An iniquitous Jonathan government is fighting a rolling, uneven war against every sector of the Nigerian economy which they reckon is not with them
In its most recent opinion on Nigeria, The Times made a staggering mistake by suggesting that President Jonathan could , sooner than later, ‘wake up to find he has lost his country’, like he did the Chibok girls, thereby implying that our dear president has been sleeping on duty. Rather than being soporific, our president has never been more active, busy in the map room, overlooking, strategising and, of course, commanding his demolition squad; a squad so busy and efficient, it is multi tasking in Adamawa, Nasarawa is to come, Edo, recently demolished Ekiti and now awaiting Wike’s mother-of-all mayhem in Rivers State now that Shekarau has taken over those massive duties as Coordinating Minister of Education. Had the president given a quarter of the time he devotes to vanquishing the opposition to nation-building, neither the ‘Protectors of Nigerian Prosperity’, nor its cousin, ‘The Transformation Ambassadors’, would have looked so funny, thinking Nigerians merely laugh whenever their meaningless adverts, which stand Nigerian realities on the head, pop up on television. Nor would The Times have had the effrontery, to brand our president a bad news president. For instance, when these jesters claim, without a census, that more are with President Jonathan than those against him, I hope to God they count among these Hallelujah chorus, the hundreds of Nigerians who had become internal refugees in their own country, uprooted from their homes as a result of the unprecedented insecurity enveloping the country. I hope they count the families and relatives of those killed in mutual hatred in Plateau, the Northwest and other parts of North central as well as the living dead in those most unfortunate parts of President Jonathan’s country. Nor must these protectors exclude the millions of Nigerian youth who do not know where the next meal will come from in a rebased, huge economy of astounding growth of seven percent plus, but no jobs. I equally hope they counted on Jonathan’s side, parents of the Chibok girls who must have happily signed up to be counted. And as for their neighbours in that part of the country threatening to approach Ba Kii Moon, they had better be advised to sign up if they do not want the Jonathan train to leave them behind.
Rather than be pre-occupied with such things as so highly recommend the likes of the Philippines President Aquino Jnr. as statesmen, our president had pro-actively gone ahead to have in place zonal commanders for his demolition squad and as 2015 approaches, there is a healthy competition between and amongst the various zones, represented by geo-political divisions. Indeed, so fierce is the competition that both the North Central and the Southwest zonal commands have completely overshadowed the rambunctious South-south zone under the lead of our former Co-coordinating Minister of Education who, very successfully, managed the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic, ASUP, strike which, to his credit, has now lasted for a year without the Jonathan government caving in.
The demolition has also been all-embracing: financial/economic and through a judicious militarisation of enemy territory at critical times. By these means, an iniquitous Jonathan government is fighting a rolling, uneven war against every sector of the Nigerian economy which they reckon is not with them as if Nigeria is no longer practicing multi party democracy. My way or the highway has overtaken every tenet of democratic governance and as long as there is money to be made, tonnes of it, both recruits and cheer leaders will be handy as well as those trying to escape the jaws of EFCC and imminent jail. First, it was the federation account, deliberately and tactically mal-nourished by the duo of our most important female ministers. Monthly allocation to the states plummeted, by some account, by up to 40 percent, but pronto, friendly states were singled out and generously assisted, from the Ecology Fund to the tune of billions of naira. On the economic development level, they erect every conceivable obstacle on the way of a state like Rivers to access much needed development funds while in Lagos State they deviously ensured that the Ayobo-Ipaja Road could not be completed by asking the contractor to pay a stupidly humongous amount of money to the NNPC for pipe lines, whereas in a less inequitable environment, a government having such vital assets in an area would have facilitated that road’s completion. The result is that commuters, many of who are on the road to work as early as 5 am daily, are made to suffer excruciating traffic gridlock. As you read this, presidency agents and ‘agents provocateurs’ are actively at work in Adamawa where every conceivable subterfuge has been dredged up to oust a governor who has less than a year to go out of eight. In Edo State, birds of a feather are actively at work, stopping at nothing and under the unwavering protection of the police, to disrupt legislative duties in spite of court rulings. We await the reaction of this lawless lot to the most recent decision of the Appeal Court. If our feelers are correct, the northern gang will soon be deployed on Nasarawa State just so we can all be ‘apes obey’.
These machinations are obviously advancements on the old PDP rigging methods, especially under then President Obasanjo when they used to wait patiently for elections proper to fix them. These ones are smarter and more proactive. For instance, why go into the dangerous business of ballot box snatching when you are awash with cash, there are rogue scientists worldwide and you can procure photo-cromic ink, even on an industrial scale at the drop of a hat?
And of course, there is the army and the police to mercilessly deploy especially when you had been strategic enough to hand them over to a certain genre of individuals, men who could, and will do anything for power and money. Below then, is a summary of what President Jonathan did to Ekiti in the recent governorship election: the entire state was locked down for 48 hours with soldiers and police manning all the entry points? Armoured tanks, helicopters and other military hardware were moved to the state in astonishing numbers. The Inspector-General of Police sent in hi-tech security equipments including surveillance helicopters, armoured personnel carriers, mobile police men, even, dogs. For what? If President Jonathan did this in a governorship election, what will he not do during the presidential? Must he fight to the death? And to imagine that with their clever deployment of spurious science, they did not need a single police man more than were already available in the Ekiti State command. It was all, therefore, a make-belief but since we are no wizards in Ekiti – nor are we half as hungry as being egregiously made out on several for a waiting-to –survive-forever on an expired 2.5 kg bag of Thai rice – there was no way we could have known that the ballot paper had been tampered with and pre-programmed to activate allocated number of party emblems. Nor could the poor Youth Corps members used in carrying out the peripheral parts of this totally novel rigging method in Nigeria, have known they were being used, writing down the last three digits of certain ballot papers in each polling unit.
Since there is no honour or moderation among thieves, INEC/PDP will again, like to repeat the Ekiti magic in the Osun election. My advice, therefore, to everybody who wants to vote APC, is to ensure he/she holds on to the ballot paper for at least 20 minutes after putting his imprint and wait to see if it will not transfer to somewhere else, though there might be slight modifications to that used in the Ekiti election. As happened when INEC quickly reversed itself over the PVC Readable machines for Ekiti election, I expect an agitated INEC/federal government would come out, Monday morning, telling us a voter can only spend three or so minutes. Voters must know that no soldier or policeman is empowered to stop them from voting. Please hold on to your ballot paper for at least 20 minutes.
And should INEC continue with these outrageous rigging of elections, the American prediction for Nigeria, come 2015, may turn out a self-fulfilling prophesy. Let those who have ears, hear.
