LUNATICS ON THE LOOSE
Lunatics On The Loose
Abba Mahmood
— Jan 29, 2015 | Leave a comment
The PDP has never been this frightened. It has
never been so mismanaged. It has never been
this desperate to remain in power.
To make matters worse, it has fielded a
presidential candidate, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan,
who declared at the party’s recent rally in Jos
that he “will increase youth unemployment”!
He went to Maiduguri and told his party
people that if he was “re-elected” he would
end Boko Haram. Is he not the president now
and has Boko Haram not been around for the
last six years? What did he do in the last five
years to end Boko Haram to warrant another
four years? If anything, Boko Haram had no
territory before Jonathan but now controls a
large chunk of Nigerian territory and attacks
with impunity. The PDP simply has a bad
product and everyone is now aware.
I like the way former CBN governor, Professor
Chukwuma Soludo put it: “No other president
had presided over the slaughter of about
15,000 people by insurgents in peacetime; no
other president earned up to 50% of the
amount of resources the current government
earned from oil and yet with very little
outcomes; no other president had the rate of
borrowing; none had significant forex earnings
and yet did not add one penny to foreign
reserve but losing international reserves at a
time of boom; no other president had a
depreciating exchange rate at a time of export
boom; at no time in Nigeria’s history has
poverty reached 71%; and under no other
president did unemployment reach 24%.
Surely, these are unprecedented records and
he surely ‘outperformed’ his predecessors!
What a satire!”
To further aggravate an already bad situation,
instead of the president and his party trying to
explain what they did in the last six years,
they have let loose some deranged individuals
whose only stock in trade is to abuse and
vilify. Enter Mr Femi Fani-Kayode, the chief
propagandist of the current dispensation. His
corruption charges were dropped and he got
appointed as media director of the PDP 2015
campaign. It appears he was only hired to
disrespect the person of Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari, the PDP nemesis. And he went about
in the most crude and uncouth manner to do
the dirty job, such as making a ridiculous and
false claim that Buhari does not have a
certificate!
No less a personality than defence minister
Gen. Aliyu Gusau, a PDP founding member,
was quoted as saying on page 7 of Sunday
Sun newspaper of January 25: “You know that
I am not a politician but the truth needs to be
told that I have known Buhari since 1960. He
passed through the school that I also
attended; he sat for his Cambridge/ WASC
examination and came out with Division 2. He
then joined the army, rose to become major
general and head of state… They passed out in
1961 and we passed out in 1964. Buhari had
leadership qualities since secondary school; in
form five, he was a house prefect… By 1961,
when he was in form six, he was chosen to be
the head boy of the school.” Hope the lunatics
are listening.
As Idowu Akinlotan wrote in his back page
column of The Nation newspaper of January
25 also,“The election is not really about
Buhari, what he can do or won’t do, what
certificates he brandishes or does not hold,
what acts of cruelty he performed in the past
or acts of kindness. The election is strictly
speaking about Dr Jonathan, by what margin
to repudiate him, and about how to punish
him for the humiliation and disgrace he has
brought upon the country locally and
internationally. The PDP is already distressed.
The more they abuse Gen. Buhari and paint
him as a monster, the more the crowds at his
rallies swell.”
Nothing has exposed the PDP’s weakness
more than the recent meeting of ex-militants
and some government officials in Government
House, Yenagoa. In attendance were known
lunatics like Asari Dokubo as well as the
presidential adviser on Niger Delta. They were
widely reported in the media to have resolved
that “any attempt to dethrone the president
would be seen as a direct attack on the Ijaw
nation, (and) threatened to unleash violence
on the country and take back Niger Delta oil
should Dr Jonathan lose re-election.” Do these
creek warlords really know what it is to live
with others in a decent society? Do they really
know what democracy is?
We have passed this path before. These
people must be reminded that there was no oil
when Nigeria was founded by the British. It
was the agricultural potential of the hinterland
as well as the mineral resources of the central
zone especially that attracted the British. That
was why they built the railways vertically to
carry these resources to the ports in the
south. In any case, no one can intimidate
anybody with a finite resource when we have
the greatest gift of nature: hardworking people
and rich lands which no one can take away.
Those people are misjudging the mood of the
moment and the spirit of the time which is for
change.
Are Femi Fani Kayode, Asari-Dokubo and
others like them aware of the implications of
what they are doing? How can they abuse,
insult and disrespect a significant section of
this country and expect the people of that
section to vote for their candidate? Democracy
is about ideas and since these lunatics have
run out of ideas and are marketing a bad
product, they have resorted to what they know
best – insult, blackmail and intimidation. But
they are mistaken this time.
Another dangerous dimension being deployed
by the PDP is the use of religion during rallies.
In some states in the northwest, Vice
President Manadi Sambo was busy reciting
Quranic verses to the unimpressed audience
while PDP chairman Adamu Muazu was
reciting the Shahadah! This is a dangerous
precedence in a supposed secular, diverse
polity like Nigeria. This election is not about
Christianity or Islam. It is about corruption,
poverty and insecurity. It is a verdict on our
current situation and future aspirations which
the PDP and its candidate have so far
mismanaged.
As scholar-activist, Dr Jibrin Ibrahim wrote in
his column on page 66 of Daily Trust
newspaper of January 26, “increasingly, the
body language of the president and his aides
is that they are afraid they would lose the
elections and, if they do lose, appear unwilling
to hand over to the probable winner. The body
language is to seek postponement
arrangement”. But it is too late and rigging is
out of fashion. Like pregnancy, elections have
time limits. A government that cannot get
ready for elections in four years can never be
ready even in 40 years.
Today, everyone knows that the APC is the
largest party in Nigeria, and if every largest
party here is the largest in Africa, then, the
APC is the largest party in Africa. All the most
populous states in Nigeria are controlled by
the APC. It was the majority party in the
House of Representatives even before the
elections. Gen. Buhari, its presidential
candidate, is the single politician with the
largest following. Thus, no insults or
intimidation can postpone the imminent defeat
of the PDP. Cancer and AIDS have infected the
PDP and, as everyone knows, these are
terminal diseases. Come February 14 we shall
bury the PDP monster and entrench peace and
love on Lovers’ Day.