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The Phenomenon Known As Jerry Gana By Babayola Toungo
Professor Jerry Gana was a lecturer of unknown quantity in the Geography Depart of ABU Zaria before General Ibrahim Babangida decided to unleash him on the long suffering Nigerians, like the many catastrophes IBB unleashed on us. Jerry Gana made his entry on the Nigerian political scene as a Senator in 1983 and I bet you not many Nigerians will remember a Senator called Jerry Gana. After the military coup of December 1983, Gana went back to ABU until IBB brought him back into government as a Director in the defunct amorphous DFFRI. Not many could also easily remember the man was at DFFRI - a programme that became a monumental failure like such other IBB diversionary ventures. He finally found his moorings at MAMSER, where he really came of age – so to say. From the IBB government, Jerry Gana has become a permanent fixture in all the governments that came after.
I do not have any quarrel with Jerry Gana’s survivalist tendencies but this should not be at the expense of long suffering Nigerians. My beef with the man has to do with his lack of conscience. Jerry Gana goes everywhere with a Bible, but will find nothing ridiculous in looking you straight in the eye and lying with a straight face. When Abacha made him a Minister, he swore to heavens that Nigeria will disintegrate without Abacha and that there was no alternative to him. It was also at this time that Jerry Gana told Nigerians that Babangida was the worst thing to ever happen to this country. When he realised he had lost out, he aligned himself to the group known as the G34 who wrote a letter to Abacha asking him not to transmute into a civilian president. At the formation of PDP most members of the G34 joined the party, or formed the PDP. Elections were held in 1999, Obasanjo won and the rest as they say is history. Gana was made first a Minister of Co-operation and Integration in Africa and later Information. He ranted to no end on how bad and wicked Abacha was.
As Information Minister, Gana surpassed Goebbles, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. I believe, Jerry Gana is well above fifty but he acts like a prig. For someone who claims to be Godly, his loyalty is less than what you expect from those prostitutes you see wandering around Wuse Zone 4 in the end. At least am told they could be loyal to the amount you pay. Jerry Gana on the other hand behaves like a shameless harlot. I wonder why people bother about Fani Kayode, the new kid on the block, when Gana is up and doing what he knows best – telling lies through his teeth. The most recent case in point is the Draft Constitution surreptitiously introduced at the ongoing National Political Reform Conference. After Kanu Agabi made a poor case of defending the introduction of what is derisively known as the “Obasanjo Constitution”, Gana jumped into the fray to do a yeoman’s job of “explaining” how the constitution came about.
Some group of Nigeria-haters came out with a hare-brained idea to extend Obasanjo’s tenure by another six years; this led to the production of a distorted document called a “Draft Constitution” that at first surfaced overnight without any author. After the usual denials, the government owned up with Agabi and Gana doing the dirty job.
Jerry Gana, knowing he hasn’t a reputation to talk about doesn’t hesitate to impugn the hard-earned reputation of others. Justice Niki Tobi was my Dean at the University of Maiduguri and I can fairly say something about the man. After leaving the academics, Justice Tobi joined the Bench and rose to the Supreme Court by dint of hard work and sincerity of purpose, unlike Gana who made a name for himself through boot-licking, sycophancy and inconsistency. The letter he wrote Justice Tobi in his attempt to put a lie to Father Kukah’s denial of knowledge of the submission of Obasanjo’s “constitution”, is a pointer to how low the man has descended and how desperate he is ready to drag others with him to the bottom of the gutter, his habitat.
I sometimes wonder what sin Nigerians have committed for God to choose to punish them with the likes of Jerry Gana as leaders. The man, I believe doesn’t know the meaning of shame. I look forward to the day he will attack Obasanjo’s government, if he is able to be invited to be part of another government.
I have it on good authority that he is already warming up to succeed Obasanjo if the President’s Tazarce fails. For a guy who vehemently defended the outcome of the 419 elections of 2003 in favour of his current godfather, why not? After all, elections in Nigeria with the likes of Jerry Gana parading the corridors of power are only but a mere formality. It only takes the anointment of the powers that be and you are home and dry.
So watchout OBJ, your man Friday is already at it again, now that your boat is rocking and roiling on the high seas of uncertainty and rapidly adrift. Only this time, having exposed himself too much for what he really is, may be no future Nigerian leader will touch old Jerry with a ten-foot pole. So why not smooth talk his way and go for broke a power grap for himself?
If you think this is sheer fantasy, then you don’t really know the man. What do you think the recent South-South/ North Central political leaders’ dialogue was all about? Who do you think has been the arrowhead? May God deliver us from such dishonest and conscienceless people that parade themselves as our political leaders – the likes of Jerry Gana. |