Mariam Mariam
Nowhere in the world can a sitting government be getting ready for election and we have the kind of crisis in the power sector. They (PDP) are taking for granted that they will win every position they contest. So, the present situation shows how much contempt these fellows have for the Nigerian people …I can’t imagine in a normal democracy where people are expecting that their votes will count, that a government so close to the election will allow that. What it means is that these people have total disregard for the Nigerian people. They expect to rig the elections, so the Nigerian people don’t matter”-Pat Utomi
I have often found myself not agreeing with most things that I have read from Pat Utomi, but in the building up of the elections due in the next couple of days as I have quoted above, I think Utomi has been very apt in his observation of the Nigerian political scene. Last week, newspapers carried the report where Obasanjo attributed the protracted power outage across the country to sabotage. Obasanjo was quoted by the media as saying that “I thought that the measures we are taking in recent times will have put things right. I am not sure…but I am suspecting sabotage. I don’t say there is sabotage but I am suspecting. And if I am suspecting, I have to find out. I will send a team out to all generation stations and find out what is happening and the report will be made public. And if anybody is involved in the sabotage, they will be seriously dealt with”.
There are many things that we have said about Obasanjo in the past: his duplicity, his criminal proprieties, barefaced lies, vindictiveness and absolute incompetence as a ruler. But the man never ceases to amaze, and for me the revelations of the past week in respect of power supply crisis in the country only corroborates what Nigeria’s greatest writer, Chinua Achebe, said of Obasanjo this week, that the man has taken our country to the lowest level it ever could be. Obasanjo does not seem to have a sense of shame and neither is he a man of honour; and he is clearly a president of the lowest common denominator, otherwise, he would not mount the electioneering rostrum to give as cause of the monumental crisis of power supply in Nigeria “suspected sabotage”.
It is clearly unacceptable that the very tall promises he made during his 1999 inauguration, the constitution of all manner of bodies, the expenditure of over one trillion naira, including the award of multibillion dollar power supply contracts without observation of the due process, Obasanjo will not be modest to accept the failure of his leadership of the power sector in particular, but would instead go on a wild goose chase in search of some faceless saboteurs. This is where Pat Utomi’s statement at the head of this piece makes such sense. If the PDP regime is not preparing another route to power, it baffles that they would take the record of their negligence, incompetence and outright disrespect of the Nigerian people in vital areas of national development such as electricity supply to the next election due in the next two weeks.
Obasanjo must be living in cloud cuckoo land to imagine that Nigerians will take from him that a faceless group of saboteurs have been responsible for the pains he has inflicted on them over the past eight years, if we just take the power sector alone, where according to the records, over one trillion naira has been expended, in many instances without much transparency, openness or due process. It seems part of the package of the sector that operatives of the regime play their parts in inflicting darkness on the country and get promoted to higher levels; this was the way with former minister, Segun Agagu, who became governor of Ondo State, and Obasanjo’s PDP is rewarding Liyael Imoke with the governorship of Cross River State after presiding over darkness for many years on behalf of Obasanjo.
Let us restate the salient points; on the eve of the general elections, Obasanjo will go down in history as the most incompetent, unpatriotic and the most arrogant leader Nigeria has ever been saddled with. This ‘know-it-all’ president casts a know-it-all pall on the country, made very wrong choices of lieutenants to run very vital institutions of state, largely because his choices in many cases were driven by an agenda other than the nation’s best interest. The ambience of work did not encourage creative thinking; it subverted competence or patriotic commitment. It is this incompetence which has been at the root of the problems of power supply, not some faceless saboteurs.
What Obasanjo was doing at the PDP rally was true to character; he was passing the buck of responsibility from himself and hoping that he can send the Nigerian people on a wild goose chase in search of saboteurs. If ever there was a saboteur, we must look for him within the precincts of Aso Villa, where he has presided over a regime of darkness in the past eight years. So without wishing it, Obasanjo has actually indicted his own regime and has given us one more reason why the Nigerian people should give themselves the pause in their choice of leaders in the coming elections, Obasanjo’s tenure is far too damaged, and has become such a liability that elections are truly free and fair, they are most likely to harvest only the wrath of the Nigerian people.
It is this background that has led to very disturbing phenomena in the polity. INEC continues to operate in an openly partisan manner, almost like an extension of the PDP and the Presidency. It appeals against court decisions that do not favour the PDP; the police are posturing like the thuggery department of the Presidency and the PDP, and so brazen have these two institutions become that the Supreme Court was forced to point out their openly partisan posture a few days ago. Hon. Justice Dahiru Mustapha took a look at the counsel representing the police and asked pointedly: “What is the interest of the IGP in this matter? You got nothing to do in this case. What judgement did the Court of Appeal give against the IGP that you are cross-appealing? The Inspector General of Police is to provide security and to maintain law and order and not to be political. In this suit, he is merely a nominal party. What is your business whether the office of the vice president remains vacant or not when a lot of crime is going on?” Justice Sylvester Onu also told INEC’s counsel: “You got nothing to do in this case. Your client INEC is supposed to be neutral; if Atiku ceases to be vice president, INEC will not be called upon to conduct election for his replacement, it is duty of the National Assembly.”
It has become very clear that INEC appeals in political cases have become a major problem we have to grapple with in the process leading to the elections, and so disturbing is is that the Nigerian Bar Association has come out to appeal to INEC to drop such appeals in order to save the nation’s electoral time-table. NBA reminded that as an umpire, INEC lacks the power of appeal. “For example”, asked NBA “how does a battle between two candidates for a seat at the Senate directly affect INEC, or disqualification of a candidate reversed by the courts so bother INEC that it enters an appeal”?
This is the chaotic background against which the last two weeks before the elections is unfolding for the Nigerian people. And as if to present us with a Rubik cube-like complexity, two different rulings have further added to the atmosphere of uncertainty in the country in respect of the eligibility of Vice President Atiku Abubakar. But given the partisan posture of Iwu’s INEC, your guess is as good as mine the choice that the body will make in respect of the rulings of the courts.
How the events of the next few days pan out will certainly underscore the credibility of an electoral process which has been skeptically received by the Nigeria people in the past couple of months, especially with the partisan stance of INEC in favour of the Presidency and the PDP regime. This skepticism has taken a further nudge given the attitude of the security forces to the civil society organisations committed to the achievement of a credible electoral process in the next few weeks. The SSS has been reported by the BBC to be harassing the leadership of the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), while there have been concerted efforts to demonize the Alliance for Credible Elections (ACE).
When all is said and done, Nigeria is saddled with a president able to fashion good and evil schemes with equal measure, as a perceptive observer once remarked; as a leader in the process of development, Obasanjo has shown a very shocking incompetence in every sector of national life and it is that deep-seated incompetence which made it difficult for him and his regime to deliver us from darkness despite expending one trillion naira over the past eight years.
But every tyranny gets comeuppance, no matter how long takes; Obasanjo is very aware that such a time will come with the electoral process. He knows tha the Nigerian people are capable of delivering a very sharp riposte to him and his vote-rigging contraption called the PDP, so he spent the better part of the las four years manufacturing dubious schemes to shroud the electoral process in as much crises and controversies as possible. In the meantime, he is hoping that the time-tested accordingly, SATURDAY PUNCH of March 31, 2007, quotes him as saying that “We must stop them. History will not forgive us, our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we stand by and watch these guys”.
Pat Utomi went further that the situation which faces the Nigerian people calls for concerted action. “I have approached my colleagues in the opposition and set up these issues, to say, ‘Okay, let us lay down our own ego so that Nigeria will move forward’. That is my goal in this. When I started out, I had a two-point mission. One is to ensure that we build a viable opposition in Nigeria. My top priority is to build a viable opposition to get rid of the current administration that has served the Nigerian people so poorly. The quality of life in Nigeria is worse today than in 1999. I am persuaded that no government has performed more poorly in the history of Nigeria”. These indeed are the words of a concerned patriot, and one hopes the opposition will hearken to them to build a formidable platform to decisively defeat the PDP and spare the Nigerian people eight extra years of locust.
