When the pot calls the kettle black…

Can we in all sincerity say that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ruined this country all the 16 years it was in power (1999 –2015), while the All Progressives Congress (APC) has redeemed and rebuilt it, ruling rightly and justly since it took power in May 2015 up till now? Can we say in all true conscience that all the looters of our common patrimony are in the PDP while all the saints, clean, untainted, and unblemished politicians are in the APC? Is our situation better today than it was three years ago? Are we more confident today that we are on the right path and are making steady progress as a people and nation? Is the PDP as loathed and vilified today as it was three years ago when Nigerians overwhelmingly rejected it at the polls, creating an upset never before seen in this country? Are APC and President Muhammadu Buhari as popular, well loved, and absolutely trusted today as they were three years’ ago? If elections are held in this country today, will APC and Buhari coast home to victory like they did in 2015 or does a reversal of fortunes await them like it did ex-President Goodluck Jonathan and PDP in 2015? Honest and dispassionate answers to the above questions will settle the raging controversy over the looters’ list making the rounds and the claims and counter-claims to popularity and acceptance by the two leading political parties.

Since the Buhari administration released its first and second lists of those it called looters’ of our nation’s coffers, the PDP and ordinary Nigerians have come up with what they described as more authentic lists of looters. These unofficial lists have had a telling effect on whatever the Presidency had hoped to achieve with its own release. The Presidency’s narrative has not only been cut stopped in its tract, it has also been hijacked and turned into a volcano now threatening to submerge the government. Buhari handlers appeared not to have done a proper home work before coming public with their lists; it did not reckon that since its elective convention, the PDP has regrouped and resurged enough to mount a courageous defence as well as viciously challenge the information machinery of the ruling party for the mind of Nigerians. Perhaps more importantly, APC and Buhari still live in the past, thinking that their once unassailable propaganda machinery is still well and alive and that their talisman, Muhammadu Buhari, still evokes the same sentiments and strikes the right notes with the people. Apt is the saying that you can fool some of the people all the time; you can fool all the people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Sai Baba has been replaced with Kai Baba even in many parts of the North, once seen as the impregnable fortress of Buhari. The same taunts and provocations that the APC propaganda machinery unleashed to great advantage to rattle, unsettle, disparage, dismantle, and dislodge Jonathan and PDP have returned today to haunt Buhari and APC. For instance, “Clueless and incompetent”, which Lai Mohammed coined, is today freely used, and fittingly so, to describe Buhari and the APC.

• Buhari denies religious bias claim against FG

Sadly, Buhari and APC are the architects of their own misfortune. They have failed to learn from history. Therefore, the same virus of impunity that ruined Jonathan and PDP has returned today to plague the Buhari –APC administration. Just two examples, the first being the litany of corruption cases that Buhari and APC have swept under the carpet. More than anything else, it was Jonathan’s reluctance to fight corruption, overlooking the well advertised shenanigans of his close aides that sounded the death knell of his administration – Stella Oduah, Deizani Allison-Madueke, Abba Moro, the subsidy scandals, to mention but a few. The same virus of impunity has returned with vengeance. Buhari’s carpet is bulging and busting at the seams. Serious larceny the PDP called “family affair” and swept under the carpet. APC senator from Kaduna State, Shehu Sani, cruelly but aptly described the Buhari so-called fight against corruption as a ruse and deceit. The administration, Sani said, fights corruption with deodorants when it concerns APC members but uses insecticides when opponents are concerned. This was how Jonathan also condoned corruption in the ranks of his party men and voters punished him for it. Buhari and APC’s own punishment is around the corner. The second example is the in-fighting tearing the APC apart. To start with, there had never been a government as rudderless and leaderless as Buhari’s, where the members carved out spheres of influence and fought battles against one another. The “strong man” image that helped propel Buhari into power has fizzled and in its place today are jeers and taunts. Here, again, Buhari has been the architect of APC’s destruction. His cronyism and nepotism in critical appointments apart, his Machiavellian tactics of employing deceit to access power only to turn round to ditch those who gave him their back as well as repay voters with stunning parochialism, provincialism, archaic and ruinous fundamentalism have no comparison in our history.

APC may soon unravel; while some have described it as an amalgam of strange bedfellows, the truth of the matter is that Buhari, its major beneficiary, was its greatest and, even now, most potent enemy. He made no effort to nurture it but from Day One set out to tear it asunder. While it may be true that there are other centrifugal forces tearing at the party, it is beyond controversy that, like Brutus, Buhari’s has been the unkindest cut of all. PDP’s implosion was its greatest undoing. APC stands at the same threshold right now. Many of its leaders are already negotiating to return to where they came from. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has not helped matters with his third force. With his repeated salvos aimed at Buhari’s jugular, there is no denying the fact that the Ota farmer means business. Someone opined jocularly that it was a fight-to-finish between Buhari the herdsman and Obasanjo the farmer! That appropriately, even if regrettably, captures the mood of the nation. Buhari’s lethargy, to put it mildly, in the face of murderous Fulani herdsmen’s rampage all over the land, has done incalculable damage to his re-election bid. The Middle Belt which, traditionally, had been the foot soldiers and enforcers of Hausa-Fulani hegemony, is in open rebellion. That was the import of the recent damning call to arms made by Gen TY Danjuma. Whether we like it or not, Obasanjo, IBB, and Danjuma’s voices carry weight locally and internationally. Their coming together in 2015 helped in getting Jonathan out of power; it portends no less for Buhari in 2019.

It must be the reading of this handwriting on the wall that propelled Buhari and his loyalists into two desperate actions recently; the first is the Dapchi girls and the second the looters’ list under review. Both, however, have exploded in the government’s face. The suspicion over the Dapchi abduction and release is deep-seated and widespread and cannot be wished away. The non-release of Christian- girl Leah Shakiru may appear inconsequential now but will return over time to tear deal telling blows on Buhari and APC. Then, of course, the looters’ list, is laughable, to say the least. To continue to make PDP the excuse why things are the way they are simply testifies to the fact that Buhari and APC are not prepared to govern. According to some reports, about 75% of the leaders of APC today came from PDP. Twenty-two out of 24 APC governors were PDP; the APC leadership of the National Assembly were PDP; not to talk of hundreds of former governors and National and State assembly leaders and members who were PDP but are now calling the shots in APC. Two former national chairmen of PDP are now in APC. Many ministers today were in PDP. APC’s spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, was Jonathan’s Minister for Sports. Has he forgotten? So, when they say ad nausea that PDP ruined the country, are they not talking of people who were in PDP but who today are in APC? Thinking deeply, the reason why APC has continued to ruin this country rather than rule it well is because those who ruined the country under PDP ingeniously migrated to APC to continue their looting spree and unimaginable ruination of the country. As if to punish Nigerians for voting PDP out of power, they are now using the APC where they regrouped to inflict untold hardship on Nigerians. So the narration should change from “PDP ruined this country for the 16 years it was in power” to “PDP has ruined this country from 1999 up till now” while Buhari, the King Nero of our time, fiddles. QED!
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That Oluwo or Emir of Iwo tragedy

The unfolding Oluwo or Emir of Iwo tragedy need not surprise discerning sons and daughters of Yoruba land but it is a wake-up call that the very important traditional institution of Obaship has been desecrated and thrown to the dogs. The process of desecration did not start yesterday. It had been on for a long time but is now only getting to its crescendo or apogee. Look around you, is it only the “Baba Sala” in Iwo that is the culprit? Many of our Obas are undeserving of the throne; one beat his wife in public; the woman later died. Obas fight and insult one another in public. They are enmeshed in marital koseegbo. The sordid financial dealings of some qualify them as 419ners. They eat and dance Owambe in public. You find them everywhere. The institution, highly revered in the past, has lost its glory, allure, and grandeur. And the reasons are not far to fetch. One: Politicians have politicized the choice of Obas, preferring only pliant candidates to men of honour. Two: Kingmakers now manipulate the selection system in favour of the highest bidder. Corruption is the name of the game. Three: The misplaced priority on education is a fad that is turning up charlatans and riff-raff who come from abroad to seize the throne when they know next to nothing about the history, traditions, and customs of their people. Four: We must return to the basics and allow Ifa do its job. The throne is no mosque or church. If you are born-again Christian or mullah and your faith does not allow you become an Oba in the real sense of the word, then, go to the Church and become a pastor or to the mosque and become Baba Adinni or whatever. We must learn from other peoples, even the Jews and Arabs, who have not allowed religion erode or erase their culture and traditions.