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Festus Keyamo’s Icarus Moment By Kennedy Emetulu

October 23, 2017

Late on Saturday, 21st of October 2017, I chanced upon a thread on my friend, Sunday Akoji’s wall on Facebook. He simply reproduced a quote by Festus Keyamo from his Twitter page. In it, Keyamo said: “The greatest handicap of d opposition in mobilizing Nigerians to oppose d ruling party is d lack of moral high-ground from which to operate.” I was a little angry when I read it, but I only responded by saying he’s crazy and moved on. But, the next day, Prince Henry Nwazuruahu Shield stated the following on the thread: “I agree with Festus Keyamo on this. Unfortunately, the party in power also has no moral ground to call others thieves”. His comment brought me back to the thread and this time, I talked in more detail about the problem I have with Keyamo’s comment. Below is a link to the thread in question:

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Prince Henry Nwazuruahu Shield and I have been having that exchange since then. As I stated there, Keyamo was only flying a kite preparatory to a much more vigorous defence of the present government. He has now done so with a piece posted by my Oga, Hrm Babatunde Ogala on his Facebook wall. I reproduce below in full this statement by Festus Keyamo:

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“I am one of those who mounted a strong opposition against the misrule of the immediate past old order political system in Nigeria. I am one of those social activists, who fought to oust the PDP and its bad ruling system.

“I am one of those who fought for the change of the political and governing status quo in Nigeria. And two years down the line, we can't start calling for change again, because their is not yet a better alternative. I say it with all sense of responsibility that there is not yet another political order we can say we want to push for to take over from this present one again.

“So, calling for change around this time simply means we are saying PDP should come back. Calling for change right now means we are talking of going back to where we came from. Calling for the change of this new governing order means we are saying we should return to the culture of misrule of the past. What some people are saying is that it pays us to go back to that unacceptable place of the past, where executive recklessness; impunity; leadership visionlessness, indiscipline and irresponsibility; merciless looting of the resources of the people of Nigeria et cetra were the order of the day.

“So, the only option available right now, in the absence of the third order political system, we can consider for power, to continue to engage this present one for better delivery of government services and improvements. We gave PDP the chance and enough time to improve, but the party messed everything up. We must give this APC government too time to prove it's worth.

“We must give them time to improve, while we continue to mount pressure on those who are in charge to run Nigeria well.

“How I wish there is a third power bloc order we can start thinking about to take over from this one. A strong political and ready order in a young vibrant and energetic young Nigerian. But, believe you me, there is none yet at the moment, so we just have to keep making do with this one. It is a lot better than where we were coming from as a nation. It is better than that crude and sorry state of our immediate past.

“On this note, I shall continue to give this government that comparative support. That is, this one is still a lot better, compared to the last one.”

--- Festus Keyamo

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Understandably, Keyamo is playing mother hen for the horned chickens he helped hatch. I mean, sure, he can do that, he can defend the government freely, but if he has to do so, he must do so without this silly pretence of lamenting for what he wants us to believe is the lack of credible opposition. As I said elsewhere, this is an ill-concealed support for a government he helped install at a time he realizes that the people are fed up with this government. This is Keyamo saying: ‘Yeah, you are not happy with Muhammadu Buhari and co, but the PDP people are worse. So, stick with Buhari’. He is conditioning Nigerians to accept Buhari and APC’s bad governance as a fait accompli, as something that cannot be changed in the next election, because he in his infinite wisdom has adjudged those he helped chase away from government, those now in opposition, as worse.

Well, I’m sorry, this is an irresponsible view of politics and citizenship. Festus Keyamo has been part of the ruling party from its formation and before then he has been part of the ancient regime as a lead Prosecutor to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under the PDP. So, how many corruption cases did he prosecute for the EFCC in the years he was their lead Prosecutor under the PDP regime? How many corrupt people did he help put away? I suppose the then PDP government brought him into the EFCC because of his supposed expertise and independent-mindedness and to show that they were serious about fighting corruption, so where is Mr. Keyamo’s scorecard in that regard? I mean, he cannot say he wasn’t given the opportunity to put his money where his mouth is, so what happened? The only thing I recall about his time as EFCC lead Prosecutor was him writing a proposal to the National Assembly for a constitutional amendment to address what he said were delays in corruption cases, which he said were some of the major obstacles in the fight against corruption. Indeed, the high point of Mr. Keyamo’s career with the EFCC was his shameless defense of the former Chairman of EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde before the Senate when the man ran away abroad after being accused of diverting N1 trillion worth of funds recovered from corrupt persons while in office. That case has since been dead and buried just like that because, under the APC government, Mr. Lamorde is a sacred cow and Keyamo of the APC is his lawyer.

As I said, Keyamo was one of the foundation members of the APC and in 2013 he attempted to contest for the Senate seat of Delta Central under its banner. However, his high profile campaign came to a screeching halt when he accused his own party of fraud in the conduct of the primary, which was won by Ortega Emerhor. In the 2015 election, Keyamo was vociferously opposed to the Goodluck Jonathan government and was one of the most visible and outspoken of Muhammadu Buhari’s surrogates. He called Mr. Jonathan names and accused him and his government of all sorts. In a long polemic published in SaharaReporters on January 18, 2015, which was part of his effort to get Buhari elected a few weeks after, Keyamo passionately berated the elites who’d kept silent as Jonathan and the PDP destroyed the country and presented Buhari as the “clear alternative” and the man who will fix the broken country. But now that everything he had predicted about Buhari has been exposed as sheer humbug, Keyamo is moving the goalpost for 2019. He wants Nigerians to give the ethnic-minded, nepotistic, murderous and criminal enterprise that is the Buhari government more time because Nigerians gave the PDP more time. He is not concerned about the illogic of allowing Buhari and the APC more time to do more damage the way he accused Nigerians and the elites of giving the PDP more time to destroy the country. He is not ashamed that he’s making the case for equal opportunity destroyers in the affairs of our country.

Here is the problem with Keyamo’s reasoning: There is no problem in a democracy to openly support the government you have helped install, especially if you want the government to be reelected to office in an upcoming election, but you do not do this by declaring it the lesser of two evils. You do this by presenting facts about what the government has done to keep its electoral promise to the people and how it has bettered the life of Nigerians in the period it’s been in office. Telling us the government deserves to be reelected only because the opposition is worse is not only self-defeating, it is disrespectful of the people who are suffering today under this government. It is the electorate that makes the decision about who is worse, not you, a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying member of the failed ruling party.

What Keyamo ought to be concerned about right now is his conscience. Keyamo put his credibility as a public interest lawyer and conscientious citizen on the line when he sold us Buhari and this government. Now that he himself has admitted that this government has failed to meet even his own expectations, he shouldn’t be seen defending such a government with an argument that the opposition is worse. His lament that there is no third force or ‘third power bloc order”, as he put it, is a coward’s testament. I mean, what is preventing him from championing such a third force if he’s convinced it’s what is needed to save the nation from the vermin he helped install and from those he helped chase away? If he needed inspiration, why couldn’t he take it from Emmanuel Macron who created a third force in French politics and in one year led them to power sweeping everything before him? I recall that when people questioned his experience in politics when he was contesting the Senate primary in Delta, he gave a long speech about how he was one of the four that conceptualized the National Conscience Party (NCP) in 1994 along with Chief Gani Fawehinmi and how he was the first Northern Coordinator of the fledgling movement that later became the party. He also said at the time that in his long years of professional career, he has handled hundreds of cases involving inter and intra-party disputes and that these have given him a rare insight into the various intrigues and shenanigans in political parties and in politics. Add to that the fact that he’s one of the founding members of the APC, so what else does he need to champion the establishment of the needed third force in Nigerian politics?

The truth is Keyamo has not shown that he is interested in the progress of the Nigerian nation. He is content being part of the present ruling faction ruining Nigeria. He wants the rest of us to calmly accept that our fate is sealed and that we can do nothing about it. He slyly consoles us with the claim that the PDP in opposition would be worse in government. Yes, without any iota of fact, he’s declared this APC government as not as bad as the PDP governments of the past and it is for this reason he wants us to stick with it. Unfortunately for him, that’s not how democracy works. When the people have had enough, they will do the needful. When they do so, they will be looking at records, warts and all. If Keyamo is satisfied that the APC record is better than the PDP’s, he should leave it to Nigerians to make their choice in 2019. He might not have the courage to champion the third force, but he can rest assured that there are Nigerians who are gearing up to challenge the status quo in 2019. At any rate, the future is for Nigerians to ponder, not for Keyamo and his ilk to determine for the rest of us. If he continues in this vein, he’ll soon discover that hubris took Icarus too close to the sun.

My honest advice to Keyamo is that he should stop abusing his intelligence and that of the Nigerian people. If he wants this government reelected, he should begin now to use his influence within the ruling party and within the corridors of power to force this government to begin to act responsibly and honestly to address the many problems of the nation, which it has clearly exacerbated and made worse on all fronts since it came into office. Only people like Keyamo in his present state will not recognize this fact, but it is a fact known to most Nigerians, North, South, East and West. So, Keyamo should stop selling this less than convincing ‘lesser evil’ potion, because not many will drink of it when the time comes.