LAST WORD BY SAM NDA-ISAIAH
 
Mr. President, Just Go And Don’t Insult Us
MAY 21, 2007
 

In what President Olusegun Obasanjo termed a valedictory speech, but which in fact was an "insulting speech" to the nation, Nigeria’s outgoing Baba told us to our faces that we should stop celebrating the death of his third term agenda because if he had really badly wanted it, he would have gotten it anyway. In clear language, the president looked down his nose at the entire nation and told us that as far as he was concerned, we do not matter, and whatever he wants, he gets, even if we all do not want it. This actually about sums up the president’s rulership style of the past eight years. We have always known that the president disdains and thinks nothing of us, but I don’t think any Nigerian thought it was this bad. This indeed should be the most demeaning insult Nigerians have ever been subjected to.
 But this has always been the president’s mindset towards Nigerians. That was why he did whatsoever he wished throughout his entire 8-year tenure. That should also explain why he rigged all elections like a common felon just out of prison. That is why he spent the nation’s money without regard to appropriate laws and even the rule of law. That is why he sold Nigeria’s assets to whoever he wished and at whatever value that caught his fancy; that is why he shared out our oil wells to his friends and cronies as if they were chickens on his Ota farm and that must explain why he arrested and jailed his enemies on the self-serving grounds that he was fighting corruption, while sharing bribes and spreading corruption himself at the same time.
 
 It will be hard to get a worse public office holder than Nigeria‘s outgoing president. He lies to himself and because he believes his own lies, he wants all of us to believe them also. To worsen matters for him, there are a few minders around him who pretend to believe the lies, and that gives him comfort. To the extent that the Nigerian president at a point started to believe that he was the most handsome man in Nigeria. Just like the fairytale king without robes.
 
 One of the greatest lies Obasanjo still tells himself is that people don’t know that he was the mastermind, chief executor and chief bribe giver of his failed third term bid. He still tells people, who pretend that they believe him (even though they laugh behind him) that he was not the one who wanted third term. It was the idea of several Nigerians who think Nigeria will collapse without him, the "messiah".
 
 But the president forgets that he has in fact confided in several Nigerians, many of whom are his comrades-in-crime. Apart from that, he has personally bribed many senators and legislators, in addition to the N50 million which was shared to many of our lawmakers. He forgets that many of these lawmakers are still alive. The outgoing president is such a gifted liar that he has no problem lying even about God. He said if he really wanted the third term, he would have simply prayed to God to grant him the request. This is like saying that God answers all prayers, including the prayers of thieves about to rob their victims.
 
 Since Obasanjo has "successfully" rigged both the 2003 and 2007 elections, it will be reasonable to assume that he prayed for success before rigging the elections. And I think the president really believes God answers the prayers of the wicked against the poor and the just. He actually thanked God for successfully rigging the elections. He is not alone in this self-deceit. The "vice president-elect," Jonathan Goodluck, said his "victory" was the doing of the Lord. These people are decidedly too far gone, and have mocked God so insolently that it is hard not to think that they will end up calamitously. God is no respecter of man, and He is certainly not Obasanjo’s playmate for him to say that whatever evil he would have wanted to perpetrate, all he needed to have done was pray to God. What an outrage!
 
 But maybe we are not talking about the same God. These days, one hears so many stories about our dear "born again" president that it is hard to believe anything anymore. It is possible that the God I am talking about is not the same god the president is referring to. But let’s leave that for God to judge. What I know is that no leader can hoodwink his people, conspiring with business associates to keep the price of petrol and diesel as high as it can get, just so they can continue to earn large profits at the expense of suffering people, while claiming to be worshipping God. You can’t rig elections the way the president did in 2003 and 2007, instructing a compromised IG to shoot anyone who stands in the way and still claim you have any special relationship with God. You can’t be president of a nation and be a major shareholder and founder of a company that gets awarded NITEL and the most prestigious hotel in a privatisation programme in which there are other bidders, in addition to generous allocations of oil blocks and still talk the talk of the God that I know. You cannot seize oil blocks from people who oppose your evil third term agenda and offer them to governors who generously funded the same third term agenda and still say that you didn’t want the third term badly. And you cannot treat the death of people like Bola Ige and Dikibo so cavalierly (one was killed by a drug baron, and the other by armed robbers, according to our "born again" president) and still talk about God this way.
 
 I think the president should start confessing his sins and crimes against the Nigerian state and plead for forgiveness. He should ask all those he has offended to have the grace to forgive him, while he also forgives all those that have offended him. That is what is and should be done by even the best intentioned outgoing presidents, not to talk of one like Obasanjo who has messed up everything he met. Nigeria is worse off today than this same day eight years ago. The democracy handed down to him eight years ago by General Abdulsalami has been replaced by a fraud only he and those like-minded can still call a democracy. Men of integrity like the late Justice Ephraim Akpata, Gen Abdulsalami’s INEC chairman, have been replaced by people like Dr Roland Guobadia and Professor Maurice Iwu, who were carefully chosen to deliver the kind of electoral results we see today.
 
 Nigeria’s electricity power supply is worse off today, inspite of the more than a trillion Naira that was purportedly pumped into the sector by the trio of the president, Segun Agagu and Lyel Imoke. It is noteworthy that both Agagu and Imoke are still enjoying the "fruits of their labour". It is only in an Obasanjo democracy that one sees people like Imoke and Agagu as elected representatives of the people. Nigerians are more apprehensive today than ever. Exactly eight years ago, the world was optimistic about the prospects of the inchoate democracy in Nigeria. Today, you only need to go through the international media to know exactly what the international community thinks of Obasanjo and the democracy he is leaving behind. While smaller countries like Mali, Benin Republic, Senegal, South Africa and Ghana are enjoying respectable democracy, Nigeria is still not certain of the future. One only needs to browse the internet to read what Nigerians are saying about their country.
 
 But Obasanjo should stop insulting us. If he has an ego problem and cannot handle the fact the he and his third term agenda were decisively crushed last year, then that is his problem. Inspite of what the elections have turned out to be,  Nigerians, and indeed the whole of Africa are still celebrating the defeat of Obasanjo and his third term bid. As for the delusion that if he had wanted third term, nobody could have stopped him, many of us still wish he had tried to rig himself through as he always does. Because if he had forced himself through inspite of the verdict of Nigerians and the National Assembly, then we would have had no choice but to invite the military to remove him. But for now, Obasanjo should just go and leave us alone, and face the verdict of history.

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E A R S H O T
When Did The President Discover That Ige Was Killed By Drug Barons?
Obasanjo has just told us that Bola Ige was killed by drug barons. Why is he talking about that now? When did the president discover this? If he knew that all along, what did he do about it? Why didn’t he make attempts to get the drug barons by using all the instruments of power at his disposal, the same way he closed Nigerian borders and forced Benin Republic to extradite Hamman Tijani, a suspected robbery kingpin, simply because Iyabo, his beloved daughter was the victim? No, we don’t believe the drug baron tale, just like we did not believe him when he told us in 2003 that Aminosari Dikibo, the PDP deputy national chairman was killed by armed robbers. The real investigation to find out the real killers will start after next week. The president  need not be agitated.