“People are saying that the PDP is dead or about to die a concerned person like me will remain in the party till it dies and give it a befitting burial. If PDP will die, let it die in our hands so we will give it a befitting burial and mourn her.” – Adamawa State Governor, Murtala Nyako.
THE late Chief Mobolaji Bank-Anthony must be turning in his grave! It was on Igbosere Road in Lagos, if I recall properly, that he established his undertaking business in old Lagos. It was appropriately named “THE SYMPATHETIC UNDERTAKERS”.
I don’t know if the business is still thriving, because far more aggressive undertakers entered the morbid business, reflective of the arrival of vulgar money and its vulgar display in Nigeria, including the preparation of the dead for the final rites!
We can lament the passing of Sir Bank-Anthony’s more dignified business approach, but recent rumblings in Nigerian politics come with noise, blood and tears. Cloak-and-dagger is at the heart of politics, except that the PDP took vulgarity and cut throat to a height that should shame that most shameless of contraptions, Africa’s largest vote-rigging monstrosity, the PDP!
We have arrived at a critical juncture on the route to 2015; the gloves have fallen and the pugilists are revealing very ugly bare knuckles.
The struggle is for the soulless soul of the PDP and President Goodluck Jonathan’s corner, is the red corner of mischief, that brought together the most eye popping and strangest bedfellows: old men Tukur, Anenih and EK Clarke; the eternal AGIP Jerry Gana and sundry political flotsam and jetsam.
They are confident, as someone once mischievously noted, that their PDP faction can seamlessly “merge” with INEC and the security agencies to show muscle. This is where Murtala Nyako comes to fore. He represents the “Undertaker” faction within the huge basket of scorpions that the PDP has always been, as Chief Sunday Awoniyi once observed.
After years of injecting political poison into Nigerian political society and ingesting collateral poisoning themselves, including DELIBERATELY herding the people of Northern Nigeria to Northern Cameroun, with their opportunistic support of Jonathan in 2011, Nyako and his colleagues in the “Undertakers” faction of the PDP are now on an offensive.
They will stop Jonathan by all means, including hastening the death of the behemoth holding Nigeria in bearhug, the PDP. They are importing political caskets, but unlike Sir Bank-Anthony, they are UNSYMPATHETIC undertakers for the PDP. The solution finally discovered the problem on the turf of Nigerian politics!
Let us be clear about it; all the tendencies within the PDP are embattled. Nigerians will give everything to chase away the party that has systematically institued underdevelopment and the pillaging of our national patrimony since 1999. The duel-to-the-death will weaken the party further; yet, I get a sneak feeling that, when all is said and done, they will somehow paper over the crack and pull from the precipice.
The fear of loss of power will nudge them back to political realism, akin to a wedding between a feuding couple: each is fed up but none can or dares walk out! But before that realisation, we are guaranteed a lot of absurdities. For example, PDP just set up a “reconciliation” committee composed of Jonathan sidekicks and headed by his number one Man Friday, Seriake Dickson. He previously added much Niger Delta petrol to the raging political fire, by serially abusing Jonathan “enemies” in the recent past. How then does he function as reconciler-in-chief?
Meanwhile, Nigeria bleeds 400,000 barrels of crude oil everyday, while Jonathan continues to pay billions of naira monthly to Niger Delta thugs “protecting” pipelines to facilitate continued oil theft, almost like a vital component of Jonathan’s “Transformation Agenda”.
Jonathan needs an extra term in 2015, to ensure that his Niger Delta constituency achieves “Resource Control” by subterfuge, through the continuing oil-theft regime. This backdrop plus a threatening political death emboldens the “Undertakers” of Murtala Nyako’s corner of the political boxing ring. Seconds Out! Bring on the political caskets!!