Vengeance. Vindictiveness. Vendetta. These three words, do they mean exactly the same thing? Or do they not mean exactly the same thing? Whether or not we go to any good lexicon to get the answers to these seemingly easy, simple questions, which actually can be said to be one and the same question, one thing is clear for sure. The three words are negative, and they convey negative feelings, negative thoughts, negative sensations, and negative attitudes.
Looking back at General Muhammadu Buhari’s first presidential term of four years which officially ended two days ago, one may not totally be wrong to say that our ex-Army General who became our democratic President imbued our psyches with the listed, aforesaid, negative sentiments which constituted our collective psychological temperature. Did GMB seriously try to assuage the negative psychological effects the past four years of his venatic presidency had on us all – and especially on the opposition and those who did not share his theory, practice and style of governance or of democratic leadership? The answer, obviously, must be in the negative.
As we must put it, in our country’s well known lingo, the man we truly once loved “fall our hand.” We don’t need to stress the point that GMB’s four years’ presidency was one which characterized our republic as the Republic of Vengeance – or of Vindictiveness or of Vendetta. We don’t need to stress the point, but we must stress it here as such hence this small and simple review of the vindictive regime of GMB of the All Progressives Congress in the past four years.
Under ex-President Jonathan we were free. Under ex-President Jonathan we were not under the spell of those who wished (and still wish) to “Fulanise” or “Islamise” our country. Under ex-President Jonathan we never had religious fanatics and ethnic imperialists who decimated villages and towns and cities of fellow Nigerians as we had in the past four years of GMB’s presidency. Under ex-President Jonathan we were never insulted or abused to our faces and before our very eyes every day and compelled to be quiet or silent because of all kinds of security implications. Indeed, ex-President Jonathan never put us in political prison or ethnic captivity with solely security personnel or officers from his own regional base or ethnic region.
Because ex-President Jonathan did not do all this and more negative things we truly were free under his presidency. Of course, ex-President Jonathan “illegally” dealt with the President (Justice Salami) of the Court of Appeal under his presidential watch, but he did not disgrace and humiliate him as GMB, our highly vengeful GMB, has disgraced and humiliated Justice Walter Onnoghen because of GMB’s alleged political and ethnic suspicion that the sacked Chief Justice of Nigeria would preciously stick to points of law without paving the way for any interference from anywhere, including the highest quarter, in the event that opposition parties, one way or the other, might challenge the result/outcome of the last presidential election in the election petition tribunal and the Supreme Court on appeal. Because the sacked CJN is not a vile man, because as an esteemed, accomplished and powerful judicial lordship who could not be gagged, who could not be compelled to follow any line of an ethnic or political script outside the principles of law, he must be nailed – and he was nailed. Even his fellow Justices, allegedly envious of him, or allegedly settling old scores with him, were allegedly employed and similarly allegedly compelled to do the vile job in a candidly unvarnished way.
Some of them were even also allegedly blackmailed inevitably to abandon him to his political and ethnic lot and judicial fate. In the Republic of Vengeance which GMB has turned our country and republic into even Supreme Court Justices must be wary of the almighty power of vengeance, vindictiveness and vendetta. After all, our Supreme Court Justices are mortals. They are men (and women). And every man (or woman) is mortal! And in the Republic of Vengeance such as ours man is mortally weak as mortal.
Now if the presidential candidate of the PDP in the last presidential election did not know this he should now. For resisting GMB and insisting on going to court or the established presidential electoral tribunal to challenge GMB’s electoral victory he now, in the spirit of GMB’s vengeance, stands the risk of being deported from Nigeria as a non-Nigerian who illegally or criminally contested the 2019 presidential election against troubled and troubling GMB of a distinct personality of vindictiveness. In fact, PDP’s presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar may even face first the punishment of imprisonment before his second punishment of deportation and eventual third punishment of death in his forced permanent exile. (But he won’t die). All this will happen despite and in spite of the truth that Atiku Abubakar was once the number next-to-a-former President’s of our country. Atiku Abubakar believes that the tribunal or courts, including the apex court, will give him victory, electoral or non-electoral, but our judges and justices have the total responsibility to avoid the noose of Mr. Vengeance in this Republic of Vengeance. Let day becomes night and night becomes day, the PDP presidential candidate will be denied an obligation as a citizen of our country to be president – even if he merits to be president. Our commander in chief and his cohorts of soldiers of vengeance or of vendetta will disable him openly or un-openly. Their untroubled thoughts and actions will forever disallow a reversal of fortune.
I hope all of us remember Colonel Sambo Dasuki who was National Security Adviser (NSA) in Dr. Jonathan’s presidency. In the last four years of GMB’s presidency what became of the Colonel? Even now what has become of him? He has allegedly been in solitude in detention despite several judicial pronouncements acceding to his bail. And what really is Colonel Dasuki’s offence? What crime did he commit that has given our country another kind of new experience? Is GMB so insecure that he should deny Colonel Dasuki his true freedom? The allegation is rife that the former National Security Adviser was prominently involved in the under-ground activity that pushed GMB out of his throne in his military head-of-state-ship in 1984. This may explain his arrest and the prison torture he has experienced in the past four years. Will the Colonel successfully hold out and survive the torture of his outstandingly vindictive gaoler in this forged Republic of Vengeance? Time will tell.
At this juncture I must submit your intelligence and attention to the disappointing fact that even flibbertigibbets and minnows of GMB had enforced the menacing power of vengeance, vindictiveness and vendetta in their dealings with our workers and people under their ministerial or administrative watch. A good example is Dr. Chris Ngige the minister of labour and employment who dared our labour unions, including Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) over the replacement of Mr. Frank Kokori as chairman of Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITI). The vengeful minister directed NUPENG to “produce its only outstanding Financial Returns for 2018 within 72 hours when the extant law stipulates 30 days, and even when such returns are supposed to be due by June 31, 2019” (see Vanguard of Monday, May 20, 2019 Page 8).
In our Republic of Vengeance dissent of any kind – except maybe from the press – is disallowed. Even traditional rulers must read the lips of venal governors before opening their royal mouths as Emir of Kano now knows belatedly. We wait to see how the Emir or the Governor of Kano will ultimately fulfil their historical roles in our Republic of Vengeance. Will Kano people stand against their oppressors and their scourge and assert themselves as free people? Time will tell.
But after all said and done, we must commend GMB for not vengefully descending, lightly or heavily, on our dissenting and dissident Nigerian press questing for the best for our country in the past four years. In this wise he displayed the right virtues in our Republic of Vengeance. Yet we must submit that the past four years will go down in our political chronicle and history as the bleakest four years of our Central Republic of Vengeance (CRV).
•Afejuku may be reached via 08055213059 (SMS only).
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