| My Problem with the President and his Enemies! |
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| Written by Frisky Larrimore | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 10 April 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I may be old fashioned and out of touch with mainstream political reality. I am however, proud to be a journalist of the old school. Old school journalism that was taught in institutions of learning as late as the early to mid-eighties laid emphasis on objectivity and balance in reporting and commentaries. Modern journalism however, assumes to have outgrown this old trend, which is currently coined “obsolete”. Modern journalism contends that there is no such thing as objectivity because it is relative and individually construed. Modern journalism contends that objectivity may be attempted but never attained. The conclusive impact of this confusional psychological maneuver is the dwindling trend of journalists even attempting objectivity these days. The genesis of the Iraq war and the high dose of nationalist and pro-western coverage, which urged George Bush on to the ultimate marginalization of the USA in international politics, is arguably, one strong evidence of the manifestation of modern journalism. When it comes to Nigeria however, old school or modern journalism doesn’t seem to play any single role. Envelopes of different colors in conjunction with the consuming power of any diabolic cheerleader to sway the media men and women in all convenient directions are enough to do the trick. In the midst of all that though, I submit in all humbleness that even though both parties in the current political divide in Nigeria have axes to grind, the anti-establishmentarian forces have taken their game far too far! General Obasanjo has my highest respect and honor as a man of visionary political calculations. Contrary to all that have been said and are being said, Obasanjo did not start off in 1999 without a clue on how to rule Nigeria or where Nigeria needs changes. In his eight years of leadership, he has taken bold steps in restructuring the political equation from the grass root to the highest echelon. He has audaciously taken on forces that have always had the might and wherewithal to make or mar. Forces that have made and marred Nigeria’s future throughout years and decades since independence. Forces that sought to teach him a lesson by almost plunging the nation into a civil war in the wake of the Sharia waterloo. In fact, Obasanjo bit the fingers that fed him in violation of generally accepted ethos across the board in the Nigerian cultural divide. All in the interest of salvaging a fair and balanced distribution of power for Nigeria. Obasanjo has headed a government that has offered proof that Nigeria does have qualified and competent technocrats after all the years of helpless brain drain and intellectual bankruptcy. Technocrats have made their fingerprints a landmark in the shaping of economic and financial reforms that will definitely elevate Nigeria’s future to affluence if consistently followed upon. Various institutions that saw the light of day in the fight against economic and financial crimes are parts of the legacies for which Obasanjo will be remembered much to the anger of his hate-filled adversaries. In this appraisal, I will cautiously deviate from addressing the failures of Obasanjo’s eight-year administration in healing the infrastructural malaise that has inherently plagued the country’s social identity for ages. These have been and are being exhaustively addressed almost on daily basis. The focus of my problem with Obasanjo will however, center on partly more serious and sometimes, more pertinent issues of his eight-year governance. I strongly implore the President to educate me in all fairness, detail and candor on what really happened to Bola Ige. The life of this flamboyant politician with the stubborn attitude of wanting to walk through an impermeable wall to achieve what he believes is right, may have been lost. But his soul remains imprisoned as long as the truth is not known about the circumstances surrounding the criminal termination of his life. His soul remains with every well-meaning Nigerian who knows that Bola Ige was a “Zero Tolerance” advocate of Ribadu’s caliber with a slightly more confrontational treat than Nuhu Ribadu. To set his soul free from the hands of fellow Nigerians seeking to know why Bola Ige had to die, I strongly implore the President to open up Bola Ige’s Dossier for public dissection. It is extremely incomprehensible to figure out the failure of law enforcement in solving the riddle of Bola’s killing several years thereafter. I desperately implore the President to educate me wholeheartedly on the rationale behind his affiliation with and tolerance of a thug like Adedibu in Oyo State. I beg the President in desperation to help me out with explanations on the real story and truth surrounding the person of Andy Uba. The story of money laundering linked with facilities for the President’s farm is hanging in the balance. While no one expects the President to be perfect like his enemies seem to be doing, answers to these three simple questions will go a long way in smoothening out several wrinkles in the President’s biography that simply do not fit. Given the reality that post-Obasanjo Nigeria will never be the same again, the zero tolerance attitudes that have now taken hold of Nigeria have long overdriven a wave of social frenzy across the nation that has been hijacked, misused and ultimately overblown by enemies of the President. All of a sudden, the President now personalizes evil, madness, corruption, civil disobedience and social and political destruction all in one, in the eyes of his detractors. It is on this note that I say good morning to former Governor Balarabe Musa of Aminu Kano’s PRP. Balarabe Musa as a personification of effective and efficient hate propagandists of the Atiku Abubakar’s camp now seems to be waking up from a long, dreary sleep of political fantasies. Suddenly he is waking up to the reality that Atiku may not end up becoming President of Nigeria. How on earth did anyone imagine anywhere in Nigeria that Atiku could afford such a high profile humiliation and ridiculing of the Presidency and end up triumphant? The focus on Atiku and his camp in this case is informed by the symbolic posture he has come to assume these days, for enemies of the President. As a harakiri political fighter, the signs were on the wall for Atiku to read that taking on the President in an extremely albeit childish open battle from within and outside the government is the start of a long-drawn political suicide. I have long wondered in several essays and analysis, where the Vice President’s psyche derived. I cited the example of Vice President Al Gore and the sacrifice he had to make in the face of a Presidency that was hijacked by George Bush, which arguably, failed to meet the explicit provisions of the constitution in various ramifications. To avoid ridiculing the nation, party friends and well-wishers advised Al Gore to back down. He made this sacrifice, withdrew his legal cases even though he could have gone on and on, and is standing high today in the triumphant pose of a successful and high profile environmentalist. Former German Chancellor Schröder of Germany could have remained Chancellor today if he had stubbornly insisted on political doggedness in personal interest. Unfortunately, the likes of Balarabe Musa urged Atiku on. They could be literally heard chanting “Go Atiku, Go!!” while the man steadily headed for his own political destruction. In hindsight, I will refuse to lay the blame squarely on Atiku. Events that have unfolded over the past weeks and months have unleashed a lot of realities. Atiku may have been quietly smiling and laughing at people like me, who cautioned him to consider personal sacrifices in the interest of Nigeria and the growth of constitutional democracy. He had Judges to rely on. He had the President of the Association of Nigerian lawyers to rely on and above all, he had a sufficient number of senators and representatives that will not send him to his premature death. He had all he needed to carry on with the fight even though the invaluable support of a united North eluded him. As the most prominent figure to stand up against the President, Atiku Abubakar ended up building a coalition of extremely incompatible bedfellows. All united in the quest to destroy Obasanjo. Court judgments after court judgment went on fueling Atiku’s strength and the power of his opposition machine. No one took cognizance of the ultimate weapons available to the President in the event that such official and partly unjustified humiliations are allowed to succeed. The most prominent and controversial product of Absurdistan in this respect once contended that the Vice President owed the President no allegiance because he swore only by the constitution. This absurd judgment vomited hatred of the President and forgot to understand that the hated Olusegun Obasanjo will not forever occupy the Nigerian Presidency. Balarabe Musa who gained public sympathy in the wake of his illegal impeachment as Governor in the second Republic was highly revered as a pillar of the “Progressives” – a movement that stood for social justice and political advancement in the second Republic. Now, he has ended up squandering all those useful assets by leaning too far out of the window in support of one section of the political equation at the expense of personal credibility. There will definitely come a time when the Nigerian Bar Association will openly beg for questions to be answered. Questions on what deal existed or still exists (if at all) between the current leadership of this highly honored body of learned intellectuals and a party to the ensuing political dispute culminating in the reality that the Nigerian Bar Association is now overtly and ostentatiously in betrayal of the high ideals of judicial objectivity. The neurosis for political relevance informing the drive for profiling a political identity on the part of individuals leading the Nigerian Bar Association has long been speculated as an explanation for the NBA’s presently undeniable partisanship. The Agbakobas, the Balarabes and the “incorruptible” judges of the Nigerian establishment all await the day of reckoning. A day of reckoning that should teach every party to the democratic agreement that law and order is not defined by hatred, not the least, in a country like Nigeria, where government should occasionally be allowed the benefit of treading the critical boundary for the purpose of instilling sanity. A day of reckoning that will teach politicians that arming jobless youngsters and dedicated followers of “Ghana must go” in political insurgency will spell their own destruction. A day of reckoning that should teach everyone to judge Obasanjo by his success and his failures and not by any undue amplification of his failures alone. Obasanjo’s enemies have long relied on a pathetic press that remains overtly silent in the face of hate-filled destruction. They watched high-level Nigerian political tourists traveling to America and Great Britain to ridicule the government of their country. They applaud a sitting Vice President recklessly remaining Vice President and decamping to another party. All is well as long as it seeks to destroy Obasanjo. In a press landscape featuring learned colleagues that are unable to differentiate normal Public Opinion Polling from Exit Polls, there are only a handful of luminaries to show. When even an exemplary and learned colleague like Reuben Abati (who stands out for Obasanjo-bashing rather than balanced appraisal) makes the unforgivable error of characterizing a journalistic attempt at objectivity (as done by CNN in interviewing the Nigerian Minister of Information to balance up a reporter’s footage on the Niger Delta) as benevolent, then the state of journalism in Nigeria is questionable indeed. Neither old school journalism nor modern journalism seems to have caught up with the present breed of Nigerian journalists. Pity indeed!
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Posted by Robot| 10.04.2007 14:37