Anti-Atiku Cabal, Leave Boni Alone Now

By

Ibrahim Garbati Saleh

irosalwww@yahoo.com

 

The absurdity and barbarism in the campaign to scare away potential political loyalists of Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the criminal and shameful persecution of the present loyalists of the Turakin Adamawa through naked blackmails and selective justices not only represent a gross betrayal of a very loyal Vee Pee but indicate total disrespect for our thinking faculty in this country–the naked despotism shows how a cabal has taken Nigerians for simpletons.

 

The “offence” of Atiku is certainly not that of disloyalty or untrustworthiness.  Nigerians can still recall that in the heat of the alarming “northern” criticisms of the then nascent president Olusegun Obasanjo’s government, it was Atiku who, at a well attended occasion at Arewa House, Kaduna, summoned courage and patriotically carpeted the biased Northern critics, at the expense of his popularity among his fellow Northerners, especially those too illiterate to appreciate the imperative of his timely, expedient intervention.  It was the same Atiku who, despite the failed attempts by OBJ to replace him, refused to vindictively team up with state governors against OBJ in 2003 elections despite the offer of the Presidential Office. Despite series of sickening betrayals of him by OBJ, Atiku refused to cooperate with coupists who allegedly wanted to kill OBJ and make him (Atiku) President.  Nay, he facilitated their arrest.  In fact, it was the Turaki who brought OBJ into the powerful political machinery of the PDM: the most powerful wing of PDP. The examples of Turaki’s magnanimity towards OBJ are endless.  So the only offence of Atiku seems to be his apparent refusal to neither join the sycophantic OBJ’s third term campaigners nor support the unpatriotic and undemocratic deal to pave the way for OBJ’s friends who once swindled Nigeria and thus the resolve to economically and politically destroy Atiku and his associates by every means.

 

Therefore the onslaughts on Governor Boni Haruna of Adamawa state should not surprise any informed Nigeria since he is one of the unrepentant loyalists of the Vee Pee.  Even though the young Governor has, by the grace of the Almighty, so far withstood and survived various mischief of the Atikuphobic cabal, the way some pen pushers have these days been lavishly motivated to destroy him should be a cause for concern to any decent Nigerian who cherishes justice and fair play.

 

It is instructive that one of the seasoned blackmailers of Atiku and Boni, Mr. Abdulrazaque Bello–Barkindo, has acknowledged the popular belief of teaming Nigerians that the Federal Government is pre-occupied with hunting Atiku and his associates in one of his (Barkindo’s) recent articles entitled, “Is PDP Repositioning Against Atiku?”

 

It is very clear now that any perceived Atiku loyalist is individually attacked proportionate to his strategic importance to him, his nearness to him and the feasibility of such attack.  No wonder Boni (and Atiku) has been under regular harsh media bushing by a particular gang of writers like Barkindo, and Babayola Muhammadu Toungo etc whose shamelessly biased eyes don’t see the mess this great nation has been submerged in by their sponsors, and so pretentiously hold the Vee Pee responsible for the monumental failure of this egocentric government as if they (Barkindos) are totally ignorant about the nature of presidential system of Government; as if they don’t know what is really going on in this country and who are practically and constitutionally responsible for that; as if they don’t know the constitutional and prevailing limitation of Atiku with regards to the running of the nation.

 

It is interesting that the media attacks on Boni come from no other place than the usual quarters and the mischievous writers pretend to be concern about the alleged low level of development in Adamawa state.  They have for long been trying to pitch the peace loving people of Adamawa state against their caring but financially constrained government and despite their persistent failure to instigate break down of law and order by misleading the ordinary men that the state receives startlingly huge amount as federal allocation but fails to develop, they nevertheless continue to push hard their campaigns of calumny against Boni to probably justify the lavish commissions which “must not cease”.

 

After a series of failed mischief against Boni the enemies of progress and fake democrats embarked on anti-party sponsorship of legal tussle over Boni’s Governorship, they failed.  They then cocked up lies and provided fake evidences of Boni’s supposed ownership of multi-million naira landed properties, but on careful scrutiny, the fakeness of their mountains of “evidences” was exposed.  After series of failed mischief the cabal fabricated and sponsored scurrilous rumours and some very dirty lies against Boni but by then Adamawa people had “unfortunately” become wiser.

 

The new strategy is the use of a protégé of the anti-Atiku cabal, General Muhammed Buba Marwa (rtd), to “contain” Atiku / Boni.  But despite their splendid grooming of Marwa, the first attempt to spectacularly use him to “destroy” Atiku / Boni did not only result into an incredible failure but Marwa himself was so ratled that he started telling lies “on tape” while being interviewed by Leadership news paper only for him to later tried to bribe his way out of the bottomless pit into which his mouth has plunged him.

 

Imagine a person who wants to rule Nigeria telling cheap lies only to attempt to bride journalists to conceal his unstatesmanly crime.  Unfortunately for him, some of the “hungry” journalists cherished their integrity and professional ethic more than his bribe.  This bribery crime alone is enough to compel Marwa to withdraw from the presidential race if he has an iota of integrity and conscious and if his benefactors are not merely using him against Atiku/Boni.  He does not have to wait until Nigerians shout him down; in a more civilized society Marwa would “honourably” withdraw from the race.

 

For those who might not understand what I am saying, I am referring to the scandal in which, of recent, Marwa lied in an interview with leadership news paper that the Adamawa State House of Assembly passed Environmental sanitation Bill into law at the eve of his contentious declaration for the PDP only for him to deny saying so when Adamawa Law Makers proved him wrong.  Cowed by the consequences of his blunder of lies he allegedly resorted to bribing the newspaper so that it (the paper) would claim to have misquoted him.  But two of the interviewers, Mr Uche Ezechukwu and Demola Abimboye, refused to sacrifice their integrity in return for “crispy”.  In fact any one who saw the appearance of the parties to the Marwagate before the Adamawa State House of Assembly on the AIT and NTA and the reaction of the Leadership newspaper management staff will agree with me that Marwa has really shot himself on the leg and has proved himself to be morally unqualified to contest the presidency of this great nation thereby vindicating Boni.  This was how this aspect of persecuting Boni/Atiku, like the previous ones, failed.

 

Do not be deceived, there is no way any excellent development of Adamawa state by Boni- there is no way any wonderful performance in office (or any miracle for that matter) could have saved Boni from this persecution because even those not as loyal and close to Atiku as him have been terribly dealt with.  For instance, suspected pro-Atiku state Governors like Bola Tinubu of Lagos state, Orji Kalu of Abia state, Saminu Turaki of Jigawa state, Chris Ngige of Anambra state etc all suffered various degrees of persecution owing to their closeness to Atiku.

 

All Atiku Aides known to be very loyal to him have been sacked and in some cases replaced by possible spies.  All the Ministers, Heads of Parastatals and Government Agencies suspected to have soft spot for the Turaki have been given the boot and, in must cases; persons believed to be anti-Atiku were the replacements.  Nay, businessmen suspected to be on talking terms with Atiku are callously and criminally sabotaged by the vengeful cabal.

 

Many government policies were truncated on mere suspicion that Atiku loyalists would rather benefit as if they are not confide Nigerians.  Just imagine? Rather than paying attention on how to improve the lots of Nigerians the apex “leadership” is pre-occupied with how to politically and economically bring Atiku down.  We cannot afford the luxury of allowing a cabal to reduce the governance of this great nation to mere political persecution of the Vee Pee; Nigerian governance can never be the cabal’s dynasty.

 

Some apologists of the cabal insinuate that the cabal is against Atiku because he is avaricious.  But that is an irony because the cabal is made up of people that simply don’t have moral justification to describe Atiku as corrupt as they are individually and collectively neck deep in corruption!  No corruption can be worst than their failure to made public the books of the NNPC despite series of challenges by Nigerians.  These greedy “owners” of Nigeria have made the multi-billion dollar NNPC transactions close to their chest because they definitely have something to hide. Their refusal to repair our refineries so that their fronts could continue to import oil at the expense of our economy is a mega-corruption. 

 

Consider also how this morally bankrupted cabal imposed Adolphus Wabara on us and desecrated the senate presidential seat with this corrupt stooge of theirs even when, they knew, he did not win the election. Consider also how they eventually corrupted the real winner of the election with bribe to forgo the mandate his people gave him. We are never in a hurry to forget how they corruptly handled the case of the disgraced Speaker Salisu Buhari, pardoned him, and even eventually motivated his successor to go into exile with members of his family to make possible the return of Salisu Buhari but for the pressures from people like Chief Gani Fawehinmi etc, simply because the family business of the disgraced Speaker had allegedly contributed to the financial strength of chief OBJ’s presidential campaign. We can still recall the Electoral Law scandal–particularly how the cabal lied to the nation.  Consider also how the cabal allegedly employed the Ghana–Must-Go inducement to impeach some out–of–favour NA leaders (with the exhibit displayed) but at the end no investigation was carried out against either the accused or the “false accusers” who displayed “fake” exhibit at the National Assembly.

 

Their corrupt, selfish and witchunting role in Anambra State crisis also proved that Atiku is by far a saint compared to them.  In case you forget the perplexingly corrupt show of shame in Anambra state; there is this stooge of the cabal called Chris Uba, who, riding on the back of the corrupt cabal, commanded Governor Chris Ngige of Anambra state to be taking directives from him with regards to awards of contract, appointments, and how the allocations of the State should be spent on the wild ground that he was the one who “rigged” Ngige into power based on these criminal conditions.

 

When Ngige refused, on July 10, 2003, hardly two months of Ngige’s being on power, Uba criminally abducted him to the surprise of Nigerians who wondered whether there was no law and order in this country.  Nay, it was an AIG that incredibly led about 200 mobile Policemen to criminally abduct the Executive Governor after overpowering his personal security and Aso Rock was “watching” approvingly as this jungle drama lasted.

 

In what further portrayed Nigeria as a primitively lawless and procedure-less society, while Governor Ngige was in Uba’s “prison”, the later rushed to town with a supposed letter of the former’s resignation while in his (Uba’s) captivity.  The Aso Rock backed Uba stampeded the Anambra state House of Assembly to, on the strength of the illegally sketched and unduly processed letter, consider Ngige resigned and his Deputy the new Governor.  But the population of Anambra rose to the occasion and the charade backfired to the dismay of Uba’s godfathers.

 

Uba then mobilized a suspended member of the Anambra state House of Assembly, Hon Nelson Achukwu to drag Ngige before Enugu High court presided over by Stanley Nnaji where they secured the courts declaration that Governor Ngige had, on the strength of the letter, resigned as Governor.  To the surprise of Nigerians, the “Federal Government” capitalized on this judgement to direct its stooge I.G. of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun, to withdraw the Governor’s security details with immediate effect.  And that, as you could remember, was done despite the obvious lack of jurisdiction by Enugu State High court.

 

Just as Nigerians were wondering how the cabal so turned the presidency into a mere instrument of very cheap vendetta, Ngige took the mater to a court with jurisdiction, the High Court of Awka, Anambra state, where he expectedly obtained an order invalidating the order of the Enugu High court.  But in another shameless exhibition of lawlessness and corrupt abuse of the Presidency, the cabal used the powers of the highest office of the land to rubbish the Court’s ruling by influencing the police to refuse to restore Ngige’s security details. Eventually, Ngige had to proceed to the Court of Appeal, Enugu, where he obtained a similar order re-instating his security details.  Yet this cabal–controlled Federal Government, hiding behind her stooge police command, blatantly ignored the court order as if we were a primitive society.  When Tafa Balogun came under more pressures from Nigerians, he said, to the chagrin of Nigerians, but delight and amusement of the Presidency, that he was still studying the ruling.  No wonder the cabal later in November 10 2004, sponsored some miscreants to unleash tremendous mayhem, arson and other acts of terrorism in which some very important public buildings, including the Government House, were razed down under the nose of the police for no reason other than to punish Ngige for refusing to be corruption – compliant and for his being pro-Atiku.

 

To cut a long story short, now a court has rather belatedly declared Ngige not the winner of the last Anambra state Governorship election on the strength of the allegations of rigging but the self–confessed chief culprit of the rigging, Uba, is walking the street of Nigeria freely.  In other words, while a beneficiary of the crime is penalized, the culprit of the crime is spared at least for now owing to his being close to the dirty cabal, which recruited some uncritical ‘columnists’ to vilify Atiku.  The only times Uba was “punished” was when OBJ told him (and Ngige) to “get out of here” for having admitted before him (OBJ) to having “rigged” Ngige in to power and when the PDP suspended him (and Ngige).

 

Another corrupt application of the law by the Atikuphobic cabal is meted out on another perceived pro-Atiku, Mr Peter Okocha, whose Sadik Petroleum is the main-investor in the privatized African Petroleum (AP). The cabal, which believes that Mr. Okocha is too close to Atiku or is even his front, is determined to twist the arm of the law against him.  So, on the assumption that Okocha has bought a goldmine, a development which, they feared, would financially strengthen Atiku’s political machinery, it (the cabal) sponsored blackmail write- ups that an Atiku man has been given AP at a give away price and so agitated for the reversal of the privatization. But as if God wanted to expose the cabal’s ill-intention, it turned out that it was even Okocha that was cheated in the privatization exercise and that put the cabal in a dilemma – it (the cabal) wanted to back out from the agitation but it was too late.

 

The new management of AP simplified the cabal’s agitation by petitioning the presidency over the privatization of the AP to Sadik Petroleum under false prospectus.  Ironically, at that point, the cabal wanted to shamelessly back away from its agitation since it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the perceived Atiku man. Nevertheless, the president had to set up a tribunal of inquiry headed by retired Justice Edet Robert Nkop.  The finding of the Tribunal was a huge disappointment to the cabal.  For instance, the Tribunal revealed that the actual value of the 30% AP shares sold to Sadik petroleum at a whopping N2.3 billion is actually N658.4 million only; that there was a criminally huge debt concealment; AP then, owed creditors N25 billion contrary to the paltry N6.5 billion presented to Sadik petroleum by the old AP management and the BPE; that the debt AP owed NNPC presented as about N11 billion was overstated by N9.1 billion.

 

The disappointed presidency had no option but to accept the report that ironically vindicated the pro-Atiku businessman.  However it (the Presidency) very unethically and witchhuntingly implemented only the less serious aspect of the report while avoiding the aspects that go with refunding money to Sadik Petroleum for overpayment due to the craftiness of the former AP management and BPE’s lapse.  Nay, the Group managing Director of the NNPC, Mr Funsho Kupolukum, has given the AP’s new management a 30 days ultimatum to pay the N11 billion to the NNPC or else the “debt” will be converted into equity holding by NNPC.  In other wards, the NNPC will forcefully take over the AP since it is very unlikely that the AP will be able to pay this tremendous ransom called debt especially within 30 days.  This happened even when AP got N3 billion waiver from banks after reconciling the real debt status.

 

In fact, as a prelude to what awaits the AP at the end of the ultimatum, the NNPC is poised to ban AP from lifting petroleum products from all depots in Nigeria.  So why should Nigerians even tolerate this cabal calling Atiku names.

 

We were recently told how the cabal stopped the privatization of the Kaduna based New Nigerian News papers on mere suspicion that those poised to buy it had sympathy for the Vee Pee and now those staff who were retired preparatory to the aborted privatization have been, for the past 6 years, suffering untold hardship for the privatization was not allowed to reach its logical conclusion to enable BPE settle them.

 

The list of the 2007 – induced corrupt persecution is endless.  But the above is enough to prove to those still in doubt that the various allegations against Boni are his own share of the persecution of Atiku loyalists by a terrible cabal.  In fact Boni is, more than likely, a major target of the cabal, which until we ‘persuade’ them to purge themselves of their evil habits, our nation will not have a bearing at all.

 

No wonder then, when Marwa aspect culminated into a scandalous blunder, you now hear that a former Speaker of the defunct Gongola State House of Assembly, Mr. Paul Wampana, has petitioned OBJ over alleged financial crime by Adamawa State Commissioner of Finance, Mr. John Elias, whom the Leadership newspaper, which was involved in Marwa lying scandal, vindictively called “Governor Boni Haruna’s man Friday, and factotum” in its August 28, 2005 edition but, nevertheless, failed to establish a tangible link between Boni and the unsubstantiated allegation of corruption, beside some vindictive vilification of the Governor. But the most crucial question is, perhaps, that of the moral justification of the cabal, which tries hard to discredit Atiku at the slightest opportunity. The fact, as we have seen, is that, while Atiku, even though much more decent, is a man of few words, on the other hand, members of the cabal, thought they are the worst culprits of Nigeria’s social and economic failure, conceal their terrible identity by bamboozling Nigerians with their well rehearsed sanctimonious razzmatazz and demagogy in the name of sermon about such virtues as anti-corruption, sincerity, accountability, equity and justice, democracy, respect for court verdicts, due process etc all of which they  observe only in the breach.

 

So, it is high time Nigerians told the cabal; “Hypocrites! First get rid of the log from your own eye; then perhaps you will see well enough to deal with the speck in Atiku’s eye” (Mtt. 7:5). Please they should leave Boni alone!

 

Ibrahim Garbati Saleh

Is of N0.22 Ahmadu Bello Way,

Adjacent to NNDC Building,

Kaduna, Kaduna State.