ONE MONTH ALREADY: THE ABSENCE OF CREDIBLE NORTHERN VOICES SIGNALS YAR’ADUA’S CONTINUING HUMILIATION BY THE OBASANJO MOB

One month is a long time in the life of a government. Even for a supposedly new regime like the current one of Umar Yar’Adua, a lot can be achieved in a space of four weeks provided the will and determination are there. Unfortunately, so far, what Nigerians have witnessed is a president incapacitated by indecision and an apparent tendency to dither on critical national issues. And to compound matters, the Yar’Adua presidency, even while preaching a new moral order in the way our public affairs are conducted, seems contented with succumbing to the turpitudes of the ancien régime under its sponsor, ‘Igbochukwu’ Obasanjo and his mob of carpet-baggers and mischief-makers as is the case in the ex-dictator’s recent self-proclamation , in typical Nigerian military fashion, as chairman of the PDP’s Board of Trustees (BOT).

It was indeed a sorry spectacle to behold. As if to leave nobody in doubt as to the brazenness of their rascality, on Wednesday, June 27, 2007, the pro-Obasanjo pack which has been exerting an eerie stranglehold on the affairs of that strangely named outfit - the People’s Democratic Party ( PDP) - did, true to form, re-enact their crooked ways by illegally and corruptly imposing the ex-tyrant as the chairman of its Board of Trustees. The lack of quorum , not to mention all the skullduggery that attended the foisting on the PDP of a now familiar but diabolical sight on the party and in some critical respects on the affairs of the country, it has to be mentioned, did take place in the presence of President Yar’Adua. It would appear that the latter had been dragged from the presidential villa – the usual venue for such meetings – to the Transcorp Hilton, one of the national jewels expropriated by Obasanjo and his associates only for him to be made to act as witness to yet another outrage on the part of the former maximum ruler and his cast of co-travelers in the likes of Bode George, Ahmadu Ali, David Mark and Ojo Maduekwe. Having Obasanjo as PDP BOT chairman is sending the wrong message to Nigerians and the international community. It says that it is business as usual and for a regime battling with a serious problem of illegitimacy, it is counterproductive for the individual at the centre of it all to be seen as condoning acts of impunity and recklessness being perpetrated by the character most responsible for the generalized depravity and lawlessness the nation is suffering from today. Furthermore, for Yar’Adua to be seen as being part of the desperation by Obasanjo and his gang to hang around Abuja after the disastrous kleptocracy of the former dictator tells the world that the president is not man enough. That he is at once a hostage and a pawn of the Obasanjo desperados. Worse, that Yar’Adua is unable to wean himself from his godfather’s apron strings which would imply an inability to cast off the spell of orchestrated decadence and disharmony, the stock-in-trade of the tin god from Ota.

Slowly but surely, Yar'Adua is proving to Nigerians that he is the willing puppet that corrupt man called Obasanjo imposed on the nation in the bid to cover his unwholesome schemes in the last eight years. With Mr. President in attendance, Obasanjo shamelessly displayed his trade mark grotesqueness by making himself the chairman of the PDP's BOT! By illegally declaring himself the chairman of the party's BOT, the ex-dictator is once more telling Yar'Adua that he can go to hell. Obasanjo and his confederates are invariably making a statement, albeit in the only language that they know. They are saying that their selfish interests take precedence over and above the noble concerns of the Nigerian people. That the president sat there and in an obsequious manner, stomached all the filth and lawlessness the leviathan was unleashing on him and what is left of that vehicle called the PDP speaks volumes. Yar'Adua and the cast of amateurs around him don’t seem to get it. As long as the ex-tyrant and his coterie of allies continue to indecently get involved in the affairs of the PDP and our national politics in general, the former governor from Katsina will be confronted with problems of legitimacy. Only the other day, (rtd) Col. Abubakar Umar joined the chorus of well-meaning voices calling on the Yar'Adua administration to distance itself from the nuisance called Obasanjo. Pointedly, Umar suggested that Yar'Adua and the PDP must not allow the latter occupy any position of influence either within the PDP or in the polity as a whole.

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“The former president should stay away from the politics of this country because he has created a lot of mess in the polity. Despite all the pretences, it is now evident that he ran the most corrupt administration in the history of this country… Those who are trying to embellish the performance of General Obasanjo in the last eight years are either ignorant of what happened or transpired, or are beneficiaries of his system or cronyism and fraud. People are going to be embarrassed when the story of General Obasanjo’s corruption is told. “Obasanjo, with all the mess that we have seen around today in the area of socio-economic and political development, cannot be said to be a statesman like some people are claiming, we have facts to proof this and we will do so very soon. “The best he can do for this country is to withdraw from public life and enjoy his loots. The only people who have respect for him are the likes of Aliko Dangote, Femi Otedola and those billionaires he created from the ailing Nigerian economy who will continue to worship him for those reasons.” We will not allow Obasanjo’s cronies to continue to insult us by distorting the facts of mal-administration. In due course, we shall expose him and his cronies with the available facts we have at our disposal”, Umar reportedly said.

.That Yar’Adua has helplessly witnessed the planting of pro-Obasanjo stooges as National Assembly leaders, not to mention the criminal expropriation of the country's collective wealth by the former imperial ruler and his friends or fronts, is bad enough. To cap these outrages with the continued meddling in our national affairs by the profligate Obasanjo should be seen as the ultimate humiliation of Yar’Adua and his tottering presidency. It is an insult to our collective psyche, an affront that calls for a decisive and concerted response on the part of the people.

With the latest imposition of the ogre on his PDP, it will be much harder for the president to claim that he is his own man. The fact is that Yar’Aadua has demonstrated in the last thirty days that he cannot be trusted by Nigerians. Throughout this period, the man has shown that he is unsure of where he is going. Tardy and tentative, the actions of his troubled governance betray him as one precariously perched on a pedestal of moral paucity and duplicity. What this means is that citizens can hardly count on the present crop of so-called leaders to make a break with the rotten legacy the country is grappling with. Yet, they have no other option than to aggressively ask for the rendering of accounts by the bacchants in the Obasanjo mould whose crimes and atrocities have largely been responsible for the state of anomie in the land today

The president’s fiddling while the nation continues to burn has grave consequences for the country. For starters, the fact that Yar’Adua is publicly preaching a new transparency in government while at the same time colluding with the more despicable elements of the Nigerian polity in the likes of his political godfather, Obasanjo, smacks of insincerity and hypocrisy. Whether he likes it or not, the ex-Katsina governor will be judged by his actions and not by mere pronouncements. Secondly, the lack of a clear vision, that is to say an agenda of governance on the part of the president and his PDP-led regime almost a month after its official inauguration is sadly confirming our worst fears that the nation will have more of the previous truancy and abdication which characterized the hedonistic profligacy of the wasted Obasanjo years. The third factor to note is that the Yar’Adua presidency seems confronted with an acute lack of competent and credible hands especially from the North which should normally play the role of an effective éminence grise in these trying times. Today, the president is apparently at the mercy of pro-third term forces which, it must be stated, are predominantly from Obasanjo’s South. And so, without countervailing influences willing or able at this point in time to extricate Yar’Adua from the asphyxiating clutches of the Obasanjo mob, the nation seems set to wallow much longer in incompetence and moral perdition. The fourth point to mention is the role of the official opposition and the organized civil society in all this. A viable opposition is essential in the sustenance of democratic structures. Those opposition elements who are in an unseemly haste to share political posts in a so-called government of national unity (GNU) should be condemned. Nigerians must insist on the need for individuals or groups contesting the result of the 2007 rigged polls to pursue their grievances to their logical conclusion. If indeed a GNU is warranted, the latter should be predicated on tangible conditions whose overriding objective must be the qualitative overhaul of the polity through the transformation of national institutions. For instance, priority should be accorded the matter of electoral reform. It is hoped that the sanitization of the polity should rid it of such terrible characters as the ones currently managing Nigeria’s elections under that despicable individual called Maurice Iwu. So far, with a few notable exceptions, the national media and especially its Lagos-Ibadan axis, has essentially played a cowardly role by its reluctance to insist on the previous Obasanjo regime being made to account for its sordid stewardship of the past eight years. It has to be mentioned that most of the corruption in the public service under Obasanjo did take place at the presidency. To ignore or play down this reality while calling on the largely discredited EFCC to focus on ex-governors is not only pathetic but irresponsible. For its salvation, the sedate Nigerian populace must shake off its legendary lethargy and actively confront the untenable status quo instead of eternally engaging in whimpering that seeks divine intervention in the activities of Nigeria’s evil men.

Aonduna Tondu
New York

Robot  # 1 | 01.07.2007 11:13

Today, the ...Read the full article.

ariteni  # 2 | 01.07.2007 15:58

Dr Tondu, why inflict this garbage on us? Perhaps you do not know Umar, that is why you quote and rely on him. Umar plays to the gallery. Umar has never achieved anything for himself (and Nigeria) except by virtue of being "from the North" and being a coup -plotter. Umar was "compensated" by Babangida by being made administrator of FESTIVAL TOWN - while being a Major in the Army. Umar was made Military Gov of Kaduna by virtue of being part of the coup d'etat of Babangida that took Nigeria several decades behind and insitutionalized corruption. All these happened before the man was even 30 years old. In a Military that is not as Political as ours was in late eighties, the man wouldn't even have made Seargeant but he relishes the fact that Generalsl were had to bow to him to get things or get things done because of his closeness to the then powers that be. Umar is aggrieved because Obasanjo sidelined him from "eating" from Federal Govt largesse He is not a member of PDP how come he wants to dictate who leads PDP? Right there under his nose, corrupt governor were carting away his State resources, yet he is speechless. His fixation with Obasanjo has turned into an obsession and perhaps depression. Talk Talk Talk Talk - just to be reported on the front pages. He pretends to support the South - just for the free publicity while conveniently closing his eyes to the evils and corruption perpetrated on Nigeria by some Northerners especially his mentor (Ibrahim Babangida) Dr Tondu, say what you need to say but don't quote Umar to buttress your point. By the way, Yar'Adua is not a Northern President. He is for all of Nigeria. There is no acute shortage of Northern leaders to guide him. He is not a baby and needs no such guidance. If he succeeds good for him and if he fails no Northern leader will share the burden with him. Several months ago, the PDP decided in its wisdom to make Baba General Olusegun Obasanjo now nicknamed "Igbochukwu" its Leader and BOT Chairman whenever he steps down from Presidency. Get your facts right before you rush to condemn Yar'Adua. How does it become a crime for The President to attend a meeting of his Party. The strategy of trying to set Yar'Adua against Obasanjo is not going to work. He is there to execute a Party Program and is smarter than you think. His degree papers are genuine and those of us who attended first generation Nigerian Universities have high hopes that he can do the job. Were it not for Federal Character and the beggars in ANPP and AC begging for GNU his Ministers would have started working. I agree, its time to get down to business but to accuse the President of tardiness etc is preposterous. If those people you call evil were so, they would not present Nigeria with a good man like Yar'Adua. (remember the many good Nigerians who contested PDP Primaries). Those leaders sure mean well for Nigeria by choosing Yar'Adua and if you hate the fact that Yar'Adua ate and drank with them, them you must get ready for a 4-year head and stomach ache. Yar'Adua is not on his own and the voters knew that before entrusting him with their mandate. Their vote was for the PDP and Yar'Adua only happened to be the Party's Flagbearer.

Omovudu  # 3 | 01.07.2007 16:40

Mr Tondu, You are just dripping with anger and your outburst is unwarranted. Even if it is admitted that Yaradua has been slow in picking his cabinet, it is not out of place giving the precarious circumstances that brought him to power and his quiet determination to start well with the right people. If you could clear the fog of acrimony from your eyes, you would see that the tenous path he has taken has helped him ditch the former state governors (the good and the bad) who had helped in into office. The intense security screening has also weeded out a significant amount of the bad eggs that would have become problems if he was in haste as you want him to be. On Obasanjo, you are simply myopic in your view. Tell me, even if you were completely gullible, why should you bite so early in time, the hand that fed you. Are you oblivious of the fact that it was Obasanjo that almost single handedly brought Yaradua to power and now you want to echo Col Umar that he should not respond to his benefactor as if that spoke of any thing virtuous in character. Besides, whatever else may be in contention, is Anenih better than Obasanjo for the BOT post. That he had the effontry to attempt to entrench himself in the position even after he had presided over the the ammendment to the PDP constitution to guarantee Obasanjo the jobs speaks of the warped working of his mind and as having no shred of principles. Would be nice, now that he is out of favour, to probe him for the 300 billion naira that was spent on roads in OBJ's first term. These were the mistakes of Obasanjo in his first term. Simply because he was not detailed or discerning enough in his first cabinet selection, his first 4 years were pure waste, and this baggage tagged notoriously along such that when he started serious reforms in his second term with the right crop of people, he had no time to entrench them hence the now infamous 3rd term desire and all the woes that came with it. So give this new man his space. It was Henry David Thoreau that said "If a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away" Let Yaradua be in his historic responsibility and pact with destiny.

ebasain  # 4 | 01.07.2007 18:10

Sir, thanks for another good piece. That the Nigerian elite as currently personified by a group of charlatans called the PDP is swirling in mediocrity and banditry is no news. What will be news is when Yar'Adua does something unexpected for the common good! The Yar'Adua presidency is aware that it's been foistered on the people and must dance to the whims and caprices of her godfathers. What we're seeing now is the macabre dance of ego-worshippers whom the gods have decided to make mad! The time-honored saying that 'the evil that men do.......' is going to play out the inherent quality of one of nature's potent laws now or later. For that reason I won't envy their arrogance and abuse of power. I mean, the PDP gangsters!

OluGbo  # 5 | 01.07.2007 21:50

Mr. Tondu, I see no merit at all in your posting, but feel a deep concern about your mental attitude. Your deep, if unwarranted hatred against former President Obasanjo as evidenced in your last two articles on this site, as well as attributing every evil and negative character traits to him and his associates is a matter of professional concern to me. I said professional concern because I had come accross patients with similar obsessions against other individuals when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Neuropychiatric Institute at UCLA in 1991, and even before then, I had read many similar things in the literature of the Limbic System (the part of the brain responsible for mood and affect) when I was doing a PhD degree program in Neuroanatomy at Wayne State University in the 1980's. It is easy to ignore your article if your education is pedestrian, but you apparently possess a PhD degree from somewhere and is presumably also well informed about Nigeria. Objectivity with available facts should not be a problem unless there is an underlining pathology. I am sorry to be this explicit about my thinking after reading your article and doing an internet search to read your other articles. Please seek help.

MrOneNaija  # 6 | 01.07.2007 23:55

MORE GREASE TO THE DIDDLER! Thanks for your remarks, Ebasain. Your valid points are well noted. The respective interventions by Ariteni and Omovudu are essentially self-serving, for what both contributors are saying is that Nigerians should make do with the president's diddling at Aso Rock. And, of course, the underlying message is that as a country, we should ignore the circumstances of Yar'Adua's jaundiced governance - the fact that the person pretending to be executive president is merely an errand boy of that ghastly character called Igbochukwu Obasanjo. Omovudu would have Anenih prosecuted for his role in the mismanagement of funds at the Works ministry and yet does not seem to muster the courage to call for Obasanjo's trial for his numerous atrocities and crimes of the past eight years. Omovudu and others thinking like him should also be reminded that the only music our brand new Yar'Adua seems to be dancing to is that by the mobsters currently congregating under the eerily dangerous cover of that outfit known as Obasanjo's PDP. Anybody even remotely concerned with the welfare of the Nigerian people will agree that it is supremely indecent for an ex-tyrant who has been responsible for much of the misery and despair in the land today to want to continue playing a destructive role in our local or national politics. In civilized societies, a character like Obasanjo should have instinctively taken the route of self-exile after May 29 this year. Or better still, he should have opted for suicide and thus spared the nation all the effort associated with having him prosecuted for his looting and other transgressions like the terrible human rights abuses commited by him between 1999 and May 29, 2007. The fact that Yar'Adua is today submitting to , if not actively participating in Obasanjo's on-going outrages against the Nigerian people, is a sad commentary on the president and his worldview. Ariteni and Omovudu should read my commentary of June 12, 2007 entitled "Confronting the illusion of a Yar'Adua Presidency". http://www.nigeriavillagesq... In that article, I take to task the emergence of the president in controversial circumstances after the worst electoral charade in Nigeria's history. I make the valid point that partly out of a concern for Nigeria's development and also due to his legitimacy deficit, Yar'Adua should consciously set out to court the people's goodwill by dissociating himself from the recklessness and corrupt ways of Obasanjo and his confederates. Let me end by alluding to the interjection by OluGbo. The professional capabilities he has so eloquently laboured to draw our attention to should logically be of service to the individual who probably needs them most in Nigeria today, namely, Igbochukwu Obasanjo. Amongs other chimeras, Igbochukwu must be grappling with the circumstances of his controversial ancestry. A possible emotional trauma arising from a questionable paternity cannot be ruled as as an explanation for the troubling character traits exhibited by the ex-dictator, supposedly from Ota.

Obi Mbonu  # 7 | 02.07.2007 08:25

=Omovudu;188479>Mr Tondu, You are just dripping with anger and your outburst is unwarranted. Even if it is admitted that Yaradua has been slow in picking his cabinet, it is not out of place giving the precarious circumstances that brought him to power and his quiet determination to start well with the right people. If you could clear the fog of acrimony from your eyes, you would see that the tenous path he has taken has helped him ditch the former state governors (the good and the bad) who had helped in into office. The intense security screening has also weeded out a significant amount of the bad eggs that would have become problems if he was in haste as you want him to be. On Obasanjo, you are simply myopic in your view. Tell me, even if you were completely gullible, why should you bite so early in time, the hand that fed you. Are you oblivious of the fact that it was Obasanjo that almost single handedly brought Yaradua to power and now you want to echo Col Umar that he should not respond to his benefactor as if that spoke of any thing virtuous in character.. You got it right,and as usual we lack patience as Nigerians; every body wants UMYA to start slicing up the fingers that fed him even before he gets the chance to sit down. The man is fresh in a government filled with sharks, he needs to first create his own power base, know who to trust, and know who he can work with. Nobody is born President, you learn to be President, let’s not forget that OBJ wasted almost 4 years learning how to be President. Only somebody total lacking in knowledge of the fundamentals of Nigerian’s intricate politics or has truly lost touch with realities of Nigeria will expect to get in there and start sacking and probing people from day one. He will most likely get impeached before he gets the chance to even move his family to Aso Rock. He needs to first, consolidate his base and win the trust and confidence of the common guy out there who saw him from day one as a stooge. Ngige in Anambra state used this tactics to survive for over two years, it was the support of the people that kept him there despite the overwhelming odds against him. He needs to do this knowing fully well that based on his promises, he stands for everything the current establishment will not accept, servant leadership. And fight them; trust me he will definitely have to if he has any chance fulfilling even 50 percent of his promises. As he needs to break down the current loot sharing structure that has been in place for the past 30 years or so that has kept the country in shackles. The Power problem for instance, despite all that you have heard cannot be solved with out confronting and breaking down three groups, that affect it, the cartel within Nepa, the Generator importers and lastly the AGO barons. The truth is, nothing is ever simple in Nigeria, for every sector that has a problem there is an entrenched group that is benefiting from the problem. And each group has a powerful lobby at the top to make sure that the status quo is maintained. I am sorry but the choice before him is simple, consolidate his power base and fight to win a place in history or simple buckle before the overwhelming power of the PDP machine. That has been whittled and fine tuned over the last 4 years to do only the bidding of their “great leader” OBJ. And the great leader if he remains true to type, loquacious, all knowing, petty and vindictive will sooner or later shoot a broadside at UMYA to show his displeasure and that my friends is when the fun will start.

mulan  # 8 | 02.07.2007 08:42

=Obi Mbonu;188562>You got it right,and as usual we lack patience as Nigerians; every body wants UMYA to start slicing up the fingers that fed him even before he gets the chance to sit down. The man is fresh in a government filled with sharks, he needs to first create his own power base, know who to trust, and know who he can work with. Nobody is born President, you learn to be President, let’s not forget that OBJ wasted almost 4 years learning how to be President. Only somebody total lacking in knowledge of the fundamentals of Nigerian’s intricate politics or has truly lost touch with realities of Nigeria will expect to get in there and start sacking and probing people from day one. He will most likely get impeached before he gets the chance to even move his family to Aso Rock. ------------ I am sorry but the choice before him is simple, consolidate his power base and fight to win a place in history or simple buckle before the overwhelming power of the PDP machine. That has been whittled and fine tuned over the last 4 years to do only the bidding of their “great leader” OBJ. And the great leader if he remains true to type, loquacious, all knowing, petty and vindictive will sooner or later shoot a broadside at UMYA to show his displeasure and that my friends is when the fun will start.QUOTE> Obi Mbonu, I dearly hope for the sake of Nigeria and himself, that UMYA chooses the first path and in the process, makes the country a better place for all nigerians. As for the part highlighted above, I simply laugh:D:D:D:D

MrOneNaija  # 9 | 02.07.2007 10:43

Obi Mbonu writes, inter alia, of President Yar'Adua: He needs to first, consolidate his base and win the trust and confidence of the common guy out there who saw him from day one as a stooge. Ngige in Anambra state used this tactics to survive for over two years, it was the support of the people that kept him there despite the overwhelming odds against him. Truly, most reasonable Nigerians should have a stake in Yar'Adua's success as president, the manner of his emergence notwithstanding. Yet, it sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the author of the above quote to expect Yar'Adua to consolidate his administration while the ex-Katsina governor is at the same time doing the exact opposite of what is expected of him. By actively participating in the consolidation of the vicious grip the Obasanjo mob have on his ascendancy, Yar'Adua is helping entrench the pro-third term lobby in government, not to mention the legitimizing of their corrupt stranglehold on the economy. It is apparent that Yar'Adua has thrown his lot with the enemies of the Nigerian people and it behoves on my humble self as a writer to enlighten fellow Nigerians on this very sad development. The Ngige example alluded to by Mr. Mbonu is curious, to say the least. If anything at all, Ngige started his internecine squabbles with his sponsors and fellow riggers only after they wanted to dislodge him and plant another stooge in his place. In the end, his political demise cannot be said to hold any redeeming virtues for the Nigerian polity. His belated prank at playing the honourable bandit did come across as both pathetic and dishonest because it was more of an afterthought than anything else. Surely, one cannot realistically expect Yar'Adua or any other Nigerian for that matter, to consider Ngige as a role model.

Obi Mbonu  # 10 | 02.07.2007 12:30

What would you want the man do, refuse to attend the BOT meeting and oppose OBJ's crowning that was agreed to in 2006 with whose support. OBJ took years to wrestle power from Atiku after they were sworn in back in 1999. All I am saying is give the man time to settle down, its only been a month since he got sworn in, but I sincerly hope you are not right. Secondly I only alluded to Ngige in reference to his ability to survive for over two years despite overwelming odds and not because I believe there was an decency or justification in his two years internecine squabbles with his sponser.

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