Nigerian politics and the end of lies

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER  

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

We are at the moment of telling the truth, regardless of who wants to hear it or not. For a long time, we seem to have been comfortable with the lies that have ruined our systems and took away from generations of our people the life they deserve and desire. As a nation, we drifted to the point where both the leaders and the followers thrive and sustain the life they created for themselves on lies and deceits.

For over sixty years, Nigeria has been struggling with development and the collective growth of its people, simply because we were living a lie; we got leaders after leaders who claimed to be the messiah we needed; and citizens who instead of standing up to their lies, chose to be praise singers, urging on the politicians to lead their fake life. We have become totally robbed of all qualities that make good leadership; we keep parading politicians who lacked but pretended to be competent, to be possessors of integrity and authentic personals who possess the wherewithal to come down to the level of the people, touch their lives, and expediently and faithfully use national resources to secure a peaceful, united, and prosperous Nigeria.

The best strategy politicians adopt to break us is telling lies that evoke our emotions and break us apart; and that polarise us, where we fight ourselves for their sake, bequeathing them the platforms to pilfer our common wealth without consequences, except to us, and perpetuating themselves in power as our leaders. We sold ourselves too cheap to these people and cannot afford to allow this abnormality to continue from here on.

They came to us and told us the next thing is the realisation of the Yoruba nation; they began organising us to a revolt against the existing system, and we seemed to like it. They are pro-Yoruba, fighting for the cause and elevation of the Yoruba nation. But it is all a lie, packaged deception to create a self-serving division; division that will play itself into electoral positives for the orchestrators of such an agenda. Firstly, the arch actor of the evil agenda was and is still a core PDP stalwart, and has never cared to hide it; Sunday Igboho led the Yoruba nation agitation as a prelude to the PDP 2023 campaign. Planned, executed but failed because they never envisaged the government going all the way to truncate the plan with the arrest and trials of Sunday Igboho in Benin Republic. Not only has that happened, the same people organising the emancipation of the Yoruba nation, suddenly have become the core proponents and supporters of retaining power in the north; the foot fighter of PDP, Atiku Abubakar presidency and the core antagonism to a southerner and even a Yoruba man taking the position. Is it not obvious, now, that we were being lied to? They were all the way working for the emergence of a northerner candidate; and using the Yoruba nation convergence to create division that would discredit and oust the likes of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu from future contests.

It is the same game with the agitations for a Biafra Republic. Where is the IPOB operational intensity now? The force once calling the country a zoo, and constantly organising revolts that has created serious security challenges for the Southeast and the country has suddenly, without pacification, went down to rest, and resurfacing with its full support behind Peter Obi, a presidential candidate, from the Southeast. We told them earlier, how Nnamdi Kanu was a politician who pulled his full resources behind the candidature of former President Jonathan but became a menace to the country the moment Jonathan lost at the poll. We have been lied to, and we seemed to prefer and enjoy the lies. Like the Yoruba nation agitation, the Biafra agitation was a ruse; lies carefully packaged and sold to Nigerians at different regions as a part of campaign of calumny by both PDP and the Labour party.

The ENDSARS was another express lie they packaged for Nigerians. A genuine protest organised by Segalink was hijacked by the combination of IPOB, the organisers of Yoruba nation, and was sponsored by politicians who had planned to use the disruptions to begin the preparation of the youth population for the 2023 elections. For a period of almost a month, the entire nation was turned upside down by misguided and organised protests across the country with the principal objective of undermining the sitting government and the ruling party, APC. Both at home and at the international front, they spare no resources to discredit the APC and the Muhammadu Buhari-led government; and organise the youths for a general revolt against the ruling party in preparation for the 2023 elections. They claimed there was a massacre; they presented the whole world with some suggestive, artistic blood stain flags, photoshopped images and videos of non-existing corpses. And they granted paid interviews across the globe. 

Then, the truth of their intentions began to surface; they began a direct attack on the name, properties and investment of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man who was neither in government at the center, nor in Lagos, his state, at the time. He is just a politician like tens of thousands of them across the country, but he was single handedly picked for attack and destruction because they are already fighting for 2023, and they knew all along he would be their headache.  

Unfortunately, till today, a good number of our people have still chosen to live the lie that the ENDSARS massacre was a reality; the lie that scores of citizens were shot down in cold blood by the military in the night at the Lekki toll gate. Well, weeks ago, they surfaced again to commemorate the one year anniversary of what they termed “Lekki Toll gate massacre” but without any picture of a single ‘victim’ of the purported massacre which is contrary to the custom globally. No family of the ‘victims’ was shown to us on the commemorative occasion to mourn their lost one and once again and to draw the government attention to their plight, once again as practiced globally. Suddenly, we could not find any journalist to give the public an update on the purported massacre; but as you all know, your guess is as good as mine: it is a phantom massacre. 

And now it is 2022, and they have again packaged another lie for us in Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar. What bothers me is that the truth isn’t hidden but we all prefer the packaged lies. I would make mention of this again; when former President Olusegun Obasanjo clearly defined who Atiku Abubakar is and the danger of trusting him with such office he is desperate to occupy, the only way out for Atiku, and what any innocent man would do was to immediately call him to order, sue him and forced the pages in the publication to be removed and out of circulation. Till today, despite the fact that the author repeatedly at every opportunity reiterates his stand on the issues, Atiku has never defended himself. The revelation of the unrefuted content of the Obasanjo book is enough truth about the man Atiku Abubakar, but today, we are being presented with the lies that the man is a unifier, with the political and economic salvo to transform the country. Can the leopard change its skin? Of course not!

Then, the Peter Obi lies are perforating the corners of the country. Suddenly, the same Peter Obi that, as a governor for eight years, added nothing to the life and status of a state as huge as Anambra beyond the self-profiting investment in a brewery is now being packaged as a new breed of politician who will rescue the nation from the old order! How can it be Peter Obi? The same Obi that oversaw almost ten months old strikes across the state tertiary institutions, the health sectors and others and insisted he would not have any dialogue to resolve the strike actions. The same Obi who took the state money to invest in a company owned by his family and is boldly presenting it as his major achievement as a governor. The same Obi, as a governor, who literally asked the northerners to leave his state or instruct their brothers in the north to stop harming his people, at a time when there was massive attack on their lives, properties and businesses. I listened to Nnamdi Kanu revelation of who Peter Obi is on one of his radio Biafra broadcast; he said he is the man who stole the commonwealth of Anambra people to build malls in Abuja and other states and yet the same IPOB he leads now sing praises of Obi indirectly.

I was on Nairaland Forum some days ago, and I stumbled on a conversation between two people, both apparently are legal practitioners. One was lambasting the other who is now a staunch supporter of Peter Obi, for promoting a candidate he once described as the worst governor in Nigeria ten years ago.  He said “what changed, how did the “worst” governor suddenly become the messiah we have been expecting, intentional amnesia or what’? Another person joined the conversation and said “I was back then, lost the password to my old handle. You have the right to your opinion brother, we are just asking how did the fraud suddenly become the best, what changed?”

The lies we have been served, the lies we accepted, would be our final undoing as a nation and as a people if we don’t joggle back to reality and begin to reject the deceit that continuously serves us wrong leaderships across the states and the centre. How can we have access to all the truth about these sets of people and still choose to accept what some people are fabricating for us as the antecedents of people who did not rule in cosmic space but in our states and nation and we all know what their real antecedents are.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!