These are not the best of times for our country, Nigeria. At, least not from the way the opposition politicians are getting ever more desperate with each passing day in their quest to wrest power from the President, Goodluck Jonathan, and the ruling PDP. Just the other day, the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajamila, sought to illegally declare himself as the Majority Leader based on the illusory number of members in the House that he believes have defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Although the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, was able to calm the frayed nerves in the Lower House, many analysts believe that the speaker himself may not be exonerated from the APC plot to seize control of the House.
In another separate but sequenced event, the governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, who appears to have finally lost every grip of his state, advised his supporters to take the law into their hands and get violent if need be. That a governor who swore an oath to protect the lives and property can recommend to his people to put their lives in harm’s way for his own selfish political ambition speaks to the tragedy of our political recruitment process. No wonder, former President Obasanjo declared in 2007 that Amaechi’s nomination as governor had a “K-leg”. Although we may disagree with Obasanjo on many other issues, he got this one right! In recent times, the Rivers governor has completely abandoned governance to engage in desperate politicking in a manner that suggests that either his state is on auto-pilot or in a free fall.
Yet in another desperate move by the APC, the party instructed its members in the National Assembly to block all executive bills especially the 2014 budget and the screening of the newly-appointed service chiefs ostensibly to force President Jonathan to redeploy the police commissioner in Rivers State, Mr Joseph Mbu.
It is difficult to comprehend the nexus between the barracking of an honest police officer whose only offence is his refusal to be used by a governor against his people, and the attempted shut down of the political system by the APC. Maybe, the APC and its allies in the media, masquerading as journalists, have not come to the understanding that Nigerians are highly upset by their desperation for power so much so that they are willing to destroy the country if only to seize power from the ruling PDP. Yes, asking the National Assembly not to screen the nominated Service Chiefs amounts to not only treason but a calculated attempt to make the country ungovernable. The APC leadership’s call is almost a paraphrase of the rallying call of the radical anarchists of the 18th and 19th centuries asking their members to destroy whatever could be destroyed and smash whatever was smash-able in society.
It is very cheap an argument to posit that the APC’s bid to block executive bills is a legitimate strategy of presidential politics. That the leadership of the APC can issue such an anarchist instruction to its members, aimed at crippling the security architecture and hierarchy of orders in country that has been fighting an uncommon war against a terror group, which has left thousands of our innocent citizens dead, is not only callous but also telling of what desperation for power can do a political party.
Those who have severally accused the PDP of impunity and being power drunk in the past can now see, for themselves, what APC would become if by any stretch of imagination it gets into power. The mere illusion of having higher number in the Lower House as a result of the purported defection of some PDP members is already driving the APC leadership to insanity so much so that it wants to destroy the system in its bid to seize control in the Legislature. It is, however, reassuring that APC members in the Senate have risen to the occasion by putting national interests first before any partisan considerations by calling the bluff of the leadership of their party, APC in the screening of the service chiefs and in the matter of the 2014 budget consideration.
When Lai Mohammed, the mouthpiece of APC, promotes anarchy all over the country just to capture Rivers State, whose governor seems to be working at cross-purposes with the indigenes, it could be excused because opposition politicians seem to have no place for morality and national interests. But when a journalist like Sam Nda-Isaiah, the publisher of Leadership Newspaper, equally donates his column for the endorsement of violence in the quest for power, then we must call in the priest for the last sacrament.
Well, the situation might not be as tragic as it appears because Nda-Isaiah from all indications and available information is only masquerading as a journalist. He is a partisan politician; and he has been using his newspaper as a platform to promote his presidential ambition as well as blackmailing his opponents or imaginary opponents like President Goodluck Jonathan. Yes, Jonathan is an imaginary opponent because, although Nda-Isaiah has the right to pursue his presidential ambition, there are many who think that his entry into the race would amount to reducing the presidency to a Boys’ Scout affair. So when next you read Nda-Isaiah’s column or the anti-Jonathan editorials in Leadership, just see it for what it is – a campaign by an APC wannabe president!
By Tamuno West-Greene sent this piece from Port-Harcourt via Tamunowg@yahoo.com
