Ignoring blatant hypocrisy but celebrating fraud

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

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I have been having what anyone might rightly call a high stream of thoughts in the last few days. 2023 elections in particular, across all the levels, must be a do-or-die affair for Nigeria and Nigerians, not necessarily to kill or maim senselessly, but to get it right. To collate all actions and inactions, to recognise and line up behind what is best for the country. This is the one time that we cannot allow sentimental dispositions to sway us from rationality and from doing what is right for and about this country. This is the time that, above all, the call for compatriotism beckons on us above all, to put Nigeria first in all reckoning.

If we are to first sustain the great bricklaying achievements of the Buhari Administration, regardless of critics’ submissions, and to present a country that recognises the outright meaning of federalism and brings it to bear on the country; seeing the individual tiers of government effectively functioning and developing at their full capacity and in accordance to available and potential resources, then we must use the 2023 elections to elect the best of hands into all elective positions across the legislative houses across the states and at the centre and make sure the best of all the aspirants becomes the president of the country.

A tree does not make a forest; a defective legislative house is already a signal to a malfunctioning system as there is nothing much the executive institution can accomplish without a legislative house that is patriotically rendering its national duties. This being said, the onus is upon us to vote the best and trusted hands to the states and federal legislative houses, the best into all the governorship seats and the most qualified by capacity and antecedents as president of Nigeria in the next fifty days thereabout.

In my many thoughts, I have come to be very rough in presenting my reasons for the many decisions I have taken concerning the all-important elections and to openly declare my supports with reasons for those I strongly believe are capable of delivering on their promises and present the best that I want to see in my country in the nearest future. So doing that, today, I am going to move around issues and persons, raising points that are germane to the decisions we have to make and make as soon as possible.

Last week, I talked about the celebrated endorsement of Peter Obi by Obasanjo and still I cannot stop wandering what the former president thought he could still achieve with a candidate’s endorsement in this country; Obasanjo that I know has made a rubbish of the political values he commanded as a former president when he made the blunder of endorsing Atiku Abubakar in 2019; the same Atiku he had vowed in his book, ‘My Watch” to never support. In his words, he said “if after everything I know about Atiku I support…, God will not forgive me.” This was him making that bold declaration. Yet, he went ahead to eat his own conviction, and told the whole of Nigerians that the same man was the best thing that could happen to them. To rational Nigerians, Obasanjo endorsing whoever is a non-issue. 

On Obi, I really want to give it to him. He is an astute businessman; from his shares in International Breweries and the chains of NEXT supermarkets across the country. Give it to him, he knows how to do business with his money, but it would be totally out of point and non-correlating for Peter Obi to claim to be a believer in a productive Nigeria and preaching the same. In all the lines of business of the Labour Party candidate, he has proven to specialise in the importation of finished goods into the country, a country that needs a more favourable balance of trade. Just like Shoprite, NEXT is substantially if not a 100 percent store of imported products and has been since inception. I must reiterate the fact here that the drive to industrialise Nigeria cannot be overseen by a man who makes his money from the very opposite of industrialisation of the country. 

And when we talk of setting this country on a development autopilot, we are talking of taking decisions that prioritise local production, commerce, and consumption. We want to see repetition of the rice revolution across products and local capacities. It does not matter what the costs are on us at the beginning, but the value chain gains and the long term effects on the national economy is a dream we must give life to. An economy that records permanently, a positive balance of trade and payment. We cannot have that for as long as the likes of NEXTs and their owners are still in business, and definitely not when they are in control of the machinery of governance.

Really, Peter Obi should not have been in the permutation as much as Atiku Abubakar deserves no place in the leadership of the reborn Nigeria, but for the emotional undertones that decide our supports for candidates in the country, their likes wouldn’t have the courage to remain in the presidential race. We would do everything to push Tinubu out of the race on the back of non-evidential allegations of drug related crimes, academic discrepancies and whatever. Even when they know these allegations are untrue, they continue driving them to shove up sympathies for their preferred candidates. Yet, here we have a Peter Obi who confessed to and is proud of investing Anambra’s money in his family business where he remains a Director, a clear ethical breach of conflict of interest, and we accepted it and chose to make no issue out of it. Would that have been the case if it was a Tinubu in that shoe? Of course, No! 

What we want to have on Tinubu is a proven document or documents of any atrocities, yet, when we have the same on Peter Obi, we chose the silence response to douse the effect. The global viral PANDORA PAPERS is enough to terminate the political dreams of any politician in a very sane society where the electorate holds leaders accountable for their actions and inactions against the country and its people. But what effect does the revelations contained in the paper have on Nigerians responses? Mostly negative. No journalist deemed it a feat to discuss it; the politicians on Arise TV wouldn’t touch it and Obi remains the celebrated ‘messiah’ of his irrational followers.

We must all remember that the PANDORA PAPER is an apolitical investigation carried out by 600 journalists from 150 news organisations across the globe over a period of two years. The unbiased investigation threw open Peter Obi’s secret businesses that are clandestinely set up, mostly in well-known notorious tax and secrecy havens in ways that breached Nigerians laws. They breached our laws to the extent that as a citizen, he has technically designed his businesses to evade tax payment to the Nigeria government. 

And did he deny them? No. he claimed ignorance of the law; saying he wasn’t aware that the law expected him to declare such assets or companies. As intelligent as Peter Obi has claimed over the months since he came into the presidential race, how could he be so ignorant of the laws of the country he claimed he is the best man to lead? He didn’t know it was illegal, yet he embraces secrecies to hide the ownership identities of the companies and shares he holds in all those investments.

The crazy among the “Obedient” has called is the baseless message that if they want a better future for their kids, they must vote for Obi; but, we have asked for the umpteenth time without response, those people who voted for him as governor for eight years, how are their children now? How on earth could the Anambra state he developed become increasingly depleted by its residents thronging to Lagos state that Tinubu has pocketed? How come Peter Obi himself feels safer living in Lagos despite the purported huge work he did in his home state and the ‘transformation’ the state experienced during his tenure?

Record is there; it remains factual that under Obi, poverty in Anambra grew from 25 percent to 54 percent, and more than half of the entire populace of the state were living in poverty. During his tenure as governor, the state local government civil servants worked for nine months without salary, medical doctors were off duty for almost a year and state university lecturers spent over ten months on strike. When asked, he said it was because he was reforming the state and so many were not comfortable with the changes. Where are those changes?

Peter Obi is never the problem; the Nigerians who know all these and still chose to pretend they are not there are the problem. We know very well, all of us, the antecedents of the same man as the governor of Anambra state for two consecutive terms. We know his stance on religious freedom for all. We know his relationship with the organised labour as a governor, we remember how the state owned hospitals were without doctors for over ten months and the state university was closed down for almost the same length of time because he would not even negotiate with them. We are all aware of how insecurity was at the highest in the state during his time and how he did nothing about it. Aren’t we all aware of the inability of the same man to improve the standard of living of the people of the state, at least from the record? 

This blind followership would not help us as a people. It is a fact Obi is not winning an election, but even at that, following him against rationality has exposed the deformity in our capacity to rally together to grow this country. Until we all, as compatriot citizens put Nigeria first, and sieve our leaders on the basis of proven capacities and antecedents and devoid absolutely of biases, we are going nowhere regardless of who wins the elections in a long time to come.