Last week, the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) said the mass murders across the country were the handiwork of
some people who were hell-bent on embarrassing President Jonathan
because he “is a minority”. The statement was released by the PDP
national publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh. This kind of statement should
have embarrassed any normal president but Jonathan is far from being a
normal president. He did not disown the statement and the PDP national
chairman did not disown it, so it is safe to take it as the view of both
the president and his party.
If the president was not embarrassed by
that statement, I was embarrassed for him. I, in fact, felt scandalised
and discomfited that a man who is president and commander-in-chief of
the armed forces would think he is a minority. I wonder why somebody who
is already the president of 174 million people would still be speaking
this language of division. The PDP has even gone further to say that it
is the statements of General Muhammadu Buhari, former head of state, and
Nasiru el-Rufai, former FCT minister, that were the code words for the
criminals to embark on their killing spree. The insinuation is that
Buhari and el-Rufai are behind Boko Haram. Well, I think this is a good
time for both Buhari and el-Rufai to go to court because this nonsense
has persisted for too long. If Buhari, who as head of state crushed the
Maitatsine uprising forever, would now become a Boko Haram sponsor,
then, I think Olisa Metuh should have his day in court to prove this
allegation. The PDP publicity secretary even went further to say that
the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu panel indicted General Buhari in the 2011
post-election violence. I remember that the last time the PDP told a lie
of this nature about Lemu, the Sheikh came out himself to say it was a
lie. He said he never said anything like that and the report of their
work, which Jonathan had dumped like every other work aimed at solving
the nation’s problems, was still there.
All this talk by the PDP is just a
desperate attempt to divert attention from President Jonathan’s
unprecedented incompetence. If Buhari, el-Rufai and company were behind
the violence all over the country, then, they must also be the ones who
organized the kidnapping of the president’s foster father in Bayelsa
State. And they must be gifted kidnappers indeed because they forced the
president’s household to negotiate a handsome ransom. A whole
president? That also means that Buhari, el-Rufai and company also
organised the attack on the Enugu Government House, a few weeks ago. I
didn’t know that Buhari and el-Rufai are also “biafrans”, because their
boys who carried out the criminal attack on the Enugu Government House
held a press conference to declare that they were “biafrans” and they
attacked the Enugu Government House to send a clear message. Buhari,
el-Rufai and company it must be that also organised the MEND bombing of
Abuja on October 1, 2010. That must be why Jonathan insisted that the
bombers were not MEND operatives even after MEND had claimed
responsibility several times. If we are to believe the president and his
PDP officials, then, Buhari and el-Rufai must be Boko Haram, MEND,
Ombatse, biafran, Fulani, Birom, Tarok militiamen all at the same time.
I think the clowns around the president
should stop this tomfoolery and face the reality of their principal’s
crass incompetence. I have always said that Jonathan does not have the
gift of leadership and the nation should have been spared this horror in
the first place. It is very clear that the president is unable to
secure this country from terrorists, kidnappers, armed robbers and the
ubiquitous gunmen. And I think this fact is already too obvious to the
PDP mandarins; that is why they want to distract attention from his
incompetence. Is it also the opposition that has been stealing all the
public funds on Jonathan’s watch? Or, is it Buhari and el-Rufai that
have been massively stealing the crude oil in the Niger Delta and the
president has been so similarly incompetent to deal with the situation?
If President Jonathan wants to seek
re-election in 2015, he is very free to do so. I am, in fact, one of
those that have consistently defended the president’s right to do so.
But he must run on his record. Nigerians will evaluate how he has fared
as president so far. They must know how he has been able to secure the
people – which is the most elementary responsibility of any president.
The north-east will want to know how he has been able to secure them
from Boko Haram; those in the north-central will like to know how they
have been protected from the Ombatse and the Birom, Tarok and Fulani
militia who visit at night, while those in the north-west will ask how
he has protected them so far from the “unknown gunman”. Those in the
south-south, including his own household in Bayelsa, would like to know
how he has protected them from the kidnappers and armed robbers. Ditto
for those in the south-east. And those in the south-west will want to
know why they have been abandoned to armed robbers.
Nigerians will ask to know whether this
unprecedented insecurity that has engulfed the entire nation like a
plague has something to do with the unprecedented stealing that is
currently going on and which has grounded the Nigerian state to the
extent that the police and other security agencies as well as state
governments do not get their appropriated budgets.
Nigerians will also remind the president
of the N2 trillion stolen in the name of fuel subsidy in 2011 which he
has done absolutely nothing about. Ditto for the N100 billion stolen
from the police pension fund and all the other funny figures of theft we
hear every day. We will also ask what he has done about the dilapidated
Police College, Ikeja, where the president’s dogs cannot even survive
in. Nigerians will also remember that the president’s reaction then was
“Who brought the press here?” and not why human beings were living in
such sub-human conditions. And this is saying nothing about the missing
$20 billion (about N3.3 trillion). There are lots and lots more
Nigerians will be asking. This is the record the president must campaign
on. We are not going to allow anyone to use his place of birth, creed,
tribe, minority or majority status or religion to divide the people.
EARSHOT
Jonathan’s Standard Of Corruption
Jonathan’s Standard Of Corruption
Again, this time in Namibia, President
Jonathan has declared that the talk of corruption in Nigeria is blown
out of proportion. I am actually beginning to believe that the president
really means it. That is why I think Nigerians should begin to imagine
what the real corruption would be if Jonathan ever got a second term.
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