By BASHIR ADEFAKA
What I have noticed in Nigeria, whenever something tangible is being done which seems to be in favour of the marginalized sector: ethnic, religion or political, or as at present, the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is that something quick has always cropped up to either rubbish that attention being enjoyed or neutralize the applause or accolades being garnered.
Recall when President Buhari did the unthinkable ever, recognizing the June 12, 1993 presidential election and honouring the icon of the process, Alhaji Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (MKO Abiola), the next thing that happened was for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who knew that his already eroding popularity was getting to its final extinction, to come up with a trumped up allegation of the government placing him on watch list and plotting to implicate him to jail him.
With that Obasanjo’s action, which was bought over by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the dilly-dallying Bukola Saraki-led Senate, the media quickly diverted attention from the good things happening by Buhari over the June 12, 1993 coming alive and honouring of Abiola with the highest honour in the land to the Obasanjo’s thing and that was the end of the attention a particular Buhari’s achievements were getting.
Many others had happened before then and thenceafter. No one should be left in doubt of what many of the hyped cries-out from the Senate over the Offa bank robbery was meant to achieve. I guess, but you may guess better, to ensure that when robbery cases have connection with certain people and they are being investigated preparatory to prosecution, then it is at that time an attempt to gag people of opposing views. When such people, like looters of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, are being prosecuted, it is persecution of opposition.
The whole effort is to rubbish the anti-corruption war of the government and then make sure that attempt to rid Nigeria of politically motivated insecurity will never succeed.
Fresh on our mind is that in few days ago, some 400 plus one PDP members including their Presidential Candidate moved all out from Nigerian shores to the United Arab Emirate capital of Dubai where the Muslim Arab citizens, elites cooperate with government to make things work, to hold what they later described as strategy meeting.
None of us following the event could be left in doubt that there was more to the meeting than told.
Muhammadu Buhari has just concluded plan to give Nigerian workers a new national minimum wage to ameliorate their condition.
In a swift reaction, the PDP and his presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar called that noble decision a vote-buying. They even went a step further to attack the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) for calling off their planned strike. Now a probe has commenced in the Saraki’s Senate with intent to catch a “thief” in Buhari who they say has diverted government money through Social Intervention Programme (SIP) to funding his presidential project. A reasonable opposition politician should know that Buhari who defeated incumbent without government money will make it much better now that there will be no Federal Might working against him.
Next was the issue of some so called assailants breaking into the house of Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who claimed in his call to the Police that they wanted to assassinate him.
Unfortunately, Ekweremadu, a lawyer and second officer in the Third Arm of Nigerian Government told Nigerians that the police did not respond to his call on time. But the facts we got later faulted his claim against the police because he himself could not deny the response by Force Public Relations Officer (Force PRO) Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police, Jimoh Moshood, which said one of the two said to have broken into his house was arrested on the spot.
Despite that Ekweremadu is known for his open support for the atrocities of IPOB and Niger Delta Avengers while they were carrying out their anti-Nigeria dangerous activities calling Nigeria Zoo and bombing the then singular economic cash cow of the country thereby plunging us as a nation into economic recession, he has never for once ceased to enjoy protection of the security forces of the same Nigeria he conspired with those groups to collapse just to prove a point that the Fulani man in power as President must not succeed, barely eight months, where the government of his Igbo fellow man, Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, and party, PDP, failed to succeed during their time, due to their great deal of corruption and officially inflated insecurity for 16 years.
That is the satanic mentality of an average Nigerian politician. This is how they connive with one another to bring Nigeria, once respected as Giant of Africa, to his kneels. Yet they would go to Dubai to hold meeting because that is a better society. Commonsense should have told them that if the politicians and citizens in that country are as irresponsible to UAE as they are to Nigeria, they would not find peace to hold a doubtful strategy meeting of 400 people in the place.
In a nutshell, since Ekweremadu has continued to say that he did not believe in the preliminary report of the police that the guys that broke into his house were burglary criminals and insisted that they were assassins, threatening to release CCTV to show what actually happen, it means he, being the owner of the house, knows what the police does not know and so should be the one to prove it.
Meanwhile, I hold that Nigerians should rise up force Ekweremadu to release the CCTV that he has threatened to release and then he should name people he can prove in that CCTV that sent the so called assailants.
This he must do if he will not want us to believe that what has cropped up now suddenly 24 hours after the APC and Buhari government are gaining more popularity over new minimum wage for workers is not to neutralize the jubilation of Nigerians as an implementation of the Dubai meeting conclusion.
