Category: Steve Osuji

If desperation and divine malady Desperation must be the first rule in hell. There must be an infernal mandate that requires a man who craves something badly to go after his heart’s desire with the ferocity of a wounded lion. Such a man shuns rationality; he tramples, he breaks, he maims and even kills to have his way. A desperate man is utterly irrational, a desperate man is a dangerous fellow, a desperate man is sooner imperiled.

While man would describe this intense and reckless pursuit of one’s desire as desperation, the Holy Scripture presents it as divine affliction or malady. The Bible showcases a typical example in King Saul as recorded in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel. The story of King Saul is at once exciting and profound. God raised him from nothing to become the first king of Israel. No sooner did he mount the throne than he rejected the word of God and forgot his humble roots. Not only did God reject him as well, he simply afflicted him with despairing spirit and a mad craving for power. And the rest for King Saul is a chain of crazy reactions.

Saul got so desperate he disguised himself and consulted a medium. He got so desperate he could not wait for the high priest to conduct the rites of burnt offering; he defiled the altar of God. Again, in Saul’s paranoia over power, he pursued David, his anointed successor, through the wilderness seeking to exterminate him.

At the peak of his monarchy Saul became completely devoid of God and His grace. He forgot he was picked up from the lowliest family of the smallest tribe (Benjamin) in Israel. One afternoon, madly intoxicated by his lusting after power, he ordered the execution of 85 prophets. Not satisfied, he saw to the wiping out of the inhabitants of Nob, a city of prophets. Why: because Saul could not imagine power slipping out of his hands.

The persecution of Prof. Jega   Are we having a Saul syndrome in Nigeria today? Well maybe not but there are surely troubling signs. It surely is a mark of utter desperation if billions of naira is being mindlessly frittered away in the quest to remain in power when there is acute hunger in the land. It is particularly so in the persecution and demonization of Prof. Attahiru Jega, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). An estimated N5 billion must have been disbursed in the past two weeks in what may have been an ‘operation bring Jega down’.

As if Jega has suddenly become the number one enemy of the nation, damaging attacks were unleashed on him on all fronts immediately after the postponement of the elections last February. The campaign was not only ferocious but all the spectra of the media were mobilized – print, electronic and social media.

One counted no fewer than 50-full page adverts – many of them placed on special positions –  in national newspapers between February 11 to March 7, 2014. The adverts are largely a caricature of Prof. Jega denigrating him, throwing at him, serious allegations of ethnicity, electoral fraud, embezzlement and incompetence. The overall objective is obviously to damage his credibility completely and perhaps force him to resign in ignominy. These horrid adverts are ‘powered’ by Goodluck Lagos Grassroot Project and each one of them bears the photograph of President Goodluck Jonathan. There is therefore, no mistaking who is the brain behind those anti-Jega adverts.

Failed elders in need of rehab Another expensive strategy adopted by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the presidency to hound Jega out of office has been to mobilize people who are supposedly elders and leaders to castigate Jega in public. The pattern is to accuse him of incompetence and even allege bias against him. Some of the names that have been corralled into the scheme include Chief Edwin Clark, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Bode George, Walter Ofonagoro, Femi Okunroumu, Prof. ABC Nwosu, MASSOB chieftain, Ralph Uwazurike and OPC leaders Gani Adams and Fredrick Fasehun, to name a few.

These men at every opportunity in radio, television or newspaper interviews castigate Jega and the modalities for conducting the next elections. Most critical and troubling is that not one of these men spoke out of conviction. Some samples: In the Sunday Vanguard of February 22 Chief Clark said in an elaborate interview that: “Jega should go. We believe he should go not only because of inefficiency; we believe he is working with some northern leaders to declare a northern presidential candidate the winner of the March 28 election, that’s Buhari.”

On the same day, in another newspaper, The Sun, Ezeife in a 3-page interview which was highlighted boldly on the front page thus: “No election until Jega quits”, he said: “…Jega has been compromised that his continued stay there is not morally wise. He should be honorable enough to resign and safe the nation this confusion.”

Another national newspaper had an interview with Bode George titled: “Jega is a public jester – Bode George” It was as if one script was being syndicated through a group of failed elderly men needing economic rehabilitation. It is always a sad spectacle when our elders a re ‘roused’ into acting irrationally.

Then there was a barrage of negative editorial barbs in the forms of analyses, opinion commentaries and advertorials. Some more samples: “Jega’s electoral burden” is a two-page political ‘analysis’ in one national paper. You would think Jega had suddenly become a presidential candidate running against President Jonathan after reading such a piece.

On the internet, in radio and television talk shows, no cost has been spared on what seems like operation uproot Jega or damage the electoral process. Yes, an estimated N5billion must have been dissipated ‘fighting’ Jega at a time many Nigerians are feeling severe pangs of hunger.

Brimming with bad faith First the PDP claimed that INEC was not ready and they forced a postponement. Next they tried to remove Jega by force; that did not work and they descended on the Permanent Voters’ Card (PVC). They condemned it and canvass that we revert to the Temporary voters’ card. That too failed. Now they are raising hoopla about the card readers. To reinforce its desperation, PDP has connived to push the belated registration of a new party by the apt name: Young Democratic Party (YDP). You may call it ‘bomboy’, a veritable instrument of perfidy.

In all of this, PDP and the president are brimming with bad faith. They want to win by all means or they plunge our dear country into a deluge. PDP is in scorch earth mode; it is behaving like the bad rat in our fathers’ timeless words that would not eat a certain grain yet would rather waste it.

But we can only take solace in the fact that what God has decreed, no man can undo. PDP by all its actions is already practising to be an opposition party. Its time is up and it had better chosen a graceful exit by conducting a good election. I commend the story of King Saul to President Jonathan and his excited team members.

Sounds like the title of a fairy tale but this is a true-life story happening in Ebonyi State, southeast Nigeria. Ebonyi had always been the patched spot of the east – stunted, backward and remote. It really is a poor, poor cousin afflicted by wants and wantonness. Strange things happen all over but stranger things make their abode in Ebonyi for instance, communal feuds around there come in the form of savage bazaar that consume by wild fire and blood. Examples of such human carnage in Ebonyi are numerous.

Now, another story, stranger than fiction; at least by the standards of Nigeria’s political culture, has broken in that outpost. Last week, Pa Martin Elechi, the septuagenarian incumbent governor widely regarded as the father of modern Ebonyi made a plaintive cry for help. Pa Elechi who is rounding off his second and last term as a governor took to the newspapers in what seems like a safe-our-soul two-page advertorial. Have you ever seen a sitting governor; an elderly man, cry for help? Have you ever seen a deputy governor stampeding his boss and threatening to remove him from the executive quarters and put him on the run? Not in Nigeria, but it is happening.

In a 17-point plea, the governor explained carefully, how a cabal from Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of power, is working up the state to a conflagration.  He mentioned specifically,  the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Chief Ayim Pius Ayim and such co-conspirators as Chief Uche Secondus (Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP), Chief Olisa Metuh (National Publicity Secretary) and Amb Franklin Ogbuewu, Deputy Coordinator of the PDP Presidential Campaign in the state.

What is at stake? The Abuja ‘mafia’ led by Ayim is bent on hijacking the state by installing a stooge of their own in the next dispensation. They made sure the old man had no say in the transition process especially in installing his successor. They imposed his deputy, Chief Dave Umahi as governorship candidate in a contrived congress that excluded the sitting governor. Same for all the other elective positions in the land; they never allowed the old man to have a say.

All entreaties to President Goodluck Jonathan, the leader of the party, yielded no fruit. The invaders appeared to have usurped even the powers of the president. Unable to live with the humiliation any longer, the old man and his supporters shifted their allegiance to a lesser known Labour Party (LP). It soon dawned on the Abuja bullies that the old man could still pull some strings in the state. Electoral entropy starred the cabal in the face as LP suddenly came alive and became dominant in the state. Jolted, they immediately resorted to rough tactics.

According to the governor, a wave of terror was unleashed on the state with shootings, attacks on campaign rallies, burning of vehicles and vandalizing of LP billboards. Like a caged hound, the SGF allegedly caused the simultaneous release of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) on the state. As you read this, no fewer than six state commissioners are on needless shuttles to and fro the Abuja offices of these two so-called graft commissions. The governor’s son and about 13 LGA care-taker committee chairmen are also being run through the Abuja hoop.

Worst of all, the state’s accounts were frozen even before investigations had started and against court order. And finally, there is currently a contrivance to impeach the governor by all means.

It may be argued that this is an internal affair of a party but that in itself is the irony and the crux of the matter. The brigandage in Ebonyi is a pointer to the situation across the country and signposts a ruling party where there is a confounding leadership vacuum. For instance, the governor listed all the entreaties made to the President and party leader and all his ‘efforts’ at intervening yet this megalomaniac gang he has as aides and party officials countermanded him at every point and carried on with their perfidy to the point that the state begins to implode, lives are lost as PDP faces a crushing defeat at the polls.

True, what is happening in Ebonyi is typical of PDP and its Abuja marauders across board and across states. It is also Senator Ayim’s stock-in-trade, to put it plainly since his senate days in Abuja to be an agent of destabilization of his forlorn Ebonyi State. He has a history of seeking to lord it over any governor in his state. Today he has raised his megalomania one notch. He seeks to hijack the state by force, install a stooge and run it by proxy.

In his poorly wired mind, he thinks nothing of the incumbent; he has not an iota of respect for him, thinking him old, frail and of no consequence whatsoever. He forgot that this old man with all his flaws is probably the living father of Ebonyi who laid the foundation of the state; he forgot that he paved the way for most of the younger Ebonyi politicians of today including Senator Anyim. What, if we may ask, has Ayim done for his poor state drawing on the influence of the exalted offices he held as Senate President and SGF?

But even if we grant that old Pa Elechi has soiled his office and is guilty of all they accuse him of; we ask how dare Senator Ayim or anyone in the Presidency, PDP or the EFCC for that matter, lay an accusation of corruption against anyone else? These places are bastions of corruption. It is starkly indecorous to seek to hound out of office, a man who has only about two months to go. It is coarse to literally strip the old man naked, drag him about town in utter humiliation and ignominy. What made Ayim and his cohorts think they could get away with such barbarism; such jungle tactics?

We know it is the way of PDP but it still does not make it acceptable and right. It is the same steel-gloves tactics that was deployed in Bayelsa State with former Governor Timipre Silva and incumbent Seriake Dickson. It is the same jungle treatment that Governor Chibuike Amaechi has been resisting in the past two years.

Same in Delta State where the Presidency allowed some thugs, old and young, to lame-duck a sitting governor and shunt him from having a say in who succeeds him. If Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan was not made of a higher constitution we would have in Delta today, a streaming of much striving, maiming and killings. Ebonyi would have been child’s play because the stakes are far higher in Delta. This surely isn’t any way to run a party or country.

We must state it clearly that all of these happened because the leader of the party, the president did not manage to stand firm and insist on the right and culture approaches. Where his wife was not the chief culprit, it was him or aides and party cabals. Happily, it is coming to an interesting denouement that Pa Elechi is only old, he still has some political fire in his belly yet as the invaders have found out.

One thought the Afe Babalola University, ABUAD, Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State was one of the better set up private citadels of learning. What with the pedigree of the founder (of the same name) and the good report one hears about the institution in its short life.

The report emanating from the institution currently is that it may be operating not unlike all the other strictly-for-profit private universities. One hears that school fees which were already high are now shooting through the roof. For instance, 400 level medical students whose fees were recently increased to N1.7m from N1.2m have been asked to pay N2.6m as they resume March 12th.

According to a post by Hassan Taiwo (Soweto), coordinator of Education Rights Agenda, this is a “debt sentence” as many of the students who were already groaning under the old fees may never make it back to ABUAD. It will be a sad day for a medical student who has already put in so much to drop out mid-way.

Who regulates our private universities? Are they allowed to charge fees arbitrarily? What is the role of the National Universities Commission, NUC?

The impression one got upon reading the Okomu story is that of a state of anarchy; a place government no longer exists. On Tuesday, February 12, 2015, gunmen reportedly invaded the estate of the Okomu Oil Palm Plc in Ovia South West LGA of Edo State killing two and injuring five workers. They were also said to have set ablaze, a large expanse of their palm plantation over the refusal of the management to ‘settle’ them.

From the report in Daily Sun (February 13), the story was not the fact that the marauding youths always walk in and out the estate freely but the reaction of the staff. “We are just workers but the Ijaw boys always attack us and leave the management staff alone. The boys need something from the management but this managing director is too stubborn…”

Did you notice the note of total surrender and hopelessness? Apparently even they had long forgotten that governments still existed in the land.

Sadly, OKomu is one of the few surviving agro-allied firms in the land that is quoted on the Stock Exchange; you would expect government would protect them adequately. But government is in retreat.

Irony: Nigeria imports palm oil! Yes, that’s true. We import palm oil even though we were once world’s highest producer and ought to glut the world with palm oil products. The global market for palm oil last year was about 63 million metric tons produced mainly by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Nigeria produced barely one million metric tons.

Wetin government dey do sef? We can’t refine crude oil, we can’t grow palm trees and we can’t protect those making some effort. Na wao.

The fountainhead of our corruption is traceable to the spiritual corruption flowing out from Aso Rock…when a man is afflicted with spiritual corruption, he corrupts everything around him. He prefers to bring near himself, men who are tainted and morally depraved, and easily blackmailed or manipulated… one of the ugliest attributes of the spiritually corrupt is greed. Greed for power…

Chief Sunday Awoniyi, pioneer chairman of PDP in a speech to Northern senators in 2005

The spirits of Aso Rock Despite reassurances carefully handed out by President Goodluck Jonathan during the President Chat last Wednesday, the auguries are still dim. He had assured Nigerians that he would hand over power if he was defeated in the coming elections; he vowed that there was no plan to sack INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega and that he would not sack him. Notably, he said: “The rumour that I will not hand over or that I am scheming to prolong my tenure are insinuations; they are not true…it is quite unfortunate that so much wrong information is floating in the system.”

Yes, President Jonathan may have doused some of the tension in the polity, but one has been around long enough to read the emerging trends and to doubt whether in spite of his words, is the man of the moment in Aso Rock, not marching down the same road to Golgotha that almost all his predecessors trod?

My apprehension follows from the above quote from Chief Awoniyi, the late Aro of Mopa, among the last true statesmen to grace this land. He was speaking about the then occupant of the Presidential Villa, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. One also speaks from experience having reported (as a journalist) all previous occupants of Aso Rock from inception and witnessing nearly all of them go bad and leaving in ignominy. From the first, Ibrahim Babangida; to Ernest Shonekan, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and now Goodluck Jonathan.

Speaking of Aso Rock, “spiritual corruption” and damaged leaders, there was a long-standing rumour that interred in the very foundation of Aso Rock during its construction, were evil sacrifices. Besides, every occupier was said to have implanted, his own fetish ‘fortifications’. So even though our presidents have been either Muslims or Christians, their professed faith were merely ceremonial and for photo opportunities. In other words, each one of them reportedly had interred, some ‘black power’ of his own within the precincts of Aso Rock.

Mind you, one has no confirmation for these rumour, but one has reasons to suggest that the combined force of these dark powers would render any occupant of Aso Rock confused, bereft of the true spirit of God. One really cannot find any other reason why honour, dignity and moral leadership have seem to desert our leaders while they are ensconced in that hallowed abode.

Babangida, who laid the now suspect foundation of Aso Rock, would not leave office. He almost brought Nigeria to her knees in 1993 and practically had to run away under a gale of global opprobrium. Abacha, who snatched power from Shonekan, was a more pathetic figure, preferring tragic end game. His remains were hurriedly evacuated in a wooden plank from Aso Rock. Obasanjo, after two terms, tried to suborn the legislature and damage the constitution in order to continue in power by hook or crook.

We thought we had been through the worst; we thought that those men were perfidious just because they were mere soldiers without much learning and culture. We thought they behaved the way they did because they were philistine in nature with no understanding about the finer ideals of life, governance and nationhood. But we may be mistaken; we fear we are back to that ugly crossroads once again.

Jonathan’s road to Golgotha For some of us who had the misfortune of reporting and writing about the stupid behaviours of our past presidents, we cannot help but feel a certain sense of déjà vu in President Jonathan’s current contrivance to hang on to power at all cost. We can smell the signs from miles away. A last minute postponement of elections which had been scheduled for nearly four years is reminiscent of the antics of Gen. Babangida in his maradonic days. We see Abacha and Obasanjo come alive once again when we see soldiers and amoured tanks raised at every turn to intimidate the citizenry.

Surely Jonathan saw defeat stare him in the face; he saw an overwhelming Buhari momentum; he saw that Nigerians are sick of his failed presidency and that they were poised to make that change through the ballot. What Jonathan has done by that singular stroke of subterfuge, by that sleight of hand is to try to postpone Nigeria. And he would even postpone our lives, if it required that to hang on to power – not minding the huge costs, individual and corporate, to the nation. If only he could adjourn Nigeria sans his presidency, what a great magical world it would be. This distortion, this abrupt dis-alignment of our very lives brings up pictures of Babangida calling off the June 12, 1993 election mid-victory; it reminds me of Abacha’s tanks on the streets of Lagos chasing and killing protesting Nigerians; it brings back the picture of Obasanjo bribing lawmakers with tens of millions of naira to twist the constitution in his favour.

I am reminded once again of those bleary days when Nigeria was a pariah state and all the countries of the world condemned her leaders and kept them at arm’s length; away from the conclave of decent people. It was the foolish, heady days of Abacha when he thought he could do whatsoever he wanted with Nigeria and the citizenry and get away with it. But the world ostracised him and it was only a question of time.

So, so sad that Jonathan contemplated that road to perdition in today’s world. Defying the will of the people and the world community, he has forced the abrupt adjournment of a poll that had been on the card for four years. Who would tell him that it is a failure of his government that this election is deferred; it is an injury to his office as commander-in-chief that his service chiefs had the temerity to declare that they could not guarantee security after a year of a scheduled election and he did not or could not summarily dismiss them all if truly that excuse was not his contrivance

Elders with new-found virility This presidency needs no advice anymore; this presidency seems far gone, lost and irredeemable. But the greater tragedy is that most of the elders have gone too. Having acquired a new-found virility, when they are not taking young new wives, they are drumming the drums of war. Elders who are at the departure lounges of their lives are drinking the strong wine of perdition and seeking to leave the country in a ruble.

How could elders like EK Clark, Alex Ekwueme, Ayo Ladigbolu, Chukwuemeka Ezeife and Walter Ofonagoro ask that INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, should resign this late in the day? When he conducted the elections in 2011 and it favoured Jonathan, it was okay. Today he is not good enough and each day a man on such a serious national assignment is ridiculed and blackmailed?

Now who will tell Jonathan that losing an election is not the end of life? Who will admonish him that it is better to lose an election than to lose your honour, your soul and your country? Who will call him back from the road to Golgotha? What more to say than to inform our dear President that all the fellows before him who trod this path never ‘returned’: at least not in one piece. He must ask Babangida, Abacha, Shonekan and Obasanjo; if only he could learn from their folly.

Kayode Fayemi @50: welcome to the golden age

This is ushering John Kayode Fayemi to the golden age as he turned 50 last week. An intellectual and gentleman of immense culture and breeding, he tried to finesse Nigeria’s politics but whoever gives pearls to swines?
As stated on this forum in the run up to the Ekiti election, to compare Fayemi with Fayose is to compare light with darkness. That Mr. Ayo Fayose, the ‘alleged’ governor of Ekiti State, could as much as stand up for an election in today’s Nigeria is a searing affront to the civilised world. And that he was declared winner would unravel someday as a cold-blooded betrayal of democracy if not a cardinal sin that both heaven and earth would continue to reject until the very plot and plotters have been exposed and shamed.
Well, we urge you JK, to continue to hold out in quiet dignity; welcome to the age of defiant grey hairs and muted strengths.

Leaders are unborn Almost exactly 10 years ago, as editor and columnist for the defunct New Age newspaper, I had written a piece titled: “The Ekwueme quagmire” (New Age, Thursday, January 20, 2005). Let’s take an excerpt from that piece as a background to today’s offering.

“His ultimate quagmire is typified in the Anambra situation since 1999 (but) which came to a head on June 10, 2003, with the abduction of a serving governor of his state and party – a situation that wants to make one hide one’s face in black polythene bag.

“How could an Ekwueme be in a country where ‘pirates’ would put monies accruing to his state’s treasury on the table (like a loot) and simply share it, month after month, year after year, for four years and for another term kicking off?

“How could an Ekwueme be alive and for nearly a year, teachers and pensioners were not paid, schools were shut, entire Anambra infrastructure collapsed in the face of huge monthly revenue allocation to the state? How could an Ekwueme be and the president (Obasanjo) stated in public that the problem in Anambra took root because there were no respectable elders in Igboland?

“Finally, how could an Ekwueme be member of a party, a state and even a country where a governor is abducted, properties razed and votes said to be entirely stolen? None can remember on strong statement he made in condemnation of these abominable acts.”

Of course, Dr. Alex Ekwueme is former vice president of Nigeria, founding chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a two-time presidential aspirant. More important, he led the Group of 34 (G34) that practically chased the late military junta General Sani Abacha, out of office and which metamorphosed into PDP.

To drive home the point, Ekwueme is the most influential voice in the land since the Second Republic. But as the excerpts above show, and with due respect to an octogenarian statesman, he has always failed to lend his voice during critical moments of national crisis. It took the conscientious voice of the late Chinua Achebe from his wheelchair in faraway US to call global attention to Obasanjo’s madness in Anambra at that time.

Just as Ekwueme’s silence reverberated in 2005 when Governor Ngige was abducted, a similar scenario plays out today. While the nation totters, respected elders go on endorsement circuit. While that may be their prerogative, not when they purport to speak for the entire Southeast; but they are not mouthpiece of the Igbo; they have not earned that pip. Recall the mess the late Ralph Iwechue made of Ohaneze in 2011 endorsement season. So sad that Igbo politicians of this era have proven to be poor, poor politicians. Poor as pimps.

Atedo’s ataraxia While Dr. Ekwueme may be in a quandary as to how to handle the mantle of leadership providence bequeathed to him, Atedo Peterside suffers acute ataraxia, a state of mind in which a man suffers what may be debilitating tranquility. Or to say in plainer, it is a state in which you experience too much of a good thing; where you are permanently in cloud nine, so to speak. For those who may not know, Atedo Peterside boasts of a rich pedigree. He is a silver spoon who did even better for himself. In the 80s of one-man banks, he led a small team to set up an upscale wholesale bank known as IBTC. It was so successful that all the turbulence that assailed and blew away many of its peers never affected it. Today it trades as Stanbic-IBTC, a member of the multinational banking group, Standard Chartered. Atedo remains its chairman.

With his kinsman, Goodluck Jonathan as president, Atedo naturally found favour with him and has remained a member of the president’s economic team and ‘kitchen’ cabinet in the last four years. His influence in economic affairs has been deep and of course his bank has grown proportionately.

Unconcerned professional Many will remember Atedo as a well groomed man of culture, a professional and a patriot. In the heady 80s of the Generals (Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha) when the junta sought to extirpate our resurgent democracy, Atedo was one of those who stood up to be counted.

Not minding the inherent perils, he teamed up with a few other soul mates to found the Concerned Professionals, (CP). Through well-reasoned newspaper adverts CP relentlessly challenged the obdurate military regimes and insisted that the right thing must be done by the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Chief MKO Abiola. In that period of subterfuge and renegades, Atedo’s was an intervention that was at once unique, effective and memorable.

You must have noticed recently, similar newspaper adverts with Atedo apparently trying to re-enact the activism of those days, using the platform of ANAP Foundation. Sadly, today, he appears to have grown ataraxic and dangerously sentimental. His last installment is titled: “The ugly side of Buhari and GEJ”, (The Punch 31-01-15, page 23). It is a perfect example of negative campaign done with panache and bravura.

 As Atedo purports, it is a preview of an opinion poll bankrolled by him which results show that Buhari and Jonathan are running neck-to-neck. But Atedo’s take on his poll drips with bias and bad blood against Buhari that nobody should bother about the result of his so-called poll. First, it has to be the ‘ugly side” of the candidates that has to be highlighted. But it turned out to be Atedo’s ugly thoughts and sentiments about Buhari.

There are about 20 ‘negative’ verbal assaults against Buhari on one page of Atedo’s article. Let’s list some.

One: swing voters will determine the next presidential election. “They want change but see Buhari as the type of change that is both worrisome and alarming.”

Two: “Many of the swing voters are true democrats who abhor authoritarianism. Buhari was not a benevolent dictator… he was a vicious and wicked one who used retroactive decrees to sentence youths to death…”

Three: “On the economy, Buhari was a disaster first time around. He was clearly an economic illiterate…”

Four: Atedo describes Buhari as “an old and infirm “honest” man who is driven by blind ambition to re-occupy a seat from which he was booted out in 1985…”

And what is GEJ’s ugly side? Hear it from Atedo: “GEJ’s vulnerabilities are from the party chieftains and a few dodgy aides that he accommodates and/or tolerates… he believed too much in assurances from our security agencies… This entire group have (sic) lost credibility in the fight against Boko Haram…” on and on, GEJ is Atedo’s hero and knight in shining armour. Atedo wraps up his ugly campaign thus: “If I vote GEJ in this election it is because his ugly side is less ugly than Buhari’s known and well-documented uglier side and nothing more.”

One cannot help wondering where the rain started to beat Atedo? I shed tears as I interrogated his metamorphosis; if one had not interviewed this fellow about 20 years ago one would probably blame it on hunger. Today, he typifies the current leadership that sits in its exquisite cabin and would not acknowledge that the ship of state is sinking. Is Nigeria not a pariah state today as in 1994? No serious country would sell us arms. When is a banana republic? Chadian troops and South African mercenaries are on our soil today? What is our exchange rate now? Yet in Atedo’s estimation, Gen. Buhari is Nigeria’s problem.

Let’s close by informing Atedo that he will go down as one of the un-doings of GEJ. If only the president got proper counsel; if only just one refinery was built in five years (as Singapore and even Niger did) and Nigeria no longer imports petroleum products…what a difference that would have made today?

In praise of Asiodu’s G – 13

All it too little too late but as they say, better late than never. Have you seen a recent press release by a group that goes by the name, INITIATIVE FOR MORAL RECTITUDE IN THE SOCIETY? What an awkward name but what is in a name? They say they are for …Promoting Good Governance and we say about time some elders stood up to be counted and rescue this drifting ship.
They say they are distressed by the situation in our nation Nigeria and call on all political parties to ensure that their candidates stick to issues rather than pointless attacks on their opponents. They also call on all parties to shun violence and seek redress through statutory means of resolving disputes, among other laudable talk.
But really the news is in the members who signed the news release: Chief Philip Asiodu who appears to be the arrowhead; Alhaji Ahmed Joda, Chief E.J. Amana, Prof Grace Alele-Williams, Prof. T.A.J. Ogunbiyi, Prof. Ibidapo Obe, Alhaji Abba Kyari, Amb. B.A. Clark, Amb. Abdhullahi Atta, Alhaji Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, Chief B. Ogunkelu, Dr. G.A. Soyoye and R/Admiral A.O.S. Okoja (Rtd).
It is so salutary and refreshing to see a group that appears unbiased and truly exists in the interest of our motherland. We hope this initiative is sustained and that it continues to grow in its noble objectives.