By Femi Aribisala
NO doubt about it, the North betrayed Goodluck
Jonathan in the last election. The greatest ally of
the North in Nigerian politics has been the South-
South. Therefore, it was not asking too much for
Jonathan to expect the North to return the favour
under his administration; when he is clearly
carrying the mantle of the South-South.
Jonathan did not take Northern support for
granted. In his six years in office, he spent the
overwhelming proportion of resources at his
disposal on the North. The $1 billion Kashimbila
Dam, one of the biggest projects handled by his
administration, is in Taraba in the North.
Jonathan built over 150 Almajiri schools in the
North. He revived Nigerian agriculture, to the
primary benefit of Northern farmers.
Most of Jonathan’s political appointees were
Northern. He entrusted a Northerner, Attahiru
Jega, with INEC, bucking the tradition whereby
INEC chairmen tend to come from the South-East.
When the North complained about the Chief of
Army Staff, Azubuike Ihejirika, Jonathan replaced
him. When the North complained about Festus
Odimegwu at the National Population
Commission, Jonathan fired him. Nevertheless,
when the election time came, the North betrayed
Jonathan and the South-South.
Northern PDP governors secretly worked for
Buhari’s victory. In Jigawa, Sule Lamido only paid
lip-service to Jonathan’s campaign. In Bauchi, Isa
Yuguda watched as Jonathan’s campaign train
was stoned. In Niger, Babangida Aliyu did not
care that no Jonathan poster was placed
anywhere in the state throughout the campaign.
The blunder of these recalcitrant governors was
in thinking they could be lackadaisical about the
PDP at the federal level, but passionate about the
PDP at the state level. They all ended up losing
their states to the APC.
Retracting on promises
In order not to scare off dodgy members of his
party with his anti-corruption rhetoric, Buhari
promised to let corrupt sleeping dogs lie if
elected. APC party chairman, John Oyegun,
declared that Buhari would not waste time going
after embezzlers of public funds before 29th May,
2015. He said: “The future of the people of this
country is too important for us to spend valuable
time trying to dig into the past.”
But now that the election has been won, Buhari
no longer feels any obligation to keep his word.
Instead, he said on TV Continental that, unlike the
Quran and the Bible, the APC position during the
election is subject to change. The signs indicate
that the APC is now inclined to engage in a
vicious propaganda campaign of maligning the
Jonathan administration and the South-South
through mud-slinging probes.
Buhari now says he will revisit the issue of the
allegedly missing $20 billion from NNPC
accounts. He said in Hausa to his Northern
constituency: “Imagine a situation where the
former CBN governor, who by God‘s grace, is now
the Emir of Kano, raised an issue of missing
billions of money, not in naira but in dollars, $20
billion. What happened, instead of investigating
whether it was true, they simply found a reason
to remove him.”
In short, in spite of the forensic audit of NNPC
accounts by the prestigious
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which concluded no
money was missing, Buhari has already declared
Diezani and the NNPC guilty and Lamido Sanusi
innocent. He claims the matter was not
investigated, which means
PriceWaterhouseCoopers is not good enough for
him. Who is he now going to ask to conduct a
new probe when we already know the answer he
wants?
Witch- hunting
What we have here is the beginning of a witch-
hunt. One of the first questions of interest is
where Buhari’s oil minister is going to come from.
Within the context of the cynical view that the
insistence of a cabal that power must return to
the North is not unconnected to pending oil bloc
allocations, the question remains whether our new
oil minister must also be from the North.
In Nigeria, the FCT Minister is always from the
North. However, the oil minister is not always
from the South. The North has no oil, but it longs
to control the lucrative oil industry. Under
Jonathan, oil minister Diezani Allison-Madueke
has come under prolonged attacks and
harassment, not only because she is a woman,
but also because she is from the South-South.
Under Yar’Adua, the Petroleum Minister, Dr
Rilwanu Lukman was from Kaduna. The Group
Managing Director of the NNPC, Sanusi Barkindo,
was from Adamawa. The Director-General of the
National Petroleum Directorate, Alhaji Bello
Gusau, was from Zamfara. The Executive-
Secretary of the Petroleum Technology
Development Fund, Mustapha Rabe Darma, was
from Katsina. Are we in for a Northernisation of
the oil industry again under Buhari?
If Buhari is now determined to probe the oil
ministry under South-South stewardship, contrary
to his campaign promise; he must also probe it
under South-West stewardship. President
Obasanjo doubled as his own oil minister for
eight years. If Buhari is now going to probe
Diezani, then he must probe his new ally,
Obasanjo, as well? Otherwise, if care is not taken,
Buhari’s war against corruption will quickly divide
Nigeria along ethnic fault-lines.
Once you decide to probe the Jonathan
administration, the Niger-Delta is going to insist
on a probe of the Obasanjo administration. Once
you probe the PDP, which represents Southern
rule, there is going to be insistence that you
probe Northern rule. Should Buhari decide to
probe NNPC, the issue of his own tenure as
petroleum minister and the 2.8 billion saga will
also be brought up. He cannot apply today the
discriminatory standard he used yesterday,
whereby vice-president Ekwueme languished in
jail while president Shagari relaxed under house
arrest.
If our president-elect wants to stay true to his
election campaign promise, he should stick to the
issue of passing the Petroleum Industry Bill
expeditiously, instead of opening the Pandora’s
Box of NNPC probes. He should also look into the
whole process of dismantling the NNPC itself, and
selling it off. Hankering after the past suggests
the APC is bereft of innovative policy ideas.
Witch-hunting Diezani is no substitute for lack of
policy.
Press censorship
The first thing General Buhari did on seizing
power in 1984 was to declare in a television
interview his determination to “tamper with the
press.” The first thing he has done this time
around, even before being sworn in as president,
was to seek to impose a ban on the AIT. AIT is
one of the press houses that did not support him
during the election campaign. Moreover, it is
owned by Raymond Dokpesi, a South-South man.
History, they say, has a tendency to repeat itself.
Those of us who were adults during the first
coming of General Buhari took great pains to
warn Nigerians of his antecedents. Those too
young to know about him were convinced we
were making up stories. Others denied the
relevance of Buhari’s pedigree. One man tweeted:
“Even if PDP shows a video of Tinubu and Buhari
on AIT robbing the Central Bank of Nigeria, it
won’t change our minds.”
A cease-and-desist order on Buhari’s censorship
of AIT came thankfully from APC Central. Sane
minds prevailed from the party’s headquarters,
mindful that any attempt to curb the press this
time around is likely to end Buhari’s honeymoon
with the media immediately. Suffice to say the
press operates everywhere as a tight union.
Attack on one is deemed an attack on all.
APC-friendly press houses had a field day
maligning Jonathan for over five years. No one
tried to muzzle them. APC itself came up with all
sorts of lies. APC publicity secretary for Lagos
State, Joe Igbokwe, wrote a libelous and
defamatory article against me entitled: “Behold
the Wind Chaser called Femi Aribisala.” Igbokwe
claimed I am a registered member of the PDP,
which is false. Among other lies, he said: “In
Osun Femi and his robbery gang came with
helicopters, guns, bombs, jackboots, tanks etc.
but ordinary people with bare hands stopped their
open robbery.”
I was not in Osun during the 2014 gubernatorial
election. I have no robbery gang. I have no
helicopters, guns, jackboots, or tanks. I could
have sued Igbokwe for all he has got. But I
decided to let it pass. However, until called to
order, our president-elect seems inclined to use
the apparatus of the state to settle personal
scores. This is a bad omen about his incoming
administration.
Election offenders
The same discrimination is already evident in the
president-elect’s stated position vis-à-vis election
offenders. President Jonathan was magnanimous
enough to concede defeat in a flawed election.
But APC is not prepared to let sleeping dogs lie.
Despite now holding sway in 22 states to PDP’s
13, the APC continues to cause trouble
everywhere. Once it is not declared the winner,
the election must have been rigged.
The president-elect has joined the fray. He
proclaimed his determination to prosecute
election offenders. But he only enunciated this
policy with reference states where APC is
currently disputing the results. Accordingly, he
instructed the governors of Edo, Imo and Rivers
to document all offences alleged to have been
committed.
These states happen to be those with APC
governors; and in the South-South and South-
East where the APC was routed. Are we going to
get corresponding prosecutions in cases in the
North, including the president’s home state of
Katsina where, surprise surprise, more ghost-
voters came out of the woodwork to vote in the
lackluster governorship election than in the high-
profile presidential election?
Mr. President-elect should be reminded that he is
going to be president of all Nigerians; including
especially those who did not vote for him. He
should be very careful how he treats the South-
South. Without a doubt, nerves are much frayed
now in that geopolitical zone; which also happens
to be the economic jugular of Nigeria.
My advice to him, for what it is worth, is that he
should leave the sons and daughters of the
South-South alone. Thanks to President
Jonathan, we have just missed the bullet of the
much anticipated post-election turmoil. This is no
time to start stepping injudiciously on South-
South toes in the name of anti-corruption.
Upheaval in the South-South will be far more
economically devastating for Nigeria, and for his
vaunted presidential agenda, than what we have
experienced under the onslaught of Boko Haram.



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/05/cease-and-desist-no-witch-hunts-against-the-south-south/

BEWARNED!! This article is a mixture of panel beaten truth + plenty Lies + Ethno-sentimentalism + bags of bitterness (to add taste).

Titilayodeji13:

By Femi Aribisala
NO doubt about it, the North betrayed Goodluck
Jonathan in the last election. The greatest ally of
the North in Nigerian politics has been the South-
South. Therefore, it was not asking too much for
Jonathan to expect the North to return the favour
under his administration; when he is clearly
carrying the mantle of the South-South.
Jonathan did not take Northern support for
granted. In his six years in office, he spent the
overwhelming proportion of resources at his
disposal on the North. The $1 billion Kashimbila
Dam, one of the biggest projects handled by his
administration, is in Taraba in the North.
Jonathan built over 150 Almajiri schools in the
North. He revived Nigerian agriculture, to the
primary benefit of Northern farmers.
Most of Jonathan’s political appointees were
Northern. He entrusted a Northerner, Attahiru
Jega, with INEC, bucking the tradition whereby
INEC chairmen tend to come from the South-East.
When the North complained about the Chief of
Army Staff, Azubuike Ihejirika, Jonathan replaced
him. When the North complained about Festus
Odimegwu at the National Population
Commission, Jonathan fired him. Nevertheless,
when the election time came, the North betrayed
Jonathan and the South-South.
Northern PDP governors secretly worked for
Buhari’s victory. In Jigawa, Sule Lamido only paid
lip-service to Jonathan’s campaign. In Bauchi, Isa
Yuguda watched as Jonathan’s campaign train
was stoned. In Niger, Babangida Aliyu did not
care that no Jonathan poster was placed
anywhere in the state throughout the campaign.
The blunder of these recalcitrant governors was
in thinking they could be lackadaisical about the
PDP at the federal level, but passionate about the
PDP at the state level. They all ended up losing
their states to the APC.
Retracting on promises
In order not to scare off dodgy members of his
party with his anti-corruption rhetoric, Buhari
promised to let corrupt sleeping dogs lie if
elected. APC party chairman, John Oyegun,
declared that Buhari would not waste time going
after embezzlers of public funds before 29th May,
2015. He said: “The future of the people of this
country is too important for us to spend valuable
time trying to dig into the past.”
But now that the election has been won, Buhari
no longer feels any obligation to keep his word.
Instead, he said on TV Continental that, unlike the
Quran and the Bible, the APC position during the
election is subject to change. The signs indicate
that the APC is now inclined to engage in a
vicious propaganda campaign of maligning the
Jonathan administration and the South-South
through mud-slinging probes.
Buhari now says he will revisit the issue of the
allegedly missing $20 billion from NNPC
accounts. He said in Hausa to his Northern
constituency: “Imagine a situation where the
former CBN governor, who by God‘s grace, is now
the Emir of Kano, raised an issue of missing
billions of money, not in naira but in dollars, $20
billion. What happened, instead of investigating
whether it was true, they simply found a reason
to remove him.”
In short, in spite of the forensic audit of NNPC
accounts by the prestigious
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which concluded no
money was missing, Buhari has already declared
Diezani and the NNPC guilty and Lamido Sanusi
innocent. He claims the matter was not
investigated, which means
PriceWaterhouseCoopers is not good enough for
him. Who is he now going to ask to conduct a
new probe when we already know the answer he
wants?
Witch- hunting
What we have here is the beginning of a witch-
hunt. One of the first questions of interest is
where Buhari’s oil minister is going to come from.
Within the context of the cynical view that the
insistence of a cabal that power must return to
the North is not unconnected to pending oil bloc
allocations, the question remains whether our new
oil minister must also be from the North.
In Nigeria, the FCT Minister is always from the
North. However, the oil minister is not always
from the South. The North has no oil, but it longs
to control the lucrative oil industry. Under
Jonathan, oil minister Diezani Allison-Madueke
has come under prolonged attacks and
harassment, not only because she is a woman,
but also because she is from the South-South.
Under Yar’Adua, the Petroleum Minister, Dr
Rilwanu Lukman was from Kaduna. The Group
Managing Director of the NNPC, Sanusi Barkindo,
was from Adamawa. The Director-General of the
National Petroleum Directorate, Alhaji Bello
Gusau, was from Zamfara. The Executive-
Secretary of the Petroleum Technology
Development Fund, Mustapha Rabe Darma, was
from Katsina. Are we in for a Northernisation of
the oil industry again under Buhari?
If Buhari is now determined to probe the oil
ministry under South-South stewardship, contrary
to his campaign promise; he must also probe it
under South-West stewardship. President
Obasanjo doubled as his own oil minister for
eight years. If Buhari is now going to probe
Diezani, then he must probe his new ally,
Obasanjo, as well? Otherwise, if care is not taken,
Buhari’s war against corruption will quickly divide
Nigeria along ethnic fault-lines.
Once you decide to probe the Jonathan
administration, the Niger-Delta is going to insist
on a probe of the Obasanjo administration. Once
you probe the PDP, which represents Southern
rule, there is going to be insistence that you
probe Northern rule. Should Buhari decide to
probe NNPC, the issue of his own tenure as
petroleum minister and the 2.8 billion saga will
also be brought up. He cannot apply today the
discriminatory standard he used yesterday,
whereby vice-president Ekwueme languished in
jail while president Shagari relaxed under house
arrest.
If our president-elect wants to stay true to his
election campaign promise, he should stick to the
issue of passing the Petroleum Industry Bill
expeditiously, instead of opening the Pandora’s
Box of NNPC probes. He should also look into the
whole process of dismantling the NNPC itself, and
selling it off. Hankering after the past suggests
the APC is bereft of innovative policy ideas.
Witch-hunting Diezani is no substitute for lack of
policy.
Press censorship
The first thing General Buhari did on seizing
power in 1984 was to declare in a television
interview his determination to “tamper with the
press.” The first thing he has done this time
around, even before being sworn in as president,
was to seek to impose a ban on the AIT. AIT is
one of the press houses that did not support him
during the election campaign. Moreover, it is
owned by Raymond Dokpesi, a South-South man.
History, they say, has a tendency to repeat itself.
Those of us who were adults during the first
coming of General Buhari took great pains to
warn Nigerians of his antecedents. Those too
young to know about him were convinced we
were making up stories. Others denied the
relevance of Buhari’s pedigree. One man tweeted:
“Even if PDP shows a video of Tinubu and Buhari
on AIT robbing the Central Bank of Nigeria, it
won’t change our minds.”
A cease-and-desist order on Buhari’s censorship
of AIT came thankfully from APC Central. Sane
minds prevailed from the party’s headquarters,
mindful that any attempt to curb the press this
time around is likely to end Buhari’s honeymoon
with the media immediately. Suffice to say the
press operates everywhere as a tight union.
Attack on one is deemed an attack on all.
APC-friendly press houses had a field day
maligning Jonathan for over five years. No one
tried to muzzle them. APC itself came up with all
sorts of lies. APC publicity secretary for Lagos
State, Joe Igbokwe, wrote a libelous and
defamatory article against me entitled: “Behold
the Wind Chaser called Femi Aribisala.” Igbokwe
claimed I am a registered member of the PDP,
which is false. Among other lies, he said: “In
Osun Femi and his robbery gang came with
helicopters, guns, bombs, jackboots, tanks etc.
but ordinary people with bare hands stopped their
open robbery.”
I was not in Osun during the 2014 gubernatorial
election. I have no robbery gang. I have no
helicopters, guns, jackboots, or tanks. I could
have sued Igbokwe for all he has got. But I
decided to let it pass. However, until called to
order, our president-elect seems inclined to use
the apparatus of the state to settle personal
scores. This is a bad omen about his incoming
administration.
Election offenders
The same discrimination is already evident in the
president-elect’s stated position vis-à-vis election
offenders. President Jonathan was magnanimous
enough to concede defeat in a flawed election.
But APC is not prepared to let sleeping dogs lie.
Despite now holding sway in 22 states to PDP’s
13, the APC continues to cause trouble
everywhere. Once it is not declared the winner,
the election must have been rigged.
The president-elect has joined the fray. He
proclaimed his determination to prosecute
election offenders. But he only enunciated this
policy with reference states where APC is
currently disputing the results. Accordingly, he
instructed the governors of Edo, Imo and Rivers
to document all offences alleged to have been
committed.
These states happen to be those with APC
governors; and in the South-South and South-
East where the APC was routed. Are we going to
get corresponding prosecutions in cases in the
North, including the president’s home state of
Katsina where, surprise surprise, more ghost-
voters came out of the woodwork to vote in the
lackluster governorship election than in the high-
profile presidential election?
Mr. President-elect should be reminded that he is
going to be president of all Nigerians; including
especially those who did not vote for him. He
should be very careful how he treats the South-
South. Without a doubt, nerves are much frayed
now in that geopolitical zone; which also happens
to be the economic jugular of Nigeria.
My advice to him, for what it is worth, is that he
should leave the sons and daughters of the
South-South alone. Thanks to President
Jonathan, we have just missed the bullet of the
much anticipated post-election turmoil. This is no
time to start stepping injudiciously on South-
South toes in the name of anti-corruption.
Upheaval in the South-South will be far more
economically devastating for Nigeria, and for his
vaunted presidential agenda, than what we have
experienced under the onslaught of Boko Haram.



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/05/cease-and-desist-no-witch-hunts-against-the-south-south/

Who get ear make him hear.

Femo!!
Incredible article from the one and only Aribisala, Buhari's perpetual nightmare.

The truth is alwys bitter. Femi has written the truth let those not happy go nd die. Again buhari needs to attend National Democrtic Institute if he must do well as president of a new Nigeria.

Nice article by femi, how I wish other writers emulate his objectivity.

fammo:
BEWARNED!! This article is a mixture of panel beaten truth + plenty Lies + Ethno-sentimentalism + bags of bitterness (to add taste).

Until you tell us the lies in this article, you are just earning your pay as a pay per post meddlesome interloper

nonsense as in NO SENSE AT ALL. crap.


thieves.

Brilliant nonsense as usual.

This guy sounds like a bigot. Why are these people always playing the victim card that they're facing opposition because they're from the south-south region? If GEJ's govt had performed well and the populace felt the impact of their governance, APC wouldn't have had any chance.
So is he saying wrong doings of the previous administration shouldn't be probed because they're from the south-south? They shouldn't fear if they've done no wrong. It's logical to start the probe from the immediate past govt.

Abeg make una leave south south from una talk,any kind music wey Buhari go play,south south no go worry.