Category: Yomi Odunuga

In an interview with newsmen, the embattled Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, spoke on how he has been managing crises in the party, his son’s alleged gubernatorial ambition in Adamawa State, the Boko Haram menace and other issues. Deputy Editor, Nation’s Capital, YOMI ODUNUGA, was there. Excerpts:

HOW would you react to media reports on the alleged plan to remove you from office by some forces within the PDP, most especially the governors from the party?

You just said media reports. That is the point. You know that as democracy deepens in Nigeria, so will people begin to understand that sensationalism is not an act of journalism, but an act of marketing. We all know that once the media touch a story, the facts are almost always turned upside down. That is why sustained sensationalism is not helping our young democracy to grow. That is why I believe that we should all be against gossip journalism for it stands on the way of strengthening democratic institutions in Nigeria. I believe that rather than destroying our young democracy, the media have the duty to help nurture it. We shall all agree that this democratic journey cannot happen without a critical media, but criticism should, first and foremost, be based on pursuit of the truth so that citizens should be fed with the facts and truths to enable them make the right judgments and hold their leaders rightly responsible. But gossip journalism, journalism devoid of facts, is journalism that tends to set us backward rather than move us forward. Our media should as a matter of urgency understand that when Party members disagree, it does not mean that the party is about disintegrating or is on fire. In the PDP, we have been disagreeing to agree; and that is the very beauty of democracy. But this is not unique to PDP alone, it is a universal reality. Political parties all over the world are constantly disagreeing to agree because everybody is allowed to air their views. That is why PDP has the NWC, the NEC, and the Board of Trustees as instrument of airing views and resolving problems and building consensus.

There is no better democratic way to run a large party like ours. But that is not to say that every member of the party would agree with you on every decision you made. And if that happens, then, one should not conclude that the world would come to an end. If one or two governors, for example, do not like my face, because of certain decisions we took as a party, that does not mean the world is coming to an end, especially when it is possible that another set of decisions we took which they like could compensate for the earlier decisions that made them to not like my face. That is politics. And the same goes for a few members of the party who would want Bamanga Tukur’s head to be broken because they did not like our recently concluded reconciliation exercise. Does that have to mean the end of the world? I don’t think so. That is why it surprises me to read most of the things members of the press go about writing without evaluating their facts. How can I as the National Chairman of PDP who became chairman because I wanted democracy blossom in our party not be cherishing principles of democracy? How can I bring internal democracy into our party if that is not done democratically? I know that change is difficult to come by, but I also know that the only lasting change is the change arrived at by consensus.

The party runs more effectively because we all put heads together to make decisions. That was what happened when I got elected as the chairman. That was what happened when we resolved to address the problem that causes breakdown of confidence among our members across the states. It was the same process that guided us when we concluded that the agenda of reconciliation based on Triple R (Reconciliation, Reformation and Rebuilding) should be our main driver in reinventing PDP. That is why I have come to PDP to fight and bring back justice, equity, and progress. So, to answer your question, I am not aware of any plan to remove me as the chairman of this great party. I read about the plot to remove me when I was in London and now that I am back, the party is passing a vote of confidence on me. You can now see the dimension of events. The PDP for me is a family, and it would continue to be so as long as I remain the chairman. I will do so taking responsibility for every action the party has taken, most especially on how to return the confidence of members. I will do so without succumbing to distractions and blackmails.

Are you in essence saying that you are in good accord with all the governors who many believe are nursing grudges against your leadership?

Look, the governors are the main pillars of the party and no one should wish that away. That is why we work to relate well with them. The chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, Chibuike Amaechi, and I talk always on the phone and exchange visits. Amaechi is a gentleman, who I know has the party at heart. He is a leader who I enjoy relating with. The same is true with the chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, Godswill Akpabio, who has insatiable love for the party. The ongoing sensational reports about my relationship with the Governors, is unfortunate because it is the creation of the media. Akpabio and Amaechi, as party leaders like big brothers in a family, are priceless to the party, especially as good sources of inspiration. And what makes us good leaders is not our ability to avoid problems since problems must always come but our ability to face problems squarely and patiently as well as creatively whenever they come so that at the end of the day we resolve them and learn from them. That is what PDP is good at, we always focus on what sets our party stronger and puts us ahead of the opposition groups.

Are you saying all is well in PDP for now?

While I won’t paint a rosy picture of the situation of things in PDP, surely I will paint a picture of a party that knows how to manage its internal conflicts and problems. As a big family, we are bound to encounter problems from time to time. As I said earlier, as a big family, we believe in sitting down to rub minds and see how best to take the party to a greater height. This we must do now that we have a war of survival to fight as 2015 gets nearer. At the end of the day, we always come out stronger and more tactful than before.

Some members of the party said that you made a slip on the issue of Adamawa PDP when the National Working Committee of the party sacked its executive. Could that be true?

The truth is that Bamanga Tukur was never and is never the creator of the crisis in Adamawa PDP. The problem had been there before I came in as the party chairman. Party members in Adamawa had complained so bitterly that they wanted an election to replace the old exco which had completed its tenure. They wrote several petitions to the National Secretariat, to the Independent National Election Commission and to the Presidency. INEC intervened. The late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua also intervened when he directed that fresh election be conducted. INEC did the same and the records are there. The PDP under the leadership of Chief Okwezilieze Nwodo set up committees, which met with stakeholders in Adamawa and they made recommendations. That was what we met on the ground when we came in. In fact, we continued to receive delegations upon delegations from Adamawa urging us to democratise the leadership process in the state. The NWC met and took a decision, which we felt was in line with democratic pursuit in the party. We agreed that since we are in a democracy, not in a dictatorship, we should conduct our affairs also democratically. In doing that, we did not target any individual or group when we asked PDP in Adamawa to conduct its affairs democratically. I want to make it clear here that Bamanga Tukur has no ulterior agenda in Adamawa PDP. That the fact that it happened under my chairmanship shouldn’t make me the creator of the long standing problem when all we did as NWC was to bring democracy. In fact, if there is anything, the main agenda is to see more members embrace the party as their own by creating a level playing field for everyone to operate in.

That it is being opposed by those who don’t want democracy should not force us to succumb to their wishes. We will continue to do what it takes to ensure that we promote and protect party democracy in PDP. The good news is that we are now in the process of reconciling all aggrieved members in the state and other states of the federation as democracy demands. It is our responsibility to do that without succumbing to intimidations and blackmails. We should do so if we want our party to return to the ideals of its founding fathers. That is why I crave for the continued support and understanding of our party members so that we fast-track our journey to party greatness, rather than to allow ourselves to be tied down by issues we should have resolved with the snap of the fingers.

So what are you going to do now to pull all the aggrieved parties together to get the party going?

We have been talking to ourselves at different levels. If you have been observant, you would have been noticing some changes. I have been saying times without number that my insistence on democracy is in the long best interest of the party. And that is what I have been pursuing since I became chairman. I have since then been pursuing an agenda of Reconciliation, Reformation and Rebuilding of the party at all levels in Nigeria. I knew it was not going to be an easy task but no doubt I am optimistic we should get there.

What is your take on the plan by the government to grant amnesty to the Boko Haram sect?

We are being faced with insurgency from within, which we tagged as Boko Haram. But, for me, I see it as an attack from outside. Therefore, it is not really the duty of only one section or one community. If we see something that attacks our government, attacks our churches, attacks our mosques, attacks our markets, attacks our motor parks, attacks our emirs and chiefs, attacks the United Nations, attacks the police and the military, I think we all better start thinking. I hope it is all of us, starting with the political parties, to come together; the religious bodies, ulamas, everybody should have what we call ‘hands on deck’ to ensure that we confront that evil and win it. I call on everybody to confront that evil and win it. I am concerned because today you know our party is the party that carries the government and everything that affects the life of the people definitely should concern the party and everybody’s concern. Boko Haram is a bad omen and they are bad. They are not Boko Haram, they are evil, that is what I can say. They are evil, even bringing up a connotation that isolates them.

How can you justify bombing the mosques, bombing the churches, bombing the market, bombing the motor parks, bombing people along the street, bombing police stations and bombing barracks, bombing banks and all that? What I can say is let good confront the evil.

You have been accused of being an interested party in the Adamawa PDP crisis because of the alleged interest of your son, Awwal, in contesting as governor in 2015. How true is this?

You are talking about my son. He was in politics before I became the chairman. He was in the House of Representatives before I became the chairman. I leave my son to be what he wants to be. I cheer him up if he is looking for leadership, why not? My job as chairman of the party is not to promote any individual or stop any individual from expressing his desires. I have already told my party members and my God that I want to lead this party based on equity, justice and fair play. And I said, no imposition, including everybody. Let the members of the party decide whom they want as their leader in every level; that is where I stand. Whoever they want should be their leader. I am not interested in he is my son or she is my daughter. If you are my son or my daughter, so what? Those who are governors, are they not sons of some individuals? If they are daughters, are they from the tree? They are sons and daughters of some people. If he says he wants to be governor, I will clap for him.

You have been going around talking about reconciliation. Is the removal of Rivers State PDP executive part of the reconciliation?

PDP does not remove anybody. We don’t remove a winning team. It is a court matter and I have nothing to do with it. If people feel cheated, they go to court and if the court decides, I have nothing to do with it. What they decide, we take over from there.

Since you came into office, it appears the party is enmeshed in more crises, why is it so?

All these are part of human endeavours. You know wherever you have human beings, they are bound to make their views known. You can have different interests and so, you can expect that. My job as the chairman is to reconcile these as much as possible based on level playing field, based on equity, based on justice. It is a challenge, I am ready to face that challenge, whenever it happens, we face it.

If the militants in the ‘new’ Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) are bereft of ideas regarding how to help President Goodluck Jonathan out of the stagnating ‘leadership’ mess, they should not add to the burdens on his frail shoulders. And if these persons are sworn to pursuing a suicidal mission, they should, at least, spare Christianity the bloody tar brush with which they are inclined to make an imprint. It is, first, a simple matter of courtesy to the faith and, above all, respect for God. Whatever their grouse against the State, nothing could be more sacrilegious than for a bunch of terrorists to ignorantly position themselves as God’s battle axes. That, I dare say, is my reading of the statements credited to a certain Jomo Gbomo, of a plan to attack mosques, Islamic institutions, hajj camps and clerics on behalf of Christians.

By the way, I am a Christian and I shudder at the suggestion that some dunderheads have chosen to fight on my behalf or on behalf of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). It is petty and cheap. It is an old trick where the evil ones that live among us try to mix religion with politics. It just can’t work.

It is quite difficult to know those cavorting before this coward from the pit of hell. But it is quite easy to decipher where the country is headed should Gbomo’s threat become a reality. This character speaks spiritedly about the “assassinations of clerics that propagate doctrines of hate” as if he is any better. Except he writes under the influence of some psychotic substances, there is no way anyone with half a brain can justify the Independence Day bombings of 2010 where more than a dozen innocent souls were killed and scores suffered various degrees of injuries. If that was not a terrorist act, then what is? During the Independence Day bombings, did the Jomo Gbomo MEND, which thumped its chest for a successful job, separate Christians from Muslims before detonating the bombs? And what kind of baleful hatred would propel a man to embark on such a cowardly violent act?

Just like the Boko Haram sect, there is something about MEND that sucks. They are birds of a feather out on a mission to set the country on fire. The Jomo Gbomo MEND constitutes a clear and present danger to our collective existence regardless of the delusion in high places that MEND ceased to exist after some ex-agitators came out of the creeks to embrace amnesty. If that was the case, then October 1, 2010 wouldn’t have happened; the crude theft in the Niger Delta would have significantly reduced and the killing of 12 policemen would not have taken place. The MEND that Jonathan and those he granted amnesty operated may have been dissolved but there exists a deadlier one that pretends to know not Jonathan or the ‘Generals’ who now run things from the comfort of their homes in Abuja. It is the MEND on the bend – a MEND whose threat to cause mayhem should not be taken lightly.

How can this MEND assuage our pains and anguish by piling up more body bags of innocent souls through the evil called ‘Operation Barbarrosa?” How can it base a negotiated ceasefire on a questionable intervention by the convicted mastermind of the October 1, 2010 bombings, Henry Okah? Who is this Gbomo and what does he stand for?

Now, this jolt of history for those who may not know what Operation Barbarrosa portends. Adolf Hitler’s 22 June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War was code-named Operation Barbarossa. It was the largest invasion in the history of warfare. Contrary to its planner’s intentions, it marked the beginning of the pivotal phase in deciding the victors of the war. It failed and caused a high rate of fatalities for Hitler’s war machine – 95% of all German Army casualties that occurred from 1941 to 1944. So, anyone can see the illogic of MEND’s Hitlerian ‘inspiration’.

If the truth must be told, Gbomo and his ilk thrive because of the crying laxity in our security and justice system. Perhaps if those who perpetrated criminal acts of terrorism against the state had, in the past, been apprehended and made to face the full weight of the law, we would not be at this stage where we now offer amnesty to the destroyers of our humanity. When you take up arms against the State, maim, kill, rape, kidnap, ruin its main source of revenue and get rewarded with amnesty and a secured future in the name of peace, what you get is the kind of unmitigated arrogance and lethal injury that have been inflicted on this nation by people who should ordinarily be serving terms in prisons.

Unfortunately, and at the risk of sounding like the bird with the broken beak, the only person who has to sit up and rein in these terrorists is Jonathan himself. He must, by now, accept that he committed a grave error when he tried to extricate MEND of complicity in the Independence Day bombings. We now know that at the heart of that carnage was a MEND that would rather compound its kinsmen’s misery rather than helping Mr. President out of a difficult situation. And it is all due to the impotence in governance. The question is: How did we sink this low?

We are swimming in this slimy puddle today because we, collectively, left the initiative to the criminals. We conceded the bragging rights to them and now we marvel when people like Jomo Gbomo and every other sick warlord taunt the State!! After countless threats of apprehending them and bringing them before the justice stool, not a single arrest has been made. Killings after killings, the government did nothing other than throwing its hands up in submission and seeking divine intervention when we had expected it to deploy all the resources at its disposal to halt the state of anomie. It appears the government is content with its half-hearted approach to confronting raw terror. And that’s a shame.

Jonathan needs to wake up, smell the coffee and take decisive action. In his speech just hours after the Boston twin bombings that killed three and injured scores of innocent bystanders, President Barrack Obama defines terrorism thus: “Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians; it is an act of terrorism.” Obama’s sole promise to the grieving populace is simple: the culprits will be apprehended and made to face the full wrath of the law! Does this refrain sound familiar? Yes, it does. The only difference is that, in the United States of America, a President’s word is a bond. Here, the words are as empty as they come. As I write this, the security forces are on the verge of unravelling all the knots surrounding the Boston bombings and suspects are already on the radar. Surely, justice will catch up with those responsible as promised by Obama. The law is waiting to crush them. Here, we humbly wait on them to embrace amnesty while justice cries blue murder! How sad.

Be that as it may, we need to sound a note of warning to Gbomo and his group that it is not too late to put an end to their sickening terror plot. Already, the Nigerian State is saturated with humongous madness that the authorities are battling to contend with. It is the responsibility of the authorities to go after this MEND on the bend and stop it from inflicting another bout of terror on the nation. I doubt if the country can survive the consequences of such a threat. The time for long speeches is over. This is the time to walk the talk and halt the drift into anarchy! Will Jonathan stand up to be counted?

Last week, I asked a question which, in my view, sums up the painful realities of the Nigerian story: how does hope triumph in a milieu where deception holds aloft the trophy of our quotidian living? For as long as I can remember, we have always been, unabashedly so enmeshed in a mad race to dribble the truth, even to our collective peril. It’s a tough one to swallow, but there is hardly any Nigerian today who does not address issues solely from the direction through which his bread is buttered. And so, it is not uncommon to read about how some of yesterday’s men suddenly transformed into today’s apologists for all that is bad with the system. Let’s face it, you do not invite a man to ‘come and chop’ and then tolerate his indiscretion of pissing in the pot of soup. Seriously, I cannot understand why some people cry blue murder just because those who used to be on this side of the divide, breathing down the government’s neck now see things differently, having joined them on that side. In actual fact, this delusive grandeur of deceptive reasoning tends to continue ad infinitum because we all seem to be in the same boat—victims of the lure of the stomach rather than common sense. But, this is a topic for another day.

 Today, the focus is on a deceit of a different kind—the endless chicanery at the Wadata House headquarters of the self-professed Africa’s biggest political gathering, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). That the PDP is yet again treading a self-implosion laden path, just two years before a general election is hardly surprising. Those who call it a gathering of the crudest set of Peoples-Deceiving-People must have perfectly dissected its physiognomy. Was it Soyinka that once described them as a “nest of killers”? No one should expect less than something close to a fratricidal war in a family of deadly pugilists who will stop at nothing to hold on to power. Those who expect things to be different under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration really must have lost the compass in navigating the history of this behemoth. For, right from inception, the PDP has proved to be its own arch enemy. It has a queer way of raking up needless dust and making a hell of noise out of it.

 In its 13 years of existence, the party has always been in search of peace while it holds on tenaciously to those things that are the direct antithesis to a peaceful communion. At the heart of its problems is its fixation on a fallacy that it is running a party of like minds with adherence to rules and regulations as contained in its constitution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps, if the founding fathers of the party had stood their ground and stopped former President Olusegun Obasanjo from annexing the PDP as part of his personal fiefdom in Aso Rock, this behemoth would have saved itself from being under the control of one man. We may not know if the story would have been different had the late President Umaru Yar’Adua completed his tenure. But we do know when and how the so-called supremacy of the party was subjugated under the whim of one man. It started when Obasanjo got tired of Chief Barnabas Gemade as chairman of the party, cut short his tenure and imposed Chief Audu Ogbeh at a closely monitored pseudo convention. It was not long before Ogbeh received the same shock treatment after Obasanjo’s symbolic rapprochement at the former’s house where he reportedly ate pounded yam and vegetable soup. Hours later, Ogbeh was kicked in the groin and Chief Ahmadu Ali, singlehandedly picked by Obasanjo, stepped in.

 Since then, the PDP has been waddling in deceitful twists and turns. Its constitution was dramatically changed to accommodate Obasanjo’s dream of becoming a life Board of Trustees chair. Chief Vincent Ogbulafor was eased out of office in a controversial manner by Jonathan loyalists for his insistence on maintaining the zoning arrangement of the party, which would have seen a Northerner emerge as President in the 2011 elections. He was shoved off the chair few days after the party’s National Executive Committee, which was chaired by Jonathan, passed a vote of confidence on his leadership. Even Ogbulafor’s successor and Jonathan’s chosen, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, could not survive the web of deceit woven around the presumed cohesion in the party and he had to step aside.

 Fast-forward to 2012 and there came in a breath of fresh air in the person of Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, an octogenarian with vast experience in business and politics. Everyone had thought he would be the stabilizing factor, the kind of father figure that would truly bring the dissenting voices in the family to the round table. But alas, if news filtering in from Wadata House is anything to go by, Tukur may as well be marking time on that swinging hot chair. It is simply unbelievable that the ruling party can’t wean itself off its old wily ways.

 Like others before him, Tukur is under intense fire. Although the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, has been doing all he can possibly do to downplay the brewing crisis by blaming it on mischief makers (thank God it is not the devil this time), history has taught us not to buy that dummy. He speaks of cohesion and unity among the rank and file of the party while the Akwa Ibom State Governor and chair of the PDP Governors’ Forum speaks of ‘Judases’ that must be sent packing before lasting peace can be achieved. He said majority of the party members are on the same page with the party apparatchiks, yet Tukur and the BoT Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih, have embarked on separate junkets across the nation on a reconciliatory mission. Is it not strange that these octogenarians are busy reconciling close ‘friends’ when they should be in the comfort of their homes resting? If things are as calm as cucumber, why did Akpabio make references to Judases that would be crushed by the party’s moving train? Why the nine-month delay in holding the party’s NEC, an event that should be a quarterly affair in accordance with the constitution? Why are the governors queuing behind their Adamawa counterpart in the crisis that Tukur has been identified as an interested party? Why is its deposed National Secretary, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, crying blue murder and threatening to fight Tukur to the bitter end? And why is Tukur always dropping Jonathan’s name each time he tries to explain his action or inaction? Why the backbiting, dirty intrigues and hurried fence-mending? Why?

Truth is: Although the PDP reserves the right to pride itself as the only national party in the land; but clearly, it has not managed its affairs better than the opposition parties. It is abysmally poor on internal democracy because it operates at the whim of one man—the voice from Aso Rock. It was the norm under Obasanjo and the pattern continues under Jonathan. That, in my humble view, is not party supremacy. It is the basest form of political gobbledygook. If the party must look itself to the mirror, it must start by accepting that it has thrived on deceit and has not lived up to the minimum standard it sets for itself. There is no betrayal that could be bigger than this. And that’s what Judases do. The problem is: it is hard to identify the saints among this crowd of Judases. But if Metuh believes that there is no cause for alarm and that the Tukur-led executive “will be in charge of party administration until our term ends”, I can only wish him good luck as the hunt for the Judases under the umbrella of deception continues!

Perhaps, like me, you have often wondered whether there would ever be an end to the farcical drama that serially

unfolds in Nigeria, almost on daily basis. For the incurable optimists among us, it is a question of time before change occurs. Yet, that time is fast ticking towards an imminent implosion, which many perceptive citizens would rather not talk about. They will rather keep tugging at the attenuating strings of hope as if such hope has an elastic capacity to soak up the widening depth of anomie across the Nigerian landscape. How does hope triumph in a community where deception holds aloft the trophy of our quotidian living? No doubt, things are getting tougher by the day and unusual innovations in official corruption along with other challenges such as the Boko Haram menace continue to weigh heavily on expectations of productive governance. Nonetheless, extreme attention is being focussed on frivolities by those who ought to take the bull by the horns. It’s really incredible how Nigerians trudge on in this climate of ceaseless gloom and plastic laughter.

Probably determined to take our minds off the drudgery of whining over the tragic realities of our collective existence in this country of a thousand surprises, the Governor of Bayelsa State, Seriake Dickson, introduced a freshly-minted swagger to our sorry story. For a state that has been in the news for all the wrong reasons right from the days it fell under the firm grip of the now pardoned ‘Governor General’ Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, it beggars belief that Dickson ( who was packaged as one on a arduous journey of re-claiming the lost glory of an oil-producing community that is in dire need of true heroes) could be the one cuddling inanity as if it was getting out of fashion. And I doubt if this man that was fished out of the House of Representatives is not sold to extending Bayelsa’s locust years from his leadership style.

In retrospect, it is clear that one had erred by concluding so prematurely, that Dickson had reached the nadir of political chicanery with the ‘eye-service’ elevation of Dame Patience Jonathan to the position of a Permanent Secretary in the state’s civil service. But with His Excellency’s decision to adopt his Abuja-based godfather’s strategy of setting up committees after committees and panels after panels with benumbing intimacy, it was not unexpected that Bayelsa would, sooner rather than later, become another practical example of how government can be run through committees. However, it never crossed the minds of many that Dickson has the sole ambition of beating his mentor to his game. And that was exactly what he did with his decision to set up a committee that would tackle the menace of rumour mongering, which the state believes serves as a big impediment to the reclamation dream of Jonathan’s chosen.

To justify the move, the Chief Press Secretary to the Bayelsa State Governor, Daniel Iworiso-Markson, quipped: “The high-powered committee will address the ugly trend of rumour-mongering in the state. A situation whereby the person and office of the governor are always at the receiving end of rumour-mongering is quite disturbing to the government. The committee will be tasked with the responsibility of fishing out persons who made it a habit to peddle rumours and spread false and misleading information to the public.”

If you ask me, I will say Dickson deserves a National Award (preferably GCON) for thinking out of the box. Why is Bayelsa so blest with geniuses who always wear their thinking caps on their buttocks? Okay, I know the community harbours some of the nation’s best fishermen in spite of the curse of oil. What I did not know is that the state is also brimming with men who can, with a single cast of the net, fish out rumour mongers wherever they may be hiding in the oil-rich region. What an egregious malady? Now, some questions. What were the criteria used in fishing out the members of this rumour-mongering fishing committee and what are their modus operandi? Would they be hanging out at the beer joints and red spots tapping on the conversations of the citizens? Would they partake in this rumour-mongering hunt by dropping some snippets that would ignite the passion of the peddlers of fake news about the person and office of the governor?

In this rambling moment, I just wonder if the Bayelsa State Government has not carried this rude joke too far. What does its entire Ministry of Information really do? What exactly were the tissues of lies or rumours being peddled about the governor anyway? That the elevation of the First Lady to the post of Permanent Secretary was not a show of appreciation for the dogged fight put up by the Jonathans in kicking Timipre Sylva out of the seat? That he has not spent most part of his short tenure hounding perceived loyalists of his predecessor in addition to his commitment to wiping off any footprints that could remind him of Sylva’s governorship in the state? Why should rumour-mongering so discomfit the chief executive of a state that he would appropriate state resources to fund a moribund committee which is clearly certified to chase shadows? Hmnnchonchuhunhon…I laugh in Chinese language.

Yet, Dickson was not the only one that has turned governance into one huge bungling game. The wicked grin on Knucklehead’s face has refused to disappear, having painstakingly digested what some notable Nigerians have had to say about the demise of the iconic writer, Prof. Chinua Achebe. You can’t help but wonder where all those eulogies were flowing from! If only they had taken time to read through Achebe’s lines in all his books, they would have buried their heads in shame. Do they know how Africa’s finest writer started his exilic journey? Do they have the capacity to decode his messages, the innermost grief he felt for the missed opportunities and the consistent squandering of God’s abundant blessings? And do they really think Achebe would choose their platitudes over and above a life that is truly dedicated to the service of humanity? How far have they gone in redressing the problems Achebe listed as plaguing Nigeria and hindering its progress? And when the man died, all they had to offer were words which fly in the face of logic! Shame.

If you believe that the words they spluttered about Achebe came from the depth of their hearts, then you must have believed President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan when he hinted that the latest plan to hike the price of Premium Motor Spirit would be done in consultation with the people. Suddenly, the people now matter to them. How strange? By now, the average Nigerian understands that this latest gimmick, about the people and I, is merely dressing a bitter pill with sugary coatings. Having gone through a nation’s maximum revolt against his coercive action in January, 2012 when he unilaterally did the unthinkable by attempting to force a price regime on the populace, Jonathan ought to know that he would need more than the twisted logic of “wasting resources meant for a greater number of Nigerians to subsidize the affluent middle class” to scale the hurdle this time. How does he expect to convince the people on the need to remove fuel subsidy when he has not told them what he plans to do about the massive corruption in that sector, which has made the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation insolvent, in addition to the huge liability it has become?

Really, there is no point whining like a broken record, rambling on about the plan to create 480,000 jobs; build infrastructures; strengthen security; improve agriculture, power and medical facilities when all we see daily is a systemic decimation of our collective patrimony and a seeming lack of the political will to rein in the culprits. Now, some may say this is sheer rumour-mongering that denigrates the person and office of the “Oga at the top.” Needless to say that I lay no claim to originating this presumed fable. Those interested in fishing out the peddlers of this wicked rumour of inaction and cluelessness against the government at the centre should visit the spots where ordinary citizens converge after work hours to soak their sorrows and laugh off the ramblings in high places. Shhhhh… I just hope I have not given more than enough hint to Dickson’s committee on rumour-mongering as it settles down to work. I wish them good luck in their new venture.

Do have a blessed Easter celebrations devoid of empty patter!