Ojo Maduekwe at His Seditious Best
By
Prof. Sullivan Odumegwu
sodumegwu@yahoo.com
In the Vanguard newspaper of September 22, it was reported on
front page that the Minister of External Affairs, Ojo Maduekwe said
that President Yar’Adua is reeling under some guilt of coming to power
through a ‘flawed’ election procured by Prof Iwu. And that, in effect,
the President will expiate his great guilt (or please American
critics) by not re-appointing Iwu to a second term as Chairman of INEC
after Iwu’s tenure expires in mid 2010. Ojo spoke in the absolutes,
like he was speaking for the President in a way that portrayed the
Yar’Adua as some pathetic snitch and frenetic ‘confessionist’ to a
fraudulent mandate. That said, I will now turn to the consequences of
Ojo’s statements on President Yar’Adua and the lawfully constituted
Government of Nigeria, if not on the greater national security
interests of the Federation of Nigeria. But first, let me say these: I
am not and will not be an apologist for Professor Maurice Iwu. Iwu has
enough critics and defenders already; so nothing I write for, or
against him here or elsewhere will add much to the media blitz on the
issue. Suffice it to say that if Ojo’s intention was to hurt Iwu or
ingratiate himself to a certain fringe audience of the international
community, he failed in both attempts woefully. But knowing vintage
Ojo, I wager that his true target was a President Yar’Adua that may
not know that Ojo harbours a consuming grudge against his person, all
with the rising international profile of Turai Yar’Adua, which Ojo, in
his petty ways, is reported to see as trespassing into a foreign
policy arena he has come to see as his exclusive fiefdom. Add the
desperation Ojo must be feeling from the credible rumour that he is
slated to fall on the hammer of the next cabinet reshuffle.
To be sure, Ojo was plainly disloyal to the President, hugely
embarrassed his own party – the PDP, and came damn near close to
courting a criminal action for committing sedition (by some stretch)
against the very government he serves; and again, he breached the
sacred frontiers of our national security, and rankled the stable
political order. Now you may ask: How was Ojo disloyal to Yar’Adua?
Well, here is the way I see it: By telling the whole world, aggravated
by using a foreign platform, that his President and government are
struggling under the grand illegitimacy of a flawed election, is, by
every definition supremely disloyal to the President and to the
lawfully constituted government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
including a National Assembly and constituents units of the Federation
that will now have to live with the stigma and political liability
that one of their own – Ojo has publicly condemned them to coming to
office through electoral fraud, and made it worse by putting those
demining words into the President’s mouth. There is no other way any
reasonable person can read Ojo’s runaway remarks, except to water it
down to the less offense that Ojo was ‘simply’ pre-emptive of the
President, the Minister of Information (whose duty it is to announce
such a major policy shift) and to the Federal Executive Council that
has never deliberated on such matters of collective electoral guilt
and then directed him to seek forgiveness of Americans. The only
saving grace is if Ojo can prove that he was misquoted totally but I
doubt it because the kernel of his remarks were too brazen and
rendered with much exactitude.
Now, let’s turn to the seditious aspect of Ojo’s indictment of his
President’s mandate. The word ‘sedition’ is a term of art universally
employed in the Common Law to mean the following:
“Sedition
is a term of law which refers to overt conduct, such as speech....
that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection
against the established order. Sedition often includes......
incitement of discontent to lawful authority”. It connotes the "notion
of inciting by words or writings disaffection towards the state or
constituted authority". “A seditionist is one who engages in or
promotes the interests of sedition”. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition;
and Laws of Federation of Nigeria and pertinent legislative histories
in the Commonwealth.
A plain reading of the above definition squarely
reveals Ojo Maduekwe as a seditionist extraordinaire because his
statements tended to foist President Yar’Adua and the lawfully
constituted Government of Nigeria with illegality of tenure or
fraudulent procurement of electoral victory. And when made by a high
official of the government, these remarks can incite discontent or
disaffection towards the state of Nigeria and her constituted
authorities. Incitement can lead to violent demonstrations or military
coup against the government. And doing so before an international
audience, plus at a time when Nigeria is looking to rebrand and reach
an accommodation with some restive units of the federation, makes the
offense much more aggravating; besides threatening our national
security and stability vis-a-vis the world community. And with the
current state of insecurity in the land – Boko Haram and its genre,
restiveness in the Delta, kidnappings, and of course, the approaching
Anambra guber elections, Ojo’s mean-spirited remarks might also sound
too tempting to those looking to overawe Nigeria or isolate her
government.
The above line of argument cannot be rebutted by the
simplistic argument that the government of Nigeria has chosen - in the
interest of free speech - to shy away from the many other acts of
sedition that are committed against it every day. In good times, most
democratic governments have a tendency of ignoring many acts of
sedition as harmless (though prosecutable) acts of taking free speech
too far; if not as a trade-off to the opposition political flanks to
vent their political frustrations. Even then, once in a while, the
government invokes its discretion to prosecute or take other lawful
actions to repel rank seditionists. There are probably one or two
cases now pending in the land, with at least one instituted by
Yar’Adua himself. And when the Feds come to town to engage
seditionists, they may decide to nail them on yet other more (or less)
aggravated felonies. I am not sure that Ojo will survive any
aggressive federal scrutiny bordering on moral turpitudes and he has
no immunity to duck under. Hint: He is said to be wealthier than all
financially-strapped and dilapidated Nigerian missions combined. And
recall the hard queries and media scrutiny he received over his role
in the suspicious manner he sold off choice Nigerian real estate in
the US for a fraction and the loss of credibility he blamed on those
he blames for leaking ‘official secrets’ over the deal.
On the brighter side, despite the severity of Ojo’s
seditious speech and record of serial undiplomatic conduct in office,
I doubt that the Nigerian Government will border to prosecute him.
Yet, I also doubt that he will go scot-free, politically. Why? Because
if his commission of sedition is as yet inchoate or did not rise to
the level of hurting Nigeria’s national security and diplomatic
standing, then he committed grand heresy against a government he
purports to serve in high office and the party that he and the
President belong to. So, I will be surprised if he survives an
outright dismissal from office or does not fall on the next cabinet
reshuffle. Further, pure political justice requires that Ojo be
immediately arraigned for expulsion from the PDP, to free him to join
another party which has been in the rumor mills since the past two
months. At best, President Yar’Adua will do well to censure him
publicly and leave him to wallow in remorse and self-doubt.
Finally, let’s turn to the Americans before whom Ojo
made his remarks. First of all, Americans are extremely intelligent,
albeit in some funny ways. And that helps them to quickly figure out
jumpy political turncoats, charlatans, self-haters and their genre,
all in one fell swoop. Ojo seems to qualify. So, while Ojo was
mouthing obscenities against the very government he serves, calling it
fraudulent, flawed and guilt-ridden, his American audience will be
wondering why he has not resigned; why he is flying red-eye shuttles
around the world, promoting the foreign policy of a government and a
President he claims have admitted to illegitimate mandate. And it does
not help matters that the blacks amongst the Americans may be shocked
that Ojo may be acting the way he does because of some inferiority
complex he always seems to exhibit in the presence of white people.
Add the fact that the American audience before whom Ojo is posturing
as a later-day ‘electoral’ reformer already possesses a prodigious and
infamous dossier on him, including his shameful political conducts
dating from the ‘YEAA’ and ‘leprous’ days of military dictatorships
where Ojo was the poster boy for subduing pro-democracy elements,
which, lest we forget, comprised people like the President’s late
older brother.
Further, the Americans would have since correctly read
that Yar’Adua’s ‘admission of electoral flaws’ simply meant
fundamental and system flaws in the general conduct of, and attitudes
to elections in Nigeria, not the warped interpretation Ojo sought to
give a more than two-year old well-intentioned remark that has since
receded from the memory of real-world Americans. And finally, the
Americans would have figured from CIA ‘country checks and prompts’
that Ojo has gotten wind that he won’t survive Yar’Adua’s imminent
cabinet reshuffle. So, taking on Yar’Adua ‘diplomatically via Iwu’ was
a ruse to secure some ‘pro-democratic’ executive job with any of the
imperialist think tanks in the US that love to put us down as a nation
and as a people of black race. The ‘put down aspect’ fully comports
with Ojo’s notoriety for self-hatred and consuming racial inferiority
complex – a bewildering combination of psychological conditions I will
rather leave to psycho-analysts to ponder.
Prof Odumegwu is of the Coalition Against Defamation
of Nigeria (CADON)
sodumegwu@yahoo.com |