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Is PDP Repositioning Against Atiku? By Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo
The change of guard in the ruling PDP, coming weeks after the National Intelligence Council of the US, that all-knowing, ubiquitous, single super-power reported that Nigeria is likely to make its way to its final resting place in fifteen years should have raised the question of what the nation stands to gain from the changes. Instead the overwhelming sentiment is that the president is digging in to clip the wings of his deputy. Even while none of our political heavy weights are willing to admit that the report does more than the mere muck-raking that they claim it is made to achieve, nothing can invalidate the deep emotions that it stirred since it became public. It is for this reason that those who maintain a stake in the affairs of the country should see last week’s fierce shake-up in the ruling party as nothing short of a deliberate gambit to reposition the country and put the report and its authors to shame.
But this has not been the pitch because at the centre of this change is Obasanjo, whose opponents continues to allow his hard battle for a second term, to remain a reference point for his every move and the entire management of our national affairs. The latest gig in town is that most of the new-comers on board the PDP hierarchy are either presumed or self-styled Obasanjo men. I wonder how this men, if they were of any timber or calibre (thanks to K O Mbadiwe), will feel about this new frenzy to put people into small packages where no man is worth anything more than being someone else’s shot-put.
But somehow our contemporary political situation makes this itemisation of key players in the process, inescapable. With the type of damning report (mostly relating to fraud and indiscretion in the conduct of the Ngige affair) that sent the last batch packing, the new group of PDP henchmen will do themselves a world of good to divert the trigger finger from the heart of the presumed reason for their coming. By steering attention away from the mischief of the pots who would rather call the kettle black, they should hold as a conscientious mandate the will to depart from the past. If it is true that the last NWC has been so culpable, it is no surprise then that the US decided to spell out our nation’s obituary the way it did. Yet it is Nigeria alone that is capable now or in the future to explore its viability to the optimum like any other country of the world and therefore shame them. There is no mistaking the fact that the US can be counted among the contributors that cost Nigeria a large chunk of its potential which by and large is why Nigeria today on danger list.
Nigeria is not a failed state yet, and its problems are not irredeemable either. If Nigeria were a failed state, the US would have been on its way out and not digging further in. By the time the collapse of key institutions take place, corruption and lawlessness becomes the controlling order of the day, the police force is replaced by open gun-running, extortion and extra-judicial killing of innocent citizens such that the murder rate raises the level of fear, that women and children are carrying their belongings on their heads and heading towards the country’s national boundaries instead of driving to schools as we have seen many country’s experience on TV in the last two decades then, anyone can safely declare Nigeria a failed state.
But even those factors alone do not make a country a failed state and that is why those who loosely apply the phrase are factoring us in that category. In their formative years many developed countries went through the pain and anguish that Nigeria is experiencing presently. What however made them to evolve into viable entities is the resolve of the people, both the leaders and the led to, overcome their difficulties, by not giving in to village despots. In the case of Nigeria we are faced with a strange brand of despots, local champions, whose crude uncivil behaviour leads them to see public office as a way of engineering social ruin, sabotaging democratic ethics, abusing even their own family and crippling judicial processes, all to perpetuate themselves in power.
A crucial factor for any meaningful development to take place in a country is the provision of responsible leadership by the state and a reciprocal response from the citizenry. At some stage, depending on the state of affairs, a ruling administration can step in and curtail some rights of its citizens. But this can only be condoned if the purpose is weeding out anarchists and not cowing political opponents as witnessed in Adamawa State against Buba Marwa recently.
That act of brigandage provides ample reason for the nation to not sympathise with the Atiku group if the speculation that the party is being repositioned to contain him is right. Even before this untoward digression, Adamawa State where his altar-ego holds sway has witnessed serious abuses of individual freedoms and democratic ethos. The state provides even more evidence that this group does not possess the ability, even if given the chance a million times over, to bring us out of the mire of “corner despotism” which has grown like a mustard seed since they assumed power in the state in 1999.
Administratively, if the US definition of a failed state is to fetter anywhere in Nigeria, it is in Adamawa State. The state administration has shown a considerable lack of will to uplift the poor and powerless. It is pre-occupied, more than any administration before it, with a stone-faced, jack-boot mentality for crushing them even further. Outside of the argument that military regimes have been an aberration, this administration has shown an even greater tendency to oppress and humiliate the citizens and, in fact, even deprive them of the baby steps of economic progress that they won under the military. The Atiku group’s theory has been to take everything away and totally impoverish the people so that their bidding will be done at no cost at all. They want to crush us all and stand there alone. And what they have so far perpetuated is the personalisation of employment, the bastardisation of family values, the emasculation of private businesses and the total annihilation of community development. If Nigeria is handed to them on this platter of gold, that is grounded on the lame argument that as the Vice president Atiku is the rightful successor to Obasanjo, they will only expand their abuses to other parts of the country and the US report on Nigeria will come to fruition in even less years than the fifteen in it.
The scenario in Adamawa State is bad enough as it is. It should also stop there. Thankfully we have the fortune of not having to see an Atiku governorship that later snow-balls into the governorship of his lackey. This Atiku-Boni setting is already a “buy one and get one for free” arrangement that has kept the majority of our people at the bottom of the ladder doing domestic work, like gardening, menial labouring and scratch-farming. And if all those who are found to have turned the Anambra State crisis to their milking cow belong to this group, what further evidence do we need to deny them the mandate to further push us down the cliff?
Somehow, one cannot help but be amused by the idea that the state government is thumping its chest at the erection of Adamawa Plaza worth billions in Abuja. How that improves the living conditions of the ordinary man in Lamurde, Bazza, Fufore, Madagali, Shelleng or even Michika and Jada can only rest in the imaginations of the “corner despots” and their fellow locusts. Adamawa State does not elect a governor to provide jobs for the urban gold-digger in Abuja. Adamawa State does not appreciate its governor or any governor for that matter to waste colossal local people’s money beautifying Abuja. Adamawa State wants its governor to provide services and raise the standard of living of the people who put him there. Period!
That Plaza is a symbol that panic is already setting in within the Atiku camp and they are looking outside of their primary assignment to hoodwink the uninitiated. The Plaza is there to tell the citizens of other states that they can perform and it is all aimed at the 2007 elections. And if a state government is not reversing the pain and anguish of the people it is chosen to govern, a million plazas in Abuja is a hit-and-miss diversion regardless of who is commissioning it. As Elliot said, it is the confusion of the “cunning passages and contrived corridors” out of which we have to find a way.
razaque
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