Times are so frenetically awash with political activities of a sort never before known. Of all the Heads of State any nation has ever had, none epitomizes the true state of his country as Obasanjo does Nigeria. This he inflicts on us by the apparent relevance he still commands. It is the height of embarrassment, to say the least, that a man that has aggregated double figure years of leadership of a nation should affect such vileness. If there has been, and we know there has been since independence, bribery and corruption, surely under Obasanjo’s watch, the rhizome of a monster combination was spawned. He was Petroleum Minister throughout his eight-year tenure.
We presume in that period no funds were stolen. We have not at any point heard a demand for audit of that ministry’s account in that period. How come? Our leaders are like mushroom, reared on filth in the dark, emerging into glorious daylight to grow and blossom. Their original characters never change. They have placed us in a tangle akin to the last spaghetti out of Pompeii AD79.
It is now impossible to try and predict which way our wind of fortune shall blow. Postulation on our future now is an all-comers game. The polity is so fired up with unguarded utterances and acts the populace is a dithering mass of fear. It is my suspicion that we have given Obasanjo more attention than he deserves. A man we all have held in some awe and acclaim, a man that had never spared a chance to square up to Wole Soyinka starts up a fusillade of his own. What biblical rude name was it he called the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?
In spite of all his venomous broadsides at Obasanjo, our erudite friend never thought to hurl close to such horrendous trash at that man. Sixty reasons not to vote for Jonathan but the man tires after the count of one! What has he now seen in Obasanjo, what travelling political agenda have they cooked up together, for him to pitch his tent at Otta?
It is unthinkable that a man of his stature, a Nobel Laureate no less, should elect to voice such fell crudity of the language he is renowned for on no less than the top office holder of his own nation, a man he should ordinarily eulogize! Soyinka’s command of language is such he could easily show zenithal respect and politeness to the man he elects to destroy. One surely must wonder what should make this man plummet from Olympian heights of decency to these nadiral depths.
That Tinubu waged a venomous running battle against Obasanjo was lost on no one when he was Lagos State governor and Obasanjo was president. Now the trio of Obasanjo, Soyinka and Tinubu, erstwhile dour opponents are transformed protagonists championing the same cause of change from within the same camp of political collusion!
Now I ask: who are these three musketeers truly championing for a change? This tripartite alliance is to my mind a most unlikely alliance. These three more than anybody else should remember Ajasin, Awolowo and a score of Yoruba that suffered at the hands of Buhari; the same Buhari who as at this moment remains equanimous, unapologetic and unrepentant. This calls for thought. The Yoruba do not have short memory as a strong suite. There are so many speculative thoughts on what might happen in Nigeria if one or the other candidate lost the presidential election, plenty enough to fill the Grand Canyon.
The common supposition is the eruption of violence of an unprecedented dimension. The incumbent’s detractors have their excuses for rejecting him, including one-plus-sixty of Soyinka’s. Those that think Buhari will straighten out the corruption issue forget their erstwhile abhorrence of his hard handedness of years gone by. I would be the last to insult Soyinka by deeming him dimwitted not to know that the change this country needs is not a change from a Jonathan to a Buhari. The man has more brains than slouch behind such a mundane supposition. Soyinka knows more than anybody else that the change Nigeria needs is from its present federated status to a confederated status, with a Constitution to suit. Olusegun Obasanjo knows it; and so does Bola Ahmed Tinubu. In the absence of that ultimate desired change, this trio seek a different change; and there the real déjà vu rears its head. Tinubu himself knows a thing or two about “Toronto” I think.
We have at this moment a second Katsina State indigene being championed by Obasanjo. Yar’Adua was a sick man when OBJ made him his heir apparent. Virtually every soul knew it but perhaps not that his sickness was terminal. OBJ recently denied knowing that Yar’Adua was sick. Not so long ago, Soyinka qualified Obasanjo’s status and degree as a liar. Not so long ago, health became a talking point about Buhari. That was pooh-poohed. Jonathan was a relatively obscure politician when OBJ attached him to Yar’Adua.
Now we have another obscure running mate attached to Buhari! It is hard not to conjecture that these Yoruba linchpins want the presidency back west! There then lies the déjà vu. Poor Buhari must be gullible to think the Yoruba have forgiven him. The dirk, the dagger and the kris they wield must be honed and barbed; why else this unlikely alliance? Isn’t this the change these elements want? Yet, when the chips are down, it is doubtful that they will come out breathing fire like dragons. Under this mesmeric hoo-hah mantra of change, many begin to see a lot of non-extant flaws in the Jonathan administration, flaws that aren’t even there at all.
We seem stuck between a rock and a hard place in our choice between a ‘weak’ Jonathan and a ‘strong’ Buhari, merely because it is a supposition self-serving interests have generated and propagated. Let us not be ungracious and take away the incumbent’s good works from his score sheets. Let us compare relative tangible positive achievements by Buhari first then Jonathan in his own tenure at the helm of our national affairs. We, who claim Buhari a financial saint, should well ask what those 53 suitcases contained, traveling baggage of just one man!
But of course, we must not forget his forte was the Gestapo style he threatens yet to bring back. Many of his adherents today are too young to know what that was. There are many more ways of killing a rat than stuffing it full of gunpowder and using its tail for a fuse.
The best way we may fight our monster of corruption cannot be by corrupting democracy via the return of a bloodthirsty Genghis Khan into our wobbly democracy. That would take us back half a century; and violations of civic and human rights we had endured with the gun to our heads shall return through our votes. Yet Buhari claqueur (oti mkpu in Igbo) Soyinka has not advanced beyond that change mantra in support of clue-filled Buhari! All that notwithstanding, there undoubtedly needs to be some change at state and local levels. Where I come from for instance, the change bug is with us. We at least think we have a strong need for a change.
- A. Orji is seen to intently and callously foist a dynastic continuum of patented misrule. Abians see him as having achieved mighty little in eight years and yet he wants to impose his protégée on us. His son, Son Excellency you might call him now, is thought to prance around as if he owned the state. He is said earmarked for Speaker of the House of Assembly as a prelude to his eventual takeover as Governor of the state. This sort of hegemony is not admissible in the homogeneity that is Abia State.
We are becoming subjects of to have been enslavement to the TA clan. So we want a change, period. In my senatorial district of Abia North, the PDP Comrade that time and again stood in our representation has done woefully bad we feel no ounce of amusement whatsoever. His party is handing over to one whose earlier performance and our dealings with him in the past leave us no choice but to give our full plume of support to another whose track record we can at least comfortably vouch for.
That is the sort of volte-face change, the sort that is not earth shattering, that one may deem admissible. “I, Ibrahim Babangida….” knocked out Shagari and democracy, installing Buhari and the army. Then “I, Sani Abacha….” knocked out Buhari and the army, installing Babangida and the army. Can someone please tell us what were those excuses Babangida and his fellow sympathizers gave for ousting this man Buhari? Now we are in fact hearing “I, Olusegun Obasanjo….” for the installation of (the same) Buhari on his second trip around, same as Obasanjo.
Nothing will happen that has not happened before, should either Buhari or Jonathan lose this presidential election. Neither may be our best bet to lead but we are clearly better off a democracy under Jonathan than a ‘dictatorcracy’ under Buhari. At some point in time, when perhaps we have had enough of our travails, we might work toward the changes we in actual fact need, and those preparations might include a four-year-plan, starting now, to wipe out these old tainted sacking-and-looting-and-sacking political operators that have taken us nowhere but chasing our tails in ephemeral effectiveness.
We must have a rethink and I believe our younger generation must spearhead this. History is replete with instances to learn from. The French Revolution 1789-1793 is an example. The Russians having first failed in 1905 enacted their liberation from their oppressors with the Germans at their front door in 1917. Nothing unifies as the universal common language of anger, and anger is born of hunger, and that is a language we must avoid.
SUN
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