Selling Cocaine in the Open Market

Selling Cocaine in the Open Market

By
Sam Nda-Isaiah

The fact that the so-called “private sector group” that paid for the “wrap around” advert in the ThisDay of April 20, 2006, to sell their third term idea could not do it with their names appended should confirm that even they knew that they were marketing an illicit product.

To date, I am yet to see or meet any responsible man with a good name openly campaigning for Obasanjo’s third term. Like Senator Yari Gandi said, doing so would be like selling cocaine in the open market. I, for one, have heard of the booming cocaine business, but I don’t know of any shop where cocaine is sold on the shelves. Advertising Obasanjo’s third term is akin to selling cocaine in a shopping complex.

The only people you see displaying their third term wares publicly are people like Festus Odimegwu, Ibrahim Mantu, Bode George and their likes who need no introduction. Anyone who has met any of these people and noticed how they comport themselves in public would not be surprised by their chosen vocation. They know they are marketing a bad product, but hell, so what?

They have nothing to lose. Not even a name!
But the intensity with which Nigerians rejected the ThisDay advert and the veiled apology in an emergency but very good counterpoise by Segun Adeniyi, the editor of the newspaper, the very next day, should send a clear and unmistaken message to the perpetrators and sponsors of the third term project. If they had listened attentively, they would have heard what Nigerians were saying.

Which is that they will treat anything appertaining to Obasanjo’s third term project with “extreme prejudice,” as Mahmud Jega would say. There is nothing wrong with what ThisDay did except that it committed the professional lapse of accepting to carry an advert of such nature unsigned.

But the newspaper will survive the public anger because, like every other newspaper and indeed all mass media in Nigeria, except of course Tony Iredia’s NTA, it has been one of those shouting loudest against the third term rascality of President Obasanjo.

If the advert had been brought to Leadership, we would have received it with thanks, but we would have insisted that someone take responsibility by signing it and, like Segun said in his write-up, we would have appended a disclaimer on the top right hand corner of the advert, which would have read: “This advert we are carrying today is dangerous to the health of the nation.

Those behind it are irresponsible and shameless and are the most worthless of the Nigerian society. But we publish it nonetheless because even Lucifer has a right to free speech.”

I can understand the extreme animus that is currently being directed at third termers who are considered Satanists, but we will not allow them to force the rest of us to start behaving like them.

They are the scoundrels who would not as much as allow an anti-third term gathering or, as happened recently, a meeting between members of the National Assembly and top politicians including a serving vice president, a former head of state, two former inspectors-general of police and several state governors. We must not allow ourselves to become as roguishly minded as they are. Only the guilty behave that way.

In the imprudent advert, the sponsors asked us to vote for greatness and they listed the president’s numerous “achievements” which are supposed to be good reasons why we should confer a life presidency on him. I thought they would have also told us why PHCN has become a byword in Nigeria, in spite of the billions of dollars that have been expended in that sector.

Or maybe, as they said, “for the first time ever, Nigeria now has a middle class,” they should also have said, “for the first time ever, Nigeria now has 24-hour uninterrupted power supply daily.

” They must have also forgotten to talk about our booming refineries and our hospitals and schools that have been refurbished like never before. They also forgot to get the children of Bola Ige, Marshal Harry, Aminasoari Dikibo and Chuba Okadigbo to endorse the advertisement.

They should also have told us in their advert what has happened to all our money since 1999 and what has been happening to the excess crude proceeds, since the president’s achievements they listed included the cessation of misappropriation, mismanagement and corrupt practices in government.

Maybe the sponsors did not go to school to understand the meaning of those terms or simply that they have no manners to think that the rest of us are as depraved as they are.

Nobody signed the adverts, but it is not too late. Let the sponsors take another page tomorrow and probably tell us their names. That would mean that they believe in the project and would identify with it even if the Obasanjo government falls tomorrow.

But even though no one signed it, there are suspects already. Nigerians are already pointing fingers at those behind “Transcorp,” that unregistered shadowy organisation whose life is inextricably tied to Obasanjo’s life. There’s also a text that is currently being passed around which reads thus: “For supporting 3rd term, please start a boycott of goods and services from Panalpina, Transcorp, Dangote Group, Nigerian Breweries Plc…

Please pass on”. I know the incidence of such texts will increase in the coming days. My advice to the owners and CEOs of these organisations is to come out publicly to deny any involvement with the third term project. All of these companies (except Transcorp) have been operating successfully even before Obasanjo became president, so I don’t understand why their owners would do this to themselves.

The only advice I will give to those legislators who have collected bribes in order to vote for Obasanjo’s third term is to have a rethink.

If the sponsors, including the president himself, cannot muster the courage to come out and own up to the third term project, why should anyone risk his or her life since the voting in the National Assembly would be done openly and every member would answer “his father’s name” as both the Senate president and House of Representatives speaker have hinted? Or do they love Obasanjo more than they love themselves?