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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