- Nigerians tell ex-presidents to exit political scene
Some Nigerians
have expressed indignation over the reported moves by former president,
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former military president, General Ibrahim
Babangida (rtd) and former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar
(rtd), to select possible candidates from the North and the South to
replace President Muhammadu Buhari and run in the 2019 presidential
election.
The trio were said to have held a meeting
to consider some names on both sides of the Niger. News of the said
meeting and the outcome has continue to draw sharp reactions from
Nigerians incensed by the seeming disregard of the people in the 2019
permutations.
Outspoken Presiding Bishop of Calvary Kingdom Church International, Archbishop Joseph Ojo, in a telephone chat with Sunday Sun
advised the duo of Obasanjo, Ibrahim, both of whom he particularly
blamed for several ills in the society, to simply fade away into
retirement so that the people’s memory of them would be of good and not
opprobrium.
“I think that these people, with the
exception of Abdulsalami Abubakar who is a nice gentleman, the other
two, Obasanjo and Babangida, should try to think of how they can have a
peaceful exit from the political process, so that their memory will be a
good one, like the good memory the people have of Chief Obafemi Awolowo
and some other past leaders. They should be grateful that God had given
them the privilege to lead this country. They should also realise that
there are other people who have the wherewithal to fix this country
without them and make Nigeria become a better place.
“I just believe that they should
respectfully bow out of this quest to continue to call the shots in the
affairs of this country. When the ovation is loudest, that is when to
quit the stage. They should respect themselves and give way to younger
people who can lead this country out of the woods. Obasanjo and
Babangida should look for one place to go and hide their heads, now that
they still have some honour left. They should disengage and bow out.
On the previous missteps of Obasanjo and
IBB in trying to influence the leadership selection process, Archbishop
Ojo recalled the case of the late Umaru Yar’Adua and echoed what Ekiti
State Governor Ayo Fayose said recently that Obasanjo always put
weaklings in office so that he could teleguide them.
“I think Nigerians
should learn from past experience and vote against candidates that these
people have endorsed. Voting for any candidate supported by Obasanjo
and Babangida is voting for evil. That amounts to voting for the status
quo; that would signify our determination to suffer for long,” he said.
Ojo added: “If we are true to our hearts,
we should disappoint them by voting against the candidate they support.
They are not the ones that would determine what we would do in the
polling booth, we are mature enough. We should vote against whoever they
support. No matter how clean and green the person is, we should vote
against the person, so that they will know that they cannot always call
the shots in Nigeria. In very simple language, Nigerians who don’t like
what is happening should take the destiny of Nigeria in their hands.
That is my position.”
Weighing in on the discourse, spokesman
of Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu
Bello University, Professor Ango Abdullahi said that no group or
individuals should impose a candidate on Nigerians as far as democracy
is concerned.
Prof Abdullahi told Sunday Sun
that Obasanjo, Babangida and Abdulsalami, who are all retired generals
and were at various times military heads of state cannot continue to
impose presidential candidates on Nigerians.
Dismissing the report in the media about
the clandestine moves by the trio to influence the emergence of the 2019
presidential candidate, he said: “Not at all. The decision as to who
leads Nigeria if indeed we are in a democracy must be the exclusive duty
and right of the people of Nigeria.”
Secretary General, Arewa Consultative
Forum (ACF), Mr. Anthony N. Z. Sani, who concurred with the view of Prof
Abdullahi, emphasised that the former heads of state would not be able
to impose their anointed presidential candidate on Nigerians in 2019.
The ACF scribe rhetorically asked: “Do
the Generals you have listed constitute the voters? The Generals’ votes
cannot produce a president in a democracy where majority have both their
way and their say.”
He added: ”But if Nigerians define
democracy to be of the Generals, for the same Generals and by the same
Generals whom you have listed, then they have themselves to blame and
not to blame the Generals who have their right to canvass for their
preferences in a democracy.
“All that is needed is for Nigerians to
make judicious use of their democratic right and ensure that their votes
count so that the ensuing leaders would be accountable.”
Legal practitioner and President of the
Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR, Malachy Ugwumadu, also
frowned at the regrouping of the past leaders and what he described as
their “unstopping quest to determine leadership in Nigeria,”
Ugwumadu said that it must be noted that the Nigerian people remain the repository of Nigeria’s sovereignty as enshrined in Section 14, subsection 2A of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
He said that the definition and
characteristics of leadership must, therefore, be their ultimate
decision, which cannot be abdicated to “a selected group of individuals,
however powerful, in their inordinate quest to continually perpetuate
themselves by subverting that and overreaching the collective will of
the people.”
While acknowledging that there was
nothing wrong in past leaders gathering together and associating to
respond to national issues, he however, stated that “anything about
Nigerians without the involvement of Nigerians is not for Nigeria and
cannot be for Nigeria.”
He spoke further: “The point must be
enforced by the poverty of the legacy of these people who are ganging
up, after destroying the foundation of our corporate existence. I am
saying that their decision to continually arrogate to themselves the
supremacy of knowledge and the certainty of their inordinate powers to
perpetuate things endlessly is further rendered mischievous and
perfidious by the fact that they are the same
people that destroyed the structural foundation of this country.
“It was Babangida who flouted and
destroyed the ethos of democracy when he annulled the June 12, 1993
election; it was Obasanjo who derailed this country and sold the
commanding heights of our economy; Abdulsalami Abubakar is the author of
the decree, which became the 1999 Constitution and is now the greatest
headache of the country.
“I am making the point that Nigeria of
today is no longer the Nigeria of their days, when their arrogant
military attitude superseded the will of the people. They destroyed the
country and cannot be part of the solution, except they first of all
purge themselves of the crimes they committed against the country and
then make retributions. They can also individually and collectively take
proactive steps to mobilize the energy of their constituencies to
support progressive politics of the day and create new vistas of hope,
rather than telling us that they want to impose another leader on the
country. In any case, they have been in the business of imposing
leadership and none of the ‘leaders’ they foisted on the country ever
worked.
“Babangida bequeathed General Sani Abacha
to Nigeria, and we suffered that holocaust, which his regime turned out
to be for more than five years, with unimaginable killings everywhere.
The case of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola can be easily called back to mind. The
death of Olu Onagoruwa is clearly associated with assassination of his
son. Obasanjo cannot tell us anything about democracy because his entire
tenure left us with the endless darkness we have in the power sector.
Few days ago SERAP came out with a book entitled, From Darkness To Darkness.
“So we must continue to emphasise the
negativities about these characters that say they want to continually
impose leadership on the country. They should be rendered
inconsequential in the decision regarding who becomes the next
president.
They must be rendered inconsequential by the superiority of
our position, and the determination of the Nigerian people to recover
the space that have been yielded to these people. They should be
rendered inconsequential by exposing the inadequacies that characterized
their tenure. They should be rendered inconsequential by our cohesion
in the campaign and our resolve to oppose the machination of these
people.
“Democracy itself is a marketplace of
ideas and a platform for plurality, a centre where you synthesize
divergent opinions. However, we must ensure that people with dubious
tendencies do not take the upper hand. To do otherwise means that
sovereignty no longer lies in the hands of the people. That would be
dangerous.”
In the same vein, a chieftain of the All
Progressives Congress in Anambra State and Lagos based legal
practitioner, Chief Pat Anyadubalu, argued that the trio of Obasanjo,
Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, have a stake in who becomes the
president, adding that ordinarily some people would not bother if they
play a role in getting Nigeria a good leader.
“Unfortunately, he said, “we have not
gotten a good leader through them. That has been our problem. If you are
the one that has been partaking in choosing the national leader of the
country and we have not gotten it right, then you lack moral right to
want to continue to determine who the next leader should be. That is why
Nigerians are perturbed that these people are coming together again to
choose and determine who would become the president in 2019.
Anyadubalu posited that the trio of past
leaders should take their hands off the 2019 political process that has
subtly taken off and allow Nigerians to freely choose their own leader.
“If we find that anybody they endorse is
not satisfactory to us, we should use our vote to stop them from getting
to Aso Rock. We should mobilise and vote against their candidate who is
found not to be satisfactory or competent. We can vote against the
person and also protect our votes,” he said.
Adding to the gathering storm of
opposition to the seeming renewal of the intervention of the trio,
General Overseer of Wordbase Assembly, Bishop Humphrey Erumaka said that
the country needs to return to the past in the 60s and 1979 election,
when the contest for power was intellectually robust and not
characterized by the present system tainted by godfatherism and the
imposition by a cabal of past heads of state.
His words: “Even if they choose a young, healthy person, he will be running with old people’s mentality to please those who put him there. The younger people should not be dependent on the cabal represented by the small group of past heads of state. The cabal syndrome should not continue. It is no more based on who merits the position of president but who is in their good books. Even if a weakling or person with questionable character pleases them, they front the person and the darkness continues. I would rather say that the parties in truth and spirit, should openly decide who runs on their platform through transparent democratic process and rigorous convincing campaign leading up to a proper ballot. That way, what will occur will be a true case of ndoro-ndoro ochichi (open, legal contest for power) and not nyere-nyere ochichi (murky hand over of power on a platter of gold to a preferred candidate). What we need in Nigeria is ndoro-ndoro ochichi, not nyere-nyere ochichi.
His words: “Even if they choose a young, healthy person, he will be running with old people’s mentality to please those who put him there. The younger people should not be dependent on the cabal represented by the small group of past heads of state. The cabal syndrome should not continue. It is no more based on who merits the position of president but who is in their good books. Even if a weakling or person with questionable character pleases them, they front the person and the darkness continues. I would rather say that the parties in truth and spirit, should openly decide who runs on their platform through transparent democratic process and rigorous convincing campaign leading up to a proper ballot. That way, what will occur will be a true case of ndoro-ndoro ochichi (open, legal contest for power) and not nyere-nyere ochichi (murky hand over of power on a platter of gold to a preferred candidate). What we need in Nigeria is ndoro-ndoro ochichi, not nyere-nyere ochichi.
“These people who are enjoying their
fabulous and stupendous pension with horrendous amount of perks at the
expense of the Nigerian tax payer should just retire and leave the
country to move on.
They destroyed the foundation of the country and created the problem, they cannot be part of the solution.”
Moreover, Anyadubalu bemoaned the fact
that the majority of Nigerians show apathy to the political process.
“How many of us bothered to register and obtain the voters card?” he
queried.
He added: “Every year, teenagers reach
the age of 18 and become eligible to be enrolled on the voters register.
How many of us bother to get involved at the ward level and mobilise
these young people to register to vote. How many of us consciously
educate them on the political process and also mobilise them to vote. If
we do this, we will be able to counter whoever these past leaders
endorse, if we feel they are not competent or qualified to rule.
Nigerians have to rise up and take back the country to themselves.
Enough is enough. Like Charly Boy said, “Our mumu don do.”
*Sunday Sun
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