Friday, 27 April 2018

28TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE OKAR COUP: DAY BABANGIDA'S SECURITY WAS BREACHED by Gabriel Akinadewo

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Source: http://freedomonline.com.ng/28th-anniversary-of-the-orkar-coup-day-babangidas-security-was-breached/

It is 28 years today that a deadly onslaught by some middle-level officers against the regime of the then Commander-in-Chief, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, created a state of uncertainty for hours in the country. A group of coupists, led by Major Gideon Gwarzo Orkar, not satisfied with, according to them, the way the gap-toothed General was running the country, launched a dawn raid on the seat of power at Dodan Barracks, Lagos. GABRIEL AKINADEWO writes on the anniversary of the conspiracy which almost dismembered the most-populous black nation.
It happened on a Sunday, a day divinely ordained by God for Christians to keep holy and worship Him.
In many parts of the country, most Christians were already asleep. As usual, they would wake around 6 a.m. to prepare for Sunday service but exactly 28 years ago, an event which happened in Obalende, Ikoyi, Lagos made many of them to skip service that day.
To Obalende residents, they knew as early as 2 a.m. that there would be no Sunday service that particular day. They not only heard on the radio around 6 a.m., they saw, firsthand, the processes that led to the disruption of service in many churches.
In the wee hours of the fourth Sunday of that month, many of them were aroused by the ear-splitting sounds of gunfire. Earlier, some food vendors, who were in the habit of selling till around 5 a.m., scampered for cover and the trepidation woke some of the sleeping residents.
Then, they massed at their windows with curtains slightly drawn to behold a military convoy of fighting vehicles, tanks, Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) and heavily-armed soldiers marching towards Dodan Barracks, the then seat of government to give back-up power to their colleagues who were already battling with the security men stationed there to take over the number one residence in the country.
Obviously, their target was the number one citizen who was then the eighth Commander-in-Chief of the most-populous black nation, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
Before then, Nigeria had witnessed seven coups – four successful, three botched – and Obalende residents didn’t need any crystal ball to know that another security breach was in the making.
What they did not know then was the identity of the ring leader. It was after the announcement on the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) that they knew that Gideon Gwarzo Orkar, a 38-year-old Tiv Major, was behind it.
For six years, he was Commanding Officer of Saki Armoured Barracks, Oyo State and he had just been posted to the Command and Staff College, Jaji, as Directing Staff Officer (DSO).
The execution of the plot on April 22, 1990 was symbolic. It was the first time five states, Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Borno and Bauchi were excised from the country.
It was a day the invincibility of the Babangida regime was shredded.
It was the second time middle-level officers tried to take over the government. The first time was on January 15, 1966 during the first military coup led by the late Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu.
April 22, 1990 was a day Babangida took the decision to take the capital to Abuja which he eventually did on December 12, 1991.
Also, it was a day the then Minister of Defence and Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the late General Sani Abacha, proved his loyalty to Babangida.
A day the Maradona should be grateful to the late Khalifa because if Abacha, who later removed Chief Ernest Shonekan on Novermber 17, 1993, had wanted to hijack the coup, he would have done it without any resistance.
For many hours, Babangida’s whereabout was unknown. It was rumoured that he was taken to the Defence House by some of his trusted bodyguards and later to the National Theatre.
In fact, in the early hours of the bloody Sunday, Dodan Barracks, the seat of government, was deserted and unmanned. Journalists, searching for news, walked in and out, unassisted, unchallenged, unmolested.
This led Nigerians to believe that the coup had been clinically accomplished without any resistance.
Orkar’s broadcast was being relayed to Nigerians intermittently, amidst martial music. He not only announced the overthrow of the Babangida administration but also the tinkering with the political geography of Nigeria, the excision of the five states, with conditions for their re-admission.
“We wish to emphasise that this is not just another coup, but well executed for the marginalised, oppressed and enslaved people of the Middle Belt and the South with a view to freeing ourselves and our children yet unborn from eternal slavery and colonisation by a clique of this country,” Orkar said.
In many parts of the country, people who considered themselves marginalised were jubilating with university students at the forefront.
In Lagos, students of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) staged a solidarity rally. From Akoka, they went to the premises of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Channel 7, Tejuosho in their hundreds. The soldiers guarding the television station even rejoiced with them.
Due to the fact of the unknown, many top military officers had already gone underground. The element of surprise that ringed the operation caught them unawares.
The late Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, who was Babangida’s second-in-command, was attending a boat party when Orkar and his men struck.
On hearing the news, the party came to an abrupt end. Security men quickly spirited Aikhomu away to a safer place.
When Orkar and his men came in the early hours, they went about their mission with clinical precision. They stormed the seat of government and since they were least expected, they took the guards by surprise, attacking from the Federal Secretariat end, after seizing the radio station. It was a day Dodan Barracks was heavily shelled.
Orkar’s men met a meek resistance because most of the presidential guards fled due to the superior fire power but a few of them, led by Babangida’s Aide-de-Camp (ADC), Lt. Colonel U.K Bello, stayed to ward off the coupists.
When Bello saw that the firepower was too much for him and his men, he quickly mounted one of the armoured tanks at Dodan Barracks to unleash a deadly blow.
His intention was to secure Dodan Barracks, go to the radio station and, if necessary, level the whole place to dislodge Orkar and his men. Unfortunately, one of the coupists had, a few days earlier, tampered with all the tanks when he came to service them, demobilising them.
One of the coupists was in Dodan Barracks on the eve of the coup to play with the guards. While playing draught with them, he had tactically asked if Babangida was going to spend the night there. The guards ignorantly gave him the answer he needed. So, by the time Bello realised that the tank with which he wanted to launch a counter attack was faulty, it was too late. He was killed instantly.
In other parts of the city, there were shootouts, especially at the Ikeja and Ojo Cantonments. In a bid to gain control of the armoury, many soldiers were killed. Although the then Army spokesman, Colonel Fred Chijuka, put the number of dead soldiers at Ikeja at eight, it was believed the number was higher.
Indeed, there were more ferocious shootings at the Ojo Cantonment and the killings were not contained until mid-morning.
The plotters, determined to turn Ojo into a foothold, had turned their guns on colleagues, killing and maiming, selectively.
In the process, some junior officers were co-opted into the rebellion.
But, to some discerning Nigerians, the coup was pregnant with failure. Though the radio continued to relay martial music and the announcement of the change of government by Orkar, it was believed that those who had jubilated did so prematurely.
The shootings at Ojo and Ikeja were seen as the determination of the plotters to gain control of the armoury, an action which should have been carried out a few hours before the announcement.
In major checkpoints, soldiers’ presence was nil. Surprisingly, telephone lines were working, The Murtala Muhammed Airport in Ikeja, Lagos and other strategic points were left unguarded.
It was later discovered that the plotters did not have enough men and they were only holding on to the radio station. That was when the proper crushing of the rebellion started.
By this time, Babangida had already been moved to Bonny Camp. That was done when a telephone call was placed to the camp by Babangida’s men and Colonel A. Kurubo, Commander of the Guards Battalion, told them that his men were loyal to the gap-toothed General.
They also got an assurance from the then Colonel Ishaya Bamaiyi of the 9 Mechanised Brigade, Ikeja.
But the rallying point was Abacha who used the power of his office to cut off the plotters from the barracks in Lagos.
By this time, the Orkar team had almost exhausted their stock and they were on the edge of desperation.
It was then that Abacha ordered Kurubo to move in with his men to crush the rebellion. He was supported by soldiers from the Ikeja Cantonment.
For hours, the premises of the radio station were turned into a theatre of war, aimed at dislodging Orkar and his men.
Similar efforts were made to jam Orkar’s voice out of the air through the facilities of the State Security Service (SSS).
This was finally done a few minutes before noon. By this time, all the commanders of army units nationwide had already pledged their loyalty to the Babangida regime.
With the removal of Orkar, Kurubo came on air to tell Nigerians that the “dissidents have been routed”, urging them to await further announcements.
A few minutes after noon, Bamaiyi also came on air to corroborate Kurubo. A few minutes later, Radio Nigeria went dead which was due to the heavy shelling which affected the equipment.
It was then the turn of Colonel Raji Rasaki, the military governor of Lagos State, to make available the state radio station, Radio Lagos.
He went on air to tell Nigerians to go about their daily activities. By this time, Abacha had already sent troops and tanks to all major points, including the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Ikeja, NITEL, seaports and the Lagos end of the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway to secure these strategic points and prevent the escape of the plotters.
Then, he came on air, describing them as “disloyal, misguided soldiers and national security nuisance.”
“Their broadcast was embarrassing and they are already isolated. Most of these disloyal elements have been arrested and are already undergoing interrogations,” Abacha said.
It was believed that one of the reasons given by the coupists for their action was the way most of the ring leaders were sidelined in military promotion.
This was believed to be Orkar’s main grouse with Babangida.
A Tiv from Benue, some of his colleagues commissioned same day with him, who were from the core North, had a meteoric rise, becoming his superior officers. This was the same reason given by the plotters of February 13, 1976 when General Murtala Muhammed was killed.
Then, Illiya Bisalla, a Major-General, was a course mate of Muhammed and Lt. General Theophilus Danjuma was his junior officer, in fact one of his students.
When promotions were made in 1975, Murtala was made a full General and Head of State. Since they were course mates, Bisalla didn’t allow this to affect him so much but when Danjuma was promoted a Lt. General above him, he couldn’t stomach it.
Same applied to the late Col Bukar Sukar Dimka who announced the coup as some of his colleagues were promoted above him.
So, it was believed that this frustration led to the Orkar coup on April 22, 1990.
Two days after the botched coup, U.K. Bello was buried at Paiko, Niger State with full military honours.
Naturally, investigations into the plot were swift.
Many soldiers were arrested and no fewer than 16 officers declared wanted by the Federal Military Government.
Also declared wanted was a fish merchant, Great Ovedje Ogboru, who was believed to have bankrolled the plot and offered his warehouse at Ikorodu as operational base.
He was accused of buying J5 Peugeot buses used by the plotters in carrying arms and men. He was also accused of importing arms into Nigeria for the operation, using his fishing trawlers.
Also declared wanted were Lt. Col. G.A.A. Gwam of the Command and Staff College, Major D. Mukoro, a Ph. D holder in Chemistry, Major T.O. Edoja and others.
Later, a seven-officer military tribunal headed by the General Officer Commanding (G.O.C), 1 Mechanised Division, Kaduna, Major-General Ike Nwachukwu, was set up. Brigadier-General Abdulsalami Abubakar and Lt. Colonel Abdulmumuni Aminu were among members of the tribunal.
At the opening of the trial on May 21, 1990, Nwachukwu said: “The accused persons can be rest assured of speedy but fair hearing by the tribunal”.
He said the public would be kept abreast of the tribunal sittings but till the tribunal finished its work on July 18, 1990, nothing was open to the public.
Initially, 863 officers and civilians were arrested in connection with the coup attempt. They were investigated and tried by the tribunal and 751 of them were released for want of evidence with a few officers being compulsorily retired from service.
Some were eventually sentenced to death and others jailed.
According to Aikhomu, the aborted coup was led by “ a group of disgruntled, incoherent and ambitious officers and men of the Nigerian Army. After a thorough investigation, the following facts have been confirmed to be the outline plan of action of the dissidents;
(a) to overthrow the Federal Military Government by force,
(b) to summarily execute, in the process, the following principals of the government, Mr President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federation, all members of the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), all military and civilian members of the National Council of Ministers, all military governors: senior military and police officers,
(c) to blow up the seat of government in Lagos and move the federal capital to another location to be decided after the successful execution of the coup plot:
(d) to excise five states out of the federation;
(e) to demolish major bridges across the River Niger and Benue to effectively dismember the country.
“Apart from the arrest and elimination of senior military, police and government officials, their plan included the arrest, summary trial and execution of prominent Nigerians said to have been involved in the implementation of the Federal Government’s transition programme.
“This summary trial and subsequent execution were slated to have started all over the federation as from 4 p.m on April 22, 1990.”
Aikhomu also accused Ogboru of financing the plot with N10 million with about 400 ex-servicemen recruited by Major Mukoro “ and assisted by one Mr Alex Aigbe”.
After the Nwachukwu-led Special Military Tribunal had passed its judgement, another Military Investigation Panel (MIP) was set up to investigate the judgement of the tribunal and the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the appeals lodged by the appellants.
Then, the AFRC met at the State House on July 26, 1990 to consider the findings of the MIP. After three hours, it rose to continue the next day.
Due to the series of appeal made by some prominent Nigerians on behalf of the plotters, it was initially believed that the adjournment was meant to consider the appeals.
But that was not to be.
The second day, it was obvious that the condemned plotters had a date to keep with military tradition which makes treason an offence punishable by death.
On Friday, July 27, 1990, the area surrounding the Kirikiri Prisons was a beehive of military activities. Five armoured vehicles were drafted to the area and a combined team of military police and personnel, heavily armed, kept watch.
At 2 p.m, two military officers arrived in a jeep to monitor the situation. An hour later, 40 soldiers, dressed in military fatigue, arrived. Then came seven Black Maria vehicles with some of the condemned plotters.
They were brought out in handcuffs, tied to the stakes and shot. The remaining plotters were shot in other locations.
Aikhomu himself confirmed this in a 7p.m. broadcast.
On that day, 43 conspirators were executed, the largest execution of coup plotters in the country’s history. It was a bloody Friday.
Before then, the highest was 32, after the Dimka abortive coup of February 13, 1976.

Tuesday, 17 April 2018

LIFE AND TIMES OF LATE PROFESSOR DORA AKUNYILI

SOURCE:https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2053915401601023&id=1615174272141807

Prof Dora Akunyili's 14-year-old son came home from school on vacation. He called her and said,
“Mummy, do you know you are burning people’s money?”
She was shocked. The boy warned,
‘Mummy, these people will not like you and they can go to any extent to fight back. I don’t like this your job, Mummy.’

I told him not to worry. I gave him Psalm 127 to read and meditate on. "Except the Lord builds a house, the labourers labour in vain…”
Dora Akunyili's was too determined to stop fake drug in Nigeria and not even genuine concern from her biological child could discourage her from stopping those selling chalk in place of antibiotics, powder in place of antimalarial drugs or unsterilized water in place of adrenaline. Dora got her courage boosted whenever she remembered her own sister, Vivian, also died after taking fake drug.

So as the Director General of Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) Dora Akunyili started to set ablaze fake drugs worth million dollars monthly.
On the 26 December 2003, a bullet from drug counterfeiters shattered the rear windscreen of her vehicle pierced her headscarf, burnt her scarf like hot water and gone through the front screen.
"Within a split second, there was a painful bang on my head, which made my scalp hurt badly." She recalled. It was a really close shave with death!

“Thousands of Nigerians die from fake drugs every year. Is my life worth more than their lives? I will keep on fighting" she declared.
Drug counterfeiters dared not bribe her because her honesty and patriotism were legendary. When she was the Zonal Secretary (South-east) of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF), she had cause to go abroad for medical attention. The bill was $17,000, including $12,000 for surgery. But after pre-surgery check-up, it was discovered that she didn’t need any surgery again. She promptly requested that the $12,000 be refunded to PTF. The doctor was shocked. He was used to seeing Nigerians coming around with fictitious ailments.

When she got back to Nigeria, the (then) chairman of PTF, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, wrote her a letter of commendation. When Obasanjo wanted to appoint a DG for NAFDAC in 2001, somebody who knew this story told President Obasanjo about Dora Akunyili. The President asked for her phone number and called her, but when she answered the call and the caller introduced himself as President Olusegun Obasanjo, Dora Akunyili dismissed the call as handiwork of fraudster because she never in her widest imagination thought President Obasanjo could have her number or call her. Dora Akunyili was interviewed and appointed as DG of NAFDAC by "presidential call."
This patriotic lady sent drug counterfeiters out of Nigeria saving millions Nigerians from "medical mass murder".
She took on big companies like Cadbury, Nestle and Park n’ Shop in the process of enforcing regulations.
Akunyili died in India on June 7, 2014 after a long battle with cancer.
Please let's celebrate another hero who put her life and her family's safety on the line for the good of her country.

Wednesday, 11 April 2018

OYEGUN AND THE ABUJA DISEASE by LOUIS ODION, FNGE

Source: frankofili.net

Abuja disease is a peculiar affliction in Nigerian politics. It refers to the tendency of an actor with otherwise modest endowment or from humble station to transmute to a monstrous creature once he/she enters the nation's capital and begins to frequent the power circles.
Intoxicated by a new false sense of identity, such upstart does not consider it abominable to now point at their cradle with the proverbial left hand, mocking old benefactors, before their new friends.
Chief Odigie Oyegun would appear the latest sufferer of this pathology. With a straight face, the National Chairman of ruling the All Progressives Congress (APC) toiled hard to deny allies who smoothed his path to office. Perhaps the most audacious of such exertions was an interview published by Vanguard where he sought to disavow a known truth: the decisive role played by both Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in his emergence in 2014.
Specifically, the interviewer asked: "Some are alleging that you've not been fair to those who assisted you to emerge National Chairman of the party, especially Bola Tinubu. Is this true?"
Hear Chief Oyegun: "Everybody assisted me to this position and I'm grateful to all of them. The only thing is my personality and integrity; I don't joke with these two things because they're the only currency that I've and I'll defend them at any time. I don't believe one particular person solely assisted me to this position."
And in what sounded more like a poor imitation of Buhari's now famous inaugural "I belong to everybody and nobody" phrase, Oyegun added: "Some day, the story of how I became chairman of APC will be told. You will then see that everybody did assist me to become National Chairman. This means that I'm there for everybody. I don't belong to any camp in the APC. I belong to all members of APC high and below."
With that, the APC chairman could, however, only be said to be deceiving himself in his desperation to impress a national following that does not exist. In the same interview, even more disturbing was his showcasing a poverty of ideas so blissfully over the reported insolvency of the party's national secretariat. We shall return to this presently.
Now luxuriating in the new-found glory, Oyegun must be assuming that the nameless - but nonetheless discerning - porters at Benin airport have forgotten the wilderness days of 2013 and early 2014 when they often would relieve an elderly man, regularly clad in French suit, of his little bag after rushing in from his hermitage on the sedate Reservation Road in Benin GRA to catch evening Arik Air flight to Lagos - tellingly at predictable intervals.
Easily given away by the littleness of his luggage, no one needed further proof that his mission in Lagos could be other than political meetings, hosted by folks whose generous hospitality he now belittles.
So, when Oyegun spoke in such imperial tone, he must also have assumed no one remembers how the Edo chapter of APC had unilaterally issued a statement endorsing his then arch rival, Chief Tom Ikimi, solely for the office in 2014, obviously to foreclose his (Oyegun's) chances.
Unhappy with what he considered "an anti-democratic maneuver" and "a crude attempt to close the political space", then Governor Oshiomhole had to make a passionate appeal to the state party executive to shift ground. They were incensed that even with the convention barely few days away, Oyegun still had not thought it courteous to formally intimate them of his interest in the big job.
Following Oshiomhole's intervention, the Anselm Ojezua-led state exco backed down and granted Oyegun audience to make a presentation. Thereafter, the Edo APC recanted its earlier position by issuing a statement also acknowledging Oyegun and wishing both contenders good luck at the national convention ahead.
That development would cost Oshiomhole his political relationship with Ikimi seen largely as the man to beat for his greater national visibility which he was too eager to flaunt to the point of hubris.
If Oshiomhole ensured home anointing for Oyegun, Tinubu sold him to his allies at the national level, obviously out of a nostalgia for - and maybe over-romanticization of - their NADECO past. We are talking of the days of innocence of APC when key gladiators still related as comrades united by a shared resolve to oust Goodluck Jonathan from Aso Rock; when the atmosphere had not become poisoned by mutual suspicion and deep bitterness arising from a sense of alienation.
Of course, it is open secret that over the years Asiwaju and Ikimi never got on well over the former's memory of the brutal repression suffered as NADECO exile under dictator Sani Abacha in the 90s with the Oduma of Igueben serving as the voluble foreign minister.
It is a measure of Tinubu's blistering networking that Ikimi eventually faced stiff resistance from almost everyone who held the ace within APC then except Turaki Adamawa (ex Vice President Atiku Abubakar). Out-muscled, he had no choice than withdrawing few hours to the commencement of voting at the convention. In pulling out of APC eventually, Ikimi brought drama and a lengthy epistle dripping of bile and acid.
Reminding the public how he had hosted several exploratory meetings that led to APC's birth in 2014, Ikimi likened what happened to "someone taking away my pot of soup", more or less dismissing Oyegun as a political merchandise with little or no electoral value.
Indeed, in hindsight, Ikimi would now seem vindicated. At home, Oyegun has in the last three years been exposed as grossly impotent politically. In the 2015 general polls, not only did the APC national chair fail to deliver his polling unit in Oredo, his ward, local government and the entire Edo South senatorial district were also lost to PDP. It was only Oshiomhole's rally in his native Edo North that ensured APC eventually deliver 45 percent to Buhari's victory in the historic March 28 polls.
Even more humiliating was the outcome of the state governorship primaries in 2016. Oyegun's anointed in the shadow polls came a distant third to Godwin Obaseki. In the September 26 governorship polls proper, Oyegun, the great national chair, failed again as PDP won his polling unit right there in Oredo, the heart of Benin City.
Back in 2011, even as the presidential running-mate to Shekarau on the ANPP platform, Oyegun's showing at home was no less disastrous. ANPP performed woefully across Edo. In fact, on account of the sparse number of votes recorded in Benin City, it would not be exaggeration to say no one outside Oyegun's family members and few loyal neighbours came out to support a ticket that supposedly had "the son of the soil" as the vice presidential candidate.
Taken together, no one is begrudging Oyegun whatever super stardom he thinks APC leadership now confers on him. But what we only expect of those whose palm kernel has been cracked by benevolent gods is simple - humility. While Oyegun now makes a fetish of self-declared "personality and integrity", we only expect a demonstration of this very virtue in a fidelity to the facts of history, particularly when the memory is still fresh.
Acknowledging those who provided you ladder to climb to a height will not in anyway dim your stardom. On the contrary, it confers greater nobility. Only those incurably afflicted by the Abuja disease would seek to belittle, without qualms, their key enablers of yesterday.
On APC's state of financial health, Oyegun also missed the point by dragging PMB's name at all into the story of APC's illiquidity. Contrary to his insinuation, no one is saying or expects Buhari to dip hands into public treasury to fund party's activities. I think the issue is whether enough incentives are being created for party members or blocs to have a sense of ownership that will, in turn, ginger them into freely bringing their widow's mite.
How was the party able to finance itself before gaining power?
Theoretically, a party is supposed to draw oxygen substantially from membership fees, dues and levies by those who subscribe to its charter of values.
To be fair to Oyegun, party finance remains a sticky point even in the so-called mature democracies. In the United States, the corrosive influence of Wall Street was a big issue in the both the primaries and general polls last year. The challenge has been how to evolve institutional bulwark against kickbacks, influence peddling, embezzlement and extortion on party's behalf.
In the present circumstance, it is, however, debatable whether Oyegun has been able to draw on his much vaunted "personality and integrity" to provide an exemplary leadership that towers above the squalor of partisanship and therefore commands greater loyalty and trust of all and sundry. It then explains why the national secretariat appears increasingly deserted and the earth vanishing under Oyegun's bare feet.
Nothing illustrates graphically that loosening grip than the reported tumult in Abuja on Tuesday by state chairmen of the party. While Oyegun would typically choose to live in denial, the party's chief spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, was forthright enough to admit that the state leaders were bitter over Buhari's "lopsided appointments" which have only succeeded in casting the government as sectional; a total negation of the promise of 2015.
With the deafening rabble at the door, the question now is whether Oyegun, as the embodiment of the heart and soul of APC, has the courage and the gravitas to convey the message to Buhari with a view to winning back those who genuinely feel alienated. That may be a tough call for a pensioner feverishly afraid of losing his own share of the spoils of office in Abuja.
Meanwhile, with his kinsman now appearing to totter under the weight of office in Abuja, I can see Ikimi taking another sip from his favorite cognac this moment, smiling mischievously.

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

NIGERIA TREASURY LOOTERS AND THE SHAME OF A NATION by SHABA Mafu

. Just like the confessions and revelations of witches that have drunk the blood of a victim whose head does not agree with witchcraft practice, there have been self-confessed revelations ranging from election rigging, as credited to Ibrahim Mantu and the looting spree of the shameless politicians who claimed they were elected into public offices. Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu had said it all. Elections in Nigeria are basically manipulations, thuggery and political witchcraft. Last week, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed reeled out some names of treasury looters in Nigeria who stole from the National Treasury in different ranges and denominations. He, first of all, gave out some few names like the conventional Choir who first sings chants before the rendition of the main song. A week later, he reeled out twenty-three other names who also are in the Looters Club. The names given were the names of Nigerian politicians. They were all from the opposition PDP. This week, Reno Omokri, feeling embittered that the thieving and the roguery is not a matter of the PDP alone, 'submitted' his own list of the treasury looters of the APC. He said it is like a preamble to what is to come depending on the reaction of his co-contestant, Lai Mohammed of the APC.
Nigerians must not be deceived by these politicians and their affiliates. They settle themselves in their nocturnal meetings where the barrier of political differences is consciously and deliberately pulled down. There is no political party in Nigeria. All we have is an Association of Treasury Looters in different political guises. The PDP and the APC and other political parties are of same political colouration with non-existent ideologies. These Mohammeds and Omokris thought they are doing a good job by these dirty public revelations of stealing of the commonwealth.They are only telling Nigerians that the political class in Nigeria is grossly irresponsible and undependable.
I read that the former Deputy to Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, Mrs. Fatima Raji Rasaki has decamped to General Obasanjo's SDP, the Third Force to 'seize' power from the APC come 2019. The defector was of the PDP and one of the converts of the former Army General, Olusegun Obasanjo. Decamping does not change the minds of stealing by politicians. If a soldier pulls off his uniform and he is on mufti, that does not make him a 'civilian'. He is still a soldier by training. The trained heartlessness and thieving by most Nigerian politicians are not cured by his numerous decamping. Atiku Abubakar is still the same man known for his legendary in terms of decamping and re-decamping or call him a legitimate political prostitute. Whether he is morally and politically upright or not, is not changed or determined by his routine decamping.
What aches my mind is that are there no people from the civil and human rights circles who can take over the politics from these cake-sharers? I feel this is the only angle for political salvation for Nigeria, and not these mindless looters and deceivers coming under the guise of different political parties.
Nigeria is in the soup with these crops of politicians we have irrespective of their political parties. Whither goest Nigeria?