abdulraheem
When the news broke last week, that Professor Jerry Gana, the Political Adviser to President Obasanjo (many times Minister, ex-head of DFRRI and MAMSER), made the shotlist of people who have signified their intention to be President of our country come 2007, I had a most wonderful day, laughing at the un-seriousness of the PDP elite and how lacking in respect for the Nigerian people those usurpers must really be. I mean, how on earth can Jerry Gana drop his hat in the ring for Nigeria’s Presidency? Is it a contest to determine the most consummate court jester of the land? Or is it to choose the number one boot licker? Are we looking for the lowest common denominator in the affairs of Nigeria? After all, if we went as low as Obasanjo to choose a President, with its disastrous consequences over the past seven years, then a smart guy like Professor Jerry Gana, and I give it to him that he is a very smart survivor, would have reckoned that his own chances are very bright indeed. It is after all, a nation of ‘anything goes,’ as Obasanjo once described our dear country. It is only in a country of ‘anything goes,’ that we would tolerate the absolute incompetence of the Obasanjo Presidency for this long; watch the man spend money illegally and without appropriation; it is in such a country that N302 billion will be missing from the proceeds of oil revenue and nobody will be sanctioned and it is in a country of ‘anything goes’ that Obasanjo will forge the Electoral Act and then ask that it should be blamed on ‘printers’ devil (a ‘born-again’ President that one!; massively rig elections, illegally collect billions of naira to build a presidential library and cap it all with the audacious effort to steal the nation’s constitutional order. Here anything goes indeed. Armed with a superb intellect, a very deceptively warm persona and worldly wise in the ways of political survival in Nigeria, then there is no one as eminently qualified as our dear Professor Jerry Gana, to want to be the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If it is to survive, then he has; or is it service? Well our Professor has served the military dictators to the very best of his ability, a clear Christian conscience and with all the intellectual sagacity of a patriot. It is to his credit that he did not see evil under Babangida (the first of our military dictators who plucked him from the relative obscurity and near poverty of the classrooms of ABU), he did not talk evil under the maximum dictatorship of Sani Abacha (remember that Professor Gana never ever lies!), he was too busy working and serving. And when civilian government returned, under the despot from Otta, Olusegun Obasanjo, Professor Jerry Gana was also indispensably a part of the entourage. His bonafide was absolutely impeccable! Here was a fellow Baptist ‘born again’ President, who needed both political support and ‘spiritual’ re-inforcement; who else was better placed to offer these, but our own dear Professor Jerry Gana? There was the small matter of the Villa’s chapel that also needed to be put in place, and it was done in record time, with the spiritual dexterity of people like our Professor. He has remained a permanent fixture in there ever since, like a perfumed candle, shining the light of his spiritual loyalty to Obasanjo and ensuring that he was available for all types of errands, that will keep the dictator happy and on top of the game. It is on record that this never-lying Professor was at the heart of the rather controversial attempt to smuggle a mysterious constitution that sought to achieve a third term for Obasanjo at the National Political Reform Conference. Like a bubble, it bursted in his face, but he took that in his stride; left God to fight his battles and he intensified his prayers, like a faithful prayer warrior that he is. Ordinary mortals like us cannot fathom the ways of the Lord, and it must be that people like the ‘spiritually upright’ Professor literally has the GSM number to higher places (I don’t mean Aso Villa alone!) and must have been privy to some ‘spiritual scoops’ from yonder (I blush as a journalist should for missing scoops from on high) that obviously must have emboldened him to seek the candidature of the PDP in next year’s presidential race! Otherwise, I believe that, jokes apart, if the Professor permits himself the luxury of a critical self-appraisal, away from his spiritual intoxications, he ought to have found out that the most honourable thing he could do for himself, is a quiet retirement into greater supplication to God, for forgiveness of sins and also find the time to enjoy whatever he might have raked-in, from all the years of serving all kinds of despicable regimes, from the military dictatorships to the anti-people and absolutely incompetent civilian regime of the current despot in Aso Villa, Olusegun Obasanjo. Sometimes I wonder how someone like Professor Jerry Gana comes to terms with his own conscience. What is he going to tell his grand-children about being known as AGIP: Any-Government-In-Power? He must do Nigeria a favour of writing his memoirs, where he would painstakingly reveal the secrets of boot-licking, submission to all kinds of bosses: military dictators and civilian autocrats. Some provisional titles for such a book could be ‘BOOTLICKING WITH SPIRITUAL FERVOUR’; ‘TELL NO LIES APPROACH TO SERVICE’; ‘PULPIT HARRANGUE TO CHOP-CHOP’; ‘MAN MUST CHOP SPIRITUALITY’; ‘I WILL SERVE, I WILL CHOP, I WILL OBEY’; ‘SPIRITUALLY OBEY THE LAST ORDER’; ‘I AM ANNOINTED IN BOOTLICKING’, just to name a few. (Professor Gana must pay me my consultancy fee!). I hardly ever dream; but since the news of our Professor’s interest in the presidency hit the headlines last week, I have had this persistent dream that Obasanjo rigged the PDP convention and Jerry Gana became the party’s candidate. He then pulled all stops and achieved the Mother of all riggings during the general elections in April 2007, for Jerry Gana to become the new President, since Gana was the only candidate that can be trusted to carry on with the reform program, protect Baba’s legacy and keep the Villa chapel in business etc. Nationwide protests notwithstanding, a badly shaken Professor Jerry Gana was handed the keys to Aso Villa as the new occupant. On the first full day at his new home, one of the orderlies or is it protocol officers came in for a consultation with the new President. But what happened next shocked the protocol officer. The newly installed ‘president’ Professor Jerry Gana fell on his knees and was making for the boots of the protocol officer as if to lick it, in the manner of old feudal courtiers. The shocked protocol officer beat a retreat, saying, ‘no Mr. President, why are you doing that to me?? Just then, Professor Gana remembered who he was and muttered aloud “Force of Habit!” Unfortunately I woke up from my sleep at this juncture and could not continue with this dream sequence, I hope when next I fall asleep, Professor Jerry Gana will continue his drama in my dream. I honestly think that the presidency of our country has been turned into a joke, but we are not laughing! Nigerians must decisively tell the Jerry Ganas of this world that we are deserving of much better and qualitative leadership than the ‘Alawada’ or ‘Jagua’ varieties of comedy they represent. Jerry Gana should please know that he is a joke carried too far. “PDP: From Tazarce to Tawatse”! (Text message) It was my persistently perceptive correspondent who sent me the text above last weekend. It was in response to the interesting developments in the fast sinking titanic called the PDP. It hit an iceberg last week, when a new faction emerged to challenge the Obasanjo faction, headed by the unelected (and therefore illegal?) Chairman and ‘Garrison democrat’, Dr. Ahmadu Ali. It appears that at long last, the PDP was now going to have a taste of its own poison. Over the past seven years, they have engineered the factionalisation of other parties in order to weaken them, as vehicles of a democratic challenge to PDP rule. In the process, they got lost in a habit of undemocratic practices that endangered the nation’s democratic process. The PDP could beat its members into line only because of the power of patronage, bribery and brute force. Members were not happy with the way the party’s affairs were being conducted, but could not walk out of the party because that meant the abandonment of a cash cow or the route to it. Yet the rot was deepening as the arrogance of the viceroys that Obasanjo appointed to run the conquered party, reached a head, during the run up to the botched third term agenda. So sure were they that they could force everybody to do their biddings that they stepped on all toes and alienated all and sundry. But the defeat of third term exposed the hollowness of their threats and all their arrogant struttings and the huffing and puffing! The appearance of a new faction made up of the original founders of the party, shows just how inept the Obasanjo clique is, in the game of politics. The clique had built its house of cards on a platform of authoritarian control and the control it has of access to patronage; but the Obasanjo clique is very unpopular with members of the PDP. The aggrieved members, and these were legion, were waiting for a suitable opportunity to expose the utter weakness of the Obasanjo clique and how tenuous its hold really is, on the party. The illegal leadership of Dr Amadu Ali, Ojo Maduekwe and co, also carry a heavy moral burden, which makes it difficult for them to play a noble political role. It was therefore not a surprise that they turned what ought to be handled with a deft political approach to a law and order issue; they mobilised the state apparatus of security to handle a partisan political issue, and before you could spell PDP, mobile policemen had taken over the factional office. The law and order approach represents the true face of the Obasanjo clique, and it again underscores why Obasanjo has been such a disaster for Nigeria’s process of democratic consolidation. It is important for the political elite to pull in one direction, to build a formidable platform to decisively defeat the PDP as it is presently constituted in the next elections; this party has transmogrified to reproduce the worst features of the Obasanjo persona: vindictiveness, intolerance, authoritarianism and even wickedness. Can it be purged of these terrible features in the near future? Must the fate of our country continue to be tied to a party that reproduces the worst features of the despicable despot that heads it? It can only be more woes, more suffering for the Nigerian people, if we are not rid of this vote-rigging contraption called the PDP. It is what the founding fathers too realised that made them finally speak up last week. They have come to see that if it is left in the hands of the Obasanjo clique, it will be decisively rejected by the Nigerian people, and they too will be guilty by association; they might end up being stoned on the streets by the Nigerian people as having been the original founders of a party that became a hijacked vehicle that was then used to terrorise and loot our country by a team of brigands, in a manner of speaking. The days ahead will be very interesting indeed. It is part of those interesting scenarios that Dr. Amadu Ali came out the other day to say that Obasanjo’s shoes were too big for anybody to wear. He might not know that those are actually like the shoes of a leper; and I don’t know any sane person who would want to wear the shoes that a leper vacates, because leprosy is very contagious, as the medical doctor that Ali is, would tell us. What really should be done by the Nigerian people is to burn those leprosy-infested shoes that Dr Amadu Ali is talking about. We must purchase for ourselves a beautiful new pair of shoes in 2007, one that fits our legs, does not leave us in pain because it was not actually our size, as the Obasanjo shoe did in seven years, leaving us all with blisters on our toes and soles. Dr Amadu Ali, please take away the leprosy infested shoes by midnight on May 28th, 2007. We are through with the owner of that pair of shoes.
