One is stocky, nearing ninety, with a comic face, dons a riverine hat, has a bitter tongue in his head but loves his role for not being a role model. Another is tall, slim, past middle age, has a face of shifty calmness, a lickspittle when he wants something and a Judas afterwards. The third is a prince who is a pauper in wisdom, who has made a living only because of his birthright; he is past middle age, not very articulate but a chameleon who knows how to live in and out of uniform.
This is not an age of riddles. Nigerians don’t need much elucidation on the identities of the trio described above. The first of course is Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, the so-called leader of the Niger Delta, who fattens on the identity of President Goodluck Jonathan whom he calls “my son.” In fact, he likes to call a lot of people “my son” or “my daughter.” Sonship and daughterhood have suffered from many tongues.
The second is the quisling governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko, otherwise known as the whitlow of the west. He is the man who has come out in true colours to the citizens of Ondo State and the vast, now wiser Yoruba race. Like leaves of autumn, he no longer can hide the colour of his teeth. He has been forced to laugh in public.
The third is Sambo Dasuki, the blue blood, who prides himself on only one qualification: that he is blue blood. On that score he rose in the army. On that resume again, he is the national security adviser to President Jonathan.
These three men epitomise the gloom of the moment. They are Jonathan’s trusted men. They are the point men of tragedy. There, of course, are others, like the buffoon governor of Ekiti State, whose audio tale is still unfolding. And Doyin Okupe, who was booed out of a church recently for campaigning against Buhari. But those are for another day. Then we have Musiliu Obanikoro, the minister whose imploded gubernatorial fantasies are driving him into all sorts of public misbehaviour both in and out of tapes. Then we have the service chiefs who have presided over cases of desertion in the military. Yet their failure to defend democracy on February 14 was desertion in chief. As Shakespeare noted, if correction lies in the hand that committed wrong, to whom shall we complain? One of them, Badeh, even scampered away with his family when the dreaded insurgents came calling in his village.
Back to the trio. It is because of these men that we have not known our next president now. The elections would have become history. But these men were afraid, just like their principal Dr. Jonathan. Since he has a PhD, I want him to write a thesis for political science with a tentative title, “the fear of elections: the Nigerian example.” At least, that PhD thesis would be seen by all, not the one on biology that is only heard but not seen.
Clark acted his part as an elder who is not elderly when he opened the slaughterhouse on INEC chairman Attahiru Jega. He was the first to call for the firing of INEC boss. Why? Because the man said he was ready for the polls. This elder who is not elderly was afraid like his master-son, Jonathan. After that, he led his Southern Nigerian People’s Assembly, an umbrella group of desperate fuddy-duddies and expired statesmen, to endorse Jonathan for a second term. Recently I saw a cartoon in a newspaper of Tompolo carrying him on his back to Government House, a spoof of his role as an interloper in the affairs of Delta State and how he now works obsequiously with militants, the same men who want to burn the country if his master-son loses. Let us not forget that the same elder who is not elderly had once stated that Jonathan was not in the second eleven of Niger Delta when the Owu chief made him vice president. That was the last time he was true to his conscience. Now, he calls the same man his son.
Mimiko, who has turned into a mimic governor, was very loud in supporting the service chiefs when they said they were not ready for elections. He is expecting Jega to be fired, which will light the tinder of crisis in the polity. The whitlow of the west’s younger brother is now being told that he would succeed Jega in newspaper speculations when the INEC boss is fired. Neither the mimic governor nor his professor brother has dissociated from the speculation. The speculated removal of Jega is so fraught with evil that Jonathan denied it in public. Why have both of them kept a sepulchral silence on it? No man who guards his reputation lets such words slip in public without rebuttal. Although Jonathan said he would not sack Jega, who can believe him? Did he not say that he went on his evangelical spree because the churches invited him? The churches said he invited himself and they could not say no. He placed his flawed finger in the holy of holies. If he could lie against the church of Christ, why can’t he lie about Jega? Did he not say in that presidential chat that PVC collection in Lagos was about 30 per cent when it had pushed around 60 per cent? It was presidential charade, not chat.
Dasuki was the first to fly the kite. A national security adviser did not talk about security in Chatham House when he raised questions about February 14. He spoke PVCs. He became a politician, not a security man. For a man who has lived both in and out of uniform, he thought he made the right sartorial choice in Chatham House. He wore neither uniform nor civilian clothes. He was naked, exposed as a civilian hireling. When he was appointed NSA, the reason was that, being a prince, he would help destroy Boko Haram. I wrote in this column that Jonathan erred in judgment. Boko Haram is a virus of paupers. A prince could not relate to them. A few weeks after, Dasuki stopped travelling to speak to emirs, who were also targets of the insurgents.
These men have been afraid of Buhari, and that is why the president and his men have published unprintable material that could cost newspapers billions in libel suits. Abraham Lincoln went through a similar fate. His detractors said he could not speak English, that he was a third-rate lawyer, that he was a backwoods man (bush man), that he was like a baboon, that he descended from an African gorilla. But he won the election because the time had come for him who had failed many times in his political career. He freed slaves and saved the union. Churchill’s political obituary was written in the House of Commons when he was 65 years old. He became perhaps their greatest leader ever.
It is clear Nigerians are tired of Jonathan and that is why we did not have the election last Saturday. They want another chance, just like the Governor’s Forum polls. They asked for time, only to subvert arithmetic. Sixteen became bigger than 19. The Ekiti audiotapes reveal what role the PDP assigns the military to rig elections. Before Lincoln became president, mammoth forces amassed against him and the abolition of slavery. Ralph Waldo Emerson then wrote, “the hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough.” Wise words.
Agbaje, Ambode, Sanity, et al
I received a text message twice last week from Lagos For All raising sanity questions about APC governorship candidate for Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode. Is this where the Agbaje Campaign is now headed? After failing to defend its candidate’s subversive gaffes, it now walks the dangerous terrain of fantasies. Agbaje joined the ranks of Tompolo and Asari Dokubo recently by saying that if Jonathan loses the election, Nigeria will be shut down.
The Governor of Example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, exposed the man for not paying taxes but only paid for 2013 and 2014 and evaded three years. In a federal system, he also wants to sell his state’s birthright when he says Lagos belongs to the Federal Government. After all those implosions, the campaign cannot steer its course aright. Rather it is trading in insane fantasies. Is that what his godfather Bode George taught him?
In his short story The Madman, Achebe tells of a chief who runs naked in the public square in reaction to a man he had mocked as mad. Who became the madman and who is the specialist? Apologies to Soyinka.
