One Month Already: The Absence Of Credible Northern Voices Signals Yar’adua’s Continuing Humiliation By The Obasanjo Mob

By

Aonduna Tondu

tondua@yahoo.com

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  readiness to dither on critical national issues. Worse still, 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 his godfather, ‘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 Obasanjo 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.

“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 nation. 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 his 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 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. So far, the national media 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