Look for the creativity of an average Nigerian politician, you will always find it in the negative arena and this manifests every day in the unfortunate way in which those that play full-time in Nigerian politics often express their warped mindsets? Does it occur to the leadership of the All Progressives Congress party (APC) that it is too soon to lose the essence of President Muhammadu Buhari’s second coming into power?
Look for the creativity of an average Nigerian politician, you will always find it in the negative arena and this manifests every day in the unfortunate way in which those that play full-time in Nigerian politics often express their warped mindsets? Does it occur to the leadership of the All Progressives Congress party (APC) that it is too soon to lose the essence of President Muhammadu Buhari’s second coming into power?
To those who know, the obvious renewal of attacks on the former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, in an attempt to pitch him against members of his new political family in the APC especially the President, transmit every attribute of a focused mischief and a smear campaign, not from outside the ruling party as some people believed but from within the family, by those who feel threatened by his present disposition in the scheme of things in the current dispensation.
Whether anybody wants to hear this or not, these deliberate falsehoods and sinister propaganda were obviously designed to draw a wedge between Atiku and President Muhammadu Buhari, in order to cause needless distrust and distractions in the President’s government. First it was insinuations that he has been hosting political meetings at Burj Al-Arab, Dubai to plot whatever against Buhari. Then followed a series of sponsored articles on the online news sites with caption: “Atiku is a green snake-Obasanjo;” and then the Saturday, January 2nd piece by the Nation Newspaper captioned: “Poll 2019 and Atiku’s frantic denial.”
Does it occur to those seeking to constitute themselves into an opposition within the APC that the party is no longer in opposition but the ruling party? What President Buhari needs at this point in time is for all leaders of the party to rally around him in the arduous task of delivering on his and the APC’s mandate instead of some of them thinking erroneously that the shortest cut to get recognition by Buhari is to cut and slice Atiku and every other person perceived to be too close to the president.
Given the challenge of providing good governance for the country, does it not occur to these self-serving hacks that the last thing President Buhari needs now are foolish distractions from those who should be providing him with ideas to fulfill the promises he made to all Nigerians?
Without mincing words, the viewpoints expressed in all of the articles clearly show that they are coming from a single source- whether as an individual or a group of disgruntled and outsmarted apologists.
Curiously, an analysis of such weight: “Poll 2019 and Atiku’s frantic denial” by a national daily as prominent as the Nation against a prominent APC leader could be carried bearing no by-line. This simply means that the expressed views were either the viewpoint of the newspaper itself or scripted by faceless cowards with commanding control in the paper. This is the truth!
How could a prominent newspaper that could rightly be described as an APC paper use such awful adjectives to describe President Buhari by saying he is, “an aphrodisiac power monger and Casanova,”? Haba!
The election campaigns are over we have elected a new president who has taken over office since May 29, 2015. Should private activities of individual citizens be the major preoccupation of APC leaders especially now that all energies need to be channelled into helping the Buhari administration actualize the change agenda he promised Nigerians?
So with all the problems facing our nation and the APC as a party, is it wise that the activity of one private individual and his family is placed on the front burner of our political discourse? Does this not show how naïve or rather depraved Nigerian politicians are?
It is better to assume that the “Atiku is a green snake” story attributed to General Obasanjo was a hatchet job of mischief makers. Otherwise the implication is that former President, General Olusegun Obasanjo is still carrying on as an ‘area council chief’ in his dealings with other prominent Nigerians some of whom are even more credible than himself. Those in the know would agree that the best way to deal with General Obasanjo is to outrightly ignore him as this diminishes his self-assigned worth and ego both of which are already grossly diminished.
Most people would actually believe this to be a recent interview granted by Chief Obasanjo but contrary to that, the supposed news story was an extract from the controversial and grossly misinforming book he published last year.
Obasanjo has continued to delude himself not accepting that he belongs to the past and that Nigeria has moved on. This was a man that almost scuttled Nigeria’s nascent democracy with his greedy appetite for power soon after he was re-elected for a second term in 2003.
Truth be told, the foundations of most of the dysfunctional socio-political and economic settings including disabled institutions we have in this country today and the present tribal and sectional divide were laid by Obasanjo as president of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007.
Nigerians should actually ask the Ota Chief if it was Atiku, his Vice or Audu Ogbe, the then PDP Chairman that forced him to attempt a third term in office?
Is it not an absurdity that a reasonable elder statesman can come out to say such petty things as “My assistants had moles within the Atiku group. Anything that they planned would be reported. That was the case after Ogbeh’s letter. They decided that Ogbeh should appear remorseful and come with the National Working Committee to apologise to me. It was not from their hearts, but to lure me to a ‘killing ground’.
“All pieces of information that were reported were verified because it would not come from only one informant.”
Does it surprise anybody that the very outspoken General Obasanjo up till now has not made a single comment about Sambo Dasuki’s allegation that Obasanjo was among the former leaders that benefitted lavishly from the arms purchase largess? In fact, OBJ has gone mute ever since Dasuki threatened to name those he gave money including ex- presidents. Yeye country!
Our President without doubt needs all the support- in ideas, goodwill and even prayers to be able to steer the grounding ship of the Nigerian state to a comfort zone and should not be distracted by unnecessary distractions and evil schemes of those who are positioning to take over by 2019 of self-serving calculations without God in their plans. You say you are going to take the country to Eldorado, we gave you our votes. You are yet to do a single thing towards achieving that and you are already fighting each other for 2019. Haba, Naija politician! There is God o!
Ifeanyi Izeze lives in Abuja: [email protected]