Listening to the admonition of my brother and friend, who gave his ears to our cry to President Muhammadu Buhari for political justice, in his response to driving our petitions, was a moment of reality for me. I was jolted at the depth of truth concerning politics in Nigeria. Fair political participation is not open to all.
Two things, he said, are major to the nature of the practice of politics in Nigeria: to succeed in politics in Nigeria, one must ensure remaining with the “winning team”, and no matter one’s sense of good and right doing, when it comes to the matters of “integration” with other people, that sense of good and right becomes a personal issue among others.
One thing is clearly wrong here: in a democracy, “remaining with the ‘winning team'” is very preemptive of election results, especially in such a case where the very laws guiding a process are trampled – how foes one determine the right “team” to win before a competition?
Some of us cannot forget why we chose Muhammadu Buhari to govern us. To deny this fact at this stage will be a betrayal of trust by Mr President. It will be wrong for President Buhari to be a part of the corruption of the adult suffrage of the people of Akwa Ibom State. It will be heartbreaking to know that Mr President is a pretender to his claims of fighting corruption, and his epaulette of “Mr Integrity’.
My friend and my classmate in Daura advised, “…in Nigeria, for you to survive, you must work with those who can help you (even if you cannot flock together with them?) Be sure to ensure your personal survival until you can remove the “winning team”, if you must dare to play the opposition”.
This called my mind to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, an ardent opposition leader in Nigeria and his alleged “ownership” of Lagos – our country Nigeria owns “Lagos State” through the constitution of the federal republic, but His Excellency, Senator Tinubu owns Lagos aka “Eko”.
Having worked with President Buhari very closely during his pursuit of Nigeria’s presidency from 2003, and personally following through with Mr President’s travails, trials, and his success, after all, my friend was able to use the experience of President Buhari, as a foremost and serial opposition candidate in Nigeria’s presidential elections before now to analyze our current issue, using Mr President’s struggles when he sought for justice through petitions submitted in law courts at various stages of defining his presidential ambition.
This is about a protest against the manner in which the APC conducted the recently concluded governorship primary election of the party in Akwa Ibom State, and the need to secure Mr President’s personal attention to the errors in how the result been sustained by the national working committee of the APC was procured.
Of course! There are points made against the infringement to the body of guidelines that governed the conduct of the governorship nomination exercise in the State, and it is believed that the APC hierarchy and particularly, Mr President, who are our living symbols of the change we all dreamt would be engendered by the governance style of this administration, would right every wrong done to us; and we are still following on in this confidence.
For some of us Nigerians, though some salient truth are revealing about some people we once saw as examples of honour and integrity, our minimum requirement from this administration is peace and safety. We have genuine desires, and we are exerting genuine efforts to foster order and drive our nation’s political growth alright – therefore we have already believed that true peace cannot be attained in the absence of justice.
Our leaders have been pretending to power all the while and they are still pretending – thus we see a strongly held Nigeria under the power of darkness, and the Nigerian “Church” is making excessive money selling this darkness to the members, and making it thicker. This is why I agree with Rev Father Matthew Hassan Kukah that (the laws of) Nigeria (makes the country to) produce “the most irresponsible president in the world”.
The Church in the world is the symbol of salvation given on earth, as the body of delegates from the Almighty God, to do his will on earth, but our “church leaders” in Nigeria are in fellowship with the powers of darkness. For me, Jesis gave no other “Assistant” to take from him and to give to us except the Holy Spirit. Spiritual life for the body of Christ was assigned to the Holy Spirit to ensure; and no man on earth is competent to take this responsibility. This is about knowing the mind of God.
We expect that in a democratic process, what should matter in politics is, in principle, the adult suffrage of the people and not the unreasonable, the unlawful and the obscene use of money to corrupt democratic processes, as it is allowed to happen in Nigeria. Democracy is about the people and the majority decisions. No wonder nobody is talking about Section 16 Subsection 2 (c) and (d) of our constitution, and its corrupt appliances to governance.
In the face of this fundamental provision of the law, 70% of our expendable Commonwealth is shared to only 20% of derelict Nigerians, and the remaining 30% of this wealth is kept in their custody for all of us. And the Church is in a frenzy, singing “praises” with raised hands in the air, tightened eyes squeezing out tears, and demonstrating emotions in a congregation, calling that “worship” – and at the end only the “leaders” get bank tellers in return, to keep.
This is about the mind of God: Nigerians altogether must rise, and first, appreciate the pit into which we have altogether been thrown. The picture is scary, gory and needing mass resistance. Let’s all get this straight, that until we revolt against the State, we will continue to have an “irresponsible president”.
Consider the cost of treating prostrate cancer and should a man be struggling to feed, how does he cope with prostrate when it happens to him? So for us who are in the spirit, we dwell under the shelter of the Almighty, learning at his feet. Divine health removes the need for healing at whatever level.
So we learn to apply faith to our health daily, than wait to seek (divine) healing. Which Church will we go to get that – a market place for the procurement of divine medications? Yet a senator who is a former governor takes a pension and a salary together regularly? This is happening in the face of our tertiary health institutions been degraded to consulting clinics.
It is now clear to us why Jesus came to “bring a sword”. I see why there is a need to leave been sober and consider a revolution. It is not about flesh and blood but about principalities and powers, the rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in this land. Living in the village is great gain. If anyone lives in a town other than his/hers, this is an advice: begin to relate with your hometown. You may return one day and find that you have lost your home. It is comfortable to live as a stranger in strange lands, but there is an eternal cost to pay for it.
When our advance into President Buhari’s heart was made, we had a picture on our minds: that of Mr President’s opportunity to rid the All Progressive Congress (APC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) elements within the executive arm of government, or immobilize them – it was good that “tenure elongation” was killed to bring us where we are now.
The proponents of that “culture” have not given up. President Muhammadu Buhari has this singular opportunity in the governorship primaries of the party conducted in Akwa Ibom State. He should not waste it like he wasted the one he had during the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly,
Four men lost their lives during the process of nominating their governorship candidate in the APC in our State. They died because they played their parts in ensuring democracy is sustained, they died insisting on their fair franchise. They did not expect they could be killed for insisting on their fundamental rights.
Are we not usually asked to “defend our votes (rights)”? How do we defend what we cannot see nor find? This is where the error of the current judgment of the leadership of the APC appears porous and challenged, if it is thought that election materials cannot be diverted from polling centres and results written from strange places.
How do you vote and defend it when balloting materials are no where in sight, excluding over 58% of voters who were present at ward centres and willing to vote? What causes voters’ apathy during election? Its the danger of coming out and the time wasted in watching what should not be. Is it not a shame that only 30% of the total numbers of voters in country choose their leaders? Is it not a pity that of this 30%, only 5% control electoral decisions? Should we keep quite about this?
The harmless men who died? One died by the nozzle of a policeman’s gun; the policeman is paid to protect him; and the others, by the nozzles of the guns welded by the thugs, who are arranged to Akwa Ibom people, hired by the “winning team” to snatch the victory and rob the majority of their collective franchise. The team with the majority would not fear a fair competition to determine the majority. Who ever corrupts the process of determining the majority has not the majority on his side.
The conduct of the APC governorship primary in Akwa Ibom State is not acceptable to decent minded people, but in party politics what matters is interest, whether personal or collective. So it does not matter if blood is shed in the process. After all, it has always been like that! This is why Nigerians are an endangered people in the hands of those who hold them as captives of viced politics.
Many Nigerians die from prostrate cancer seasonally because they cannot afford the medication. Many Nigerian men die from poverty, and those who survive poverty are killed for protesting their poverty to their leaders. Indeed, the destruction of the poor is their poverty.
But we care that President Buhari puts his foot down and understand how impossible it is for the “rule of law” to thrive in Nigeria with laws that are unjust. A law must be just to make it a rule, otherwise, anarchy awaits an outburst. Truly, no rule is just where equals have unequal shares, and unequal, equal shares.
I do not agree that Mr President is helpless about our case. I will show this with precedences that he can do something to the scammed result of the governorship primaries of the APC in Akwa Ibom State, submitted to and adopted by the National Working Committee of the party, preempting the decision of the Appeal Committee that should look into petitions arising from the illegitimate outcome of that primaries.
Olusegun Obasanjo, in his bid to bring the kind of order he wanted in the PDP, “forced” some candidates going into elections on the PDP leadership because he felt he had good reasons to do so. If Mr President had stamped his foot down on the invasion of the the national assembly by nPDP nomads, Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara would not have headed our legislative houses to bequeath on us the redundant men and women bequeathed.
In Imo State, Nigeria, during the processes that led to the 2007 general elections, Senator Ifeanyi Ararume emerged governorship candidate of the PDP through the same means we had recently in Akwa Ibom APC, and for which we are protesting. Obasanjo unilaterally disqualified him.
He went to court and won against the president. To end the show, Obasanjo directed his national chairman to withdraw the party from contesting the governorship election in Imo State. He rejected Chibuike Amaechi in Rivers State, and only a rascally supreme court judgment relived that after all.
Mr President must now stamp his foot down on Akwa Ibom State by personally insisting on the nullifying the skewed victory of Dr Nsima Ekere at the governorship primary election in the state, otherwise, he will pay the price of corruption dearly. He must not allow the majority of members of APC in Akwa Ibom State to suffer the kind of injustice he suffered during the processes of defining his presidential ambition. It is said he who feels it knows it.
This will help him tackle the men who have the skin of the APC outwards and the blood of the PDP inwards, pretending to be full blooded APC members. The gene of the political rascality of the PDP is not found in the skin but in the blood of those the PDP generated.
The rumour that Adams Oshomhole preempted the emergence of Dr Ekere as candidate of the APC in Akwa Ibom State is sad. He is alleged to have advised a former military governor against picking his nomination form. He is also alleged to have been paid $400,000 for his support and retention of Dr Ekere as APV candidate for Akwa Ibom State.
What Godswill Akpabio will do to President Buhari will swallow up all that Saraki, Dogara and the 8th National Assembly did to him, in the near future. The stamping down of Mr President’s foot, and his insisting on hoisting a consensus governorship candidate of the APC on Akwa Ibom State, will pull the carpet of the impending political corruption and war from under the feet of Senator Akpabio and his gang of “terrorists”, rendering them deflated and Akwa Ibom people liberated.
With Senator John Akpanudoedehe as APC governorship flag bearer and Deacon Udom Emmanuel as flag bearer of the PDP, there is the greatest assurance Mr President can give Akwa Ibom people that 2019 will be well and that lives would not be lost in the State during the forthcoming general elections.
On a very serious and last note, if Mr President sincerely needs a PDP man by blood as the next Governor of Akwa Ibom State from 2019, he should then support the reelection bid of His Excellency, Governor Udom Gabriel Emmanuel, a gentle godfearing man. Otherwise, I see Akwa Ibom State as a theatre of war, as Senator Akpabio has already foretold. These past 3 years had brought great calm to the 8 years malady of the Akpabio administration in the State.
All these problems arise because of a derelict human centred church leadership in the country: its a shame that Nigeria is decaying in the presence of a vibrant “church”: where is their ability to season and where is their ability to preservation?
I remain the light in the lamp that is upon its lamp stand to lighten Nigeria, and I am the city built upon a hill that cannot be hidden from Nigerians. I am therefore a witness against the porous, dismal and an unpeople leadership bewitching Nigeria and Nigerians.
Ini Akpan Morgan is the Convener of the APC Patriots Grouping (APCpg) in Akwa Ibom State, a Christian Teacher and writes in from Uyo via “time.subsidaries@gmail.com“
