I was young and I am now getting old and one thing I learnt from my father is to call what is wrong, wrong and what is right, right. I have been trained and educated enough to know that any nation that tells a lie about itself is a fraud. I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that any nation that wants the world to take it serious must be above board, and must not live or thrive on lies.
The 2007 Presidential elections which produced you as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was marred with malpractices and outright fraud. Nigerians rejected the fraudulent elections, the International Community condemned the conduct and the outcome, and the International observers wrote off the result as a non event. When you accepted the fact that there were terrible and unacceptable flaws in the process you pleaded for understanding and promised to make amends so that the Nation will not have a repeat of the ugly incident. We believed our President and accepted the fraud, with a proviso that never again will people get to positions such as President, Governors, Assembly Members etc without winning elections. We accepted you because this is the first time we are having a University graduate as President. We believed you because our President is a Chemistry teacher who knows the meaning of truths and lies. We believed our President because he knows that in science we say truth exists and only falsehood has to be invented. We believed our President because he knows as Chemist that there are no products if there are no inputs and some catalysts to facilitate reactions. With a sense of Mathematics, our President knows that it is a threat to democracy for a political Party in a Nation as big as Nigeria to control 30 out of 36 States (84%). With all these qualifications I know that our President has the capacity and capability to know the truth and nothing but the truth about Nigeria if he wants to know. I know that with vast security networks at his disposal in Nigeria, he has first class knowledge of almost anything that is anything in Nigeria.
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Before the April 25 re-run of Governorship elections in Ekiti State I know that my President is aware that his Party, PDP won all the re-runs in Bayelsa, Cross River, Adamawa, Kogi and Sokoto States. In Edo, Ondo, and Rivers the Nation was lucky that the Judiciary saved the situation by making outright pronouncements on who the Governors should be. If there were re-runs in those States PDP, as usual, would have ‘won’ the elections. My President is also aware that in the Ekiti State House of Assembly PDP has 13 members and AC 13 members. My President knows the truth that Dr Kayode Fayemi is very popular in Ekiti State. I have no doubt in my mind also that my President is in the know using his vast network that Ido Osi is going to present a problem knowing that Governor Oni comes from there, and as such, adequate structures would have been put in place to prevent what we are witnessing now. And even after the disaster at Ido Osi, I also believe that my President is better placed to get first hand information of what went wrong on April25 2009, and act accordingly in the overall interest of the Nation. I am saying this because I know that my President is aware of the events of 1966 that led to collapse of the first Republic and consequently the Nigeria-Biafra civil war that claimed one million souls. My President will also remember the events of 1983 in Ondo State that led to the collapse of the Second Republic. I need not remind the President of events of 1993 that led to the collapse of Third Republic.
Crisis that have consumed Nations and led to deaths of millions have always started in one small corner. It might interest my President to hear this: Two gun shots were fired in Sarajevo by a school boy, Gevrilo Princip, 19 which killed Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Archduchess Sophie, on June 28, 1914: and the enmity between Austria-Hungary and Serbia escalated into World War 1. Out of the sixty-five million young men who were sent out to battlefields, some nine million never returned. When civilian casualties are included, a total of twenty-one million persons were killed. Some still talk about the outbreak of that war in August 1914 as the time when “the world went mad”. The two gunshots from that school boy has set the whole world on fire and ushered in a period of violence, confusion, and disillusionment that has continued in Yugoslavia to this day.
Hitler’s Germany aspired to rule the world. More than 18 countries were conquered in Europe and beyond. Even the non-aggression pact signed with Russia could not prevent the over-ambitious Hitler’s army from invading Russia. Hundreds of thousands of tanks were mobilized. With everything in place, Hitler gave his commanders the order to take on Russia. German soldiers occupied almost all of Russia. But the Russian winter struck the Germans and they could not advance further. German soldiers died in hundreds of thousands as a result of snow. To make matters worse, the Russian soldiers surrounded the remaining German fighters in their soil. When Hitler was told the sad news, he admonished German commanders to fight to finish. Out of 280,000 soldiers that went into the Russian soil, less than 5,000 soldiers returned alive. The Germans lost 60,000 vehicles, 1,500 tanks and 6,000 guns. When the pathetic news filtered into Germany morale collapsed. The famed German war machines crumbled. For the genocide meted out to the Jews and other atrocities committed against humanity, the Germans are still paying billions of dollars as compensation to victims. Today German soil is still being occupied by the Allied Forces led by the United States. Germany was divided into East and the West after the war though the two are now one. Germany did not only surrender to superior fire power of the allied force, all the factory machines, all the weapons, all the planes, the cars, the trucks etc were dismantled and shipped to the victors. The only things spared were the tarred roads. Whatever Germany lost, the world gained.
I can give my President twenty of this kind of tragedies mankind must learn from and make amends but I believe that above two can teach the lessons of history adequately to those who care to listen. Now it might interest my President to hear this story on Ekiti debacle from Dele Onatade as published in Sunday Sun of May 3 2009. Hear Onatade: “Like every other reporter, I woke up early on the Saturday the day of the long awaited Ekiti State re-run election in 10 Local Government Areas being contested, scheduled for April 25. I picked up my two cameras and bounced out to do a good job.
I was in a team of other journalists from different media outfit and a team of domestic observers led by the Right Monitoring Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Olufemi Aduwo. Having analyzed the map of the ten Local governments properly, we decided to start our coverage from Ifaki the home town of PDP gubernatorial candidate, Engineer Segun Oni. The sleepy town which is about forty-five minutes from Ado Ekiti is an access route to travelers going to Kogi State, Abuja and some Northern States. Journey to Ifaki was a very smooth drive. We actually had a different impression about the whole Ekiti State contrary to all media jingles. The state seems to be peaceful, as there was no road block, no bonfire, nobody displaying cutlass or machines among the young and olds. The only AK 47 riffle I can found in that city is those of the Mobile Policemen deployed for the election.
However, the reality got done on us when we got to Ifaki roundabout where we saw bonfire and some battle ready youths. Some of them looking like petrol awaiting any form of fire. We were stopped by the irate mob who claimed to be community association leaders of Ifaki. They asked for our mission which we did not hesitate to tell them immediately, they requested for letter of introduction from INEC which observers team gave them only for them to tell us that they will not allow journalists or domestic observers team to have access to the town. We were curious to know the reason, but the only answer they can provide is that they have arrested some fake Domestic Election Observers and Journalists earlier in the day. We requested for the identity of those arrested and the Police Station where they were kept. The only answer we got is that they did not hand them over to Police but they are in their custody. It sounds so funny and ridiculous. But there was nothing we could do about it.
We continued the battle of gaining access to the community by pleading with the so- called community leaders only for a young man simply addressed as Honourable to appear from nowhere with a Pathfinder Jeep and inquest for what is happening which was narrated, he requested for the said letter and our identity which we showed him but his next line of action is to order the boys to round us up. Aduwo, immediately picked up his phone and called the Chief of Staff to Engr. Segun Oni. Having narrated the whole story to him, he gave the phone to the self acclaimed Honourable, which we latter realized is one of the aids of Engr Segun Oni then he was a little bit handicapped and disarmed his boys by ordering them back to their duty posts. And even obliged to offer us any useful assistance. All this tango lasted for about an hour and half”.
By now, my President should be aware of what happened in Ekiti State. My President has ordered a probe to what transpired in Ekiti State on April 25 2009. Our President has asked the Police to probe allegations of how 200 INEC officials collected 250 million Naira to do certain jobs. I believe that our President knows it all about the trasvesty in the fountain of knowledge and I pray that he will have the political will and the courage to act according to the dictates of his conscience. Nations have failed because leaders failed to rise up to the occasion and take decisive steps. My President campaigned for his Party as a loyal party man but I know he did not tell anybody to go and rig Oni to power at all cost. I know we have gone beyond this rigmarole in Ekiti. I know that we can do some growing up in this matter by doing the right thing at least to show the world that we can prove them wrong. Let us start the rebranding of Nigeria with Ekiti State
JOE IGBOKWE
PUBLICITY SECRETARY
ACTION CONGRESS
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