PDPigs Attack Dogs, their Contradictions and confusion A few days ago, Olisah metuh; the scribe of the biggest confusion in Africa admonished poliyitian on the other side of the devide to make their campaign issue-based in order to avoid heating up the polity. However, detailed monitor of the utterances of GEJs spokespersons points at no effort to tackle any of the problems the govt btought upon the nation but to ASSASINATE BUHARIS HARACTER AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE without telling anybody what they will do if elected;with the belief that nigerians remain as gullible as we had always being. Below are on PDPigs issue-based campaign topics He is Part of our Ugly Past--- One of the few things the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftains, including presidential aides have said against Gen Muhammadu Buhari is that he is part of Nigeria’s ugly past which contemporary Nigerians are trying to put behind them. Dr Doyin Okupe, a presidential aide recently said Buhari is part of the ugly past and argued that no such person that reminds us of an odious past can become an agent of change, as the All Progressives Congress (APC) mouths as its mantra. But what does Okupe mean by that? Buhari was a former military Head of State. Yes. So was Olusegun Obasanjo whom Okupe worked for in 1999 till 2001. If in being a past military Head of State makes one part of an ugly past, why did Okupe associate with such ugly past by serving even as a spokesman for Obasanjo? He is a Dictator Many people are hooked on the character of a military government which is typified with dictatorial tendency. Those who want to dramatize this past of Buhari invoke the ghost of Decree 4 which stifled press freedom. It is true. The military administration of the Buhari-Idiagbon regime was intolerant of opposition or even criticism and so padlocked the lips of the media and went ahead to throw two prominent Nigerian journalists (Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor) into jail. That was then and in the character of military governments which are not guided by constitutional restraints. There was no National Assembly to provide checks and balances, just a Supreme Military Council (SMC) with its notorious command structure. In a democracy, such can never be contemplated, what with the provisions of the constitution and the watchful check of both the National Assembly and even the judiciary. To hold on to the fixations of the past on this matter is to undermine the power and provisions of the constitution. He is Weak Yet again, the PDP spokesman had made some insinuations to the effect that Gen Buhari is weak and cannot really take decisions and so he is often abdicating his responsibilities. They cite the prominent role played by late Brig Tunde Idiagbon, Buhari’s number two man at the time, who almost functioned like the De facto Head of State. They cite his days at the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) where an agency, Afri Projects Consortium (APC--- Buhari has long been in league with APC) where the agency was handed over all the powers of operation at the PTF. They cite lastly, the delay in naming his running mate, having reportedly ceded the responsibility to Bola Tinubu. Politics is a terrible calling. On one hand they say Buhari is a dictator, and on the other hand they say he is weak. How can a dictator be weak? Are the two words not almost antithetical? In my thinking, the fact that he does not run a one man-show in his operations shows that he has democratic temper and conduct, which I suppose is an integral property of a democrat; and that same democratic virtue cannot be interpreted for weakness. He is old Those who have little odd things to say against Buhari argue that he is old. Really? Buhari is 72. Yes, he is not a young man, but he is not too old to be effective. Few years ago, didn’t the PDP elect a 62-year old man as Youth leader in its convention? There is no scientific evidence to prove that old people cannot be effective. I should not be misunderstood. I am a supporter of generational shift. But need I mention young people who have been entrusted with high responsibilities and they bungled it? Remember Salisu Buhari? Remember Dimeji Bankole? He is a Fundamentalist Perhaps the worst perception around Buhari is that he is an Islamic fundamentalist. There is a strong notion in some quarters that he is a religious fanatic and that he is most intolerant of Christians. And that if he gets elected as Nigeria’s president, he is going to Islamise the entire country, muscle Christians out of existence and launch Nigerian into OIC and then impose Sharia rule on Nigerians…. Just all kinds of flying fears and accusations. Matters were not helped in 2011 when some northern rascals started killing Southern and Christian Youth Corps members in Bauchi because Buhari was said to have lost the election. Bad and condemnable as it was, nobody established a link between Buhari and the silly mindless killers at the time. Buhari himself had explained several times that it is such a wrong notion merely being pushed by those who don’t like him, so he could lose the support of the Christian voters. As a Muslim, he argues that in all his presidential contests, he had expectedly chosen Christians as his running mates: From late Chuba Okadigbo, through Late Chief Edwin Ume Ezeoke (both Catholics) down to Tunde Bakare and now Yemi Osibajo (both lawyers and pastors in Pentecostal congregations). I have also read that one of Buhari’s daughters is married to an Igbo Christian from Anambra State just as his personal aides, drivers, cooks, etc., for years, are mostly Christians. But wait a minute. Here was a former military Head of State who had the military fiat to do whatever he wanted and no body will challenge him. His Deputy, late Maj Gen Tunde Idiagbon, who was even very fierce was also a Muslim, yet Buhari did not launch Nigeria into the Islamic world at that time. He did not Islamise Nigeria. A Muslim Head of State plus a Muslim Chief of Army Staff, Supreme Headquarters, did not plunge Nigeria into becoming an Islamic state, is it now that it will happen? I don’t think so. He did not even oppress Christians in his policies and programmes, so how is it now that he will do it with all the constitutional strictures all around him? I believe that the tag of fundamentalism is merely a political badge posted on him to make him look intolerant of other faiths. He is Boko Haram-Friendly Related to the accusation of being a fundamentalist is the corollary of being Boko Haram friendly. Again there is neither depth nor substance to this accusation. Buhari is on record to have made very strong statements against the operations and conducts of Boko Haram, just as the eradication of the insurgents has become a cardinal prism of his campaign. So if he is indeed Boko Haram friendly, how can he be squaring up to flush them out if and when he is voted into office? His capacity to deal with such uprising bears a link with history, as many still remember the decisive blow he dealt on Maitatsine insurgents in the 80’s. Many believe that as he dealt with Maitatsine, so shall he also deal with Boko Haram. He is Semi-literate The latest odd characterization against Buhari by the PDP is that he is semi-literate. Really? Is it not a little confounding that such a “semi-literate” got to the top of his military career and even became a Head of State? But more instructive is that in all the national assignments he had handled, not in one has he been considered incompetent and an underperformer on account of his PDP-declared insufficient education. Here was a former governor of North eastern States, a former Petroleum minister, former PTF Chairman, If he delivered his given mandates in those various tasks with such semi-literacy, ain’t we better off with such a one than with a nibbling cock-pit academic? In all the characterisations, nobody has been able to associate Buhari with corruption. Here is a former Head of State who is so ascetic that you wonder if he was ever in government service. Ever so simple and even austere, what with his famed blue- coloured agbada at almost all times. Here was a man who had to approach his bank for some facility to be able to buy his nomination form. Here is a man whom, I am told, does not even have a house in Abuja. How could a man have occupied the prime offices he had managed in the land and not be in a swathe of wealth as most Nigerian public servants are wont to be? Have we forgotten the case of a serving minister who spent N10 billion hiring private jets to fly to God-knows-where? And nobody is able to probe the act? Sadly, even the courts have granted an order forbidding anybody from probing that matter? Have we forgotten how, for three years plus now, petroleum marketers accused of committing huge fraud that caused the nation’s treasury to bleed for all its pores have remained protected in the name of being prosecuted? Do we not know that till thy Kingdom come, those prosecutions will lead no where? Was it not our commonwealth they stole and yet nobody is in jail? Is there any moral right to jail the fellow who steals another man’s goat out of hunger and yet allow those who raped public treasury to gallivant round town , sometimes with a long retinue of police escorts? Need we shout that we cannot continue like that? Is it any wonder Buhari logs along with the poor and the vulnerable of the north? What many remember most about the Buhari/Idiagbon regime is the culture of discipline it tried to instill in Nigerians. How can we forget the famous War Against Indiscipline (WAI)? With all the shenanigans and a society-of –anything-goes, there is no doubting the fact that Nigerians need a man with a proven character strength and capacity to be firm, albeit within the arm bit of the law.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 21:23:14 +0000
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