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The Man From Otuoke By Achike Chude

September 21, 2021

Some terrible people are cooking up another terrible brew for Nigeria come 2023.

Ambition Never Comes To An End.
- Kenneth Kaunda

Ring the bell!  Sound the alarm! There is an eight month rumour in Nigeria that has refused to go away. 

Never, ever, doubt it when you are told that in every rumour, there is an iota of truth somewhere. Ignore it at your peril.

 Perhaps the adage; 'No smoke without fire is a Nigerian invention.' 

Even if these sayings of the wise do not apply in other climes, you can be sure that Nigeria in all her uniqueness, good or bad, is surely an exception. Have we not been fed with abundant examples of 'rumours' whose truths were validated by their eventual occurrences? Abacha's illness was dismissed as a hoax when it surfaced within the polity. Journalists who were bold to write about it in their magazine were hounded and pursued by the Abacha regime for spreading 'lies'. Conclusion: Abacha died of his illness - Indian appples or not. 

It was the same with President Musa Yar' Adua. OBJ's third term agenda followed the same pattern of rumour denial until Senators were seen everywhere in Abuja banks, scrambling in frenzy to get their own share of fifty-five million Naira to do the 'needful' - an enterprise that actually ended at the National Assembly in a debate by Senators. Remember the speech by the then senate president, Ken Nnamani:

"Every senator must answer his father's name. I know my father's name."

And as the live television cameras beamed on the faces of each senator of the federal  republic as they cast their votes, raw, naked fear overtook them, and they were forced to answer their fathers' names. And in spite of the #55 million Naira collected up-front, the third term agenda died on the floor of the senate.

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AND THE GOVERNMENT HAD CLAIMED IT WAS A RUMOUR. 

And oh I forgot! Femi Fani Kayode again; Yes! the same Fani Kayode was in the thick of the rumour denial. What a guy!

Now we are being told that former president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, is planning to jump from the PDP frying pan to the APC fire. 

IGNORE THIS RUMOUR AT YOUR PERIL.

Pity those lovers and admirers of Jonathan who have sworn on his behalf, cursed on his behalf, and rained abuses on those implying that Jonathan can be so dishonourable as to join the party and people that demonized him in such a horrible and fiendish manner in 2015. 

They say that Jonathan going to the APC is like a dog eating its own excreta. But in this case, it is profoundly worse. Jonathan will be eating somebody else's excreta because he was never of the APC. In fact, people are saying that the excreta left by the PDP in 2015, as bad smelling as it was, is far better than the more hideous and foul smelling six years excreta of the APC.

So why would he be so 'dastardly' to risk the 'relatively' good reputation he has garnered for himself by that singular act of leaving office in 2015 with his head held high? Why would he now sully his subsequently earned 'good reputation' as an African statesman with the responsibility of bringing about peace in troubled African countries?

Power, my friends. Power! 

Power is like hard drugs. It gives many a man  a continuous intoxicating kick, turns them into gods and gives them a sense of invincibility and indestructibility. 

If you have been bitten by the power bug, resistance is almost futile. 

Africa is full of stories of lifetime presidents who forcefully manipulated their countries' constitutions and imposed themselves permanently on their people. While some were lucky to die in their beds, some were hounded out of power, while others were outrightly killed. Sadly, the power-seducing spirits and demons roaming the African continent never run out of candidates to seduce. 

PRESIDENT GOODLUCK EBELE JONATHAN SEEMS TO BE THEIR LATEST CANDIDATE

But his case will even be more tragic, because he is one of the very few who refused to be coerced, and coaxed into staying in power. He actually ascended the pantheon of the 'greats' when he made the iconic statement;

"My ambition is not worth the blood of Nigerians" 

And then he left office.

Sensible man then! What of now?

Some terrible people are cooking up another terrible brew for Nigeria come 2023. They are looking for another means to an end - a stop gap measure to lose 'relative' power temporarily, and pick it up when they are done with their stooge and tool. Jonathan, if he accepts, will be that tool and stooge. They can flatter him all they want and credit him with super human skills. But he will be a tool and unwise to accept to come back to power. I am not sure he will be that foolish. But you never know with human beings. He proved he was wise once, but he has to prove it again.

Why else do you think all the movements from defectors, mainly from PDP to APC are happening? The defector everyone is talking about is proudly proclaiming that he one of those coordinating it. He is even boasting about how he engineered the movements of some governors to the APC, though the Ebonyi governor, Umahi is calling him a liar. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We know know that FFK is poison, and pollutes whatever he touches. 

THERE IS AN UNPLEASANT PLACE FOR THOSE WHO WALK IN THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD 

Those who have contributed nothing meaningful to our country, but have rather left a potentially great country in tatters, are re-gathering and re-grouping once again for another round of assault on all of us. They are neither sorry for what they have done to us nor are they willing to stop till they bury all of us alive if possible. But hopefully, they will go unaccompanied into the dark crevices and recesses of doom and despair. We will not go with them. 

So let them continue to brew their diabolical political concoctions for 2023. Let them continue in their plot against Nigeria and her peoples. Their day of reckoning is near, because it is not written in the stars that they  will forever prevail against us. Those who have sought destruction for others will be unaware of the day of their own destruction. We will see with our own eyes, the liberation of our country and the price that will be paid for her. A price to pay, there must be. Though if you ask me, the blood of thousands of our people, already spilled unjustly and evilly all over the country ought to be enough a price. But if there is one thing to be known about power, it is that it is fought for. It is never freely given. 

'Great' was the man who tasted power, enjoyed it, was seduced by it and yet successfully succeeded in resisting its many alluring entrapments and left it all behind. 

Woe to him if he is seduced enough by it to leave the relative peace he had acquired for himself since 2015. The call to return to power is not a call by friends and patriots of Nigeria. It is a call to him from the valley of the dead. He, the called, and they, the callers will all go down to Sheol together in shame and disgrace.

The cup of the Ammorites is almost full.