Obasanjo’s Self Delusion And 2011

When an old man consciously burst into tears in the rain, his tears are naturally covered by the droplets of the rain.

But when he does so on a sunny day his tears would no doubt draw questions as to what might have forced an old man who had passed through diverse experiences to burst into such tears.

The above scenario aptly summarises the continuous outburst of Chief Mathew Aremu Obasanjo as far as the tragic consequences of PDP’s stolen mandates in the Southwest are concerned and the desperate plans of the PDP in the Southwest in 2011.

Baba Iyabo has no doubt been under the hypertensive pressure of his fraudulent, eccentric and “flawed” elections, apologies to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, the product of Obasanjo’s Presidential election who openly derided the election that produced him by describing it as flawed.

If a wife could describe her new husband as a eunuch, what else is there to say?  And precisely what else is there to say about the last election after the major beneficiary, the late Yar’Aua had spoken that it was flawed?

If it were to be in advanced democracies, the most honorable thing for Yar’Adua to do would have been to resign.  But not so in Nigeria where beneficiaries of stolen mandates are kings.

The Oracle and shameless midwife of do or die politics, whose every pronouncement is a ridicule on our national and political psyche at the usual cash and carry  PDP rally in Akure  continued in his usual unguarded vituperations and jackal lamentation and shamelessly told his confused crowd that he was surprised to see the emergence of Dr. Olusegun Mimiko as a governor.

Obasanjo could be so surprised because throughout his eight years of Presidential pestilence during which he ruled without regard for the rule of law and respect for the constitution of the land, he left no one in doubt that he was a lawless president and that every other structure within the polity could go to hell.

If in doubt take a retrospective look at his naked disregard for the Supreme Court judgment on the seized Lagos Local Government funds and a host of other court rulings that were flagrantly disregarded by Obasanjo and his band of lawless cabinet members and political cats. Comparatively, Obasanjo’s administration would go down as having the worst judicial record, going by his notorious disregard for court decisions.

That Obasanjo could express surprise at Mimiko emerging governor,  should not come as a surprise to followers of events under Obasanjo’s Presidency considering the fact that he openly threatened to unleash his Pit bulldog, the EFCC on Mimiko in order to silence his ambition to fly the flag of the PDP in the contest for the governorship seat of Ondo State.

Having pursued Mimiko out of the PDP, the man sought umbrage under the Labour Party and laboured hard to win the governorship only for him to be denied his victory, no thanks to Obasanjo’s heartless abracadabra Captain of his electoral rigging machine  the INEC, under  Professor Maurice Iwu, a man who used all unconventional methods to give us the worst election in electoral history and who in spite of his self inspired million-man march to keep himself in office, lost the battle and got thrown out of office recently.

If he is surprised at Mimiko’s emergence, is Obasanjo also surprised at all the various rulings throwing out the false results concocted by members of his party and its rigging agent, the INEC, all under his inglorious Presidency.

Were those tribunal decisions not indictments of the way and manner elections were conducted under Baba Iyabo’s administration?

Was it also not an indictment of his administration that three years into the succeeding administration’s tenure, the courts across the land are yet to completely dispense of election petitions?

It is sad, it is disgusting, it is nauseating and an embarrassing insult on the sensibilities of the citizens and  residents of the South-West that a man who could not fix their roads, hospitals, schools, give them uninterrupted power supply and raise their standard of living in eight years could still be nursing the ambition of still “Capturing” their votes in the 2011 elections.

It is an open secret that Obasanjo left our roads in 2007 worse off than he met them in 1999, not to talk of electricity. The man inherited over 4,000megawatts in 1999 and left a little over 1,000megawatts in 2007 after spending almost a trillion naira on imaginary power stations, no thanks to the House of Representatives Panel on Power where the details of the scandalous contracts on power under the Obasanjo adminisatratrion were revealed.

Today, the Lagos–Ibadan expressway  is a clear testimony to the prodigal profligacy of Obasanjo’s administration during which we only heard of amounts voted to fix roads without  the roads being fixed.  Did Obasanjo and Ogunlewe not award a contract of N9 billion to fix the Lagos  to  Shagamu by pass  of the Lagos–Ibadan expressway? The result is there for everybody to see not to talk of the Benin-Ore road and lots of other roads across the country. That aside, the Ibadan-Ilorin road contract awarded by Obasanjo in 2003 at a cost of N14 billion is yet to be completed, leaving the people to suffer endlessly on the road. It was recently awarded by the Jonathan administration at a cost of another N40 billion. One now wonders how the PDP continues to lay claim to the votes of the people in that area if not by unconventional electoral methods for which the People Deceiving Party is king.

Sadly enough, Obasanjo could also not fix the road leading from the Lagos Airport road to his Ota Farm. Today, the people of Ota regularly rain curses on him because of the harrowing experience they endlessly pass through on the abandoned road project.

As a repressive and retrogressive president, Obasanjo frustrated the power project of the visionary and  people oriented initiative of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Administration to rescue Lagos State from perpetual blackout and in the end gave the nation scores of questionable and abandoned power projects.

The award of contracts for such abandoned Independent Power Project Contracts only succeeded in throwing up a new generation of private Jet owners and a scandalous set of nouveau riche while at the same time bequeathing total darkness to the Nigerian people.

What in deed can Obasanjo point to as his achievement that would sway Nigerians especially from Western Nigeria to the side of his crises ridden PDP? But does the party rely on the votes of the Nigerian people? They don’t. All they rely on is open and unpretencious rigging and shameless ballot box snatching. That precisely is why the PDP-led federal government can only mouth and not implement electoral reform.

Did the PDP Federal Government not promise Nigerians 6000 megawatts by December 2009? What we got instead was a constant call for national prayers for the “speedy” recovery of the nation”s ailing President. Nigerians almost sustained knee bruises in their almost endless hours of remaining on their knees in prayers.

Yes, Nigerians continued to pray while at the same time continuing to suffer in perennial darkness and thousands continued to die needless deaths on our roads while the federal government’s 7point agenda became multipoint deception.

The PDP continues to rule us with a legless seven point agenda.  Three years into its  rudderless administration it cannot point to  one of the seven point agenda it has successfully prosecuted. Yet the party’s  grandfather Olusegun Obasanjo still wants Nigerians to embrace the PDP. Lest I forget, the then Governor Tinubu was almost completing the renovation of the  Federal government neglected Bar Beach when the  then Chairman of the PDP Ahmadu Alli boasted at the party’s last Tsunami rally that Obasanjo would not renovate the beach because Lagosians refused to vote the PDP only for Lagosians to torture Obasanjo and his party at the polls. Today Lagos state is more beautiful and well organised than all PDP states put together. Thanks to the brilliant handling of affairs in the state by the Action Congress and its Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, the greatest revelation of the current political experience.

While some Nigerians may say that those who left the elephantiasis ridden PDP are returning to the party, there are questions begging to be answered. Which faction of the PDP are they returning to? Is it to the Reform Forum or to the at crossroads group?

Most importantly is this question: Are the factors that led to their exit in the first instance out of the way? The answer is not far fetched since the self imposed Chairman of its Board of Trustees, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo whose actions led to their running away from the proverbial moving train, is still very much around and waxing stronger. Apart from his being the B.O.T. Chairman of the of the PDP, the man is also the compass behind the Jonathan administration.

If  so, how are the returnees sure that they would get the desired rehabilitation? And would they not run out again the way they ran back into the party? As they return to the party, they should always remember that this Tiger called Obasanjo that chased them out of the party in the first instance is still very much around.

A party that cannot guarantee security of life and property in the country and yet continues to ask the people to embrace its leaking umbrella needs to be re-examined. Is it the over 1000 lives that had been lost to civil strife in Jos or the endless crisis in Ota inspired by Obasanjo’s induced chieftaincy tussle or the daily killing of innocent, defenseless Nigerians by assassins and men of the underworld, a fallout of the joblessness in the country that could induce the people to jump at the PDP? Let the PDP tell Nigerians the jobless ratio when it came to power in 1999 and now. The records are there for all to see.

•Odufuwa wrote in from Lagos.