If I’m in a position to advice any of the presidential candidates on manifesto, I’ll suggest a 5-point cardinal agenda to fix Nigeria. Agenda 1.Anti-corruption, 2.Anti-corruption, 3.Anti-corruption, 4.Anti-corruption and 5. Anti-corruption.



Nuhu Ribadu picked Afolabi Tajudeen Adeola from Ogun State as Action Congress of Nigeria vice-presidential candidate after a marathon search. Although Ribadu/Adeola ticket is the only true new breed ticket it a very poor political calculation. Ribadu saw a real gold mine but refused to take advantage of it because he is not in control of ACN political machine. Tinubu is in control of the party and never accepted Ribadu as the leader of the party. A presidential candidate is suppose to be the leader of the party, and should be allowed to freely pick his own vice presidential candidate.

An Igbo vice presidential candidate would have given Ribadu victory in the April presidential election. None of the four leading presidential candidates picked their vice presidential candidate from the East, the PDP candidate incumbent President Jonathan picked Sambo from the North, Buhari picked Pastor Bakare from the West, Shakarau from the North picked John Oyegun former governor of Edo State from South/South, while Ribadu choice is Mr. Adeola from the West. The leading candidates ignored the Igbos, this is the first time it’s happening in the history of presidential elections in Nigeria. Igbos always had presidential or vice presidential candidates, this is a new political development in Nigeria, especially because the Igbos believe that they are still marginalized in Nigeria more than 4 decades after the civil war.

The unity of Nigeria is very important for its development; a divided country cannot competitive in the community of nations. You cannot ignore the most visible people in Nigeria. Census figures like election results are not reliable in Nigeria, Igbo’s, one of the big 3 is believe to be the most populated group in Nigeria, regardless of official figures.

Definitely the Igbos are hurt by these unfavorable political calculations, the best way to heal this wound is to zone the president position to the East in 2015, but I doubt if it’s going to happen, North is still very interested in 2015, the president not known to keep to his promises will not go in 2015 without a fight, the present PDP leadership has killed the zoning system, and North will not want to hear anything about zoning in 2015.

Ribadu had the opportunity to pick Igbo vice presidential candidate but he allowed Mr. Tinubu the former governor of Lagos State to have his way. He could have jumped on the rare advantage and pick his number 2 from South East geopolitical zone. None of the leading candidates picked their running mates from the East.

It was Tinubu that killed the merger talk between Buhari’s CPC and ACN because of his personal ambition, he wants to be the vice presidential candidate to Buhari, Buhari didn’t want a Muslim/Muslim ticket, and that was it, Tinubu is a Muslim. Ribadu appears to be weak, like Jonathan. What Nigeria needs right now is a strong president.

The same Tinubu and others hijacked the June 12 revolution and changed its color from national to a tribal. He was the Orkar of the June 12 movement. Yar adua adviced Abiola to move to Kaduna to fight for his mandate from there, but he preferred to reduce a national mandate to regional one on advice of Tinubu and others who did not even vote for him. Like Abiola, Ribadu is allowing Tinubu and others to use him. Tinubu and the leadership of ACN see the party as a Yoruba party, they will never learn from history tribal parties don’t win presidential elections in Nigeria.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo(UPN), Dr Nnandi Azikiwe(NPP), Mallam Aminu Kanu(PRP) and Alhaji Waziri Abrahim(GNPP) were defeated by Alhaji Shehu Shagari(NPN) during the second republic because their political parties were not nationally spread like NPN. We are seeing history repeating itself again and again Nigeria, the progressive never learn.

During the second republic, the progressive forces tried to come together under the umbrella of Progressive People’s Alliance, PPA to challenge and defeat the mega party NPN but it did not work because of personal ambition. There was a stalemate on who will be the presidential candidate between Zik or Awo, none of them agreed to step down. Nigeria had 19 states then, NPN was in control of only 7, the opposition had 12, UPN(5), NPP(3), GNPP(2) and PRP(2), but because of personal ambition the leaders couldn’t come together to present one candidate to defeat the mega-party NPN. The ruling party then (NPN) won; because Nigerians were tired of NPN it was successfully removed by the military. History is repeating itself again, the best strategy for the progressives to defeat the mega party PDP, is to have a single candidate to fight PDP in the April presidential election. Again personal ambition destroyed the merger talk between ACN and Buhari’s party CPC. They could not present a single candidate, Tinubu’s ambition killed the merger talk, now the progressives are in bits, its candidates are contesting under weak platforms, PDP will definitely “win” the April presidential election. Like NPN, PDP is very unpopular, and may be kicked out by popular revolt few years from now.

Chief Enahoro and Chief Michael Ajasin were co-chairmen of NADECO, Chief Enahoro fought for Abiola’s June 12 mandate, he was almost killed by Abacha after Ajasins death, was denied the leadership of the group because he is not a Yoruba, Chief Adebanjo became NADECO leader. Ribadu is seen as an outsider by the leadership of ACN because he is not a Yoruba. Like Enahoro he will never be allowed to lead a Yoruba dominated political group. As the presidential candidate of ACN, he is suppose to be the leader of ACN, but he is not, Ribadu is.

Don’t get me wrong, it does not apply to Yorubas alone, most Nigerians are tribalist and we are discussing Ribadu and ACN right now. If we replace Yoruba and ACN with Igbo and APGA respectively, it will fit. There are people in South-South who supports President Jonathan like sheep, Jonathan cannot be wrong, it does not matter what he does with the power he got by “goodluck”, it does not matter to them if he destroys the economy or not, good or bad they supports him and are hostile to those who dare criticize him. Nigeria’s political problem is very complex because it is that of bad leadership and bad followership, many political scientist are confused on which is better to fixed first, the bad leadership or the bad followership?

Nigeria cannot move forward like this, we should stop the hypocrisy and be bold to always tell our preferred candidates the truth. I’m a strong Ribadu supporter, and I’ll remain his supporter even after the election, but I should be able to tell him he made a very poor political calculation by choosing a Yoruba vice presidential candidate, I should be able to tell him he is weak by allowing Tinubu to dictate to him, and I should be able to tell him that he will not “win” the election because Jonathan has already rigged the election and he has helped him by not choosing his vice presidential candidate from the goldmine, Eastern Nigeria. We should be bold to tell our preferred candidates the truth. I strongly believe nothing will work in Nigeria if the corruption problem is not fixed, let me give you a scenario, when Obasanjo was in power, he allocated money for poverty alleviation for his state, the money fell into the hands of wolves, they handed the money over to their kids who were not qualified for the program. That program failed, so are other good programs. If I’m in a position to advice any of the presidential candidates on manisfesto or agenda, I’ll advocate a 5-point cardinal agenda to fix Nigeria. Agenda 1. Anti-corruption, 2.Anti-corruption, 3. Anti-corruption, 4.Anti-corruption and 5. Anti-corruption. If corruption is fixed, everything will be in place, it will be easy to solve other problems.

It is not true that Mr. Adeola as former chief executive of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), because of his rich background in the economy and politics of the country which, will boost the chances of the party in the presidential poll, Mr. Adeola is not known, Ribadu don’t need him, to win West, ACN already has strong support in the West.

Ribadu’s spokesman Modibbo said “The South West is a gold mine. Look at this calculation - it has about 20 million voters. If we grab a lot of it and 15 million from the North West and 15 from the North Central, our victory is assured” This is dumb, the real goldmine is the East, waiting to be grabbed by any smart presidential candidate. Jonathan is the most likely candidate to win the East now, because of power of incumbency and lack of serious challenge in the zone. He got APGA endorsement after appointing Bianca Onoh-Ojukwu as presidential adviser on Diaspora matters, a useless, meaningless, wasteful position, and worst political appointment in the history of political appointments in Nigeria.

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