uk were possible for Barrack Obama to visit Nigerians – the people that is – to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk express his condolences for such an unmerited state of affairs, parley with non-governmental organizations, exchange views with political alternatives, interact with the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk labour unions, hold talks with the insurgents of the oil-producing Delta region and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk offer direct succour to the neglected people of a benighted nation, I have Buy Valium Diazepam Uk no doubt whatsoever that Nigeria would indeed be his first choice. However, such a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk precedent being impossible – at least in these times – the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk only programme that remained would have been, at best, a tokenist interaction with the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk other Nigeria, duly vetted. The rest would be to wine and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk dine, sign some effete agreements and exchange presents with the current symbol of national decay and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk leadership alienation, a nation whose claim to the status of a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk giant is upheld only by the gigantesque dimensions of its retrogression since independence, its governance ineptness and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the colossal scale of its corruption. Obama knows that every other hand he would shake at a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk state reception is steeped in sheer putrefaction from the sump of robbery, perhaps every third elbow deep in the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk blood of perceived political threats – across all levels of contestation.

Obama’s pronouncements indicate quite clearly that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk he would be the first to to admit that his own nation is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk past master of corruption both in its conduct at home and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk abroad, but he can boast that the Enrons, the Andersons, and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the Madoffs are Buy Valium Diazepam Uk mere hostages of time, that sooner or later, they end up behind bars. Obama knows that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the contrary is the case with Nigeria, that the Madoff-Enron breed will be Buy Valium Diazepam Uk presented as the leading citizens of the Nigerian nation, feted countrywide, that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk after their openly inglorious careers in and out of office, thanksgiving services are Buy Valium Diazepam Uk held for them in church and mosque, that it is such should-be social pariahs that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk will be lined up for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk formal handshakes and photo-ops with him, photos that they will proudly bequeath to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk their children and grandchildren, hang on their gilded walls and pillars of criminal impunity to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the eternal glorification of decadence. He has chosen wisely to go the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk modest, unassuming flagbearer of the redemptive theology of Change.

The homecoming son knows that the Delta, Nigeria’s sole economic provider, for Buy Valium Diazepam Uk which all prior and potential modes of productivity have been jettisoned, is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk up in flames. I have wondered sometimes, by the way, whether it is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk a coincidence that one of the handful of officers of which the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Nigerian army can Buy Valium Diazepam Uk be truly proud, now a retired Colonel, has taken to ostrich farming not far from Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Abuja, the seat of government. It cannot be by accident. Sooner or Buy Valium Diazepam Uk later, I think he reasons, the occupants of Aso Rock, and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the profligate ‘representatives’ of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Nigerian people in the legislative houses will recognize the message of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk ostrich, its fabled habit of burying its head in the sand of unconcern while the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk wind ruffles and exposes its behind. These days, it is no Buy Valium Diazepam Uk longer the wind, it is the fire, and only the ostrich does not yet recognize that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk its rear feathers are aflame. That is the lesson of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Delta uprising. Sometimes it Buy Valium Diazepam Uk is necessary to spell things out for the megaphones of, and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk pretenders to the mantle of leadership: what Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the Deltan insurgents are saying to the uncaring state is that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the present conflict goes beyond the decades-old contemptuous neglect of the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk goose that lays the golden egg.

They are Buy Valium Diazepam Uk annunciating, in clear terms, that a system that siphons off an Buy Valium Diazepam Uk obscene percentage of the national revenue to sustain the rites, rituals and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk member life-styles of legislative houses, is ultimately unsustainable. They are serving notice – and their publicised manifestoes add up to no less – that the Nigerian state is itself untenable as presently constituted and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk governed, and must be taken apart, then re-assembled, this time in a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk manner that reflects the true aspirations and entitlements of the components and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk providers of that artificial entity. They are pointing out a noticeable constant: that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk time and time again, even when an incoming national leader has Buy Valium Diazepam Uk earlier promised no less than a drastic overhaul, no sooner does he settle into that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk power base than he proceeds to shore up and consolidate a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk cracked and collapsing edifice. This he does – the pattern has become predictable and boring – by a modest re-distribution among a restricted, conniving elite, but most often by an Buy Valium Diazepam Uk unscrupulous conversion of state power, brutal repression, political assassinations and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk divisive strategies. This was what the nation suffered – yet again – during the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk eight years of misrule of the last incumbent, a supposedly Born-Again democrat and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk assiduous bible-thumper. This, in sum, is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the extraction, implicit or overt in pronouncements, by the Deltan insurgents.

I shall waste no Buy Valium Diazepam Uk more time on the deviants of the movement, the opportunists and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk mercenaries, the kidnappers for ransom, rapists, extortionists and psychopaths whose operations have Buy Valium Diazepam Uk contributed to obscuring the ideological core of the Movement for the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk Emancipation of the the Niger Delta (MEND), a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk confusion assiduously nurtured by the corrupt leadership of the nation. The outside world knows its own history, and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk should be the last to point fingers at the presence of extortionists and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk psychopaths in any movement, no matter how lofty its ideals. It is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk for us, within the Nigerian nation, to sort out those criminals and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk bring them to justice, a task that is however complicated by the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk presence of far more seasoned, far more deeply entrenched criminals, more impudent extortionists, assassins, the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk barefaced, wholesale expropriators of a nation’s resources in positions of power, reveling in the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk now untamable rampage of impunity. Now, this is the mafiadom whose triumphalist existence a Buy Valium Diazepam Uk democratically elected outsider, torch-bearer of a phenomenal precedent, is expected to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk legitimize by an inaugural visitation!

The super-patriots and Buy Valium Diazepam Uk national chauvinists must however be encouraged to continue to wallow, infuriated, in the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk sludge of national amour-propre, bawds to the careerists of open prostitution. We can Buy Valium Diazepam Uk only remind them that, outside their constricted purlieu, there are other national leaders who Buy Valium Diazepam Uk are not quite as promiscuous as they are, or are accustomed to Buy Valium Diazepam Uk encountering. They should content themselves with the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk representative emotion of the present selected national leader who, unbelieving that Buy Valium Diazepam Uk he actually sat in the presence of a former United States president, could not contain himself as he gushed: This is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk the happiest moment of my life. That presidential host was George Bush II. By contrast, this Buy Valium Diazepam Uk is indeed one of those instances when absence makes the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk heart grow fonder. For the Buy Valium Diazepam Uk average Nigerian, this month of July 2009, when another president did NOT step foot on Nigerian soil, is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk a month to treasure. The sentiment, after all, is only borrowed from Buy Valium Diazepam Uk that of the enraptured home president, for what such a Nigerian is Buy Valium Diazepam Uk saying, equally enraptured is also: this is the happiest moment of my life.

Wole Soyinka