The Nation Newspaper

Tag: tirade

  • Obasanjo’s tirade

    The problem with Nigeria is the absence of a patriotic national establishment. President Olusegun Obasanjo – an establishment player needs to move away from letter writing to help those in power to succeed. The lack of collaboration by major actors to move Nigeria forward is the country’s greatest hindrance. Unlike someplace where statesmen come together to hold think clinics, looking for the way forward, ours are always busy in ego wars.

    While this may sound conjectural, I think former President Olusegun Obasanjo is green with envy at President Muhammadu Buhari’s popularity especially with his awe-inspiring admiration by the plain folks in the north. No establishment player in our time has that advantage. Not even Obasanjo in his geographical block. This is not a campaign for President Buhari because he has also let me down on a number of issues, considering that I voted for him, having expected so much from him.

    The system in Nigeria is the problem of Nigeria and not of personages. We have a system where elected officials rig their ways into offices, many places with deaths in tow. It is a system where statesmen don’t keep political undertakings and party pledges. Nigeria is a country with no genuine party structure leading to a real political party system. This profited President Obasanjo who brazenly did away with his party’s rotational presidency agreement on principle that should have seen us more united than ever. He could afford to do so because politics in Nigeria is not by training and experience but by twist of fate. The reason he wanted to run for office for the third time against the democratic reasoning of Nigeria. The great number of Johnnys-come-lately in the political corridor is responsible for where we are.

    In the light of this, I expected him to go around addressing critical issues to make Nigerians have a decent life. I don’t see question and answer sessions between elected officials and the led to suggest a democracy in progress. No accountability seminars are held in all states of Nigeria that I am aware of and so good governance has been subordinated only to the central government. Survivalists are everywhere in political garbs and there are no democratic heroes. Our borders are not only porous but Chadians, Malians, and Nigeriens are better treated in Nigeria than Nigerians in the north because of religious affiliations. Little wonder that it is so easy to get soldiers of fortune for fratricidal wars. And the purchasing power parity between Nigerians and Ghanaians (the latter’s advantage) has always been wide. Even during his terms in office.

    The metrics for gauging our democracy is so low that road construction is celebrated by governors and documented on television. It marvels me to see advertisements showcasing the building of classrooms and of seats to schools in broadsheets not by NGOs but by state governors. I wonder what the Romans who first constructed paved roads before Christ would say were they alive today or even the Egyptians that built the Pyramids?

    The hypocrisy element of President Obasanjo is trying. Even in his presidency the poor suffered from the activity of the rich. I didn’t see a Mo Ibrahim give him an award for good governance. There were no ground rules set by him on carbon tax and gas flaring which is the order of the day in the Niger Delta. Neither did we see cottage industries and many emerging markets under his administration. People point to GSM and I can’t help but give them the look of askance.

    He didn’t remove subsidy to fund more schools, build more or work in partnership with states to train more teachers. Today the teaching profession is an all-comer affair. Most teachers are not able to teach the three Rs (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic), in education, even those out of teacher training colleges.

    A chief executive owes it a duty to leave positive legacies for posterity.

    On which school of thought did President Obasanjo run this country? I can’t remember him for any positive, life-changing speech mark. He acts like he has a mitt to protect always.

    No disrespect but the system and not Buhari is to blame for the rot in Nigeria but those in charge of evaluating performances have chosen to create red herrings by blaming people and not the system, made worse at any rate by a sitting president who has settled for easy familiarity with the people of his religion and region instead of easy familiarity with all people and religion for the growth of the country. The armed forces of any country are the only profession where soldiers are taught how to oil their gunnery for war and leadership. No other profession teaches the latter.

    I know that the power of a president is titanic and a soldier turned politician should know how to use such power. Look to the United States, half of that country’s presidents were military men, others were affiliated to paramilitary/militia groups. But President Buhari has shown total lack of capacity to use his presidential power to provide real presidential leadership. Power does not imply that people must agree and be acquiescent to controls of the holder even when it is dishonourable. This president seems to think so and doesn’t care squat to give presidential speeches when lives are lost and expect Nigerians to understand him without a communication strategy.

    I think President Buhari should run for a second term if his health permits. Ours is a democracy of conciliation. This fourth republic heralded the emergence of two presidents from southern Nigeria who ruled Nigeria for 14 years with nothing to show for it. The first refused to be an officer and a gentleman and annulled a party’s agreement. And the last who is a scholar left this country more divided than he met it. All of the persons who plan to contest against Buhari do so for piquant symbolism. They can’t match his popularity with the average Joe in Wuse Market, not minding Kano State.  What is worse is that the ones I see do not have what it takes to unify Nigeria. But he should rule with the rule of right if he succeeds and not approbate to region, people, religion and herders. Only this time, I wouldn’t vote for him. I feel strongly that social stability is important before economic and political stability. I feel strongly that Nigeria doesn’t belong to the north with its false sense of entitlement. It doesn’t also belong to Obasanjo’s southwest and its propaganda machine always, or to the southeast that revels in sulking constantly. It belongs to us all. If the arrangement is kept, we may see a president from the southeast in 2023. After which a president should come from my region of the country. Who says someone from the Igala Kingdom isn’t fit to become president of Nigeria?

    But one man can change the political dynamic for President Buhari. If Bola Ahmed Tinubu pulls the south-western plug from the present alliance with the north, Buhari wouldn’t be president because no thanks to Goodluck Jonathan, one only needs four regions to become president in Nigeria. Here is where President Obasanjo got it wrong.

    • Abah writes from Abuja.

  • Okorocha’s tirade against Tinubu

    SIR: Even though, Nigeria party politics is populated with all shades of characters, nonetheless, party traditions, ethos, norms, ethics and comportment, as well as respect for elders must not be compromised for whatever reasons. During the golden era of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello, party faithful revered the trio highly. They were regarded as hearts and souls as well as the symbols and brands of their respective parties. Nigerians, irrespective of creed and race deferred to them for wisdom, wise counsel and proper direction to chart the course of the nation. No party member ever had effontery to pass insultive comments at them. The office holders then, were operating in tandem with manifestoes and dictates of the parties.

    However, today, the tide has changed. Some modern day leaders have arrogated so much importance to themselves that they constantly operate beyond the party brief. This new set of leaders have not only jettisoned party ethos and traditions, they have also thrown overboard, the manifestoes of the parties, preferring to craft another one for their states and by so doing, have attracted opprobrium and condemnation to the party from the camps of oppositions. Governor Rochas Okorocha is a reference point in this respect.

    His recent vituperation on Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the national leader of APC was another needless, unnecessary and unsavoury attack on a leader who has made unparalled and unequalled sacrifice for the progress, growth and development of the party. Okorocha’s strange comment, that Asiwaju was crying more than the bereaved when the latter said that APC shouldn’t mimic the PDP’s penchant for short-circuiting internal democracy by promoting the idea of an automatic ticket in endorsing President Buhari for second term in office was insolent, unbecoming and calculated attempt to fan ember of discord and disharmony in the party. And it’s quite strange and suprising that the national chairman and the National Working Committee of the party have not deemed it fit to call him to order.

    For crying loud, who is Okorocha impressing? President Buhari, party hierarchy or his governor colleagues? It’s clear that none of these groups would be on the same page with him. The governor should be told in unmistakeable terms that internal democracy and honouring the letter and spirit of party rules and traditions can only strengthen the party and in fact, encourage its members, that the party does not give undue advantage to some and prevent others, to aspire to position of authority.

    The party’s all inclusive tradition and internal democracy was not an accidental devise of today. That has been the traditions and norms of the progressive. In fact, it’s the same culture that attracted other progressives across the nation, even including Rochas Okorocha to the party. Regardless of certainty or an outcome of a primary election particularly, presidential and governorship primary may seem to be, the party must ensure that the integrity of the process is not only maintained but, sustained.  Asiwaju has only enjoined members to adhere to democratic principles that have served the party so well, to the point of even sent packing an incumbent president from office. This was the position of national leader that has attracted the virulent attacks from Governor Rochas Okorocha.

    Suffice to remind the governor and very few party members who may share his awkward style of aspiring to elective office that PDP are gradually putting their house in order with particular reference to recent success of their national convention and are prepared to capitalize on any inadequacy and inefficiency of the ruling party to bounce back to reckoning. This is not the time to engage in divisive tendencies capable of truncating the vision of the party. This is not the time to fan embers of discord amongst the party members.

    • Kola Amzat,

    Lagos.

  • Fayose’s tirade against the north

    The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is gradually evolving as a party with desperate antics. This, without equivocation, is a consequence of the emergence of the first real opposition to a sitting federal government in the nation’s history. The All Progressives Congress (APC) has made this possible through the tenacity of purpose of its leaders. With palpitating defeat staring PDP and President Goodluck Jonathan in the face, the party will stop at nothing, including descending to the abyss of everything immoral, to pass across messages of hatred and destruction up its sleeves. The PDP is doing this through its avalanche of flamborines of which Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti State is topmost of those with high nuisance value.

    Fayose is known for everything but decency and he was at the apogee of his nuisance when early this week, he published an advertisement in the newspapers depicting nothing but pathological hatred for the northern part and, serious contempt for human life. To the political loose canon from Ekiti, he was playing politics of Jonathan’s re-election, but to millions of Nigerians and the world, that advert was just a reflection of the best that the PDP comprising people like Fayose and clueless Jonathan can offer Nigerians, Ekiti and other parts where their ilk exist.

    In the controversial advert titled: ‘Nigerians: Be Warned! Life and Death,’ published on the front pages of some national dailies including surprisingly, the revered Punch, he displayed pictures of late Nigerian leaders of northern extraction who died in office including Generals Murtala Muhammad, Sani Abacha and President Umaru Yar’Adua. He ended his mischievous list of pictures with that of the APC presidential candidate in the upcoming February 14, 2015 presidential election, General Buhari with a question mark and his age; and an additional highlighted message: “enough of state burials.”

    By this last statement, he, a mere mortal, is playing God by undoubtedly portraying the north as being incapable of producing leaders that can outlive their tenure in power. To now put up an innuendo that Buhari may suffer same fate on ground of age if voted into power by Nigerians that are currently yearning for his leadership is not only obnoxious but also satanic – sadistic politics taken too far. Empirical evidence the world over has shown that the age a man gets to power is no sole determinant of how long he will live. An example will suffice here: Nelson Mandela (1908-2013) became South-Africa’s president on May10, 1994 at a ripe age and left power voluntarily on June14, 1999 and lived for years after before dying at age 95 on December 5, 2013. Apart from getting to leadership positions, if the 2014 World Health Statistics report published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that put Nigerians’ life expectancy at 54 years is anything to go by, then someone like Fayose and even the president could be questionably said to be nearing their graves and should not be elected into office ab initio.

    Fayose has not shown penitence over this inhuman gaffe as demonstrated through a statement he issued through his Chief Press Secretary that he has no apology for the controversial advertisement published on Monday. He is still warning Nigerians of the consequence of electing Buhari as the nation’s president, not on espoused principles and salient issues of national significance but on petty plank of age and unfounded health challenge.

    This column is not unmindful of the usual antics and propaganda of an electoral season like this but will definitely not subscribe to the reprehensive antics displayed by Fayose in his paid adverts on the APC’s presidential candidate. The cacophony of disapproval from the public which greeted the publication is a reflection of the consideration of the advert as being thoughtless from a man and a party that cannot be considered less. By that act, Fayose has amplified his tactless as a man lacking in consideration for others. People like Fayose are thriving because the PDP in 16 years of misrule of Nigeria have merely succeeded in breeding people of questionable character that have sadly become politically ingrained as gleaming beasts.

    The PDP campaign mouth organ has made a tepid rejection of the advertisement even while at the same time describing, in wild epithets, Fayose’s puffed-up deluding status in the ruling party and Ekiti state where he governs. What an offensive way of approbation and reprobation at the same time in the party’s laborious but futile bid of extricating itself from the condemnable act due to the deafening backlash it has garnered in public space. Even the presidency has not come out publicly to denounce such an odious advertisement placed with Ekiti tax payers’ money by Fayose with the sole aim of better positioning the president in his re-election bid. All reasonable Ekiti indigenes, anywhere in the world, should come out and condemn, like millions of other Nigerians have done, the Fayose advertisement against Buhari that has put the state’s name, once again, on the world map for the wrong reason.

    That thoughtless advertisement with no respect for human life or dignity should be treated as a message from one of the president’s staunchest overzealous henchmen. The people of the north should get the message inherent as meant to denigrate its respected hegemony. The voters from this region should deploy their votes come February 14 to push President Jonathan out of power. The reality of the day is that Nigerians are fed up with PDP, especially Jonathan’s eggregious misrule and are really itching for CHANGE. This publicly nauseating advertisement is just because the ruling party, the president and his rotweillers cannot fathom the cyclonic demand for real change, courtesy of the APC. Now, they have taken, albeit unsuccessfully, refuge under the demand for Buhari’s original certificates. When they realised that bait would not deter the people from sticking with Buhari, they have changed tactics, cooking up phantom health issues on the man in the process.

    Fayose is a notorious politician who has found himself in power for the second time simply because of the majesty of democracy that saw Ekiti people vote out Kayode Fayemi for whatever disagreement they had with his leadership style. The same Ekiti democratic wave is brewing across the country against President Jonathan and a million Fayoses cannot stop Nigerians from all the geo-political zones that are fed up with Jonathan from voting PDP and his presidential candidate out on February 14. That is the issue that the Fayose advertisement has further pushed to the fore -The need to guarantee APC’s promised change in the coming general elections.

  • Dokubo Asari’s tirade on Mrs Jonathan

    It was an uppercut and well-delivered too. One of Niger Delta’s ‘war lord’ who has rejected the label of ex-militant and also refused to officially participate in the Amnesty Programme pounced on First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan and pummelled her deservedly.

    Alhaji Mujahhid Dokubo Asari’s anger stemmed from a statement from the Office of First Lady in which she expressed solid support for the emergence of Supervising Minister of Education Nyesom Wike as the next governor of Rivers State.

    The statement was issued by Ayo Adewuyi, her Media Assistant in responses to an accusation that the First Lady was scheming to install her preferred candidate as governors in Bauchi, Bayelsa and Rivers States in 20115.

    It began with a denial that “the First Lady does not meddle in the affairs and selection process of the ruling party, the PDP”.

    The statement subsequently veered into an equivocal cesspit: “In the case of Rivers State, the First Lady wishes to state categorically that the Supervising Minister of Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, is the leader of the PDP in Rivers State…. It is, therefore, mischievous to insinuate that Mrs. Jonathan is working to ensure that the governorship candidate comes from the riverine areas of Rivers State which may not be where the people are going… Mrs. Jonathan has not withdrawn her support for Chief Wike at any time… As far as the First Lady is concerned, there is no shaking in Rivers State.”

    Dokubo said the alleged plan by Mrs Jonathan to impose Wike on the people was morally wrong in the light of the dominance of the political landscape of the state by the Ikwerre, to which Wike belongs, in the past 16 years.

    “To make Wike a governor in Rivers State in 2015 is not morally right. All the fellows endorsing him for whatever reason should know that it will injure PDP, it will injure Goodluck Jonathan. If Goodluck’s name is brought into it, that he is in support of the perpetuation of an Ikwerre hegemony in Rivers State, which is not right by population, which is not right under any calculation, it will injure him and PDP,” Dokubo stated in a newspaper interview.

    He said an Ikwerre man had no business in Rivers Government House in 2015, adding that it would amount to political suicide for PDP to field Wike in the next election.

    “It is morally wrong for any anybody to say that Igbo cluster should produce the next governor in 2015. I am an Igbo man also, by virtue of my origin, and so I am not against the Ikwerre people or against the Igbo. I repeat, I am an Igbo man; I can narrow it down: I have Ikwerre blood flowing in my veins.

    “In terms of population, when you remove the cosmopolitan population of Port Harcourt and Obiakpor, which is about 80 per cent of the population, is non-indigenous of those local governments. That is old non-Rivers indigenes and Rivers indigenes, who are not indigenes of Port Harcourt and Obiakpor local governments. If you remove those populations, the Ijaws are the majority as a single block.

    “When you look at that, for somebody to say another Ikwerre man should become governor is wrong. Yes, constitutionally, he has a right to aspire, everybody is free to aspire, but it is not moral, it is not right. Something can be legally right but it might not be morally right.

    “So if we are saying there should be justice in Rivers State… if we are crying against domination by others, we should not also oppress other people.

    “The First Lady needs not to be told that it is morally and politically wrong for her to support another Ikwerre man by 2015, after the Igbo bloc would have spent over 16 years. She has every right to support who she wants but that must be done in a morally and politically correct direction and manner.”

    Is there anything more to add? Not much other than for Mrs Jonathan to realise than forcing a candidate on the people of Rivers as their next governor will amount to killing his husband politically in the state, which is already angry with him for some of his and her transgressions. A word is enough for the wise.