Mariam Mariam
Just over a month ago, the maverick Senator and former governor of Jigawa State, Saminu Turaki upped the political temperature some
what, when he advocated a tenure elongation for President Umaru Yar’ adua.In shouting Saminu to order, most commentators had assumed that such a call could only emanate from the monster raving loony fringe of the PDP. Other analysts even described Sarninu’s impetuousness, as his own bizarre way of drawing attention to himself, against the back- drop of his serious problems with the anti-graft bodies and dwindling political fortunes at home in Jigawa and his lack of relevance nationally. In asking what really was wrong with Sarninu Turaki, in a write up, I had pointed out that not even a line of denunciation had issued forth, to calm frayed political nerves around {he country, given the defeat not-too- long-ago, of the Third Term Agenda of the disgraced kleptocratic despot, Olusegun Obasanjo. The bolt from nowhere from Sarninu Turaki, did appear to me to be just the ranting of a maverick politician, given a number of interesting co-incidences.
In the first place, as governor of Katsina state, President Umaru Yar’adua was a supporter of Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda. So effusive was he about the tenure elongation project, that the Ibrahim Mantu committee that was working to ensure the project, took the well-orchestrated public bearing to Katsina, where Yar’adua was expected to rnanipulate the results. Yet, in a twist of fate, Katsina became one of the strongest centres of resistance to the entire process to subvert our national will. People demonstrated on the streets, and Umaru Yar’adua has the unfortunate record of being the only governor, under whose watch, people were shot in the streets for opposing the Third Term Agenda. It is one of the ironies of political life that Umaru Yar’adua would become one of the main beneficiaries of the defeat of the anti-people Third Term Agenda. In coming out to advocate another ‘Third Term Agenda”, Saminu Turaki was playing the smart game of stoking a project that our sitting president was part of, in a different political setting just about two years ago.
If people had dismissed Sarninu Turaki’s ratings, they would have been shocked, that even the ruling party, the PDP, has not abandoned the ghost of the Third Term Agenda! The Nigerian newspapers of Friday, June 27, 2008, all carried the report, that the PDP has proposed seven year single term tenure for the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. as well as 6-years single term for governors and three years for the chairmen of local governments. These proposals were the highlights of a 13-point position paper, which the party’s chairman, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor submitted to the National Electoral Reform Committee, at its public hearing session in Abuja.
The PDP had argued that the incumbency factor has become a major obstacle to free and f air elections, especially when an incumbent is seeking re-election. The operatives ~f the ruling party certainly. Know better than all other Nigerians how incumbency has been exploited to maximally render meaningless, the entire electoral process since 1999.
On an incremental basis, the PDP in cahoots with 1NEC, the security forces and thugs have continued to manipulate the nation s electoral system to a point where they have given elections a very bad name in our Country. So would the proposal. to have a single seven year term for president, be an acceptance of guilt by the PDP mandarins? Is It a sort of contriteness or coming out clean m the public place? The records of both the party and Its chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor, do not suggest any statesmanship or some form of altruism, of a patriotic nature.
Vincent Ogbulafor is a typically unprincipled Nigerian politician; he Is no known to hold any principles dear, and is like the OJo Madakwes of this world, beholden only to his stomach..Let us recall that during the 1999.elections, he was a gubernatorial candidate of the APP! he lost he election, but was given a ministerial appointment by Obasanjo. Coming into the realm of lucre, the unprincipled politician that he is Ogbulafor abandoned !he APP and crossed into the PDP. He was later to serve as a non-descript party secretary during the Audu Ogbeh tenure, and was never on record as having opposed the Third Term Agenda nor having stood for anything worthy before Obasanjo decided to dump him. It was from a political Siberia, that a new set of masters of the PDP in the new dispensation, the governors, plucked him, of the PDP. to become the chairman of the PDP.
It is quite obvious, that the leopard never changes its spots. At time when Nigerians thought the PDP was going to be given a new lease of life to husband the political process in a more responsible manner, the firststatementsfromthestill-dizzy-in-surpriseathiselevationOgbulafo have been a series of faux pas. First, Ogbulafor declared that he would be 101%loyal to President Umaru Yar’adua, thus exploding every hope of a party which guides and checks the Executive arm of government; and as if that was not enough. Ogbulafor showed his true colours as an enemy of the democratic process, by saying that the PDP was sworn to rule for the next 60 years and he did not care if Nigeria became a one party state! It is this kind of background. which makes Nigerians uneasy and about the new proposal from the PDP and its chairman. Vincent Ogbulafor, We have not forgotten how the Amadu Ali executive did everything to manipulate the Third Term Agenda into place, using a mix of threats, bribes, arm twisting and the heating up of the polity. Besides, the devil is always in the detail, as the saying goes. The Third Term Agenda was deliberately left hazy so that we could not see that if the amendment had succeeded, Obasanjo would have been in power for an extra twelve years! In the same manner, what Ogbulafor and the PDP are asking for is that Umaru Yar’adua should enjoy a seven year term, after the first four years, thus being in power for a total of eleven years!
There must be something truly wrong with the characters in the PDP,. Who believe that they can manipulate us into accepting their lunatic schemes to elongate the tenure of presidents and governors of their .party. How did this lunacy afflict this section of the political elite? Why In the first place, as governor of Katsina state, President Umaru do they disrespect the Nigerian people so much? Is it the fact that they have stolen so much money and believe they should just be there forever, as a marker of the impunity with which they have ruined Nigeria? Let us be honest with ourselves, and ask who in his right senses will truly seek the extension of the lack lustre tenure of Umaru Yar’adua? What will be the basis of such lunacy? What can the regime point out as its strength or its achievements in the one year that it has slept-walked through power, like a punch drunk, third-rate boxer?
At a time when Nigeria faces more crises than at any other time in its existence: Niger Delta revolt; teachers out of classrooms; power supply that has simply ground to a halt; a heightened insecurity of lives with platoon strength groups of robbers prowling major cities; the unemployment of thousands of school leavers; the collapse of industry; the tearing sitting apart of the family system; the entrenchment of obscurantism with all kinds of fringe religious groups bending people’s minds on the prowl; the destruction of the nation’s medical system or its fossilization in the techniques the 1950s, just to mention a few. Amidst all these problems, which have pulled a pre-modern society back to the Stone Age, the PDP is not thinking of how to solve the problems it says it was elected to fix.
They are only obsessed with tenure elongation! The impostors of the PD~ under the joker calling himself their chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor should be reminded that Obasanjo was a much determined despot, yet we DEFEATED his Third Term Agenda! He should also be reminded, that tenure elongation is a settled item of our political life. If they cannot face the problems of the nation, after massively rigging themselves into power, they are better advised to ship out! Nigeria faces far more problems needing an urgent attention from serious political actors. A tenure elongation project is NOT the way to solve those problems.
.D. B .Zang: Atribute
In June 1995, I was in the Jos area for about 25 days, recording materials for the BBC’s AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE program. I was making the program to examine the years of forced labour in the Tin Mines of the Plateau when between 1942 and 1944 over 110000 people were brought into the mines to do forced labour from all the provinces of Northem Nigeria, to aid the British war effort to stock pile tin. The British had lost Malaya to the Japanese, so the mines of the Plateau became strategically important to British imperialism’s war effort. About 11 000 of those miners died because of the harsh conditions in the mines.’ My program was 10 interview survivors from that sad period, which most people did not even know about. Two people helped my work: Rev. Father Jack Yali who lives in the USA today and has remained one of my really good friends and the late Dalo Da D. B. Zang, the Wazirin Jos.
One morning, 1 drove to his house in Bukuru, hoping to get an interview. After waiting for about three hours, he was about to walk past me, when my minder said that was the man I came to see. I walked up to him and explained my mission. At that time, he was part of the PTFteam With General Buhari; Da D. B. Zang told me he was not ready to give me an interview, and be was driven out of the compound. The following morning I was back there, determined to extract honey out a stone, after being in the Plateau for about 21 days, That day, he camein late, and seemed to be in a harry again and was surprised to see me the amongst a group of people warring for him.
About an hour later; he sent for the SSC reporter who was disturbing his house hoi? Lo and behold. there was food to eat, and he insisted 1must join hin. Then he asked me: Just what 1wanted.to talk about. When 1 explained that I was exploring the years of aikin dole (forced labour) in the mines, he relaxed and told me a moving story of how people came into the mines from all over northern Nigeria, the exposure to cold. the attack of people’s feet, including his own, by jigger and the deaths .
He gave me very remarkable sound bite. which enriched my program. He asked my name just as I was about to leave his house: “Oh so you are my son, and 1had left you out there all day yesterday”!” I never ever saw him again until read the story of his passing at the weekend. Dalo Da D. S. Zang was a truly wonderful old man and a bridge builder, who made outstanding contributions to the building of Nigerian.
