Ara san, ategun fe, iji ja ko gbe wa lo o ye ka dupe- translated loosely, this means it thundered, winds roared, but here we are, standing. God be praised. Hallelujah!
I am writing this a whole 36 hours before the 16 February, 2019 Presidential election, and without a scintilla of doubt, I am writing it like Inec has already called the election for sitting President Muhammadu Buhari.
I am doing so because, barring an event with seismic consequences comparable to that of Hiroshima at the drop of the A- bomb on August 6, 1945, President Buhari is guaranteed to win.
(On that horrible day during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people).
Nigeria will never see or know such. Amen.
But how on earth was Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP expected to win a presidential election in a country whose greatest challenge is corruption?
In an unbroken 16 years, his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, completely ran Nigeria aground, stealing all stealables; moveable, as well as immovable, physical and not so physical.
So bad was it that British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in a conversation with Her Majesty the Queen described Nigeria as ‘fantastically corrupt’, and one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Rather than list a catalogue of PDP’s thieving armada in its ruinous 16 year rule, let us, in brevity, capture that depraved party in the words of Joe Igbokwe, APC’s Publicity Secretary in Lagos state. Wrote Igbokwe: “We wonder what legacy a failed and corrupt party like the PDP is talking about if not the legacy of corruption, shameless looting, infrastructural wreckage, ineptitude, decay, disease, hunger and want. One question Nigerians have been asking is if anything good can ever come from a PDP that in its 16 year rule, notoriously looted the country’s treasury and left every sector of the Nigerian economy bare. If in 16 years and with oil averaging over $100 per barrel, the PDP presided over the total ruination and bankruptcy of the country, we have no doubt that its legacies are only the negative fallouts of its corrupt acts which brought Nigeria to its knees”.
PDP might even have possibly have a chance if the above were all it had to contend with. Unfortunately, given former President Obasanjo’s destructive politics, and happily for Nigeria, he told Nigerians the truth, and nothing but the truth, about Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, his Vice for eight years, the way nobody else could ever have done. Both in words and published works, he very meticulously presented Atiku as the one politician a country known all over the world as ‘fantastically corrupt ‘ must do everything to avoid, if not consign to the rubbish heap of the country’s political history. Amongst others, he had the following to write about Atiku in his book, MY WATCH: “From the day I nominated Atiku to be my Vice, he set his mind not for any good, benefit or service to the country, but on furiously planning to upstage, supplant or remove me at all cost and to take my place… “What I did not know, which came out glaringly later, was his parental background which was somewhat shadowy, (many Nigerians believe he is a Cameroonian and an Abuja based lawyer is contemplating going to court on same), his propensity to corruption, his tendency to disloyalty, his inability to say and stick to the truth all the time, a propensity for poor judgment, his belief and reliance on marabouts , his lack of transparency, his trust in money to buy his way out on all issues and his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety truth and national interest for self and selfish interest.”
No wonder the Guardian of London describes the election as one between a “stingy dictator (Buhari is a retired military general) and an established thief.”
I have no doubt, whatever, that by these words, Obasanjo contributed not a little to what must certainly be Atiku’s worst electoral shellacking, even though this is about his 4th or 5th trial. If anything defines Atiku’s desperation about becoming the Nigerian president, it must be his sheer inability to appreciate that he has no worse enemy than Obasanjo anywhere in the world; not even the U S Congressman man Jefferson, whose bribe landed in jail could manage to hate him more than Obasanjo; the same man he now believes truly endorsed his candidacy for the election.
Standing as the candidate of the rival party, the APC, to the man Obasanjo literally reduced to rubble, is the ramrod standing 7-footer of integrity; a man of incandescent incorruptibility, known as such home, and abroad, that the entire African Union appointed him its continental Anti- Corruption Tzar. After 3 attempts trying to become President he was 4th time lucky in 2015 when he entered into an alliance with the main political group in Southwest Nigeria. I have written my fingers sore, criticising President Buhari for his ill-advised, nepotistic appointments as well as his needlessly delayed action on the activities of the murderous Fulani herdsmen. But while those are obvious negatives, President Buhari has chalked up incredible achievements all of which combined to win him the election. . Despite the fact that crude oil prices bottomed out at 28 dollars when he assumed office, Buhari has achieved infrastructural achievements that easily dwarf what PDP achieved in its 16 years of the locust during most of which crude oil prices never went below 100 dollars per barrel. In each and every geo-political zone of the country, massive road construction, and reconstruction, are ongoing while, for the first time ever in the history of Nigeria, new rail lines are being constructed just as some are being commissioned. Those already commissioned include the Abuja- Kaduna, the Lagos – Abeokuta rail lines and the Itakpe rail line commenced some 20 years ago to serve the Ajaokuta steel company has finally been commissioned and in use
The roads on which work is currently ongoing include the Aba-Port-Harcourt, Yenagoa-Kolo-Otuoke-Bayelsa Palm-Lokoja-Benin,Lagos-Ibadan-Oyo-Ogbomoso-Ilorin, Onitsha-Enugu-Port-Harcourt, Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta, Auchi – Okene etc, and in the words of ace columnist, Duro Onabule, the fact that rail lines will now be extended to Ijebu-Ode, Ondo and Ekiti, really sounds like a modern miracle.
The 2nd Niger bridge which Ebelechukwu, whose cabinet Igbos dominated, did not even as much as start, like its cousin, the East-West road in the Ijaw heartland, which PDP turned to a sink hole, are now both receiving maximum attention with needed funds already paid up front.
Security, though still with some challenges here, and there, has received tremendous attention and unlike in Jonathan’s days, not a single Nigerian Local Government Area is under Boko Haram control as against almost 20 Borno State LGAs during the Jonathan era during which nearly 200 Chibok school girls were stolen under his watch. Unlike under the PDP when 2.1 Billion U S dollars meant for equipping the army was stolen, and the Central Bank became an ATM, appropriated funds are now being judiciously spent, and the same U S government they lied won’t sell arms to Nigeria has since sold war planes to the Nigerian air force.
Finally, although naysayers describe the Buhari anti corruption war as selective and ineffective, I am sure that Mrs. Deziani Maduekwe, the former minister of Petroleum who couldn’t visit Nigeria since Buhari came on board, would certainly have a different story to tell. Ditto, those who have been going the rounds of courts, trying to protect billions which EFCC says are corruption related from being forfeited to government. That is not to talk of those from who over a trillion naira have been retrieved alongside eye popping mansions. Those being rapidly separated from their ill-gotten wealth will never trivialise the Buhari anti corruption war. He has promised much more and I am sure we would soon see some of these high profile rogues right where they truly belong.
Finally, that PDP could turn off a Damkwabo, the ambitious Tambuwal or even the diminished Kwankwaso – all from Buhari’s Northwest zone, and settle for an Atiku who had been irretrievably damaged by Obasanjo because of almighty dollar, and since he was the candidate of some insecure retired generals who were represented at the dollarised primaries in Port Harcourt, should surprise any rational being. That he suffered such a humiliating defeat, together with his party was, therefore, a conclusion foretold.