I had refused to be drawn into the nonsensical re-branding project of the present government because I believed the entire concept is foolhardy and the government that drives it, apart from lacking any moral capital to provide grounding for such lofty intent, is bereft of the capacity and will to do a real re-branding of Nigeria. I know the project for what it is; another project to keep the Minister and her acolytes busy while the deliberate decimation of the Nigerian state by the gang that goes by the name of PDP goes on.
I align myself with the many Nigerians who have seen through the dubious foil of the re-branding project, promoted by an ethically rusty government that was stolen into power through the most abhorrent election mankind has seen. Again, I agree with the many Nigerians who have rightly located the main thrust of a genuine re-branding, not in mouthing empty and illogical slogans but on doing those things that would buoy deliverance of the elusive, but much-hackneyed, democracy dividends to the people.
I align myself with those who have referred the Yar’Adua government to take some tutorials on re-branding from the present Lagos State Government and not go about throwing money to recruit sycophantic adulators that would live on mouthing empty jeremiad of re-branding while the country bleeds from the conscious acts of those that pretend to govern it. I share the belief that re-branding and its intents are best served when Nigerians, especially their recalcitrant leadership, indulge in a thorough ethical regeneration. This will free them from the deep clutches of the demons of stealing public funds under sundry guises, impudently stealing electoral mandates, indulging in reckless impunity and putting the worst feet forward in nearly every facet of governance. No one is left in doubt that a visitor from the moon will grasp the concept much more when he drives through the new Lagos than when he hears the abrasive and garrulous chirruping of a minister serving a dead-on-arrival government that is not convinced about changing the sordid image governance has assumed in the last ten years.
I honestly believe that the re-run election in 63 wards in Ekiti State would have afforded the present Minister of Information and the government she serves the opportunity to showcase the re-branded Nigeria she has been noisily championing in recent time. I thought it would have afforded the Yar’Adua government a redemptive impetus to its many sly acts of indiscretion and its many failures and would serve as a foretaste of what we should expect in 2011. I thought that the hunger to live up to a good servant (some say serpent) leader would drive Yar’Adua to ensure that he outlives his restrictive partisan ethos and ensure that this exercise in a very miniature part of Nigeria is free and fair. I thought it would have given Yar’Adua the chance to live above the carnivorous inclination of his PDP and set him as a shinning example of candour in that gathering of people of depraved moral persuasion and no conviction.
Alas, the Ekiti re-run, apart from the disgraceful image it has brought on the entire country, just confirmed that membership of the PDP comes with a worrying tendency to die to shame and honour. It comes with this pungent tar that withstands the cleansing power of the most astute of detergents. It has a reductionist inclination to ensure that even if you hitherto believe in something, the moment you join, you become a shameless maggot that you care less what is said of you so long as you have enough to scoop for your bestial efforts. Ekiti has proved that Yar’Adua is as desperate as Oyinlola, that Jonathan Goodluck, who has never won any real election in his name, is as desperate for unearned fortes as progressive turncoat, Ebenezar Babatope, that Dimeji Bankole is as desperate as returnee renegade, Dayo Adeyeye! It has proved that every member of the PDP, from president to space fillers in PDP rallies can do just anything, including blue murder to have their ways in elections. It is really pitiable!
In Ekiti State on election day, it was not difficult to see where the pressure is. PDP littered their imported thugs and weapon wielding ghouls all over Ekiti to fight against free and fair election because they know that free and fair election breaks the bridge on which they stand their empty claim to strength and Ekiti was a test of their presumed manhood. Yes, 10,000 policemen were shipped into Ekiti State for the re-run in just 63 wards but this proved insufficient to deal with the malignant inclination for violent stealing of electoral mandates to the PDP. From neighboring states, hoodlums and criminals were ferried in comfort to Ekiti State. In fact, about 75 of them were quartered in the Ekiti State Government House and it was obvious that they were mobilized for their bloody business with state resources from PDP-controlled neighboring states.
What more, every PDP member, from elders to teens, from honorable to dishonorable members of whatever house, political appointees, eunuchs and serfs were involved in one form of open and distasteful electoral fraud or the other on election day. It was not limited to them as reporters and cameras captured the endless orgy of spouses, mistresses and wards of PDP chieftains involved in one form of crime or the other just to pervert the electoral wills of the Ekiti people. Reporters were beaten, cameramen were pummeled, election observers were brutalized and the police behaved in a complicit manner that suggested they were active partners in the extensive illegalities that pervaded the bye-election. The highlight of this state of anomie was the arrest and detention of Dr. Abubakar Momoh, a highly respected lecturer and civil rights activist with about six of his colleagues by the police after political hoodlums of the PDP heavily brutalized them, while the police watched with glee. I hear that Dr. Momoh and his colleagues were ferried as prized captives to the overlords of the PDP in Abuja where they are still being held captive and disallowed from attending to their deteriorating health states. The police-yes that unrepentant swine that has been placed under the apron strings of the PDP, claim that Dr. Momoh was arrested for spying for God-knows-which country! Sure indeed, a re-branded Nigeria!
It was obvious that the PDP levied direct war on the Ekiti people for standing on their way to another electoral heist. Because the Action Congress knows that with free and fair election, they stand a better chance of nicking the Ekiti polls, they did everything to ensure the exercise was hitch less. In fact, the real task was how to stop the PDP that conversely believes that it needs policemen, soldiers and hoodlums to break through the stiff resistance of Ekiti people. This was why, as hard as they try to debunk the impression that they launched a full-scale army of thugs on Ekiti on the day of the election, they have not been able to explain why the victims of this state of siege are only AC members and sympathizers. Former Senator Lawrence Agunbiade is a reference in this regard while serving Senator (?) Ayo Arise is a living reference of the commander of hoodlums as he was arrested with over 60 thugs on the day of the election prompting the rescheduling of the election in his Oye hometown.
If the showing of members of the PDP before and during the election was messy, their actions during the collation of results till date showed in clear terms that that cartel of criminals must be extirpated for the country to have any meaningful positive change. The collation was going smoothly and the results were being announced accordingly. Five local government results were announced, out of which the AC won four but the PDP has a slight lead of close to 200 votes in the overall tally, mainly from the windfall it received from Ijero, where there were reports of widespread snatching of ballot boxes by PDP thugs. With five local council results announced, the PDP knew that it would take a great miracle for it to offset the 12,000 votes advantage the AC had over it before the re-run and the devil of electoral fraud went to work. Pronto, over 18,000 votes surfaced from two wards in Ifaki, in Ido Osi local council, Segun Oni’s place and that was deemed enough to do the magic!
But the PDP and its aficionados, who have their operational headquarters in Aso Rock never reckoned with the determination of the ordinary Ekiti people who were bent on protecting their votes from being stolen by the notorious PDP and also the resolve of Nigerians to exorcise the ghost of electoral fraud with which the PDP has made nonsense of the image of the country. Again, they have the conscience of the Resident Electoral Commissioner to contend with. The later refused to announce the forged results from Ido Osi because according to her, it was against her conscience. She contended that the results the PDP tendered from Ido Osi were not signed and not collated at the right and appropriate place. She insinuated of pressures from top governmental officials on her to include the fake results and her refusal prompted the diktat that is becoming messier and dirtier with each new day. Things have degenerated in quick succession. The presidency has called a meeting of what will pass for Oni’s campaign team, with the president, his vice, the house speaker, president of the senate, INEC chairman and the heads of security agencies and for all intent and purposes, that was an enlarged meeting of the Oni strategy committee because most of the attendees were irreverently committed to the return of Oni by every means. From that meeting, Iwu was mandated to sell a lie that the REC took sick after announcing results from five local councils and that after she got well, she will announce the remaining results and conduct elections into the remaining two wards in Oye.
Without waiting for that lie to set in, the REC was to go straight to Abuja where she handed her resignation letter to President Yar’Adua and tacitly confirmed that she was being put to tremendous pressure by the PDP to pad the authentic results with fake results. Caught in its reckless lies, the PDP resorted to shenanigans by getting the police, which is at its beck, to declare the woman wanted and in another breath, insist the woman should come back and complete the election. The events are tumbling in quick succession and the fear that a major political implosion is in the offing is the resolute position of the people of Ekiti State to stand firm on their genuine mandate as well as the insistence of the PDP to ship in the fake results to steal the mandate of Ekiti people.
The president, who is as embroiled as any other member of the PDP, has been calling meeting of various PDP interests, which still shuts the door from all the parties in the present issue. It is only natural that the outcome of such meetings will tend towards furthering the PDP interest in Ekiti, which is by now, known to all Nigerians. There is clearly a lack of capacity to rise above petty partisan interests and do what is right and this remains a limiting bar to Yar’Adua’s competence to intervene in the Ekiti diktat, as many have called him to do. That is why the crisis lingers and may indeed degenerate further in the days to come. In other words, with the president far gone in the pursuit of his narrow partisan interests, Ekiti may be in for more theaters of the absurd in the days to come and the fear is that this will spill over to the larger Nigerian polity. This is indeed pathetic and one now understands why many people felt Yar’Adua should not have been involved in Oni’s campaign but he shrinked his responsibility to the entire country, in preference to his service to the PDP. He indeed went to Ekiti State to promise Oni a six year, first term.
Right now, there is no force to rein the PDP rampaging inclination to have its way fraudulently in Ekiti. Every member of the PDP is sworn to this do-or-die project to force Oni on Ekiti people and this may be one of the invisible seven-point agenda of Yar’Adua. It is really frightening! But more mocking is that this is the same government and party that is fooling themselves around yodeling re-branding, as if all it needs to re-brand a nation they have diligently confirmed to the piths of hell is through voicing enough meaningless slogans. It is a pity that Ekiti has shown the depth of that scam re-branding project as well as the conviction of those that are responsible for that huge scam. But, from the people of Ekiti comes a resolute warning to these rampaging vampires that time is running out on them. Nigerian people have had enough of their excesses and should they still remain adamantly unrepentant in stealing Nigerian peoples’ mandates, they will stew in their own crooked juice.
Peter Claver Oparah.
E-mail: [email protected]
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