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Babatunde Adenodi
Pharmacist
East Orange,
New Jersey
 USA

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“Born to Rule”. This is the motto of Sokoto State. The corollary of this is: Born to be ruled! For a group of people with self-bloated ego, this logo is an article of faith. And they work hard to realize this, fair or foul. They were the first to discover the brutal coercive power of the military. The brutal coercive power rarely adopted in decent societies. And whenever it feels like the civilian collaborators could not make it through the electoral process, they turn to the military which is in the ready to usurp power at short notice. This is what they are angling for, yet again. The good news is that we do not have to take it. We can do something about it. We can stand up to General Babangida and his sympathizers. David Mark, the current Senate President has tried to dissuade him by appealing to Babangida’s sense of reasoning. But, he can do better by using his power as a senator to enact a law barring all former Heads of State and Presidents from running as the nations president. Bankole, Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives will not hesitate to support such a legislation. Yar’Adua will have no qualms at signing this piece of legislation into law.

 

Northern Plot to Subvert the Constitution
 by Tunde Adenodi.
 

The Northern power brokers are at it again doing what they know best: plotting and scheming on their method for retaining power, fair or foul. Forty years of failure has not dissuaded them from this line of action, the mafia style.

Not for them to come up with suggestions to make Yar’Adua’s government a shinning success. Not for them to come up with ways by which their own people will derive the optimum benefit from a government headed by one of them. No plans has been submitted to the president on how their children can catch up with other groups in the country on education. No plan has been submitted to the president to halt desertification which inches towards the River Niger at a rate unprecedented in the history of the North. They have very few trees. Yet they cut down the few they have for firewood thus speeding the effect of desertification. No meaningful plan is in place to provide water for their arid semi desert towns and cities. And yes, no plans in place to address the scourge of under age marriage by grand-fathers who consummate the marriage when the children are still developing.

Yes, they are at it again. The president is said to be ill. They must know. They are close to him. They are not praying for him to be healed. They are praying to take over from him regardless of constitutional provisions that make the Vice-President the successor should something happen to the president! The Vice President’s crime is simple: he is not from the North. He is from Bayelsa State. A state that is probably responsible for at least 30-40 per cent of our petroleum production and therefore one of the geese that lays the golden egg. Abacha killed Ken Saro Wiwa. They want to kill their chance to ever be the president of their country. And they have the audacity to make noise about it and even hire marabouts to pray to God, the same almighty Deity, to make their plan come true!

How wicked can anyone be? And to know that the Almighty God is watching these selfish, heartless and unpatriotic people tells a lot about God’s mercy and patience. They must thank God I am not Him. I would rain thunder and lightening on them and their marabouts. And I would make sure they precede Yar’Adua to die!

In their plot, the constitution has no role to play. The law on succession does not mean a thing to them. That Obasanjo handed over twice to one of them is not enough inspiration to reciprocate the gesture when it is their turn. That the entire country rejected them in 1999 after they led us into a cul-de-sac was not enough to persuade them to change their ways. That they had to beg Obasanjo, whom they took for their puppet and fool to step in to save them and clean their mess is not enough. It is not food for thought for them to hear Gideon Orkar excise them from the union. In fact they ended up excising themselves from the country by declaring Sharia in the Northern half of the country.

They plan to ask IBB to use his closeness to the president to ask him (the president) to resign and hand over to Jonathan. Jonathan will then be forced to sign a deal to serve out only one term before ceding power to them. And they want Babangida to agree to be Jonathan’s vice should Yar’Adua agree to resign. In their plot Vice-President Jonathan has no role. He has no say in this. He must follow their plan like a robot.

They are also planning to amend the constitution to have the president serve two terms of 7 years each. Not for Yar’Adua, but whoever takes over from him. That way they will have no less than 14 years to rule and no less than 14 years to plan how to hold the rest of the country down.

In all these plans, the people, the electorate who they claim to serve do not matter in these schemes. Once they anoint one of them, they just rig him in regardless of the people’s wish. The people who supposedly voted them in are a mere irritant to their schemes. The caucus is only what matters.

This is how they play politics. This is all they know. The alternative is military coup. But Obasanjo had done some personnel juggling to make it difficult, but not necessarily impossible to execute a rebellion in the army. He must have taught the president a thing or two about protection against military adventurism by the political generals who are still in the army. So they try to shy away from involving the military. Besides, military governance is not in vogue anymore. This is why they prefer to go through this tortuous route to the presidency.

For 37 years, they held the nation to ransom. They started with the tribal party called the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). Yes. Northern! No pretensions to being national or at least being seen to be national in scope. While the Action Group, was just as tribal, it sought to be seen as being national. Ditto for NCNC. The British handed power to them and within 7 years they had brought the nation to a grind to the extent that the six majors had to strike, killing all the nation’s leaders and thus starting a revolution which is still playing out till date. For about 34 years it was a ding dong between the religious cum political tendency of the right and the Nigerian Army, which eventually became the Northern Nigerian Army.

Only 6 years into independence, the army took over and began a governance of brute force and corruption from 1966 to 1999. The Northern army, it turned out to be and still was until Obasanjo’s second coming. From Gowon to Muhammed, only the interest of the North was paramount in government policy directives. From Buhari to Abacha, the North was calling the shots. Until they shot themselves in the foot by annulling the freest presidential election in the history of the country. Then the south saw deep into their shenanigans and realized that they could also exercise influence on the political direction of the country just as the North had for many years. Yes, Northerners are smart people, especially in politics. But there are times smart people do dumb things.

Abiola won an election fair and square under regulations set up by them. Couldn’t they have allowed him to rule even for only one month before organizing a coup to topple him? Couldn’t they simply give their same puerile reasons for their action and thus continue their rudderless leadership for another 40 years? No. They thought they were smart and the rest of the country were stupid. They ganged up with some spineless southerners to frustrate the will of about 14 million people who voted for Abiola and imposed a puppet on the hapless nation. They slaughtered sleep and could sleep no more. They are appealing to the same shameless person who annulled the election to work towards annulling Yar’Adua’s election by persuading him to resign and hand over to Jonathan who will then handover to Babangida! And should the Supreme Court rule against Yar’Adua’s legitimacy, they have a contingency plan that will make Jonathan, the current Vice -President a mere onlooker in the unfolding political development. In either of these scenarios, the constitution has no role to play and the sensibilities of the other component parts of the nation are not considered!

“Born to Rule”. This is the motto of Sokoto State. The corollary of this is: Born to be ruled! For a group of people with self-bloated ego, this logo is an article of faith. And they work hard to realize this, fair or foul. They were the first to discover the brutal coercive power of the military. The brutal coercive power rarely adopted in decent societies. And whenever it feels like the civilian collaborators could not make it through the electoral process, they turn to the military which is in the ready to usurp power at short notice. This is what they are angling for, yet again. The good news is that we do not have to take it. We can do something about it. We can stand up to General Babangida and his sympathizers. David Mark, the current Senate President has tried to dissuade him by appealing to Babangida’s sense of reasoning. But, he can do better by using his power as a senator to enact a law barring all former Heads of State and Presidents from running as the nations president. Bankole, Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives will not hesitate to support such a legislation. Yar’Adua will have no qualms at signing this piece of legislation into law.


 

 

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