By Bashir Adefaka
There is an ongoing serialized article that was started by your’s sincerely at a time President Muhammadu Buhari was still keeping to himself the decision as to whether or not he would want to seek re-election. By this publication that series is expected end and it will be ended. But before then, it will be pertinent to deviate a little to acknowledging the latest development in the political experience of the nation and then return to the last leg of the serialized article titled, “Before they make Palestine, Rwanda, South Sudan, Syria out of Nigeria”.
At that time the President was still keeping the decision on seeking re-election to himself, it was normal for aspirants within the governing party not to leave anything to chance, so as not to regret doing so in event that the President eventually turned down the idea of seeking re-election. Hence, for any member of All Progressives Congress (APC) to indicate interest, it was the very rational definition of democracy, especially with the President’s standing request that other gladiators within the party should contest with him at a primary if he eventually decided to seek re-election.
But some elements in the polity, who because of personal gains allegedly incited killings only for them to mischievously shift the blame to the sitting President as using the apparatus of State to support his Fulani tribe’s men to kill other people, they came clearly as open enemies of State through their hatred and incitement of hate speeches, sponsorship of dangerous rumours and fake news across board. That was for no more or less than to prove a point that they are fighting and frustrating Buhari gathering concentration and achievements to seek re-election.
Thinking they had achieved enough warm-up based on their negative ways to convince vulnerable Nigerians why they should not vote for the President in 2019, they started by saying Nigeria was now more divided than ever before. Trust Buharists, of this part of the world, helped them analyse how not to blame Buhari for the seeming divisions and how Nigerians should see the truth of the seeable divisions as handiwork of corrupt politicians either of past or present era who caused same to divert attention away from their being arrested and prosecuted for their loots of the commonwealth of Nigerian people.
By the heavyweight and analytical powers of Students of the College of Buharism, those elements failed and retreated to come back later, not only in form of letters writing of many pages each but also in mounting incessant condemnations of Buhari’s Government as failure. But when the achievements were read and physically proved to them – some of them who took $16 billion for power, N300 billion for Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in the past without working, some of them who wanted Mambilla Plateau Power Project Contract to be awarded to single person among the self-asserted Owners of Nigeria but turned down by Buhari who insisted the contract must be split to four other Nigerians – they started fine-tuning their accusations until Buhari eventually made his declaration to re-contest. Majority of Nigerian people are with the President on this.
Even the open opponent that Alhaji Balarabe Musa is to the President never saw anything wrong in the declaration but asked Nigerians to be informed that his party, People’s Redemption Party (PRP), which won election last in Nigeria when he (Musa) won as Kaduna State Governor in the early days of Second Republic, is available in presidential order for their votes come 2019.
It is worth mentioning here that President Buhari’s Monday’s declaration, like his popular six-minute broadcast that commanded the stoppage of Arewa Youths’ Quit Notice of the old, has again solved a lot of problems socially, political and economically for Nigeria. It has also helped strengthened and given a better direction to the governing APC.
Now there will be more effective unity among chiefs and members of the All Progressives Congress than before. Although opposition elements would never like to mention how his ideological attachment to Rule of Law is working for Nigeria, insisting on the same systemic policy in matter of his own governing party has not only saved the APC from a near implosion but also has placed the party on a deeply rooted Iroko tree to grow taller in the coming general elections. It is therefore correct to now say that everything surrounding how Nigeria’s public goes since May 29, 2015 has resolved around the person of Muhammadu Buhari. In that case, Buhari is surely an ideology as described.
To Nigerians, whose lives might have been in confusion as a result of impasse than mighty have greeted the President’s failure to seek re-election to continue to help fight the corruption he had been left alone to do since onset, to the APC whose chances of winning would have been so thin should he fail to seek re-election and to the Federal Government of the current team, whose great achievements in security, anti-corruption and economy would have been rubbished should Buhari fail to seek re-election, it is now correct to say Congratulations!
Continued from Part II,
Before they make Palestine, Rwanda, South Sudan, Syria out of Nigeria (III)
With the second coming of Muhammadu Buhari, the narratives of entire lifestyle of Bayelsa State and, by extension, the Niger Delta region have changed. Not only that the Ogoni Land Clean up is being worked upon but also, the East-West Road that many had agonized over for decades particularly under the President of Niger Delta extractions are now at near stage of completion. The land of Bayelsa can now produce rice, plantain and their waters now breed fishes. These was the region that plunged Nigeria into recession through their Niger Delta Avengers’ economic terrorism that angered many other parts of the country to brand President Buhari as weak for not taking action. But what an elder sees sitting, the young will never see it climbing even on rooftops. Buhari sustained all of those provocations and dangers posed by the Avengers and their political leaders including Jonathan, who should be behind bars but is not, and moved on with life. Today there is peace in the area.
TY Danjuma at Taraba State University convocation calls to arms conflict?
Buhari was that patient because, and it is also clear to many public commentators now, he knew that many of those including the Nigerian Press, who thought they were sympathizing with Niger Delta over their plights, were doing them more harms by not telling them and the world the truth. And the truth they failed to tell of the Niger Delta hardships was that those hardships of the region were inflicted on the area not by Federal Government or the North that they were claiming but by the very leaders of the Niger Delta themselves. The media left out their duty to ask questions: “Before you blame the Federal Government for your plights, how did it happen? You have constitutional 13 percent derivations. Were you getting it or not? You have royalties from companies operating oil wells in your place. Yes or not? The Federal Allocations that go to all the states of the country including states of your region, do they get to you or not? You were given NDDC headed by your own people with a roadmap to make your region better than Dubai. Yes or no? Even though NDDC alone could achieve that but you were still given a whole Ministry of Niger Delta to develop you as a region and as a people. Yes or no? You also claim the Northerners are the owners of oil wells in resources that are your own. How true is this? Agreed, Northerners are Nigerians like Southwesterners, Southeasters and Southsoutherners. But does it mean that there are no people from other geo-political zones including your own zone who are owners of oil well in the Niger Delta? If there are, then why are Federal Government and Northerners your problems?”
These are questions that the media should have since asked but with the coming President Buhari, the questions started coming out naturally by themselves and the Niger Deltans began to see that neither Federal Government nor any Northerner is their cause of their problem but their own leaders who took those monies and failed to use same to develop their land and better their lots. That natural answer to the many questions they failed to address in many years past finally nailed the coffin of the whole agitations of the Niger Delta region. It would be recalled that no single vote came from Niger Delta region for Buhari in the 2015 presidential election. It would also be recalled that the region that claimed the blood of more APC/Buhari supporters in Nigeria in that election period was Niger Delta. Yet, the core of appointments of the President’s administration had been shared between the Southsouth, Southwest and Southeast.
That takes us now to Southeast, where IPOB emerged under the leadership of Nnamdi Kanu. It would be recalled that IPOB started off with Radio Biafra where very many incitement to war, dangerous rumours, hate speeches and fake news dominated daily bulletin. With these, they intended to incite the international communities against the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. There was renewed agitation for Republic of Biafra, they were violent yet they, backed by PDP’s elements like Femi Fani-Kayode, Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose and the Amnesty International (AI), claimed to be peaceful. They reportedly, and confirmedly too, threw policemen into Niger River and attacked many soldiers during one of their protests which led to reported arrest of 50 members by the soldiers. It therefore became puzzling that Amnesty International and many of the public commentators including lawyers and journalists (columnists) would overlook the violence of IPOB but chose to scream over the arrest of the criminal IPOB members. They definitely expected that a serious government must wait watch like inactively while a section of the country would through the entire nation into state of confusion and war.
Later on, this IPOB said Muhammadu Buhari was the cause of their agitation although they never agreed they were ever violent despite the establishment of equivalent of Department of State Security Service (DSS) that Kanu make for the IPOB which not only became dreaded to the extent of being feared even by governors of the Southeast except Chief Rochas Okorocha of Imo State but at a point they were extorting money from members of the public, forcing them to hang Biafra flag in their houses and at a peak attacked soldiers to the extent of taking blood out of them. But how did Buhari become the cause of the agitation of IPOB? No media ever asked that question except that they helped amplify their voice of hypocrisy which centred on “Buhari did not develop their area, he did not do their roads, they are suffering” etc. the question the media should have asked was, “Between May 29, 2015 and this time in 2016, under one year that you agitation started, how have you been justified to blame Buhari for your underdevelopment?”
Recall Nigeria’s power was shared between Southsouth and Southeast during the six years of Jonathan’s Administration so much that when a Hausa or Yoruba man was sacked from office, an Igbo was used to replace him. It was like that until towards election time he decided to bring in Obanikoro that was used as Minister of State II for Defence who carried out most of the offensives against the then main opposition APC at period. Recall the arrest by soldiers of sitting Governor Rotimi Amaechi. Recall the impoundment of aircrafts that should convey Governor Aliyu Wamakko from Sokoto, Governor Musa Kwankwaso from Kano and helicopter to convey Governor Adams Oshiomhole from Benin to attend APC governorship mega rally in support of Governor Kayode Fayemi at an election to be keenly contested between Ayodele Fayose and him. That is by the way.
At that peak of IPOB terrorism, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu came out clearly to show his support for them against the Federal Government of Nigeria. That was how Ekweremadu launched his anti-Nigeria offensives thinking that he was merely displaying hate for President Muhammadu Buhari. It was later discovered that he was about to be arraigned for a corruption case before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) over assets in parts of the world including US, UK and UAE which he corruptly refused to declare in his assets declaration form. It was at that time the Ekweremadu, climbing on a Kogi Senator’s complaint, called for military coup to remove Buhari as President. All of the people that have been exposed as having cases of corruption have fought tooth and nail against the Buhari Administration trying many ways to sack the President. It will not be stated here that the sudden sickness that took the President to London on medicals when these same people started jubilating that the President would not return home alive was poison from the plots of the wicked political opposition who the President allowed to continue to work in his government on a claim of “I can work with anybody”.
All those plots having failed, the next was letters from their fathers: Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and, recently after donating N100 million to Taraba State University for honouring him with a Doctor of Letters (Honourary Consal), Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma who called to arms conflict among Nigerians over his misrepresentation of herdsmen (an entire Fulani race) as killers of other Nigerians. Danjuma had failed continuously to deny or explain the allegation of his involvement in the killing of over 700 Fulani men, their defenceless women and children on the Mambilla plateau but he and Brigadier General Lekwot among others have publicly declared themselves as Retired Christian Generals and have so been fingered in the killing of Muslims and Fulani in the country. He never denied that yet he had gone ahead to accuse the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of complicity engaging in ethnic cleansing by supporting those he called herdsmen killing other Nigerians. How far of a truth can Danjuma be by these dangerous statements?
Truth is, these elder statesmen are after something. And that thing they are after is not going to be palatable for Nigeria. Obasanjo is leading all of these plots and he has never hidden himself from that. He wrote letter the letter failed to fly although at initial state it did with some media hype. But Babangida tried to add weight but he failed because he became cowed after realizing that Buhari is not only his senior but a man that had only forgiven him but would never forget the malicious, hypocritical overthrow and deprivation from witnessing the burial of his mother while he was kept by Babangida in prison in Akure and later Jos between 1984 and 1986. It would be recalled that late Head of State General Sani Abacha had apologized to General Buhari that it was a mistake that they overthrew his anti-corruption government that should by now has put Nigeria on its right footing in the comity of nations.
It would be recalled that meetings had held at Babangida’s house in Minna between Obasanjo, General Abdulsalami Abubakar and the Babangida himself. It would also be recalled that meetings had held at the same Minna of IBB between Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s former Vice President of Nigeria, sitting Senate President Bukola Saraki and the currently embattled Senator Dino Melaye. With the onslaughts coming from Saraki’s Senate against Buhari’s anti-corruption right, outbursts of Melaye, vocalized aggression by Femi Fani-Kayode/Ayodele Fayose against Buhari in support of anything that is negative from any negative side of the opposition up to the Obasanjo/IBB’s letters and Ekweremadu and Jonathan’s support IPOB and Avengers, respectively, to the Ekweremadu’s call for military coup and Danjuma’s call to arms conflicts among Nigerians, it is clear that the elder statesmen are out for a showdown but for no reason.
They claim Buhari has failed Nigerians but a President that has done many good and great things that his predecessors including Obasanjo never did in road and power infrastructures, education, health, anti-corruption war, security and economic rebuilding cannot justifiably be called a failure. This is leading the elder statesmen from all of these to the next level and it will not be expected that the security agencies of this country particularly the Department of State Services (DSS) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria would not have known all of these and then placed them under security watch. What we are saying here is, PLACE ALL OF THESE THIRD FORCE LED BY OBASANJO UNDER WATCH AND ARREST THEM NOW! before they turn Nigeria to another Palestine, Rwanda, South Sudan and Syria.
