The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Lofty ambitions kill the stormbird – Marabouts nail Atiku and effectively killed off Peoples Democratic Party

    Lofty ambitions kill the stormbird – Marabouts nail Atiku and effectively killed off Peoples Democratic Party

    Tinubu has a reputation for thriving in adversity. How he usually triumphed over vicissitudes of life, and politics, is an act of God. He had spread his tentacles to the six zones. He had built bridges. He may have started the journey to Aso Villa, since he was governor of Lagos between 1999 and 2007. He told Nigerians that it was his long life ambition to serve the country. Tinubu had honed his skills of dialogue and persuasion, consensus building, tolerance, accommodation, and ‘give and take.’ His greatest attribute is his forgiving spirit.

    A believer in consultation, debate and power of ideas, Tinubu is a powerful organiser, mobiliser, thinker and strategist”. -Emmanuel Oladesu, Deputy Editor, The Nation.

    These are extremely sensitive, if not dangerous, days in our country and the least one should be considered doing is gloating over the last presidential election. However, drawing attention to some or any of its key takeaways should be seen, more rationally, as  undertaking a timely, historical responsibility of showing Nigerians, particularly  the youths, that unbridled ambition, as in Atiku’s, is so dangerous it could birth totally unexpected results that  one would regret forever. Or how on earth could Atiku Abubakar’s overarching ambition to be president of Nigeria, at all cost, have been seen, apriori,  as capable of literally erasing from the Nigerian political map, a once glorious political party like the Peoples Democratic Party, once described as the largest party in Africa?

    Ambition, they say, kills the cat, but it can do far worse; and if PDP knows what just hit it, its leaders, even members, should be weeping rather than protesting the election process, as they claim they are doing, and the Bwala’s of this world resorting to meaningless sophism on television.

    It is obvious that looking at the party’s performance and post election  national spread, a monumental disaster, which needn’t have  been so, befell both the  party and its presidential candidate.

    This piece will try to examine how, and why.

    In the 2015 and 2023 Presidential elections in both the Southeast and the Southsouth, PDP performed as follows:

    State                           2015                                      2023

    Abia                      368303          (94.18%)        22,676

    Anambra            660762              (98.52)            9036

    Ebonyi                 323653               (88.94)         13503

    Enugu                  553003              (96.48)         15749

    Imo                        559185             (79.55)        30234

    Akwa                   953304               (93.73)      214012

    Bayelsa                361209              (98.48)         68818

    CrossRiver         414363               (92.09)         95425

    Rivers                 1487075             (94.99)        88468

    From the above, it needs no gainsaying that candidate Atiku has practically buried PDP.

    But how did he achieve this millennial feat?

    It goes back a long way to what

    Presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina was saying when he wrote: “that marabouts, prophets, some pastors, preachers and witches and wizards formed a “confederacy” and said Atiku would become president”.

    Our ever ebullient, eager letter writer of a former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, had in his book, MY WATCH, put it much more brutally  when he wrote as follows about Atiku, his Vice for 8 years,  1999 – 2007: “ From the day I nominated Atiku to be my vice, he set his mind not for any good, benefit or service of the country, but on furiously planning to upstage, supplant or remove me at all cost and to take my place.

    “That was what I brought him for, but he was impatient and over-ambitious. He was not ready to learn and to wait. His marabout, who predicted that despite being elected as governor, he would not be sworn in as a governor, which happened, also assured him that he would take over from me in a matter of months rather than years.

    “All his plans, appointments of people and his actions were towards the actualisation of his marabout’s prediction. Once I realised his intention and programme, I watched him like a hawk without giving any indication of what I knew and letting down my guard. I could not succumb to the distraction, diversion and malevolence of an ambitious but unwise deputy”.

    That, unfortunately, has been the Atiku mindset until the recent election and so furiously driven towards it was the man that everything else, even the country’s survival as a united entity, became secondary.

    So consumed with becoming  president was he, like when he futilely hoped to be promoted Customs Controller- General,  over which he allegedly resigned that, according to  Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State,  he  asked President Goodluck Jonathan, a sitting president who had trailed him all the way to the UK to solicit his support for the 2915 presidential election, that he should renounce his candidacy so that he, a Northerner, could contest as the PDP presidential candidate in his place.

    So overarching was this ambition that Atiku could not see the unfairness and inequality inherent, in another Fulani succeeding President Mohammadu Buhari, a Fulani, after 8 years, in a country  with over 250 ethnic groups.

    If he couldn’t see that, there was no way he could have been moved by the Southern governors’ resolution, across party lines,  that the presidency should come to the South after Buhari. Rather, what caught his fancy was to ensnare Governor Okowa, who hosted the meeting at which the Southern governors took that solemn undertaking, and made him his Vice Presidential candidate. Given that mindset too, and believing he would be the adopted candidate of the North, he graduated from one mistake to another. For instance,  directly after the PDP Presidential primaries, he had visited Wike, who came second in the election promising, and assuring, him that the next thing was to get party Chairman, Dr Iyorcha Ayu, to resign since both the candidate and the Chairman could not both come from the North. He even offered him the Vice – Presidential position.

    But Atiku was playing politics as he knew, only too well that he was not disposed to Ayu quitting his office. It was  speculated that he was Atiku’s link to the man working for his victory at the Villa. Wike, for instance, once said the following:”They are arrogant because they believe somebody in the presidency is backing them. But what they don’t understand is that the same person backed somebody in the APC presidential primaries and the person failed.

    “I will tell Nigerians at the appropriate time the person in the presidency  backing them”.

    This assumed support from higher quarters was why Atiku finally unbelievably mismanaged the G-5 affair and brought political disaster on both himself and his party.

    What, for instance, would it have cost Atiku and the party if they had quietly eased out Ayu who ended up dismally failing the party at the election proper even in his Benue home state which the APC won handsomely?

    Labour party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, merely seized on Atiku’s vaulting ambition and his inability to demonstrate leadership within his party, to help put the final nail on PDP’s coffin, relying  on a combination of  youth anger(#EndSars#) Igbo chronic insularity and irritant Pentecostalism( a new and very dangerous introduction to the Nigerian political space).

    Nigerians won’t miss the Peoples Democratic Party but would never forget its 16 year stranglehold of 1999 – 2015, especially the Obasanjo portion of it.

  • Tinubu is God’s project: The reason he remained unstoppable

    Tinubu is God’s project: The reason he remained unstoppable

    It was further discovered that Governor Ifeanyi Okowa paid a total of N150, 000,000 ( One hundred and fifty million Naira) from the Directorate of Government House and Protocol account to NDUKA OBAIGBENA, the founding Chairman of Arise Global Media Limited.

    It was discovered that the payment was described as being for ‘Media Partnership with Arise Global Media Limited.

    Nduka Obaigbena is a Duke of Owa Kingdom (a traditional title holder)and kinsman of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.

    There was no evidence of work done”  – being part of a Petition against GOV. IFEANYI OKOWA by APC, Delta state,  addressed to the Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices & Other Offences Commission, dated 20 February, 2023  and signed off by its Secretary, E V Onojeghuo Esq.

    (See Page 28,  THE NATION of Wednesday, 22 February, 2023).

    Nigerians will now understand why the APC presidential candidate flatly refused to honour  their television station with his presence.

    It is Sunday, 26 February, 2023 and Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s election as the new Nigerian President MUST have happened, at least, 24 hours earlier than you are reading this.

    The Almighty God must have had Bola Ahmed Tinubu in mind when He said in His word: 2 Timothy 1:7 that He has “not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline”.

    Twice did Tinubu head, all the way, to the historic city of Abeokuta, not only to out the plans of the enemy, but to confound, and put them to shame; and to make that come true which He also said of him in Psalms 6:9-10:

    I have heard your cry for help and I have answered your prayer. All your enemies will be discomfited and troubled. They will turn and suddenly leave in shame”.

    All these is why the ever perspicacious Yorubas say:  ‘eni Olorun da ko se fara we’, meaning that a child of God is absolutely beyond comparison.

    What did they not do?

    What evil did they not plan?

    To how many, other than Tinubu, did they not promise the presidency?

    Was it former president Goodluck Jonathan, to whom they went, from the highest quarters, to woo, even when the decent gentleman – a minority of minorities – was still thanking God for the opportunity God gave him to rule Nigeria, or was it the  political neophyte, Godwin Emefiele who, having turned the Central Bank to their plaything,  they didn’t try to foist on Nigeria as if the country is a banana Republic?

    They did not stop there.

    To Senate President Ahmad Lawan they also went, he who Tinubu almost singlehandedly paved his way to high office. 

    But, of a truth, God works in  mysterious ways, his wonders to behold as that happened long after God had posititively used Lawan to partner with House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila and other well meaning members of the National Assembly to CAST IN STONE, the impossibility of President Muhammadu Buhari  naming a consensus presidential candidate for the party as some  had planned.

    This was because the  Electoral Law, 2022, made it mandatory for  every contestant to signify, in writing, his/her acceptance of a consensus agreement.

    By the time those working against Tinubu dropped Lawan’s name like a bomb, claiming that it was a presidential directive, Lawan had, by his own hands, already helped in making consensus candidacy a near  impossibility as they could only have got Tinubu’s agreement from his cadaver.

    It can only be God!

    Even back home,  in Tinubu’s own Southwest geo- political zone where he had been the political lodestar, mentor and boss for decades, there still emerged some unforgiving enemies, who are not only permanently plotting but, forever, grandstanding like they own us.

    However, unlike many in Yoruba land who will find it extremely hard to forgive our one-time leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, I would rather  empathise with him. Here, in case you’ve forgotten, was a once formidable political titan whose name we used to swear with in these parts, but  who Tinubu has, for decades,  irrepairably banished to political Siberia in the region, if not in Nigeria. Our people merely sniggered when Papa announced his endorsement of Peter Obi as it actually amounts to nothing beyond the motor spare parts markets in Yoruba land.

    Tinubu was back in Abeokuta to, once again, expose the enemies’ shenanigans after they had come up with the worst lie ever against him.

    They allegedly went to the Villa and convinced the president thatTinubu had distributed trillions of Naira to buy votes. Having given his word to leave a legacy of transparent election, the president

     apparently brought their story and approved what APC governors have appropriately described as the ‘Emefielian & co Naira confiscation’ policy.

    The enemies went gaga, believing they had seen Tinubu and APC’s back. These well known wailers immediately went to town celebrating President Buhari, a man they had hitherto described in the most lurid of language, consigning his near 8 year tenure into Armaggedon.

    Atiku, Peter Obi, amongst others, now started to speak from both sides of their mouth, but the more pauperised and penniless Nigerians became, the more they knew those who had coyly led the president to the cul de sac.

    Things turned awry for those who planned to make APC the peoples’ enemy in order to demarket the party and its presidential candidate ahead the election when 3 APC governors headed straight to the Supreme Court, not only denouncing the wicked execution of an otherwise good policy but asking the President to withdraw it as it is not an APC policy.

    The Supreme Court, with its ears to the ground, and seeing the ruinous effect on the citizenry, promptly acquiesced, ordering that the status quo ante should remain – that is, that the policy be put on hold.

    It speaks to the villainy of the enemies that they could not appreciate the fact that had

    Tinubu and the APC intended to buy votes, they would not have severally traversed the length and breadth of this huge country, selling their very detailed Manifesto of Renewed Hope.

    But Nigerians saw through them.

    Realising that the policy left millions of Nigerians penniless, pauperised and, indeed, actually dying on queues, lining up to be paid as little as N5000, turned with sumptuous curses on the originators of the torridly executed policy.

    But since Tinubu’s candidature has the imput, and the blessing of God, the refrain, all over the country, particularly in the North today is: money or no money o, Tinubu is the  candidate we are voting for.

    It is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.

    Halleluyah

    The Ogbogbo – Ijebu Boy Turns 75

    How. time flies?

    This time 5 years ago the entire Ogbogbo – Ijebu community was a beehive of activities as family, friends, admirers, but especially his mates at both Loyola College and the Great UI, both of Ibadan, trooped out to celebrate one of their own – the ever genial, winsome and absolutely reliable Chief Olumuyiwa Runsewe.

    On that occasion 5 years ago, this entire column was dedicated to my friend of exactly 55 years having both first met at the then BOYS’ WATERING POINT in Ibadan – that is COCOA HOUSE, fittingly one of the Avatar’s (AWO) indelible hallmarks in the region.

    Since then, Muyiwa and I have been like 6&7.

    All I shall do on this momentous occasion – as all Nigerians await the formal, ‘sure as day follows the night’ election of Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the JAGABAN BORGU, as the President of Nigeria, is wish my friend God’s abounding grace.

    MUYOOO, Happy Birthday and Many Happy Returns.

  • As it was in the beginning

    As it was in the beginning

    It is a millennial embarrassment, but not at all surprising, having somewhat closed eyes to his  legacy,  that  President Buhari is ending the lethargic way  he started out. He had taken like six months to cobble together a Federal Executive Council, and in the proverbial way the Yoruba say the White man fouls the air while quitting office, he has aimed a gratuitous insult on the very apex court by  unilaterally, and illegally, varying its pronouncements.

    Nigerians can only hope that the Supreme Court would never be that laid back to allow this executive seizure of judicial power remain permanent on its long history. What has just happened should, in fact, make Nigerians pray that President Buhari’s oft – repeated promise of leaving a legacy of fair and transparent election is not a hollow one. After all, not ten in a hundred Nigerians could have believed, only a week ago, that he could, in this manner, thrash the Supreme Court by throwing its pronouncement to the garbage heap of history.

    Far worse is the likelihood that being a legal mind, Malami, his Attorney- General and Minister of Justice, may have advised this judicial misadventure.

    Short of that, the encouragement for this may have come from the Mafia to which, for so long, governance in our country would appear to have been transferred, for which reason the First Lady once belly- ached on the BBC in faraway London.

    Not even former Presdent Obasanjo, in refusing to pay Lagos state its seized Local Government funds, after the Supreme court had so ordered , hurt the court, and rendered it so torridly hors de combat, as President Buhari has just done via his unfortunate national address.

    Therefore, if we ordinary Nigerians cannot tell him, the Supreme Court must now help inform President Buhari, in  the best way possible, that he does not own Nigeria and should, therefore,  not attempt a rehash of Louis XIV’s “L’État, c’est moi”, meaning “I am the state”.

    He, no doubt, has enormous powers but none, not one, as some respected silk commented yesterday ,  gives him the right to sit on appeal on any court judgment, least of all, on a Supreme Court decision.

    It is more unfortunate that the premises on which some of his reasons are based are not in accord with logic. I give only two examples: when he says the volume of money retrieved by the CBN has lowered inflation, he either has not heard, or has not been informed, that the inflation rate which was 21.34 in December ’22 is now 21.82.  Equally, when he said that the money so far retrieved will now be available for investment, I think that, out of respect to his person, Emefiele has not yet sold him the lie that the retrieved N500 notes have been burnt, as he has ingloriously been trying to sell to Nigerians.

    Or are the ‘burnt’ N500 notes still available for investment?

    So much for the quality of advice Godwin Emefiele must have been giving President Buhari.

    This brings me to Ladi Williams who, a few months ago, as a guest of Channels TV, asked Nigerians to hold that President Buhari has, indeed, done his best, and that we should now look forward to whoever his successor may be,  for any positive change to happen in Nigeria.

    I therefore go back to my article of 31 July, ’22 titled:”The Tinubu Roadmap to Nigerian Greatness as Panacea to The Nigerian Conundrum. I wrote, therein, as follows:

    The starting point our presidential aspirants should now realise is  the appreciation that disaster looms in Nigeria. It is a nation on crutches. It worsened the other day when bandits, or was it Boko Haram elements, looked President Muhammadu Buhari straight in the eye, figuratively speaking, and  said they will kidnap, not just him, but together with a serving state governor, and bring them straight into the bush where they had then  just finished giving the remaining 43 victims of the Abuja – Kaduna train kidnap they have held for over 100 days, the beating of their lives. What made that worse was that many days after, the equally threatened governor El Rufai of Kaduna state, told Nigerians that the president was still unaware of the gratuitous insult.

    Unfortunately, insecurity is only one of the many demons tearing at the very soul of the country. The economy equally  lies prostrate as Nigeria spends about118 percent of its revenue on debt servicing. The Naira is hardly worth the paper on which it is printed just as tertiary education has been  dead for the past 5 months with nearly all Universities shut down.

     All these may not have been for lack of trying by President Buhari as presidential spokespersons  never cease to tell us but the truth is that his best is simply not good enough.

    While we  concede all the unexpected headwinds – the low oil prices for a considerable length of time, two successive recessions, Covid -19 and the ongoing Russia- Ukraine war, we beg to assert that much more could still have been done and it is safe to say that the government is, actually, now clearly overwhelmed.

    This past week, Ladi Williams, a guest on Channels TV Morning Show, suggested that Nigerians should now realise that at about 80, President Buhari is no longer the young man of the ‘80’s. Therefore, rather than  criticise him, we should commend the bit he has been able to do.

    I copletely agree with him.

    He equally  suggested that Nigerians must now begin to look more to those individuals angling to succeed him in less than a year. So whatever rough edges the president might be leaving behind, we must now begin to critically look at that individual, who would, be most fit for purpose, to rebuild Nigeria.

    This is why I am recalling the article I wrote on these pages over 6 months ago so we would concentrate less on critising the incunbent.

    The article tells about the campaign promises  the APC  presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has presented to Nigerians as his roadmap to  Nigeria’s rebirth, and greatness, if elected president. However, before I enumerate his key promises let me make some comments on two other leading candidates, starting with the redoubtable former Nigerian Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP’s presidential candidate, to be followed by that of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi.

    Thanks to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerians now know that almost as soon as Atiku got into office as his Vice in 1999,  he became distracted, plotting to replace him as President. This Obasanjo said was because the Marabouts who told Atiku he would be elected governor  but would not  serve as such because he would be nominated to a higher office, also told him he would be president almost without even trying. Obasanjo further said thatthe dislocation this caused Atiku was why he couldn’t  do much in office, except that Nigerians remember that under his direct supervision, national investments worth about $100Billion were sold off  for  about 1.5 B dollars. President Obasanjo described Alhaji Atiku in words that are far beyond me to repeat on these pages  and concluded: “knowing all that I discovered about him, what would have been an unpardonable mistake, and sin against God, would have been to foist him on Nigeria as president” – Obasanjo, My Watch(Part 2).

    If Atiku was not good enough to lead Nigeria in 2007, he certainly cannot be the man Nigeria needs today, 16 years after.

    On his part, Governor Obi, would best be remembered for investing Anambra state’s funds in his family business when he was Governor of Anambra state. There is, in addition, documented evidence of  his ethnic – motivated actions which led to Northern traders having to hurriedly relocate from Anambra to Delta state as they were being killed in numbers, and their houses, and markets, burnt. The Sultan of Sokoto was reported to have intervened to no avail. We need not mention the unreplied allegations of his drug dealing by the respected Igbo Association, IGBO KWENU.

    As the tenure of these two and Tinubu in public office was contemporaneous, it should be interesting to note that this was the same time the APC presidential candidate, as Lagos State governor,  was laying the foundations of a then  rustic, refuse – laden, and  security – challenged Lagos, to turn it  to what today is the fifth largest economy in Africa.

    That was the Lagos President Obasanjo described in 2001, while launching the Global Campaign for Good Urban Governance in Nigeria as follows: “Lagos, with its notoriety, qualifies as an urban jungle which should not be inhabited by any sane person”. The same Obasanjo would go on to seize  the state’s Local Government funds in 2005, an action which Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said provided ample opportunity for the Tinubu – led Lagos state government “to think like a sovereign state, which enabled it to overcome its financial challenges” , adding that. “the capacity of the state to rethink its predicament at the time resulted in huge increase in its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), which is today in the region of N45 billion”.

    Below is what space constraint will permit of Tinubu’s promise to the nation ahead the 2023 Presidential election:

    *Decentralising the police and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs simultaneously.

    *Transforming Nigeria into an enviable country, where there will be justice, peace and prosperity for all; a great country,  and a role model for black people worldwide.

    *Make Nigeria a thriving democracy, with a fast-growing industrial base, capable of producing the basic needs of the people as well as exporting these to other countries.

    *Turn Nigeria to a robust economy where prosperity will be shared by all; irrespective of class, region, or religion as well a safe and secure country with abundant food, affordable shelter and quality health care for all.

    *Ensuring a nation founded on justice, peace, and prosperity for all.”

    *He promised to launch a new National Industrial Policy which will focus on special interventions to reinvigorate specific strategic industries.

    *Stimulating jobs will be his top priority as President and  will launch a major public works program with heavy investment in infrastructure,  manufacturing and agriculture.

    *His administration, will build an efficient, fast-growing, and well-diversified emerging economy with a real GDP growth, averaging 12% annually for the next four years, translating into millions of new jobs, especially for millions of  Nigerian youths.

    *Create six new Regional Economic Development Agencies

    (REDA) which will establish sub-regional industrial hubs to exploit each zone’s competitive advantage and optimise their potential for industrial growth.

    *Formulate a new National

    Policy on Agriculture to boost food production. He will also formulate a new National Policy on Agriculture to boost

    food production, just he will establish  new commodity exchange

    boards, in order to

    guarantee minimum pricies for agricultural products like cotton, cocoa, rice, soya beans, corn, palm kernel, and groundnuts.

    *On infrastructure, Ashiwaju promised to “Build A New Nigeria (BANN)” by developing a National Infrastructure plan, which will cover strategic roads, bridges, rail, water, power, seaports, and airports, spanning the length and breadth of the country.

    *His administration will combine government funding, borrowing, public private partnership, private sector financing and concession to initiate a medium and long-term financial model for the BANN initiative.

    *He promises an action-oriented, and immediate, focus on resolving existing challenges of power generation plants, gas purchasing, pricing, transmission, and distribution.  The administration’s critical goal will be to have 15,000 megawatts, distributable to all categories of consumers nationwide, to ensure

    24/7 sustainable supply, all within the next four  years.

    *On the oil and gas sector, Tinubu said there will be no need for a subsidy because the market will be open and transparent. Supply will come from local refineries, and the forces of demand and supply will determine the price of petroleum products. He will establish a National Strategic Reserve for Petroleum Products to stabilize supply during unexpected shortages or surplus periods. This will eliminate any form

    of product shortages and prevent wild swings in prices.

    *25 per cent of the nation’s budget will go to Education, and he will continue the free school feeding programme of the present  APC government , feeding

    “millions of primary school children across the country. On tertiary education, his administration will eradicate strikes by encouraging the institutions to source for funds through grants and corporate

    sponsorships, with all the institutions granted financial  autonomy as well as establish student loans for tertiary education students.

    *He will increase funding for health care to 10 per cent. The National Health Insurance Scheme will be relaunched to grant health insurance cover to most Nigerians.

    Since this article was published on Sunday, 31 July, ’22, the candidate has been everywhere in the country, expatiating on them, especially as they relate to each state, professional and, or trade group  everywhere he visited on his unmatched campaign tours.  

    And as the candidate never ceases to say: hope is here.

  • Emefiele: Nigerians beware

    Emefiele: Nigerians beware

    Simply put, this current problem stems from the fact that Emefiele, CBN, and the banks have shown a lack of capacity. This is the same tardiness Emefiele has inflicted on forex and the multiple policy somersaults the portfolio has suffered. Everything about the Naira redesign is bad policy implemented badly! Timing. Deadlines. Datelines. Concept and conception. Logic. Support. Volume. Whatever the strength of the

    system, Emefiele blew it. There are not enough minted notes. Get these notes out into the market and POSs, and you have a done deal. That should be the springboard for the policy. Create volume, capacity and circulation.”

    “Taking Nigeria into the cashless zone should not be a hard sell. If it is good, people will buy into it as they have done in other countries that have demonstrated capacity and efficiency. Here in Nigeria, phone and Internet penetration remain not just poor, but erratic. Internet coverage is only 12 per cent. It is this needful backbone for e- banking that we must first get right”. – Felix Oboagwina, Lagos.

    As things stand today, Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank Governor, is an existential danger to Nigeria. The Supreme Court saw that and has, in the mean time, temporarily stopped his crazed, and totally ill- timed scheme designed to, a priori, determine how the 2023  Presidential election goes. But his danger is only mitigated, not squelched. Worse is, he might, in fact, eventually, be far more dangerous to Nigeria than first imagined.

    The Moses Oludele Idowu’s thesis which this article principally deals with might, at first, look harebrained, illogical and even impossible. But not when you take a critical look at the Emefiele persona: a guy who, for longer than the sitting president – he became CBN governor before President Buhari took office – has luxuriated in unaccountable power and money,  had dispensed dollar at whatever rate pleased him, to whoever; who sees himself the equals, if not the benefactor of the powerful Mafia goons literally controlling Nigeria, and to whom he dispenses his dollar largess.  And, of course, the same guy who felt truly insulted to be asked to resign when the president demanded that of interested public servants keen on contesting election. He actually took a lawyer to contest that just like he is now quibbling over the Supreme Court directive over his currency swap.

    Our servant has obviously become our boss, and Godwin

    Emefiele is now too big to be running after money – mere money – having himself made many stupidly rich.

    So it becomes logical, as Idowu argues in his piece, that only RAW, GLOBAL POWER, now catches Emefiele’s fancy.

    And it seems logical.

    Why?

    Quickly sensing how powerful  Emefiele, has become in view of the unprecedented protection he enjoys from the unelected, shadowy characters within the Villa Mafia to which he appears only answerable as evidenced in a trending WhatsApp video where he stood at attention, genuflecting to one of the mafia’s erstwhile arrowheads,  an  international organisation that  already controls, and inspires, a huge chunk of the agricultural policy of African countries, has probably zeroed in on him as the means through which to control the monetary policies of the largest African economy.

    The international organisation is widely known to be “engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, but mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa”.

    It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, and finally by supplying them genetically modified ones (GM)”.

    So how does Emefiele fit into this?

    Let us now press into service, the inimitable

    Oludele Idowu and his

     beautifully argued thesis, as served in his article captioned:”Who Does Godwin Emefiele Work For?

    He writes:

    “Central Bank Digital Currency:”Few days ago newspapers published the story of the introduction of CBN’s Credit Card – the National Domestic Card Scheme which is aimed at unifying all payment platforms in the country and replacing all other credit cards”.

    The Credit Card, he says, is to achieve seven objectives but Idowu is only concerned with the seventh which, according to him is  “the most contentious and amorphous one, laden with sinister intentions”.

    “The card will augment CBN’s effort to ensure seamless dissemination of government- to – person payment and other social impact initiatives thus supporting the growth of a robust digital economy.”

    “That, according to him, shows that the goal of the CBN Credit Card is  “the creation of a Central Bank digital currency, which he says is why Nigerians must be worried”.

    According to him, “the furious drive towards a cashless economy, the mopping up of cash and keeping all of us stranded is to introduce a Central Bank digital currency – a nightmare we should all be very worried about”.

    He then asks:”Why should Nigerians be Worried?”

    “The roads to hell, he says, are usually paved with good intentions. “The CBN Digital Currency promises to make payments easier but that is a fluke, indeed, a lie. Rather, it is part of an agenda to replace all physical funds with digital currency which would give them total control over our lives”. “With such an instrument the CBN and its agents will monitor every transaction, limit the amount spent and can even delete our funds as they wish. It is the road to full,  unimpeded and total tyranny over Nigerians. It is the road to totalitarianism, and  Nigerians need to be warned that our own CBN has already started a war against us.

    How?

    “With Digital Currency he says, there will, necessarily, come a Digital ID – another level of personal information processing”. “There can’t be a Digital Currency without a Digital ID. The Digital ID would then be connected to our vaccine status, which is where they are headed since that international company is a control freak”.

    Let me add this: remember those who said Africans will be picking dead bodies on the streets as a result of Covid -19?

    But God showed He is still on the throne and  they were the ones who died in their millions.

    Idowu continues:

    “So if you don’t receive their vaccines then you get no money. It would be digital currency, not physical cash; so they’ll just erase you from their platform with all your money. Is this the Davos Play Book?”, he asks.

    “If you participate in a protest against government or write an article that offends the agents of government or of the global corporatocracy, then they just clean you out, with your money”. “With digital currency it is easy, a poor man can be made rich and the rich made poor if he refused to play ball. That is why you should worry. That is why you must  wake up and fight this Emefielian nonsense. “No one is fettered or goes to perdition except with the chains which he forges with his own hands”.

    Emefiele’s political calculation, aimed at gifting the 2023 presidential election to their preferred candidate, and which is the main concern of Nigerians today, is only but short term, as totalitarianism is their real goal.

    “This past week, they warned again of Severe Epidemic Enterovirus Respiratory Syndrome ( SEERS) which they say will debut by 2025. They did a similar simulation  just months before the COVID-19 and predicted, with   clinical accuracy

     that there would be an epidemic by 2019. Nigeria participated in that simulation  experiment just as it is one of the arrowheads of the Central Bank Digital Currency. Are you sure Nigeria has not been sold?”

    Just remember that this CBN scatter brain project was not discussed at the Federal Executive Council or at the Economic council and neither the Finance minister nor, possibly the Vice – president, knew anything about it.

    Is Nigeria already at the mercy of the globalists?

    Idowu concludes his seemingly impossible, but quite rational and plausible thesis as follows:

    “So with another epidemic already planned for 2025, we can guess why Digital Currency, complete with Digital ID are being planned”. “This will be linked with your vaccine status so once you refuse to take the vaccine you have no money, and you can no longer buy or sell”.

    “With digital currency fully automated, you are shut out of the global system, and, just like your account can be deleted on Facebook or YouTube,  your money can disappear once you go against the new global ruler. “That is why Nigerians should  be worried”.

    “ And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads:

    “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” ( Revelation 13:16,17).

    If your disbelief in this is rooted in what is in it for Emefiele, first ask yourself why the globalists are not poor people.

    Control, raw power is their intent, as at a point, money becomes meaningless to some people.

  • 2023: The omens are not too good (3)

    2023: The omens are not too good (3)

    “Will Daura’s role as the “unseen god of the Aso Rock Villa” in the last eight years be confirmed or repudiated in the next presidential election? We have only a few weeks to find out. But whatever happens, Daura would no doubt have done his best to determine who would (not) be our next president” – Professor Wale Adebanwi – First Black Rhodes Professor at St Antony’s College, Oxford University.

    This is the concluding part of this article and I shall endeavour, therein, to tell Nigerians the bitter truth. As far as I can see, President Muhammadu Buhari does not hate Tinubu, the man who turned around, for good, his long running political odyssey, nor does he seem to have forgotten all the Jagaban Borgu did to make him President of Nigeria after three brutal failures trying to be president. As has been said about him, Buhari probably has a heart of gold but he is, unfortunately, presently thoroughly conflicted. He is, at the moment,  “between Scylla and Charybdis”, torn beween two equally unpleasant alternatives.- one, APC, the party on which platform he became President, as well as its presidential candidate, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on the one hand, and his powerful nephew, the man he has known forever, Mamman Daura, who believes that it is fair, and equitable, that in a country of over 250 ethnic nationalities, power must reside permanently in the North but particularly in a Fulani.

    The sheer monstrosity of this belief is what has rankled the fair minded, straight thinking  APC Northern  governors – who have – God bless them – realised that this will be nothing short of Nigeria’s road to  Somalia.

    When then you see a CBN governor, angling to become the President of Nigeria, but sitting pat in office, dealing with the Nigerian currency as foolishly and unprofessionally as he chooses, with the president obviously backing him to the hilt, or you see him disdainfully treating an arm of the National Assembly, or the DSS being shamed, told to hands off him,  just know that his source of  power resides, not in God, but rather in some shadowy, but powerful circles, totally unknown to the Nigerian constitution.

    I digress as I have almost forgotten that this article is, primarily, a dialogue between me and my friend, the brilliant professor, of Igbo extraction, on the 2023 election.

    In addition to the first of his views which I served as a teaser in the first instalment, he further wrote as follows:

    “(b) I remain very sceptical of the Northern support. Some of the governors and other members of the Northern political establishment are secretly dealing with Atiku. They may not quite like Atiku, but the prospect of retaining power in the north is something that appeals to them. There is serious distrust from this group against Asiwaju despite all he has done in the past to show good faith.

    (c) Buhari and the people around him have not shown commitment to Asiwaju and the APC. They are at best noncommittal and behind the scenes, you just have to wonder what they’re thinking, what they’re plotting and what they’re doing. These situations are worrisome. The Northern/South west alliance which Asiwaju committed so much to in building, is facing a very serious strain.

    (d) From my view, and the view of many others in the trail, Asiwaju is not pumping money into his campaign the way he was expected to. There is a marked reluctance on his part. What we see now is different from what we saw during his campaign for the ticket. Is he uncertain? Not very sure footed? I don’t really know. On this account, you are probably closer to those who may know.

    (e) there is also the fear of Yorubanisation of the entire process and some people point at this as a sign of what is to come. (we will talk more about this in due course)

    On the post election reaction, the fear is that if Obi loses, there will be protest. The reason for this fear is because the Obidients are working on a mindset. That mindset is that “Obi must win”, or if you like, “Obi has won” and is merely waiting for the announcement of his victory. This is a dangerous mindset because it negates the basics of democratic ethos and creates a dangerous psychological situation where people would be unwilling to accept a result that did not align with their expectations.

    However, the protest, if it comes will not particularly be constrained to the south east. If Obi loses, and the US, Brazil scenario comes, it will be centered around the urban areas. Obi is principally a candidate of the youths and those in urban centers and these will be the volatile areas particularly in the south east, south south, north central, and of course, Lagos”.

    My comments on Prof’s comment will go as follows.

    Nothing whatever is wrong with the North support for Ashiwaju. Indeed, not since the AVATAR, the irreplaceable AWO, dating back to the ’50s, have I seen, especially in my EKITI where we used to vote for him/his party 98 -99 per cent, anything remotely close to the APC NORTHERN GOVERNORS’ support for Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Not any where have I ever seen their level of sincerity of purpose, commitment and derring do. It will be said of these governors that they are the modern architects of Nigeria.

    Indeed, as I will show in this article, it is this support, to which Tinubu owed his victory at the primaries, that has thrown the evil VILLA MAFIA into a frenzy; running helter-skelter and leading the president into making some absolutely unthinkable emergency appointments.

    Or who would ever have thought that with elections less than 4 weeks away, in a country that is so combustible, the president could appoint Solomon Arase as Chair of the Police Service Commission – a very consequential appointment in the process that will produce his successor?

    Arase, a former Inspector- General of Police, is a CARD CARRYING MEMBER OF ATIKU’S PEOPLES DEMOCRACRATIC PARTY and the Chairman, Security Sub-Committee of the PDP Presidential primaries of October 30 and 31, 2021 from which Atiku emerged as the party’s flag bearer.

     Arase is, in addition, from Agenebode area of Edo State and some, in fact, say from the same village, as High Chief, Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi, the Chairman, Atiku’s Technical Committee for the 2023 election, and owner of AIT/RayPower, and not far apart from the neighbourhood of the likes of Nduka Obaigbena, whose ARISE TV, has hardly any other job than thashing anything APC.

    It cannot be more indicative of a high – up collusion, that within 48 hours of that nomination becoming public, Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, had hurriedly signified his endorsement of Arase’s appointment; when all the senators were yet to be siezed of the fact.

    And as if on a relay race, long before Arase’s confirmation, and before his PSC could meet, the IGP had instructed the appointment of new commissioners of Police for Lagos and Ogun States on the usual excuse that the incumbents were being promoted.

    Who is deceiving who?

    Indeed, that such a grotesque appointment could be made and so much  in- your – face, without any of the array of advisers at the president’s beck and call ever niddling him, is emblematic of the  amount of hard- headedness that goes into policy making in our country.

    It is, therefore, hoped, that for their place in the history of this great, but unfortunate, country individual senators will demonstrate courage, and shred this Arase recommendation, like those before then did in burying Obasanjo’s life presidency project.

    These people should recall that they did far worse before the APC Presidential primaries, when, at the 11th hour, they dropped Lawan’s name, but God frustrated them all, as He will do again as He never sleeps nor slumbers.

    Concluding, I can now say categorically that with President Buhari’s undisguised support for Emefele’s shenanigans, and his own, as oil minister, literally turning Nigeria to Maduro’s Venezuela, the president has lined, ramrod, behind his nephew and gone now are those days when a Northern friend of mine, with considerable political clout, could write to me saying: “When I saw Mallam Ya’u Darazo supporting Tinubu openly, with adverts in the media, I concluded whom PMB supported.This is because I know their relationship”, when I told him President buhari wasn’t enthusiastic in his support for Tinubu.

    It will, however, amount to nothing because with the Northern APC Governors’ support for Tinubu, which has caught on like wild fire everywhere in the North, the Mafia and its backers will fail, and Atiku will ‘lule’ for the sake of Nigeria.

    What Nigerians should expect next is to see this same forces putting pressure on Peter Obi to withdraw for Atiku, promising to either give him an oil block, or pay back, with ‘jara’, every penny he ever spent on his campaigns.

    Even at that, as day follows the night, and in the mighty name of Jesus, truth will prevail and Tinubu will win, come 25 February, 2023.

  • 2023: The omens are not too good (2)

    2023: The omens are not too good (2)

    “Great Nigerian youths; ponder intently on this. The Jonathan presidency, mentally slow, had force exerted on his threads or strings, fast one at that, and more than half of the time, to the swings of the Obasanjo’s until the rug under Jonathan’s feet got hauled out.

    The Obasanjo false epistle cannot be for the fun of it. It is out of malice. The letter is the sword of partisan wrangling from the scabbard appropriated to derail Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s steady presidential campaigns; mobilize Nigerians, particularly the young generations against his election as president; and to foist a puppet president in Obi on Nigeria. Obasanjo, whose military and civilian governments failed to coalesce the yearnings of Nigerians for growth and development is grossly bankrupt to dictate who our next president should be. The man who pressured the National Assembly to manipulate the constitution in favour of his third term agenda has lost purity to recommend the presidential candidate Nigerians should vote for. The man whose public conducts slammed a huge question mark on his eligibility for the world leadership laurel, the highly coveted Nobel Prize for World Peace, for which he travelled global, in rowdy manner and never had it, has forfeited aptitude to commend Nigerians to vote in a particular direction”-Isaac Olusesi in ‘Tinubu, Obasanjo and Nigerian Youths’.

    Electioneering campaigns towards this year’s election has been so fouled up one needs not be a Nostradamus to know what the election, especially its aftermath, will look like.

    As I wrote in the first part to this article, whether he knows it or not, ex- president Olusegun Obasanjo’s whining; particularly his coyly veiled instigation of the Nigerian youth, is bound to be a major contributory factor to whatever post- election conflagration Nigeria may witness, no matter which way the presidential election slated for 25 February, ’23 goes.

    This is because, as is his wont, every other political leader apart him, and possibly Peter Obi now, is a devil incarnate who has joined up in eating up the future of the Nigerian youth, even that of the yet unborn generation. But he is exempt, who has spent the longest years as Head of state, but failed spectacularly to unite the country.

    It is this his destructive, evil mindset that has ensured that not a single Nigerian president, after him, has been spared his lacerating letters. It got so bad a mild mannered President Goodluck Jonathan couldn’t help telling him to shove it.

    In his last corrosive showing, he wrote as follows: “My dear young men and women, you must come together and bring about a truly meaningful change in your lives. If you fail, you have no one else to blame. Your present and future are in your hands to make or to mar. The future of Nigeria is in the same manner in your hands and literally so. If for any reason you fail to redeem yourself and your country, you will have lost the opportunity for good and you will have no one to blame but yourselves and posterity will not forgive you. Get up, get together, get going and get us to where we should be (forgetting he had all the opportunities but never did). And you, the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’ (Your turn”).

    Whenever Obasanjo uses the word ‘dear’ for you, I urge that you mentally recall the experience of PDP Chairman, Audu Ogbe in his hands, after having lunch in Ogbe’s house or what he later visited on Governor Ayo Fayose, after he had severally visited with him in Ekiti eating pounded yam.

    I would like to draw attention to the following portion of that letter: “And you, the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’.

    Like a practised demagogue, all Obasanjo is doing here is presenting Obi – a two term governor, who left office almost 10 years ago – as a youth who must, like it or not, be voted for, failing which they would have forfeited their future. Is it possible, by any means, that Obasanjo is seeing the Nigerian youth – East, West, North and South, as homogenous, that is, one and the same, and with identical interests? Did they all react the same way to the #OccupyNigeria protest against petrol subsidy removal of 2012, or to the #EndSars riots of October, 2020?

    Monofiki!

    So if we know President Obasanjo well enough, we’d know he actually addressed his letter to the restive Igbo youths whose kinsman, Peter Obi he endorsed, and who he knows very well have been burning, killing, decapitating and, literally levying a war of sorts on all security agents at sight. Only this past week, a local Government Area Chairman was beheaded in the region after the family had paid N6M ransom.

    He was asking them to get ready for anything, should Peter Obi fail to win, to quote him: “under my watch”.

    It should be remembered that this letter was a follow up to his, and Chief Ayo Adebanjo’s visit, to the Southeast to shed crocordile tears at a momentous gathering of Igbo elders, even if the pretext was to congratulate their sons’ mate, John Nwodo, on his birthday.

    These are two Yoruba elders who see themselves as lodestars in the Yoruba political firmament and, who in their life time, cannot imagine any other Yoruba, no matter how much more impactful, relevant and consequential, aspire to be what position they assume they hold in Yoruba political history. One glaring difference between them, however, which the Peter Obi issue presently masks, is the fact that while Obasanjo considers himself as being in perpetual competition with the immortal Awo in Yoruba land, Adebanjo acknowledges the Avatar’s indisputable place, but sees himself as the only true representative of Awo.

    A mere wish.

    So Nigeria, yes Nigeria, must be very careful of these old men and all the security agencies must know that they already have their jobs cut out for them- no thanks to President Obasanjo, in particular.

    It was these thoughts that led me into inviting the views of a very good,  younger friend of mine, of Igbo extraction, and a brilliant professor, whose opinion I have cherished over the years, especially as we are mostly ‘ad idem’ on issues, to let me know his thoughts on the forthcoming election, holding nothing back.

    I shall include my reactions to his views. I wrote to him as follows:

    My dear Prof,

    Kindly let me have the benefit of your views on where the election stands today.

    Which candidate looks like coasting home to victory?

    What are your thoughts about post election reaction?

    Whoever wins, how do you think the South East, especially, will react?

    I shall be using some of your views on my column either anonymously, or ascribed, whichever you prefer”.

    I ended up not asking for his preference because I know that he will remain un – named in the article.

    It is a long discourse, and still ongoing.

    His answer should occupy us next week, God helping us, but in the meantime, a teaser:

    Prof: “Ordinarily, Asiwaju should be coasting home to victory, but I have some fears which are manifold. Let me identify some of them:

    (a) the opposition/enemies are working very hard to foist the narrative that Asiwaju is physically and mentally infirm. Through doctored videos, cut out narratives and series of innuendo, they are getting across to people. The health issue is the greatest weapon of campaign against the APC candidate even among fellow party members”.

    My reaction:

    Waoh!

    1.The health issue is sure big.

    But then can a sick person traverse Nigeria the way Tinubu is doing, severally, and for this long, without breaking down?

    I don’t think not collapsing can be faked, but opponents are doing their utmost to make him look like he’ll die tomorrow if not today”.

    An already failed wish.

  • 2023: The omens are not too good

    2023: The omens are not too good

    GENERAL election in Nigeria, especially the make or mar presidential election that is presently convulsing the country, is only five weeks away but goings-on in various parts of the country call for a lot of caution if the prediction of Nigeria breaking up, which thankfully did not materialise in 2015, is not to come upon us like a thief in the night in 2023.

    Post election events in both the U S and Brazil, two countries that are economically far ahead of Nigeria, and with no obvious religious altercations further complicating their circumstances, should serve to remind us of all the possibilities.

    I refer here to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in the US, and its repeat in Brazil a few days ago by supporters of  former President Jar Bolsonaro who was defeated in that country’s presidential election in 2022.

    Nor can we forget, nearer home in Africa, the fact that Kenya’s presidential election of August 8, 2017 was marred by violence, including killings, arson and beatings by police during protests and house-to-house operations especially in Western Kenya.  And if recalling those examples seem like Afghanistanising, then we certainly could not have forgotten the deadly post – election violence  which followed the April 2011 presidential election in Nigeria and left more than 800 people dead in 12 Northern states. The dead, unfortunately, included young Nigerian youths who committed no offence besides serving their fatherland by observing their National Youth Corps service year in that part of the country.

    A direct consequence of how that event was handled, with government agencies turning a blind eye, and ensuring that none of the killers was made to face the legal consequences, as has always been the case in Northern Nigeria, is the emergence, and virulence, of the various killing gangs that have literally overtaken the entire North, resulting in daily kidnappings, as well as the killing, even of several school children.

    Things are, of course, far worse in Nigeria today than they were in 2011 and if the colossal disaster of that election year had been attributed, by some people, to loose talk by politicians, it can only get far worse now that some elders, in order to, forever, remain politically relevant in Nigeria, nay the world, are deliberately stoking the fire, needlessly haranguing Nigerian youths, and trying to lure them into supporting a political party that only they cannot see, has no path, clear or not, to victory in an election in which the winner will not emerge simply by having the highest number of votes, even if all Nigerian youths were to vote only for its   presidential candidate.

    As I wrote last week, these elders must, for the sake of Nigeria, learn to briddle their mouth. 

    That’s all we plead.

    In their abstract on:

    Failed State 2030: Nigeria – A Case Study, Christopher Kinnan of the University of Southern Mississippi (USA), and his co- authors, wrote as follows: “This monograph describes how a failed state in 2030 may impact the United States and the global economy. It also identifies critical capabilities and technologies the US Air Force should have to respond to a failed state, especially one of vital interest to the United States and one on the cusp of a civil war. Nation-states can fail for a myriad of reasons: cultural or religious conflict, a broken social contract between the government and the governed, a catastrophic natural disaster, financial collapse, war and so forth. Nigeria with its vast oil wealth, large population, and strategic position in Africa and the global economy can, if it fails disproportionately affect the United States and the global economy. Nigeria, like many nations in Africa, gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. It is the most populous country in Africa and will have nearly 250 million people by 2030. In its relatively short modern history, Nigeria has survived five military coups as well as separatist and religious wars, it is mired in an active armed insurgency, is suffering from disastrous ecological conditions in its Niger Delta region, and is fighting one of the modern world’s worst legacies of political and economic corruption. A nation with more than 350 ethnic groups, 250 languages, and three distinct religious affiliations–Christian, Islamic, and animist, Nigeria’s 135, now 200M plus , are anything but homogenous. Of Nigeria’s 36 states, 12 are Islamic and under the strong and growing influence of the Sokoto caliphate. While religious and ethnic violence are commonplace, the federal government has managed to strike a tenuous balance among the disparate religious and ethnic factions. With such demographics, Nigeria’s failure would be akin to a piece of fine china dropped on a tile floor–it would simply shatter into potentially hundreds of pieces.”

    No lover of Nigeria can seriously dispute any of the existential challenges listed above because they as true today as they were when those troubling words were written in 2011.

    What we should all do, therefore, is not to further imperil Nigeria by exacerbating its problems.

    Therefore, politicians, their spokespersons and surrogates, as well as the do- gooders, especially those who frittered away several opportunities of leaving Nigeria far better than they did, but are are yet presenting like they are the best thing to have happened to Nigeria since sliced bread must be put under special watch.

    President Obasanjo, having stoked unnecessary anxiety by his epistemology where he should have merely endorsed Peter Obi, especially in a particularly anxious environment, security agencies must prepare specially for how the Southeast and the Southsouth will react to the result, no matter who wins.

    Yet these militarists, and their civilian co- conspirators are Nigeria’s worst enemies. Government, especially its security forces, must pay close attention to these people just like they must up the ante in their effort to stymie those individuals, groups, politicians and non – state actors in general, who do not want the 2023 elections to hold.

    While we all, as Nigerians, duly recognise the enervating, multi- faceted dimension of insecurity in most parts of the country, the North in particular, the tenacity and ferocity of the anti 2023 election elements in the Southeast demands that the security forces must think completely out of the box.

    A recent Premier Times report put this in proper perspective when it said as follows: “Although INEC facilities have been targets of attacks across the country in the past few years, attacks in the South East and South-south accounts for over 70 per cent”.

    “The commission’s analysis of the incidents showed that between 2019 and 2022, it recorded 26 attacks in the South-east (Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo), ten in the South-south (Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Cross River). “INEC also revealed that it recorded ten attacks in the South-west (Ogun, Lagos and Ondo), three attacks in the North-east (Taraba and Borno), one in the North-west (Kaduna), within the period”. According to the commission, 20 of the total of 50 incidents were by unknown gunmen and hoodlums, 18 during the EndSARS protest, six by political thugs during elections, four as a result of post-election violence and one each as a result of a bandit and Boko Haram attacks”.

    With particular emphasis on the Southeast, these anti social elements have shown that nobody, not politicians, businessmen, not government officials, security personnel nor their own impoverished kinsmen, surprisingly, are spared from being gruesomely murdered, with the body decapitated, hung or completely incinerated.

    All these we have seen.

    The security agencies must, however, be extremely careful, indeed, professional so as not to give the impression they are deliberately, and unnecessarily, targeting the region.

    Indeed, the fact that the front runners among the presidential candidates are from each of the major ethnic groups, must further direct the security agencies in the way of transparent professionalism, lest they worsen an already very bad situation.

    Nigeria must be salvaged, come rain, come shine.

    MY SINCERE APOLOGIES

    The printer’s devil crept in last week and ensured that my piece for the week was ‘headless’, that is, had no caption.

    For this I am most sorry.

  • Wole Olujobi, in his withering

    Wole Olujobi, in his withering

    ‘2023: Obasanjo And The Legend Of Tenea‘, article approximates former president Olusegun Obasanjo to “Oedipus orientation in consummate complexity”.

    “Raised and reared to preserve a kingdom, Oedipus, a grand patron of hubris, fell into a complex interplay of fate and pride to become an albatross to the kingdom he sought to preserve”.

    Let us quote him at some length.

    “Sophocles in his play ‘Oedipus Rex’ presents a gripping narrative of a man at the mercy of fate, but who pride would not allow to rediscover himself until he suffers irredeemable consequences.

    The ancient legend of Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, in several of his sojourns, lived in Tenea, a mythical lost city in Greece, according to the Greek mythology”.

    As recently as 1984, one of Greece’s top archaeologists, Eleni Korka, a Greek-American,  made the biggest discovery of her 40-year career: the mythical city of Tenea, which was built by Trojan prisoners of war sometime around 1100BC.

    After a laborious excavation by Korka and her team, the abandoned Tenea City in ruins was discovered to harbour golden carvings and other precious, high levels of art that could turn the fortunes of the delerict city of Tenea for good.

    As it is with both Oedipus and Tenea, so it is for Nigeria and General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd), former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as Nigerians again prepare for the February 2023 ballot to elect their President. After long years of misrule that left Nigerians at the mercy of poverty and Nigeria herself in the throe of ruins, conscious efforts were made to find a befitting leader to turn the nation’s fortunes for good after the conspiracy among the Nigerian ruling elite claimed MKO Abiola’s life in 1998, the unfortunate incident that sank Nigeria in the abyss like was the case with the lost city of Tenea.

    And so like archaeologist Korka, Nigerian ‘archaeologists’ in military fatigue led by Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdusalami Abubakar, dug through the length and breadth of the thoroughly degraded Nigeria to find a leader to turn the nation’s fortunes for good. Their search through ‘diligent excavation’, just like that of Korka, yielded Obasanjo, who had already decayed in General Sani Abacha’s gulag like the ruins of Tenea. Pronto, most parts of Nigeria hooted, prospecting that the nation had found fortune and so had hit the road to prosperity.

    But unlike Korka, what Nigeria’s excavators found was never gold, but a crippling albatross in the class of Oedipus: a fortune turned awry that opened the floodgate to compound-complex problems that stalk Nigerians even in their sleep”.

    Obasanjo, who I suspect usually momentarily forgets about himself when writing about the presumed failings of others, became something of a teacher of morals in the letter, which he described as an appeal to Nigerians, especially the youth. Therein he easily painted a picture of Nigeria the country was certainly not under him as president. He also attempted to give the impression that he left power of his own volition, forgetting that the National Assembly had to rescue Nigeria from his longed for life presidency through an ingenious Third Term project, for which reason he coyly convoked a National Political Reform Conference, NPRC i00n 2005 but which was angrily voted down by a diligent National Assembly.

    It is apposite to state at the very beginning that Obasanjo has all the rights, human as well as legal, to endorse any presidential candidate of his choosing, but it is equally important that the Nigerian youths, to whom he specifically directed his appeal, should be adequately informed that this is a man of incomparable hubris; a very brilliant man who can easily sell a poke for a pig, and who, having cancelled the teaching of History in Nigerian schools, has , a priori, denied the same youths, the knowledge of the past which they sorely need in determining the truth, or falsity of his preachment.

    A past master in decoy, he had cleverly harangued the youths as follows:”My dear young men and women, you must come together and bring about a truly meaningful change in your lives. If you fail, you have no one else to blame. Your present and future are in your hands to make or to mar. The future of Nigeria is in the same manner in your hands and literally so. If for any reason you fail to redeem yourself and your country, you will have lost the opportunity for good and you will have no one to blame but yourselves and posterity will not forgive you. Get up, get together, get going and get us to where we should be. And you, the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’ (Your turn”.

    I earlier levelled a charge of momentary amnesia against the ex-president. Were this not true, he would have realised that he should be the last person to attempt to lecture any group of Nigerians, especially its youth, given the agony Nigerian Universities went through under his watch.

    Both at the governmental and domestic levels, Nigerian youths need all the information they can get in deciding whether, for them, Obasanjo can pass for a good mentor, or as an elderstatesman who, judging by his own life trajectory, should be listened to, emulated or not.

    As very highly educated Nigerians, these youths must, on their own, decide which way to go and in doing this, I only need to remind them of the popular saying that Google never forgets.

    And rather than leave them to go searching the entire Wide Web, I have gone out of my way to search for, and recommend to them, a single article which will provide far more than they would ever need to decide on former President Obasanjo’s suitability, or not, to play his self- appointed role in their lives.

    I have in mind here, FAMILY SCANDALS – THE NEWS, published by Sahara Reporters on January 22, 2008 and it is in keeping with the popular Yoruba saying that if somebody promises you clothes, first look at what he is wearing.  There is, however, this proviso: please take everything you read therein, court depositions inclusive, as allegations only, (even though the former president did not sue Sahara Reporters in respect of the publication. You must, however, read the story to the end, as this piece barely contains half, to enable you make a valid judgement.

    The story reads as follows:

    “The Obasanjo family produces a blockbuster sequel to the contract scandal involving Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, as Gbenga, second son of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, accuses his father of gross sexual misconduct.

    Having spent a greater part of his life in important public positions, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former president, is familiar with scandals.

    In many of these, he starred or co-starred, injuring his reputation in a series of political and personal misdemeanours. .  Several reports accused him of abusing his office to favour cronies and himself and of selling privatised government assets cheap and in questionable circumstances.  But none of the scandals had the toxicity of the latest one: the allegation by Gbenga, Obasanjo’s second son, that his father had sexual relations with his wife, Mojisola. The lethal allegation is the highlight of an affidavit filed at the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja Division, in which Gbenga is requesting to dissolve his marriage to Mojisola. Gbenga’s affidavit was a response to a cross-petition filed by Mojisola, who was responding to her husband’s petition (ID/289/HD/05) for dissolution of the marriage on account of her alleged desertion from home. … the greater number of Gbenga’s poisoned darts were shot at his father, whom Gbenga alleged slept with Mojisola and compensated her with oil contracts with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, via her company, Bowen & Brown. “The petitioner (Gbenga) avers that the respondent (Mojisola) also got rewarded for her adulterous acts with several oil contracts with the NNPC from his father, General Olusegun Obasanjo, amongst which was the NNPC Consultancy training in supply chain management and project management awarded to her company, Bowen and Brown,” the affidavit read in part” – a gross misuse of the important office of President, more examples of which litter Obasanjo’s entire time in office, including the 16Billions he allegedly spent procuring darkness in place of light.

    “The alleged dalliances, he said, have traumatised him, and on account of that, he wants the court to order a DNA test to ascertain the true father of the two children produced during the marriage”. “Gbenga, a medical doctor and one of Obasanjo’s sons from Oluremi, his first wife, married Mojisola in Lagos on 29 April 2000 at a lavish ceremony. By 2004, the union was devoid of bliss, forcing them to separate”. Things further degenerated, prompting Gbenga to seek a divorce. But 15 days later, a notice of discontinuance was filed on Gbenga’s orders, a development attributed to pressure by the former president”.

    “Sources close to the estranged couple, however, list wife battering and infidelity on Gbenga’s part as major causes of friction in the marriage. Though Mojisola’s response was not as racy as Gbenga’s, it brimmed with delicious details of its own, which are hissing like animal fat in fire”.

    In her cross-petition, she alleged that Gbenga got contracts from the NNPC and Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, while his father was in office”.

  • 2023 and some meaningless endorsements

    2023 and some meaningless endorsements

    THE strength of an endorsement lies in the established capacity of the one giving you backing to turn things in your favour. That is why those who make light of Obasanjo lining up behind Obi have a point. In the last two or three election cycles, everyone he supported failed woefully and those he opposed carried the day” – Festus Eriye, Editor,  The Nation on Sunday in ‘The Tricky Business of Political Endorsement.

    “You and your cronies mentioned in your letter have left the country worse than you met it. Nigeria is not the creation of any of you, and although you feel you own it and are “Mr Nigeria”, deciding whether the country stays together or not, and who rules it; you don’t.  Nigeria is solely the creation of the British”.

    … “This is the end of my communication with you for life. I pray Nigeria survives your continual intervention in its affairs” – Dr Iyabo Obasanjo, DVM PhD, in a scathing letter to her father.

    I have hardly stopped laughing since these endorsements, especially from the usual suspects – those who can’t, by themselves, win a councillorship election – started pouring in for Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate.

    It began with the one from former president Olusegun Obasanjo, a man for whose sake I have been praying that the Nobel Prize Board of Directors will, very soon, inaugurate a prize for letter writing.

    Becoming a Nobel Laureate will do two things for President

    Obasanjo: level him up, not in mental magnitude as defined by the Avatar (AWO) with Professor Wole Soyinka, the man who, with the same immortal AWO, constitutes the unchanging foci of his mono directional, assumed competition. Also, that pedestal would finally assuage for his fruitless attempt at becoming the U.N General- Secretary – a project during which the late MKO Abiola – who he never one day mentioned during his 8 year rule- went out of his way to plead with the Nobel Laureate on his behalf – Obasanjo looks to me like a man in perpetual quest for relevance, even after twice serving as Head of state/ President, of the largest Black man’s nation on earth.

    Before some church men and a Sheik took Atiku to beg him in 2019, relishing in which event he then endorsed Atiku for the 2019 presidential election, below is what he told the world:”If I support Atiku for anything, God will not forgive me. If I do not know, yes. But once I know, Atiku can never enjoy my support,”.

    “It is not a question of working with or not working with an individual. If you are working for the good of Nigeria, I am working with you. If you are not working for the good of Nigeria, it does not matter who you are, I am not working with you”.

    So was he working for the good of Nigeria when the following happened under his watch: “between $8b and $16b was spent on the power sector without any result,(a senate report) Nigerian investments of over $100b, in the name of privatization,

     was sold for a measly $1.5b;  public  properties shared  in the name of  a dubious ‘monetisation policy’,  the 2007 election rigged to impose Umaru Yar’Adua who was so decent he personally described the election   as rigged and, finally, arm-twisted serving PDP governors and government contractors to donate  N7b towards the building pf his ‘Obasanjo Presidential Library’?

    Indeed, news now has it that former Ekiti State Governor, Dr Ayo Fayose, has asked him to return the N10M Ekiti money he forced him to contribute like the other state governors.

    Or could Nigerians have forgotten that President Obasanjo, at the same time, deployed federal machinery to remove governors Joshua Dariye, Rashidi Ladoja, Peter Obi, Chris Ngige and Ayo Fayose from office, as presidential spokesperson, Garuba Shehu, recently reminded him?

    Were these the actions of a democrat, even if we discount his intent to have a Third Term for which reason legislators were allegedly bribed?

    Given all these why should anybody be bothered that he endorsed a man who, with the best of intentions, has no clear path to victory in the 2023 presidential election? It has been suggested, in some serious circles, that these endorsers are actually looking forward to an inconclusive election which will enable them immorally influence things. They had better be told that were that to be the case, Obi will not even qualify for the run off, and they can take that to the bank.

    Obi’s Southeast, where he is strongest, has a mere 10M registered voters, half of who will not vote given the insecurity in the region and as for the other regions he cannot hope to have 25 per cent in more than a few states. 

    When the chips are down, Nigerian youths who Obasanjo had no time for during his tenure, closing Universities at will, and chasing their lecturers helter-skelter, but now suddenly remembers, will let him know that they are made of sterner stuff. Actually, I believe that these elders are merely out to humour a politician, a former two – term state governor they are now all eager to package as new wine in the Nigerian political firmament.

    I think it is time President Obasanjo knows that he is human, after all. All this swashbuckling just got to stop. The other time it was a futile attempt at creating a Third Option just so he could fight President Buhari to whose Aso Villa he was, at a point, the most frequent pilgrim until he saw that his ‘thread and niddle’ would not work. His endorsement of Obi, therefore, goes to nothing as will become crystal clear in February.

    I recall him telling Nigerians in 2011 that what Nigeria needed was candidate Goodluck Jonathan who he described as “a breath of freshness who would unite the broken county”. But

    Jonathan would later, like every other Nigerian president, be a recipient of several   withering letters from the only man who believes he knows it all – the only good ruler.

     So all said and done, his endorsement is as dead on arrival as it was when he endorsed Atiku in 2019, bearing in mind that even as a sitting President, the election of his immediate successor in 2007 still had to be rigged. Now with BVAS, not even the most accomplished election rigger will be able to tamper with the wishes of Nigerians.

    Concerning the other elderstatesmen who have never stopped tantalising Nigerians with restructuring, important though it is, and for which reason they claim to have endorsed the Labour party candidate, what exactly is Obi’s position on restructuring? What exactly can he be quoted as having said regarding restructuring, and where can we get that to read? I have personally written over a million words canvassing restructuring in my over 15 years on this column and know, for  a fact, that Obi will, like President Buhari, be asking what they mean by restructuring.

    So is Chief Adebanjo now being driven by ethnicity, which he loves to describe as equity, and no longer restructuring which he told Yorubas motivated his endorsement?

    In 2015, he endorsed and worked for Buhari with one of his sub alterns, our own Yinka Odumakin of blessed memory, as the campaign’s Chief Spokesperson.  In 2019 it was Atiku, even if his party, the PDP never campaigned about restructuring. Now, is it ethnicity, as if power can be served a la carte?

    Where is that done in politics?

    Nor can we forget that Chief Edwin Clark, President Goodluck Jonathan’s former godfather, was an Atiku cheer leader in 2019, talking restructuring. Today, he is rooting for an Obi who cannot be quoted, anywhere, on restructuring. Obi has not even been able to offer any idea on it, apparently out of his fear of IPOB because: he sides with Nigeria, he gets the IPOB treatment, which is certainly not palatable, and he goes with IPOB, he automatically demarkets himself, losing votes.

    That is the gentleman these elders want to vote for – as that is all their endorsement means –  just because they have their niddles and threads at the ready, to tie the hands of  President Obi, something they dare not try with Tinubu or Atiku.

  • When Nigeria’s fate may hang on INEC’s carelessness, incompetence or the corruption within it

    When Nigeria’s fate may hang on INEC’s carelessness, incompetence or the corruption within it

    “This is the first time in the annals of electoral politics, not only in Nigeria but also across the globe, where four results are produced from a single election. This is novel in electoral politics in any part of the world. May God help the Federal Republic of Nigeria” -Michael Abiodun Oni,  Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Babcock University, Ilishan, on ‘When a single election produces 4 different results as in the 2022 Osun Gubernatorial Election.

    Compliments of the season to all, especially my dedicated readers. May He, in whose memory we celebrate the season, our Lord Jesus Christ, by His grace, continue to hold the fabrics of Nigeria together. Amen.

    Ordinarily, the tail should not wag the dog, and any agency of state, qua agency, should never be as powerful as to determine whatever becomes of a nation, as is implied in the title of this article.

    But these are perilous times, indeed.

    Recently, two of Nigeria’s respected elder statesmen, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ayo Adebanjo, junketed to the Southeast, primarily, I suspect, to give Igbos the impression that the two of them are  so powerful, they can serve power, a la carte, to them, even without the people themselves, doing the serious business of seeking the support of the other regions in a country of over 250 different ethnic groups, nor minding the constitutional provision that a winning presidential candidate must score 25 per cent in two thirds of the country’s 36 states.

    This glaring lacuna, I suspect, must have led Prince Arthur Eze, a billionaire Igbo businessman, into warning Peter Obi not to waste his time and money, contesting. Former governor Ken nnamani has also said something to this effect. Without a shred of doubt, the Southeast is blessed with several individuals without a fraction of Peter Obe’s baggage – no truck with Pandora Papers, no allegations of drug dealing, even by a respected Igbo Association like Igbo Kwenu – solid intellectuals who igbos could present with greater acclaim, at a later date after solidifying their relationship with other parts of the country, and at a time when IPOB will not be a distraction.

    The two Yoruba cheer leaders who visited have continued to present like Igbos not having been president of Nigeria was the result of a gang up by other Nigerians rather than the obvious truism that some  Igbo politicians have often preferred to be either Vice Presidents or Director- General of other people’s presidential campaign organisations.

    It couldn’t have been forgotten, for instance, that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe had all the chances in the world, with Awo agreeing to serve under him, of being Nigeria’s first ever Prime Minister when he elected to be a toothless President under Prime minister Tafawa Balewa. It is apposite to let younger Nigerians know that Awo was on his way to signing an agreement with Dr Azikiwe when he heard that his quarry had just concluded one with Balewa.

    That was because Igbos believed they would always dominate any government led by a Northerner – which they actually did – and went on to repeat the same mistake, each time suffering the indignity of being unilaterally chopped off the alliance when they least expected.

    Given the above background, therefore, Obasanjo and Adebanjo must endeavour to come clean about the real reason for their support for Peter Obi which the ever perspicacious Yorubas know is ETANU.

    Truth is, Obasanjo sees himself as forever in competition with the immortal AWO in Yoruba land, and so does not wish to see another Yoruba emerge president in his life time, while the ‘enfant terrible’, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is the one who, a very long time ago, banished Baba Adebanjo and his friends – those whose names we used to swear with in matters political in Yoruba land – to political Siberia.

    They will never forgive him.

    I digress.

    For Nigerians, 2023 is a very pregnant year and all we can do, is pray it delivers safely as the smallest spec, during the elections, can completely incinerate Nigeria. Wars can be caused by the least imaginable thing especially during an election.

    This is where the INEC macabre dance in the recent Osun governorship election comes in. I urge the reader to Google the aforementioned article to know what is presently in issue at the Osun Election Tribunal where the deployment of BIVACS, has been so deliberately manipulated, it is now giving four probable results; a maze the tribunal is wading through and which, given the nigerian  judiciary’s reputation for infamy, could see anything happen.

    It is, therefore, my prayer that we do not have a repeat of that nonsense during the presidential election in 2023,  after Obasanjo and Adebanjo have so animatedly whetted the Igbo appetite for the Presidency even where not many can see Peter Obi securing 25 per cment  in 16 states and, therefore, with no clear path way to the presidency. Anyway, clever Peter Obi, he will most probably very soon collapse his negligible structure into PDP where he is believed to have already started seeking personal accommodation.

    In the event of his failure, there are more than enough killjoys in Igboland today to make 2011 a child play.

    Within 3 days in April, 2011, 800, 000 souls were wasted in an orgy of post – election conflagration which erupted in Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara, with about 65,000 persons reported displaced. That was all because the rioters had expected candidate Buhari to win the presidential election given his incomparable popularity in the North.

    Now some elders have gone on a pilgrimage to the Southeast, addressing Peter Obi like he was already an elected president of Nigeria.

    We can only hope that we do not, one day, end up ruing their childlike enthusiasm.

    And why would Obasanjo wish to, once again, recommend a presidential candidate to Nigerians?

    Concerning this question, Jide Oluwajuyitan recently introspected: “The war declared against Nigeria by our military adventurers since 1966 goes on. Leading the recent crusade is Obasanjo who spent between $8b and $16b on the power sector without result; who in the name of privatization, presided over the sale of Nigerian total investments of over $100b for $1.5b to PDP cronies; shared properties kept in their care for future generation in the name of dubious ‘monetisation policy’,  rigged the 2007 election to impose an ailing Umaru Yar’Adua and, finally, arm-twisted serving PDP governors and government contractors to donate  N7b towards building his Obasanjo Presidential Library while the National Library in Abuja remained an abandoned project”.

    It is the above precarious situation which necessitated going back to my article: ‘The Rwandan Genocide: Elementary lessons of history’, first published 21 July, 2019 so that these our powerful people will not, once again, lead Nigeria to another civil war which one of them has said Nigeria cannot survive.

    I wrote, therein, as follows: The Rwandan Genocid began on April 6, 1994 after a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over the capital city of Kigali, leaving no survivors. The casus belli for a war can be just about anything. It could be as little as some fake news or a hate speech.  For World War I, it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Sarajevo who, alongside his wife, was cut down by 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. That was the small speck which resulted in one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Nigeria was expected to have unravelledp in 2015,  and  although  then  U.S  Ambassador  to Nigeria,  Mr. Terence McCulley,  categorically denied it, not a few people believed that the United States was promoting a breakup, in what  is commonly  known as the ’tissue scarcity scare’ scenario, where the suggestion and promotion of a concept leads to its realisation. Indeed, a U. S group actually predicted a Nigeria break up in the months leading to the 2015 general election.

    In the course of the genocide, members of the Hutu ethnic majority murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. Started by Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide soon spread throughout the country with shocking speed and brutality. By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and two million refugees (mainly Hutus) had fled Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

    Rwandan ethnic tensions:

    By the early 1990s, Rwanda, a small country with an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, had one of the highest population densities in Africa. About 85 percent of its population was Hutu. The rest were Tutsi, along with a small number of Twa, a Pygmy group who were the original inhabitants of Rwanda. Part of German East Africa from 1894 to 1918, Rwanda came under the League of Nations mandate of Belgium after World War I, along with neighbouring Burundi. Rwanda’s colonial period, during which the ruling Belgians favoured the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated the tendency of the few to oppress the many, creating a legacy of tension that exploded into violence even before Rwanda gained its independence. A Hutu revolution in 1959 forced as many as 300,000 Tutsis to flee the country, making them an even smaller minority. By early 1961, victorious Hutus had forced Rwanda’s Tutsi monarch into exile and declared the country a republic. After a United Nations referendum that same year, Belgium officially granted independence to Rwanda in July 1962.

    Like in Nigeria, ethnically motivated violence continued in the years following independence. In 1973, a military group installed Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in power. The sole leader of Rwandan government for the next two decades, Habyarimana founded a new political party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD). He was elected president under a new constitution ratified in 1978 and reelected in 1983 and 1988, when he was the sole candidate. In 1990, forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), consisting mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded Rwanda from Uganda. A ceasefire in these hostilities led to negotiations between the government and the RPF in 1992. In August 1993, Habyarimana signed an agreement at Arusha, Tanzania, calling for the creation of a transition government that would include the RPF. This power-sharing agreement angered Hutu extremists, who would soon take swift and horrible action to prevent it.

    As previously mentioned, on April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over the capital city of Kigali, leaving no survivors. Within an hour of the plane crash, the Presidential Guard, together with members of the Rwandan armed forces (FAR) and Hutu militia groups, set up roadblocks and barricades and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus with impunity.

    Here in Nigeria, God forbid, a single killing can be the match stick.

    Among the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her 10 Belgian bodyguards, killed on April 7. This violence created a political vacuum, into which an interim government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command stepped in on April 9. The mass killings in Kigali quickly spread from there to the rest of Rwanda, with some 800,000 people slaughtered over the next three months. During this period, local officials and government-sponsored radio stations called on ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbours. Meanwhile, the RPF resumed fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. By early July, RPF forces had gained control over most of the country, including Kigali. In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo (then called Zaire) and other neighbouring countries. After its victory, the RPF established a coalition government similar to that agreed upon at Arusha, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president and defence minister.

    Habyarimana’s NRMD party, which had played a key role in organising the genocide, was outlawed, and a new constitution adopted in 2003 which eliminated all reference to ethnicity. The new constitution was followed by Kagame’s election to a 10-year term as Rwanda’s president and the country’s first-ever legislative elections. As in the case of atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia around the same time, the international community largely remained on the sidelines during the Rwandan genocide. A United Nations Security Council vote in April 1994 led to the withdrawal of most of a U.N. peacekeeping operation (UNAMIR), created the previous fall to aid with governmental transition under the Arusha accord. As reports of the genocide spread, the Security Council voted in mid-May to supply a more robust force, including more than 5,000 troops. By the time that force arrived in full, however, the genocide had been over for months.

    That exactly is what happens in the end: we will have to carry our own can as international do-gooders turn their backs.

    May God keep Nigeria safe but then Nigerian masses must not allow local do-gooders, politicians etc, ruin our country after they would have taken the best it can offer. Eternal vigilance, therefore, as the saying goes, is the price of liberty.