22052019 - F U L A N I S AT I O N A G E N D A : Obasanjo seeks to divide Nigeria in his old age —FG

Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2019—23
Edited by
OSA MBONU-AMADI
08070524223
osaamadi@yahoo.com
Delta State primaries of APC:
A charade and mockery of democracy
Continues from page 22
I had become more
convinced about my thesis
on the class of capture when
my friends thought our work
of restoring Nigeria was
done with General
Abdulsalami Abubakar
announcing the return to
civilian rule in 1998. We had
chosen to wind down CP with
that announcement and
leave politics to the
politicians, even though
some among our group had
asked that we transmute into
a political party. The class of
capture would capture the
main platform emerging at
the time, the People’s
Democratic Party, PDP, and
install their own, Olusegun
Obasanjo, as President. But
many of the gangsters who
were their cronies as soldiers
in power filled the spaces of
public life, making us realize
we may have made a mistake
in not listening to our
colleagues like Waziri
Mohammed and Donald
Duke.
The return of the
Concerned Professionals, the
banner under which we
resisted military rule as
educated professional men
and women, now as the
restoration group, a political
movement had led to my
being urged to run for the
office of the president.
Our clear purpose was to
set the agenda for the 2007
elections, and, in the event
of a statement, which we
thought plausible in 2007,
become a swing factor. Even
with our agenda limited as
it were, we wanted to run a
serious campaign. I was
going to campaign in every
state of the federation.
As the typical campaign
involved courtesy visits to
traditional rulers, governors
and prominent citizens in
every state the candidate
visited, I asked my friends
in Kaduna who were setting
up my visit to Minna to book
an appointment for me to call
on General Ibrahim
Babangida, the former
President. Ibrahim Usman
had asked Mohammed
Haruna to help out. The
feedback I got spoke
volumes. General Babangida
had said to those who came
to express our condolences,
he turned to Ibrahim as we
were leaving and said “Stay
close to him. He is the
future.” Was that
‘Maradona-talk’ or did he
think 30 years early was now
looking like in my lifetime?
As we left, I reflected again
on the visit to Gombe during
the 2007 campaign when the
Emir shocked us by urging
me to continue to run if the
outcome was not favourable,
because, in his words,
“Nigeria will not make
progress until someone like
you becomes President.” The
Emir, a retired Federal
Permanent Secretary had
broken the tradition of politetalk
at those courtesy calls
because he believed people
like me should continue to
patrol around those walls of
Jericho until they fall.
With Adams Oshiomhole
helping make the election of
a Godwin Obaseki who
would fit my mould, and a
few others here and there, it
made sense to wonder if the
crack was not widening. So,
the visit of the Jonny Esike
team met me still debating
whether it was a timely call
and whether the nature of
the drafting was like the
acceptance of the University
of Nigeria, Nsukka Alumni
positions. Those kinds of
drafts had determined just
about every other leadership
position, outside of
promotion at work, I had
ever held. In each case a
sense of duty compels you to
say yes. Had the time come
for an American-type
Sherman declaration? I was
of one mind to make a
Sherman declaration, as in
American politics when a
possible candidate says, ‘If
drafted I will not run, and if
elected I will not serve.’
Fiddles Akpoimare
captured well my reluctance
that evening as they left my
office. I had been there
before and seen people urge
you on whilst promising that
they would pawn all their
valuables to fund the
campaign only for them to
then retreat to their comfort
zones whilst you have
mortgaged all that was
possible to so do.
In the end, I felt the legacy
of the pooling of effort to
I was left to chant my battle matching and
battle cry chants in a lonesome corner of a
rain forest; But duty was duty! So, while the
best of friends and relations were asking,
‘Why run,’ my essence was screaming, ‘Why
not?’
that I was a friend who
required no appointment to
visit him. About my
presidential bid, he had
simply said ‘Pat is good, the
kind of President Nigeria
needs. The trouble is that Pat
is 30 years ahead of his time
in this our environment.”
When Babangida’s wife
died a few years later and
Ibrahim Usman and I went
push down the wall was
worth the troubles it could
bring me. When I computed
in the fact that a friend,
Adams Oshiomhole, seemed
poised to become Chairman
of the party and former Lagos
State Governor Bola Ahmed
Tinubu who I had worked
well with and who had urged
me to run for Governor of
Delta in 2011 with assurance
of his full support, in every
manner of campaign need,
was leader of the party. I
thought the idea may not be
so troublesome. I had said I
would not run in 2011 and
had chosen in 2015, at
Tinubu’s urging, to work
getting the party ready to
win in 2015 at the federal
level. Those assumptions of
support would prove to be
the worst misjudgments of
my engagement in public
life.
They led me down an
intense track of touring
Delta, visiting the good, the
bad and the ugly; taking
horrendous risks, and
stretching mind and body.
The endurance test with
scheming people that cost
plenty of money and
encounters with people who
think politics is about how
well they can mine your
pockets, labeling you
‘stingy’ even as they are
spending what they have
extorted from you. How can
they expect good
government from people they
try so hard to frisk? I kept
asking myself. The nature of
the politics was guarantor of
Governance failure.
I had truly entered a
laboratory necessary for
figuring out how to save a
people. It was clear such a
road would be bumpy. I
never stopped reminding
myself that the self-image I
had set for myself from quite
early on in life was that of a
freedom fighter.
Composing the freedom
fighters battle song may not
be as elegant as Mozart
scoring a symphony but both
stir the soul. I was left to
chant my battle matching
and battle cry chants in a
lonesome corner of a rain
forest. But duty was duty! So,
while the best of friends and
relations were asking, ‘Why
run,’ my essence was
screaming, ‘Why not?’
Back to the beginning
How, why and when did I
became so passionate about
saving Nigeria and working
for it to claim its glory? From
newspaper features,
columns and reports dating
back forty years, it seems
like a suffocating height of
evidence about views that
my passion for a progressive
and respected Nigeria, and
service to neighbour for that
purpose, goes all the way
back to my teenage years.
But who stoked the fire and
what has sustained it even
when it has been materially,
and
sometimes,
reputationally costly?
I think it is hard to
precisely locate the times
and sources of the drivers of
my disposition on the
Nigeria project, but a few
experiences stand out as
possible shapers of my
destiny. One that I have
referred to in the past, came
between ages 7 and 10 –
these were days spent in
provincial Gusau in the deep
North West in the early
1960s. My father worked for
British Petroleum and in
those days Gusau, which
hosted a petrol tank farm
supplied by rail, it was the
largest town before the
railway terminal town of
Kaura Namoda. My father
TOMORROW...
was transferred there
from Kano in 1962. The
local Catholic church,
Our Lady of Fatima, was
assigned to the
Dominican Order and the
school attached to it was
where I had the bulk of
my primary school
education. I was an altar
boy who showed up almost
every morning to serve at
Mass before riding my
bicycle home to get ready
for school and be dropped
off by my father.
The Dominican priests
and brothers dominated my
horizon. They were
predominantly American
and they were quite proud of
the US President of the day,
the first Catholic to be
elected President of the
United States, John F
Kennedy. He would become
my hero and role model.
I won quite a few prizes
from a variety of
competitions organised by
the priests. The typical gift
would be a book on Kennedy.
At 8, I read books most
adults had little inclination
towards. Great quotes like
“Ask not what your country
can do for you but what you
can do for your country “
became my mantra.
Kennedy quotes were
coming out of my mouth,
ears and eyes. I was
impressionable and Kennedy
made an impression on me
so much that I still remember
where I was and what I was
doing when news of his
assassination reached me.
These building blocks of
character had another stone
set on the masonry of the
I had said I would not run in 2011 and had chosen
in 2015, at Tinubu’s urging, to work getting the
party ready to win in 2015 at the federal level;
Those assumptions of support would prove to
be the worst misjudgments of my engagement
in public life
Dominican influence.
Parents and teachers of an
amazing range that worked
hard and stayed honest and
very devoted to the ideals of
the spirit of Nigeria.
However, these would
compete with experience
from a pogrom in the
convulsions of 1966 in
Northern Nigeria that
makes many of today’s
violent conflict seem like
kindergarten exercises
coupled with a horrifying
civil war, which I experienced
from both sides. A third of
the time, I saw the evil of
war inside Biafra and then
witnessed the massacre of
Anioma people, which
reached its peak in Asaba
between October 1967 and
August 1968 affected my
humanity much. Then from
mid-1968, I was a Lagos boy
who saw the war on
television as a distant
dysfunction.
The author will lead us into the knowledge of the factors
that influenced his civil and political activism, as
well as socio-political and educational forces that
shaped his interest to be of service to his country