franciskaine:
This is a season of hire-wired deceits,
misinformation, campaign of calumny and spewing
of outright falsehood and lies – all to hoodwink
and deceive ordinary and gullible Nigerians for
their votes.
I am not worried about these antics of the
politicians. It is their way. For them, their business
is politics and their politics is business. No
scruple. My real worry is that many Nigerians who
are the elites can see through some of these
outright falsehoods but have decided to sit on
fence and keep an embarrassing silence. They
forget that millions of ordinary Nigerians who are
confused and hoodwinked by these falsehoods and
who do not have access to facts depend on their
voices and guidance to make their choices. This
is, therefore, a message directed at those silent
Nigerian elites who should speak up at this time.
For me, I have decided that enough is enough.
This is the time to speak up.
Unfortunately, many of our elites do not want to
speak up now because they do not want to be
caught on the wrong side of any government in the
next four years; they prefer to play safe, not
wanting to be tarred with the brush of partisanship.
But, I ask: what is wrong with partisanship in a
country where you and your children have a huge
stake? What is wrong in speaking up and standing
up for what your conscience tells you is the right
thing to do? What is wrong in being caught on the
wrong side of the government in the next four
years, if only you would be caught on the right
side of posterity?
Except for a few class of persons like INEC officials,
security agencies and those on the Bench, every
other Nigerian has a duty - yes, a duty - to speak
up now for our country, and to come down from
that fence on which they are sitting regarding the
2015 general elections. Those elites who do not
speak up now for fear of being branded partisan
and losing face upon defeat are enemies of the
people who are looking up to them for guidance.
My message to those silent elites today is that
whilst they are sitting on the fence, people are
being killed like flies in some parts of the country
on a daily basis; whilst we are on that fence, our
foreign reserves are going down, corruption is
growing like cancer, poverty is growing even in the
face of dubious economic theories and figures, and
we continue to live without adequate power supply.
Yet, those who should speak truth to power are
sitting on the fence in anticipation of personal
gains. I am sorry, but today I have come down
from that fence because my buttocks are already
hurting from sitting on it.
Do not forget that I am from the Niger-Delta region
and all my close friends and associates are the
main supporters and aides of Mr. President. Two
or three Governors who are either my former
classmates or colleagues are the main backers of
Mr. President. It is so easy, so convenient and so
seemingly logical for me to get into that political
mix and forget about the good of my country for
personal gains. The disgusting message we hear
all over the streets of that region every day at this
time - promoted by the hirelings of the President –
is that Goodluck Jonathan is “our son”, so we
have no choice but to support him. In fact, I see
some of my “brothers” from the Niger Delta region
these days strutting all over the place, denigrating
people from other regions. It is typical of what the
Yorubas call “omo oju ori ola ri” (a person whose
eyes have not seen wealth before).
But the question I ask those who tell me such
nonsense and behave in such a manner is that,
after the next four years, what is next for us? Is
our entire future and that of our children dependent
on a South-South President for the next four
years?
Kindly note that in getting down from the fence and
speaking up at this critical time, I do not mind if
you speak up for Goodluck Jonathan. Yes, you
have a right to do so as a Nigerian. But, as an
elite, your stand must be known so that when the
massacres continue because of cluelessness, when
the unrestrained stealing of our public resources
continue, when darkness continues to befall the
nation because of lack of power, it is important we
all remember those who betrayed their conscience
and the people because of ethnicity and self-
aggrandisement and for posterity to record it as
such.
We have a President who has no single appetite to
fight corruption – yes, none. Imagine a campaign
that is dominated by the theme of corruption, yet
the President has decided to appoint a person
facing trial for money-laundering as his Director of
Media and Publicity. If nobody would say it, I will
say it because I am the one prosecuting the fellow
in court and the case has been adjourned to
February 23 and 24 for trial. Part of the lies told is
that the fellow has been freed whereas some of the
counts in the Charge were just struck out and the
court held that he has a case to answer on some
other counts. Yet nobody is asking the President
these hard questions.
The President only mouths anti-corruption. The
other day (December 23rd, 2014, I think) the
President said he would like to erect a Hall of
Shame for Nigerians who engage in corrupt and
unwholesome activities that bring the country to
disrepute. But he was the same person who
brought a convicted criminal, Diepreye
Alamieyeseigha, out of the Hall of Shame to the
Hall of Fame by misusing his power of Prerogative
of Mercy when he granted pardon to this self-
confessed ex-convict. Imagine the pain, the efforts
and resources that go into securing a single
conviction for corruption in this our clime. Yet, the
President decided to spoil the party for anti-
corruption campaigners. On top of that, he
displayed corruption within corruption by selective
pardon when the likes of Tarfa Balogun, Lucky
Igbinedion and others who were convicted about
the same period did not enjoy his Presidential
pardon.
Yet nobody is asking these hard questions on the
campaign trail. The funny thing is that, nearly six
years into his tenure as President, Goodluck
Jonathan said the other day that he is just coming
up with a plan to tackle corruption!! Haba, Jona !
To add insult to injury, President Goodluck
Jonathan decided to tackle the corruption of
stealing of our resources in the high seas by
empowering small-time crooks and criminals to
police our waterways. This is because he has no
idea as to how to revamp, re-organise and re-
invigorate the Nigeria Navy to perform its
constitutional duty. These days, it is an eyesore to
see our military chiefs and officers kowtow to
these empowered small-time crooks and criminals
for appointment and promotions and other
privileges. The disaster about this initiative of
empowerment of crooks and criminals is that crude
oil theft has never been so high, so rampant in the
annals of this country than it is now. Why?
Because the President has put a rat as a
watchman over a morsel of fish. It is sad to say,
but the President, by his actions, has shown no
spine, no appetite, no nerve to fight corruption. He
just continues to sink into an abyss of moral
debauchery.
The other tragedy of this President is that, even as
he is on the campaign trail, in the last one month,
the omnipresent insurgents have attacked towns
like Baga, Damaturu, Biu, Askira-Uba, Konduga,
Marte and Gombe. Even as we speak, the Boko
Haram insurgents are in total control of the whole
of Borno State except Maiduguri, Monguno, Dikwa,
Konduga and Biu. The insurgents are in total
control of towns like Baga, Bama, Gwoza and
Banki.
Before Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, Boko
Haram was nothing but a rag-tag group of
extremists living in enclaves like Sambisa, while
our proud military boys patrolled the towns. Now,
under Jonathan, the reverse is the case. Our
military boys are now in enclaves while Boko
Haram patrol our towns. Is it not shocking that
insurgents have a free reign to enter cities, abduct
young girls like in Chibok, burn houses like in
Baga, slaughter people for hours like in Konduga,
Gwoza etc, yet our military men are nowhere to be
found and they do not even give hot pursuit to the
retreating insurgents? What is really going on?
One obvious flaw is that our President has lost
control of the military and the top hierarchy of the
military is merely feeding fat on this unfortunate
situation and the President seems to be totally
helpless in the face of this.
The only response the President and his handlers
can proffer is to hide this glaring and crass
incompetence under political gymnastics; they
blame the opposition on the one hand and in the
same breath, they say it is a world-wide trend and
Nigeria is just having its fair share of a global
malaise. Is this true? As President, you are the
Commander-In-Chief. If you have evidence against
the opposition, just come out with it and arrest the
ring-leaders. Do not cry like a baby as
Commander-in-Chief. Deal with the situation. That
is why you occupy that seat. Till date, no single
evidence has been produced against any of the
opposition leaders linking them with the
insurgency. Rather, what we see is a President
who is supposedly bent on fighting insurgency but
who is wining and dining with someone who has
been directly linked with sponsoring the insurgents
and even traveling with such a person to Chad at a
time when the State Security Services officially
invited that person to answer questions relating to
the insurgency.
Another calamity and embarrassment is that our
President, his Service Chiefs and security advisers
were all led into wasting public funds by entering
into a phantom cease-fire deal with fake Boko
Haram leaders that left them with bloodied noses.
Not to also mention the short-lived public
celebration of the supposed killing of the Boko
Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, by the President
and his security team, only for the outlaw to
appear in subsequent videos posted online,
taunting the Nigerian government. Any four more
years of a Jonathan Presidency can only lead to
more carnage by the insurgents. He just does not
have the requisite capacity to tackle this problem of
insecurity. The truth must be told.
Yet you hear the President say that the nation will
appreciate him better after he has left office. I am
sorry, but we have seen enough bloodshed and
incompetence in the last six years to know there is
nothing more to expect the next four years and we
have seen enough to do an assessment right now
and not in the future.
In all his campaign tours, the President is already
sounding like a broken record. He says he has
made the rails to function again. He mentioned this
so much that you imagine that he was primarily
elected to revive a few train lines. It sounds very
funny when you hear such things, whereas the
primary duty of government is the protection of
lives and properties. If that primary duty fails, then
the government has failed. It is like an
undergraduate hoping to be promoted to the next
level by barely scraping through the ‘electives’ and
failing the core courses. It will never happen. So,
is the President providing train coaches to be
transporting the dead bodies from the North to the
South? Are the trains to be occupied by living
human beings or dead human beings?
Make no mistake about it, like the President always
says, it is true that we have a rise of terrorism
around the world. But, we have all seen how
governments around the world respond quickly
and decisively to any attempt for terror to rear its
ugly head within their society and how they
quickly crush it. We saw it happen in the United
States after 9/11; we saw it happen in Britain after
the July 7, 2005 bus bombing; in the last few
days, we have seen it happen in France and in
Belgium. In all these cases, all attempts were
nipped in the bud. Even, here in Nigeria, previous
governments have nipped insurgency in the bud.
The ONLY government that has allowed it to fester,
germinate and grow into a full-blown war leading
to a successful secession of some parts of the
country is that of President Goodluck Jonathan. It
is so bad that hardly a day passes by without
reports of one insurgent activity or the other
leading to loss of lives and limbs.
The President is also quick to mention that his
administration has made the Nigerian economy the
number one in Africa. He forgot to mention two
things, though; one, that some of the major sectors
of the Nigerian economy, that is, the telecom
sector, financial services and the Nollywood
industry that were taken into account to re-base
the economy were sectors not created or grown by
his government. Secondly, he forgot to mention
that the so-called re-basing has no impact at all
on the ordinary Nigerian as the 2014 World Bank
Survey still shows that Nigeria is ranked third
among world top five poorest countries with sixty-
one percent (61%) of its citizens living below $1.25
dollar per day. No government can boast of any
economic growth or theory that does not have a
direct impact on the lives of its ordinary citizens. It
is like a father coming home to announce and
jubilate about a pay rise and promotion at
workplace, yet the wife and children cannot eat or
live better many months later.
The Nigerian people have tolerated too much and
taken too much battering from the PDP-led Federal
Government since 1999. Under the Jonathan
Government, the situation in the country has sunk
to an all-time low, except for the few benefitting
directly from the government. They are blind to
criticism and blind to healthy opposition. They hurl
abuses at anyone who dares to point out these
acts of maladministration. In saner societies, the
President will not be allowed to campaign in many
parts of the country. The people will rise against
him and chase his convoy away.
The clear alternative to this monumental mess is
the person of General Muhammadu Buhari. Let us
be clear that Buhari does not present the total
package Nigerians want at this time. He is human,
he is not perfect. But at this point in our history, at
this time, at this moment, he presents the only
viable option and avenue for the people to vent
their frustrations and anger against an inept and
clueless Federal Government. He represents the
rallying point for the frustrated and teeming
masses of our people. He reminds me of MKO
Abiola (with some of his imperfections) who
became the rallying point in the struggle against
military rule.
That is the change we are talking about. It is not a
change from imperfection to perfection. It is a
change from hopelessness and cluelessness to
some hope and to some expectations.
All the personal attacks on the person of Buhari in
the last few weeks have only convinced me that he
is the best available option at this time. Anyone on
the weaker side in any argument always resorts to
personal abuses and attacks. Have you noticed that
on corruption, the only accusation against Buhari
is that, he was too high-handed in fighting
corruption in the past? In other words, nobody
can/has accused him of lacking the courage, zeal
and will to fight corruption. On the other hand, the
President eats, sleeps and wakes up with
corruption. In one of his famous interviews, he did
not even see stealing as corruption. That is why
he does not see the point why he should not
appoint a person standing trial for corruption as
his Director of Media and Publicity. He just does
not care.
So, Nigerians, we must decide what we want. When
Buhari fought corruption and was supposedly
high-handed, he was ruling with Decrees. Now, he
has the Constitution, the National Assembly, and
the Judiciary without ouster clauses to guide him.
It is therefore only an idiot that will believe the
propaganda that he would throw everyone
suspected of corruption into jail. I feel so sorry at
times for the gullible masses of this country who
fall for such cheap propaganda. But it is his type
of appetite and revulsion against corruption that we
so dearly need at this time.
http://saharareporters.com/2015/01/18/keyamo-explodes-between-jonathan-versus-buhari-here-president-who-destroyed-pdp-and

Descartes:
Coming from saharareporters?Kayemo ko Dynamo ni. What has he and the hypocrital SAN Falana have to say on Buhari certificate saga?

franciskaine:
I can bet you didn't read the excerpt.

franciskaine:
I can bet you didn't read the excerpt.

DickDastardly:
[s][/s]
Write whatever rubbish your treacherous brain comes up with, but just make sure Tompolo doesnt finally catch you

DickDastardly:
[s]Write whatever rubbish your treacherous brain comes up with, but just make sure Tompolo doesnt finally catch you[/s]

DickDastardly:
[s][/s]
Write whatever rubbish your treacherous brain comes up with, but just make sure Tompolo doesnt finally catch you