WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
This week, there are enough revelations that pose to redefine the health and wellness of Nigeria. The truth as it stares us in the face would remain that we have refused to learn from history and antecedents of actions and occurrences in the past. We have gone through a lot as a people and a nation, yet, we allow repetitions of events that take us backward by miles again and again. What people fall into the same pit twice, like Nigerians? Here, we have fallen into the same pit numerous times, suffered the consequences and would still fall into the same pit. Politically, we have continued to make the same mistake and defend the same errors that hurt our common existence. We perpetuate corruption via every open space and still wish for a saner establishment. The groups that seek to break down our systems, have all the same, apparently become the messiah we throng after and worship.
I am going to touch on a few issues that are of equal implications to Nigeria, coming from the premises of citizens’ non patriotic dealings with issues of national bearings and the glaring focusing on self by our people. One is the history and eventual outcome of the P&ID fraudulent contractual agreement with Nigeria and the other is Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi’s dispositions to the consumption of the 2023 presidential election.
The P&ID judgment delivered in favour of Nigeria last week is an opener to the extent Nigerians are willing to go in collaboration with outsiders to defraud the country without caring what the consequences would be on the country. The quashed eleven billion dollars was approximately the value of the country’s GNP, and having to pay that as damages for any reasons by Nigeria at this critical period would mean that the country would be grounded economically. Yet, that was the position some Nigerians intentionally brought upon the country because of self inducements.
How a Nigerian company registered with CAC in 2009 and signed an MOU with the Nigerian government suddenly metamorphosed to a foreign entity a year after and signed a 6.6 billion dollars contract with Nigeria basked due process in the country in the mud. Yet, it was done. Officials and government appointees took turns to take bribes to sign the future of all of us into slavery.
How a national agency would sign a 6.6 billion dollars contract on behalf of the country without a Federal Executive Council approval, without Bureau of Public Enterprise involvement, without the Ministry of Justice involvement and at a time when the President and commander in chief was indisposed and could not have approved and signed-off on such a contract.
Today, fortunate for the country, the award has been set aside ànd judgment delivered in favour of Nigeria, but it is not enough that we have won, this is the time for us to ask questions; how many of such frauds have gone under across ministries, Agencies and departments. What becomes of those identified individuals who are behind these atrocities against our commonwealth? We cannot assume all is well with us if the same legal adviser to the Nigerian government as at the time of the agreement turns out to be a witness to the P&ID. We must rise and do whatever must be done to save this country.
I remember, very vividly, in 2019; what Atiku Abubakar presidential candidacy did to the peace and unity of this country. I remember very clearly what the “Atikulated” mob meant to Nigeria’s sanity; the extent of media bashing, unhealthy and destructive propaganda orchestrated by the group, and the cracks created by the same in the country. I remember absolutely the unhinged attacks on the system by Atiku Abubakar then, to the point of committing treasonable offense against the nation when he broke into the INEC server to illegally access and corrupt election results. The emerged Obidient mob in 2023 combined with the PDP propaganda and attack machine was not new, but just a repetition of the phases we went through in 2015 and again in 2019.
In 2019, we had Atiku Abubakar so confident he was going to win the election because people who had successfully rigged almost every election in the past except the 2015 polls that caught everyone unaware, were behind him and urging him on to victory. We saw the journey to Dubai to ratify a sure winning strategy that does not consider or respect the will of the Nigerian electorate, but a concoction of plans to collectively rob the entire voting population of Nigeria and win the presidential election through cheating, deceit and unholy manipulations of the election processes.
The grand plan was to internally disrupt the entire country with lies and unfounded propagandas against the sitting president. They were so good at it but the problem was that Nigerians have become so enlightened to sieve the lies and discard unbecoming propaganda; this is responsible for the ineffectiveness of the very many lies from Atiku, his running mate and their many ground soldiers in 2019. Then, we saw the perfection of a cyber-attack on the INEC infrastructure and PDP insisting on the passing of the electoral law that will approve only electronic transmission of election results from the field. The plan of PDP was to create a serious unprecedented integrity issue for INEC and the President. How will INEC explain the existence of a near legitimate result favouring PDP as against its own authentic result in favour of another candidate? There would be a cry of rigging and possibly grounds for litigation and finally an opportunity for PDP to go down gracefully as the cheated one instead of as a villain that has been disgraced.
Then, in 2019, Atiku lost, but he chose to live in denial of reality. While elections dates were shifted by INEC, he came out pointing accusing fingers at President Buhari for shifting the date; while results were still being collated, he took to the air to reject a result that was not yet out; to Atiku, the elections were credible only in states he won and that the ruling party planned rigging the elections in favour of the president, yet left Lagos alone. However, PDP had a field day in Lagos as the party garnered almost 40% of the votes cast in the presidential election in the state.
Also according to Atiku, APC planned to rig the election in Kano for President Buhari yet, approximately 2 million voters came out to vote in Kano out of almost 5 million registered voters and there was no inflation of the figure, but when the voters’ turnout in the Southeast and Southsouth affected the PDP figures, Atiku alleged it was APC orchestrated plan to disenfranchise the people of the region that played out. This was the same Atiku Abubakar who was a strong member of the PDP team that perpetrated the worst ever election in the history of Nigeria.
Fast forward to 2023, we are with the perennial loser again, this time around shooting himself in the leg on too many fronts and yet still expecting a win at the poll. I have forever wondered how Atiku Abubakar would force himself on the ticket after the eight years of another Northerner and expect it to go down well with Nigerians; he did not stop there. He watched as Peter Obi was rising and dismounting the PDP strong base in the Southeast and Southsouth regions without doing anything. The worst that would come from Atiku Abubakar that threw away any chance he had of winning the election was being too proud to allow superior reasoning tell him he cannot have five governors under his already shrinking fold working against him and Kwankwoso walking away to spoil the votes in Kano for him, if he is serious about winning the election. Yet after all, losing the entire five states of the Southeast and having to share votes of the Southsouth with the other two major parties; as against the norms for PDP since 1999, Atiku and PDP are still deceived they won the election. How is that feasible?
The APC candidate, and now President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu narrowly grinded a win at the back of Atiku political foolishness; at the back of an election that recorded the lowest margin of win ever in the country, and one that would have been won easily by PDP if the party had put its house in perfect order.
As of today, both Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi have unanimously agreed that Nigeria is moving towards dictatorship because they did not win the election. We have seen in the last months since the election, packaged lies and propaganda without any shred of evidence that the election was won by either of them. The social media weaponised to truncate the unity and peace of the country to the end of forcing the hands of the court to offer them victory they do not merit.
The same Supreme Court that gave Obi victory in the days when PDP was aiming for his jugular; the same Supreme Court that had been Atiku’s saviour in the past, and the court in general has suddenly become a thrash and a puppet in the hands of some because the verdicts were against them. You came to court with nothing and expect the court to source its reasoning from the noises on social media and to tow with the emotional gyrations you paid for on the streets.
The courts were fair in their submissions. The judgements are in the open for all. You cannot ask the court to declare you winner of a contested election without showing the figures that make you the winner. You cannot claim your votes were tampered with at the polling units and fail to present polling agents who are first hand witnesses to testify to the frauds you claimed. You ignored what should be the substance of your case and were pursuing non issues as a basis for the court declaring you the winner of an election you did not win.
How absurd is it that we will be discussing 25% as a compulsory requirement for a President to emerge, after 24 years of democracy and consistent presidential elections. Does that mean that if a candidate wins in the entire 36 states and loses in FCT by not acquiring 25%, he would not be President? And the candidate that loses in every other state but wins FCT could lay claim to the presidency?
How does it make sense that a man who worked with Mobil Petroleum and rose to management level, did not go to the school he claimed? How can we be so daft to refuse to accept the words of the school that he was their student and continue searching for the lie we prefer to be the reality?
When you disparage the court for not accepting fresh evidence in an appeal case, and portray the court and their lordships as frauds playing the card of some people, were you also bereft of the law that the court cannot go against the rule of appeal. Who brings fresh evidence to the Supreme Court?
Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, for their selfish agendas hidden behind unexpected street mob cheering them on, have again further damaged the country’s capacity to mend its broken bridges. We have become more divided on all fronts, more than ever as a people. Today, the Southeast agitation for separation is getting stronger on the surface and underneath because Peter Obi has created the lies that the region is irrelevant in the country. Today, the divisions among the Muslim and Christian adherents in the country have widened because Peter Obi considered religion a weapon that could be wielded to win elections. Today, the trust of Nigerians in the judiciary has broken, because the duo has manufactured more than enough lies and street propaganda that the judgements that do not favour them were bought by the other party involved. Today, PDP and the Labour Party hold the results sheets from all polling units across the country, and which definitely align with announced results, but chose to poison the citizens with the narrative of tampered figures because of non display of results on the IREV portal.
Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi both know they did not win but choose to propagate lies; their lawyers knew they had no case from the onset, yet they went all the way to set up Nigerians against the national systems and institutions. To what end? To stay relevant in the political scheme?
For Peter Obi, the Obidient mob was not part of the plan, it came to you as a surprise and you did not know what to use it for beyond setting up the country in flames on the back of attacks, lies and unnecessary propaganda. Maybe, if your advisors had done a good work, your chance would have come in years to come, but you have bungled it. The Obidient mob weren’t really for you; you only became a lucky candidate for the headless mob searching for relevance in a perceived tattered national system.
