President Umaru Yar’adua seems to have come back to life in the past few weeks, a clear deviation from his previous see no evil, hear no evil and do no evil attitude. However, the new- found dynamism seems to be an indication that he can no longer bear the pressure from criticisms of his near –zero performance for the two years he has occupied the Aso Rock Villa studying the problems of Nigeria.
For the first time in his two year rule, Yar’adua walked into the State House Media Centre on Tuesday, 12 May 2009 to address newsmen in manner that could best be described as an eruption of a hitherto dormant volcano. The President was there to fire back at his erstwhile political godfather Olusegun Obasanjo on the latter’s comments on the ongoing electoral reforms controversy.
Former President Obasanjo in his usual style of blunt talking said at a public event in Kano that he was not aware any electoral reform was being implemented in the country.
In addition to the scores of similar views from almost all the interest groups in the nation’s polity, Obasanjo’s comment must have irked President Yar’adua who mustered more than enough courage or more aptly physical strength and power to confront the man that crowned him king despite bitter protest and his personal shortfalls.
In the words of President Yar’adua: “Electoral reform is on. We are at the first stage, which is to give the country qualitative laws to govern our elections.
“Some have chosen to doubt our commitment to electoral reforms based on recent events. For us, however, this is a forceful reminder of the importance and urgency of wholesale and systemic reform of our electoral systems.
“For us, doubt is not an option. Doubts don’t solve problems. Hope and persistence do. As Nigerians, we cannot afford to give up on electoral reforms.”
Wallahi, the President has come alive and this is good. At least Nigerians will know what goes on in the mind of their leader who hitherto neither talked nor acted.
Though Nigerians are happy that at last they can hear their President comment on a nagging national issue, the implications of his response to criticisms on the electoral reforms processes portend grave danger for our democracy.
It shows that Yar’adua is increasingly becoming unease with criticisms of his style of government. This has to be checked because if allowed to continue, the President would very soon metamorphose into a repressive or rather tyrannical leader that can silence any iota of opposition or criticisms. And this may not be very good for our democracy.
Nigerians should be free to comment on matters concerning the state so long as it is done in the overall interest of the nation rather than narrow selfish political motives.
Of course, like party, like candidate, the most surprising reply to Obasanjo’s comment even came from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which condemned Obasanjo in terms worse than outright abuse. This is a clear case of a house divided among itself and there is only one expected result in such situation- a terrible fall.
Does it mean that nobody can criticise or rather say his opinion on the Yar’adua-led PDP government? Is the Government trying to tactically silence all forms of criticisms?
Obasanjo for the mere fact that he commented on the Yar’adua’s electoral reform has been dragged to the mud by the PDP and all sorts of people including Tony Anenih, the party’s former Board of Trustees Chairman. According to Anenih “It is a notorious fact that some of our political leaders who claimed to have brought President Yar’adua to power are now surreptitiously wooing and conniving with the opposition, both internally and externally to malign the president for refusing to be used as a rubber stamp. To the depth of their insincerity, they even deny knowledge of the positive achievements of the administration including the ongoing electoral reforms”
Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President recently said that the PDP lacked the capacity to drive any electoral reform process. He challenged the government to use the recommendations in the Uwais Report as presented as a platform without any form of doctoring and watering down if it is serious with electoral reforms process.
The comment attracted the venoms of the combined team of the presidency, PDP and other political loafers. Despite the fact that the Yar’adua’s seven-point agenda were poached from Atiku’s 2007 Policy Document, the PDP still described him as a desperate politician seeking relevance by not seeing and acknowledging the good works of the Yar’adua-led PDP government.
When Gen Mohammed Buhari in an interview said that Yar’adua cannot deliver on electoral reforms, he was described by the Presidency and PDP as a “frustrated politician that has no constituency who had been defeated both in election and the law courts.” Must a former head of state and presidential candidate of one of the prominent political parties in the country be ridiculed for his personal views on a sensitive national issue that borders on the wellbeing of the country?
Even the civil society groups that took their protest to the National Assembly were accused of being used by the opposition and frustrated politicians to cause anarchy in the system. Haba! So who should talk and not get a name? The government should not intimidate people because it would not work.
Does the President need any opposition party to tell him that Nigerians are crying out? The people were promised portable water to drink; good schools for their children; drugs in hospitals; security of lives and property; improved supply of electric power and good roads. But after two years, when these development issues are brought to the fore, Government will say they are thinking about it.
How long do they want Nigerians to wait as they study the pathetic state of the nation? The President took two years, as claimed by the PDP, to study the problems of the country and would need another six years to attempt to solve them. Haba! Was he not aware of the problems of the country before his installation?
It is very clear that the man occupying the Aso Villa was never prepared for the job and thus did not campaign to the electorate in 2007 because if he did, he must have promised something. And he should have since planned and articulated the most glaringly pressing issues in his campaign and by now those thoughts and plans would have started bearing fruits.
IFEANYI IZEZE IS AN ABUJA-BASED CONSULTANT ON POLITICAL STRATEGY AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION ([email protected])
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