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Desperate to hit newspaper headlines and thus assume some form of relevance in the comity of real and patriotic Nigerians, there is a troika of pretenders, according to concerned fellow country men and women, who have made the art of double-speak and peddling bare-faced lies as truths to “impress their sponsors.”
In their desperation, they forget the duty they individually and collectively owe the Nigerian state, its sacred institutions and peoples. Instead they cast so much aspersions on groups and personalities they consider as threats to their devious schemes designed to ridicule others that are not their co-travellers perhaps, just to position themselves or whatever groups they represent ahead of 2015 presidential election.
And from their respective biological ages and assumed experience cum wisdom in government and governance, much is expected from them in terms of loyalty and utterances. Alas, such fine qualities in patriotism that mark out statesmen and women are demonstrably lacking in them.
“Before now, it was their spokesman, Lai Mohammed. But Chief Bisi Akande, Muhammadu Buhari and Nasir el-Rufai have joined the group. They lie, abuse, harass and intimidate perceived opposition just to be heard,” said a public affairs analyst, Samuel Edosomwan in Benin yesterday.
Dubious coincidence
Last weekend, the threesome under different circumstances not only insulted the sensibilities of Nigerian’s and President Goodluck Jonathan but uttered statements that observers view as capable of derailing the country’s democracy. But the presidency was swift at addressing them in their own foul language.
Akande
Hitherto respected as an elder statesman from whose table of patriotic disposition, lesser experienced Nigerians can feed. As interim chairman of the newly registered opposition party, APC, Bisi Akande unveiled himself as one of the hidden personalities behind Lai Mohammed’s deliberate “negative spins” in the media recently when he described Jonathan’s as kindergarten presidency.
So miffed with the senior citizen’s qualification of the nation’s presidency that presidential spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, a man he can father several times to feed him with a dose of his caustic medicine.
Hear Abati: “Chief Bisi Akande has every right to embark on a flight of fancy about the APC beating the PDP in the 2015 general elections, but he does no justice to his age and status when he resorts to propagating falsehood, willfully insulting the President of his country, impugning his integrity and desecrating the very office which his party wishes to take over in 2015 by fair or foul means.
“We urge Chief Akande and his fellow-travelers to remember that there are laws against libel and defamation of character in this country even if there are no legal impediments to indecorous, hypocritical and unpatriotic vituperations.”
He added: “Nothing else but gross ignorance and lack of consideration could have led Chief Akande to refer to a President who, having served as deputy governor, governor, vice president and president, has far more experience of governance at the highest level than him and his preferred “candidates”, as a kindergarten leader.
“By his very unguarded and intemperate outburst yesterday, Chief Akande exhibited not only an unbecoming lack of respect for the person and office of the President of his country, but also a complete disregard for the patriotic feelings of the millions of Nigerians who voted for President Jonathan and who continue to
appreciate his sincere efforts to positively transform the nation.”
Ordinarily, in a typical African setting, a Reuben Abati or a Jonathan would not dare regard Akande, a man old enough to father them in the foregoing manner. But it takes an elder blinded by motives other than the expected self-respect to attract such insults; as factual as they may be.
And it is such position that caused a colleague and analyst, Max Amuchie to comment on a social medium yesterday asking what the ideology of APC is? Does anybody have an idea?
Buhari
As for Muhammadu Buhari of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, what best describes him, his politics and ambition is “unbridled whiff for power.”
From 2009 till date, he lives with the illusion that he is the messiah the country and its peoples of diverse nationalities need for a better Nigeria. Perhaps, the little success lovers of jackboot ‘militicracy’ that Buhari led decades back in Nigeria gives him that belief that he is the one the people are waiting for.
Alas, not a few know him too well. “Buhari may run for election a hundred times and he will never make Aso Rock as President those 100 times,” said Edosomwan.
His antecedents now make many in the APC fear that with his unbridled thirst for power, Buhari could just throw spanner in the APC works once he does not get the presidential ticket. That would not be the first time though. He remains as rigid and a hard sell as ever.
El-Rufai
On el-Rufai, a colleague, Churchill Umoren asked yesterday, “Can El-Rufai tell Nigerians how these lands were allocated? Plot 3379 Asokoro 2411.7sqm allocated to Hadiza Isma El-Rufai, Plot 3376 Asokoro 2218.55sqm allocated to Asia Ahmad El-Rufai, Plot 3861 Asokoro 2410.36sqm allocated to Ali Rufai, Plot 3027 Asokoro 2139.31sqm allocated to Sani Ahmad Gwadu, Plot 3677 Maitama 2006.55sqm allocated to Ibrahim El-Rufai, Plot 1381 Wuse 11 allocated to Bashir El-Rufai?”
His question no doubt prompted another friend, Emmanuel Franklin to warn thus: “I only pray that Nigerians will open their eyes and see what APC is made of. God help Nigeria;” while yet another friend of Umoren, Emmanuel Ohiaeri added; “el-rufai who acts ‘holier than the Pope’ jumped ship, he is now in the APC!!!God knows where he will be tomorrow, Nigerians open and shine your eyes…”
Inspite of the foregoing another friend, Austine Ejeke said; “Let them arrest, prosecute and send el-Rufai to jail. It’s immoral to allocate lands to your wives and relations, even if they are the most qualified as long as you are in charge of the allocation. The man is corrupt and he should stop this after thought activism and preaching of tainted puritanism.”
Alas, it is such a man whom the presidency has described as “a serial liar” that could look Nigerians in the eye and try to skew known facts against Jonathan and his administration.
A recent incident that may have qualified el-Rufai as a “serial liar” happened last weekend. Speaking as guest of the week on Liberty FM, a Kaduna based radio station, Mallam El-rufai urged the president and his handlers to stay away from politics of religion and ethnicity which he said they have adopted as their political strategy.
In his response, Abati’s noted that going by his antecedent, it was El-Rufai himself who is the master of ethnic and religious politics.
He said “But it is most curious that this allegation is coming from Nasir El-Rufai, a man who profaned the name of Jesus Christ on Twitter by tweeting a joke which is too indecent to mention in the presence of civilised persons. This same El-Rufai is the same man who in June of last year claimed that Christians were behind the bombings of their own churches rather than terrorists and were doing this to further a Christian agenda.
“It is only a measure of his inconsistency that El-Rufai is today accusing the Presidency of being afraid of General Muhammadu Buhari whom the same El-Rufai said was “perpetually unelectable”. In fact, the accusation El-Rufai is now making against the President is precisely the same accusation he made
against General Muhammadu Buhari on October 4, 2010 when he said Buhari’s “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known”. Today, El-Rufai is serving this same Buhari.
“That El-Rufai is not above lying to the media to achieve his political objective was proven in Segun Adeniyi’s book,’Power, Politics and Death’ when El-Rufai was quoted to have confessed in the presence of multiple witnesses who are still alive today that “There was no cabal, we created the myth to neutralise Turai”. El-
Rufai sold Nigerians the dummy of a Turai cabal which was a lie used to further his own political ends.
“In any case, we have a record of what El-Rufai truly thinks of President Jonathan from the leaked secret diplomatic memo from the U.S. embassy in Abuja which revealed that just before the April 2007 Presidential election, El-Rufai had told the then U.S. ambassador to Nigeria that the then Vice Presidential candidate,
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, was “clean and honest”.
“Mallam El-Rufai’s comment on the Vice President is also unfortunate. The report quoted him as describing the administration of Arc. Mohammed Namadi Sambo in Kaduna state as a disaster, purporting that the vice president as a former governor of Kaduna state incurred a huge debt profile that compelled his successor to complain. At no time did the late Governor Yakowa ever accuse the Vice President of incurring any huge debt during his tenure as Governor of Kaduna State.
Their agenda
Observers were unanimous yesterday in underscoring the agenda of the troika and the likes of Lai Mohammed whose sole agenda “we now know is to so heat up the polity and in their calculation, cause the President to make a slip which they would capitalise on to derail our democracy. But we are wiser. Their demonic strategy has failed,” retorted a south-west leader in the ruling PDP last night.
The middle aged man wondered if APC as a party and the likes of Akande, Buhari and el-Rufai have anything to offer the nation as credible alternatives to governance as is being witnessed today; adding that “if not, let them stop disturbing the peace and deceiving Nigerians because nobody is swayed by their “lack of focus, desperation and disrespect for the office of the President which they desperately wish to occupy. Unfortunately, there is still no vacancy there.”