I wish I had done prudent research before adopting Canada as my new home. If I had not listened to the jaundiced counsel of biased residents I would have ended up in Putin’s beautiful Russia, Xi’s China or Castro’s Cuba – nations that per Western media, make no pretense to freedom, rule of law and respect for the dignity of the human person.
But I chose an unforgivingly cold country, leaving warm motherland behind. I watched Canadians dump a prime minister who embraced LGBTQ but described Muslims and polygamists as people exhibiting barbaric cultures. I witnessed the emergence of a Justin Trudeau who claimed to be a respecter of liberty.
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It felt emancipating escaping the bombs going off in Abuja, to a life in ‘ the true north, strong and free.’ A decade of bending over backwards to earn the rights of residency, I might have made the wrong choice.
The rowdy rascally honkers currently occupying Ottawa’s Parliament Hill have got me thinking. Their arrival and intention were well announced and no efforts were made to stop them. They raised $10 million (US dollars) to get here in their convoy of heavy trucks snaking through icy roads in the dead of winter through from every corner of this country. Unwary freedom-loving Canadians lined the streets cheering them on with bottled water and free snacks, clutching the colourful Canadian flag.
They remind me of patriotism of the halcyon years of military rule in Nigeria when children were ‘made’ to wash their school uniforms, fold them under their parent’s pillows to crease overnight. They were made to tear off a page from colouring books and manually crayon it in green-white-green and marched to designated spots to cheer on the governor’s convoy, loyal teachers in tow.
These flag-waving Canadians remind me of the concept of induced patriotism given to a country that gave nothing in return. These Canadians want freedom from the dictatorship of Justin Trudeau and his fellow despots.
When you have lived two-thirds of your life under real dictatorship, the Canadian notion of totalitarianism confuses the mind. I thought Canada was a free country, even with allegiance to a queen 6,000 kilometres away.
Master satirist, Rick Mercer, called the true North a nation “worth ranting about”, extolling the virtues of freedom of expression. The mob occupying downtown Ottawa thinks otherwise. And they are right, because it looks like their protest is gaining traction forcing me to tender my unreserved apology to President Jones and Lady Patience and to democrat, President Muhammadu Buhari. Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” is forcing me to do a rethink about this country.
Although Canada’s dictatorship would not fire a shot in the air to scare the motley crowd, only three people were arrested in nearly two week of riotous protests. It involved desecration of the hallowed tomb of the unknown soldier, open defecation, raiding of a homeless shelter’s restaurant and occasional harassment of mask wearers. The convoy uses 24 hours horn-blaring thereby resulting in noise pollution; the idling of huge trucks polluting the air in an environment where honking is regarded as a sign of deviance.
To a Nigerian living here, Canada reeks of a malodorous dictatorship. Its cities are barracks overwhelmed with dos and don’ts. They include penalties for open defecation that should be a right; a law on cruelty to animals that should be a pastime, indiscriminate littering that should be a privilege, open use of alcohol in vehicles or parks that are common rights, and king of rights – noise pollution, a national virtue of Osun taxi drivers and natural pastime of music sellers in Oshodi, Diobu, Mushin Sabon-Gari markets.
For years, sheepish Canadians have endured the wanton restraint of rights that Nigerians take for granted. It has taken COVID-19 mask mandates, for the few “woke” Canadians, buoyed by their global right-wing confederate and swastika-flag-waving lunatic-fringe groups to realise that Trudeau is a despot. En a marre! Yes, Canadians have had enough and without affiliation to Nigeria’s socio-political crusader Omoyele Sowore, they are poised to take back their country.
These noise-making yahoos that shut down downtown Ottawa sent Justin Trudeau into hiding and vow to replace parliamentary democracy with mob rule. The police are not ready to take orders to disperse these bozos and calling in the army is a declaration of war. Downtown business owners that sacrificed a few days’ earnings for freedom are now groaning under the jackboot of raving lunatics.
And what are their demands? Not freedom from assassins and kidnappers, not the right to be paid during lockdowns that Trudeau generously offered, no. They want Trudeau to return COVID-19 to wherever he brought it from or in the alternative – open the country for the rights to infect and be infected from personal to family level to neighbours and ostensibly to overwhelm the health care system that even Americans envy. They believe the rights to ruin the economy are inalienable and won’t go until they are freely granted.
They want to curtail Trudeau’s dictatorial powers to impose masks and vaccine mandates, and to end lockdowns. They want the alliance between Trudeau and Joe Biden requiring vaccination for inter-country truck haulers to be rescinded. The army of occupation wants full control of the Canadian and American law-making process.
But for the economic ingenuity of these largely high school dropouts, who subscribe to the theory that leaders invented a pandemic to shut down thriving economies, run deficits and cause stagflation, Nigerians are trooping to the Canadian mission in Maitama asking to come and freeze to death rather than become pawns in the hands of armed robbers and kidnappers. It is gradually becoming clear that these occupiers would give anything to earn the right to enjoy Nigerian style freedom instead of this life of a true north strong and bonded. They have changed Mercer’s rant to Canada’s freedom worth desecrating.
Under Muhammadu Buhari, their convoys would have been ambushed before it moved. Those who donated to the go-fund-me campaign would have had their accounts frozen for life. The licenses of all the trucks and truckers blaring horns in Abuja’s Eagle Square would have been revoked. The truckers and their supporters would have been arrested, frog-marched to jail and kept there until they have ‘voluntarily’ taken two COVID shots and the booster. This is the ultimate freedom – Nigerian style and it was tested and perfected in a Lagos suburb called Lekki and guess what – the sun still rises from the east!
The trucks of these rabble-rousers would have been seized and forfeited to the federal government. If there are no laws to back that action, President Lawan and Speaker Gbajabiamila would have passed an emergency law overnight – in the nation’s economic and social interest. But, if by any slip of governance, the truckers ambushed Naija security to Abuja, many would have disappeared and Oga Lai Mohammed would have denied that there was a protest with a straight face.
Trudeau should just send these chaps to Abuja to enjoy true freedom under Buhari and send the remaining batch of the best vaccines science had to fight COVID-19 with them and watch it disappear. By the way these protesters are pissing on the 34,000 unwilling COVID-19 victims many of who would have been alive if there was a vaccine and a mandate.
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