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A Word For Olisa Metuh, The ‘Dasuki For President’ Campaigner By Emmanuel Ugwu

January 5, 2016

Now that EFCC has arrested you for interrogation, start preparing to defend yourself in court. You need to ready your mind for the grist of cartoons the media will make out your case. You need to hire some lawyers –preferably, those Senior Advocates of Nigeria whose specialty is defending corrupt politicians!

Certain propositions are so pathetically impossible that a person who undertakes to utter them audibly earns questions about their sanity.

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Olisa Metuh’s suggestion that Sambo Dasuki, former National Security Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan and the infamous mascot of the Peoples Democratic Party era of unprecedented plunder of the Nigerian treasury, is the odds-on favorite to win the presidency in 2019 rests in that category of unfeasible you-dey-craze? fantasy.

Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of the ‘’largest political party in Africa’’ now reduced –in David Mark’s words –to a party ‘’in coma’’, is dreaming of PDP’s return to the Nigerian presidency. Dreaming of the party’s recovery of the keys to the national treasury. Dreaming of the return of kleptocracy.

And Metuh figures that Dasuki, the most aggressive looter of public funds Nigeria has ever seen,  is best suited to actualize the dream!

Metuh claimed that the Buhari administration was not pressing charges against Dasuki because the ex-NSA repurposed the money earmarked for the purchase of arms for the anti-insurgency operations of the Nigerian military and rerouted it to private pockets. Metuh said Buhari was trying to secure himself an easy re-election in 2019 by eliminating Dasuki, his presumptive rival, through persecution.

Metuh said that Buhari was manifestly threatened by the prospect of a Dasuki candidacy, ‘’given his vast political and security network’’. Buhari was all the more jittery because ‘’the PDP has zoned its presidential ticket to the north’’, where Dasuki hails from.

All decent members of the PDP ought to feel scandalized by Metuh’s comment. They should be embarrassed that the man who speaks for their party and the entirety of its members is possessed of an appalling thought process.

Metuh who had once accused President Muhammadu Buhari of ‘’demarketing Nigeria’’ gave himself away as a foolish man.

For starters, nothing is more obvious than the fact that Dasuki’s own horse’s mouth admission that he wantonly raided the treasury and spread the cash among chieftains of the PDP has tarnished him till death.

His confessions have foreclosed his chance of his featuring in governance again. His unmasking as the linchpin who evacuated the treasury and packed the pockets of PDP big men full of loot places him under eternal stigma. After his plunder of the defense budget left Nigerian troops armless before Boko Haram; after he contributed to the making of 2 million internally displaced persons; after he has caused an indeterminate fraction of 20,000 deaths, he is too irreparably damaged to attempt a bid for any public office.

The prospect of a Dasuki run for the presidency is so bleak it cannot be wished into feasibility. Dasuki represents PDP’s worst advertisement. He is the most toxic liability the party can dare to parade.

Metuh, a ‘’lawyer’’ who functioned in the highest hierarchy of a former ruling party should know that a Dasuki presidential campaign will make the election a walkover for the incumbent. Metuh should know that better than any newspaper stand political pundit!

And, even if we assume that Dasuki has a fighting chance, the towering evidence against him and the corroboration of the profiteers of his looting philanthropy make it almost certain that he will end up in jail.

But Metuh is hankering for a Dasuki presidency counterintuitively. He just can’t help trying to procure the incredible with his optimism. This is because Dasuki symbolizes normalcy to Metuh. Dasuki personifies the ideology of mindless looting that Metuh has grown to be dependent on.

Dasuki’s criminal generosity to the party’s big men bespeaks a loyal conformation to the PDP’s de facto motto ‘’PDP, share the money!’’

Ordinarily, one would have encouraged Metuh and his party to self-destruct by crowning Dasuki PDP’s presidential nominee. At least, we will have drama at the looters’ expense. The Dasuki for President campaign will, for sure, fetch the PDP a wipeout.

But to taunt Metuh and PDP into proving that Dasuki’s ‘’vast political and security network’’ make the potential prisoner invincible would be subscribing to the insult implicit in Metuh’s suggestion.

Metuh’s wild claim that Dasuki is the only Northerner who is ready to be president is a blanket slur on all the human beings of the region.

The mention that Dasuki is PDP’s pre-ordained presidential candidate implies that the north suffers the scarcity of men of presidential caliber. There is no man or woman from the north who has a nobler profile than a notorious rogue. No one is competent and fit to be President except Dasuki.

That’s a proper abuse. And, it is, needless to say, a diabolical lie.

The North is rich in honorable and capable people. The North boasts many decent men and women who can creditably govern Nigeria. Dasuki is not the best leadership material the North can gift Nigeria. If anything, he is probably the worst face that can represent the North.

Metuh knows this. The reason why he is campaigning for a Dasuki presidency, I imagine, must be that Metuh personally yearns for the good old days which Dasuki represents.

PDP’s loss of the presidency in 2015 was disruptive. The party’s defeat abruptly ended the enjoyment Metuh and his ilk would last for 60 years.

That would have been the longest running heist in human history. Muhammadu Buhari’s victory, thankfully, truncated that and rid the nation of merciless rapists.

The change of fortune hit Metuh and his likes too bad. They weren’t weaned. They were thrust into starvation!

Metuh misses the old order. He had himself publicly confessed that the defunct looting regime enriched him.

When Dasuki started to reel out the names of the PDP folks he had shared Nigeria’s defense budget with, Metuh was seized by fear. He panicked as he saw his friends, collaborators and fellow party chieftains implicated in the arms purchase scam and he arranged a hasty press conference. He said he must be excused from the ongoing arrests because he didn’t receive his bribes from Dasuki, the National Security Adviser. He received his own bribes from…Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the President of Nigeria!

With a glint of shameful pride in his eyes, Metuh said, ‘’ in the course of my duties’’ as National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, ‘’the then President invited and directed I carry out some assignments relating to my office and which he duly funded.’’

That has now been officially graded a pants-on-fire lie!

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission reported that Metuh was one of the biggest profiteers of the Dasukigate arms scam. Metuh received, through the bank account of his company, Destra Investment Limited, hefty deposits. On November 24, 2014, he received 400 million naira; on December 2 and 4, 2014, he received 253 million naira; on the same December 2, 2014, he received 91 million naira and 92 million naira on December 3, 2014.

The state investigators can’t find any trace of paperwork that remotely suggests the multi-million naira payments were made in fulfillment of terms of a valid contract.

Other documents show that Metuh was collecting 4 million naira cash from Dasuki’s office as monthly stipend!

What we have learnt from this seemingly inexhaustible fraud, whose particulars are being released piecemeal –ostensibly in deference to the citizenry’s inability to bear the impact of a one-off dumping- is that the entire PDP/Dasuki regime did not stop at normalizing looting of public funds. The regime legitimized the crime.

The regime made participation in the plunder the standard proof of your status. Those who are somebody by Abuja’s reckoning partake of the loot: Those who don’t measure up don’t enjoy ‘’the privilege.’’

Metuh, a man of little mettle and poor reason, cannot be fairly described as any better than the most underwhelming image maker a political party can retain. His press statements are wishy-washy, weedy and weak. His off the cuff remarks are feeble, facile and forgettable. Every of his engagement with the public tends to succeed only in confirming that he is out of his depth!

But the mediocre whose skill set is supposed to be a sentencing to subsistence livelihood collected a 1.4 billion naira –for his effort in gaining admission into the looting gang!

Dasuki paid Metuh unmerited monies just as he paid Iyorchia Ayu, an expired politician, 345 million for consultancy on ‘’electoral matters.’’

The party is over. The bank deposit alerts no longer stream in. And the anti-graft agencies are haunting and hunting the predators!

Metuh wants Nigeria to return to kleptocracy. That will not happen. The current paradigm cannot permit the ascension of a notorious thief to the Nigerian presidency.

Here’s my advice to Olisa Metuh:

Now that EFCC has arrested you for interrogation, start preparing to defend yourself in court. You need to ready your mind for the grist of cartoons the media will make out your case. You need to hire some lawyers –preferably, those Senior Advocates of Nigeria whose specialty is defending corrupt politicians!

You need not worry about 2019. Or an impractical Dasuki for President campaign. What should agitate your mind is the present challenge of stopping your own looming jail term!

 

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@emmaugwutheman