Atiku Abubakar. |
It could have passed as a joke that the
federal government represented by the loquacious minister of information, Lai
Mohammed will accuse the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) Atiku Abubakar of treason. But it was a joke taken too far.
It is on record
that all through the three times that Buhari contested for president and was
defeated, he challenged the outcome of the election at the court up to the
Supreme Court. No one mounted pressure on him to drop his cases at the court
and that he lost those cases due to lack of diligent prosecution was nobody's
fault. Not once at that time did anyone accuse him of being a threat to
democracy even though his utterances were clear threats to peace and stability
of the country at that time. In 2013, then known as General Buhari made
incendiary statements capable of leading the public to violence that 'the
monkeys and baboons will be soaked in blood,' yet no one passed a fatwa of a
felon on him.
Ironically, too,
the same Lai Mohammed was the spokesperson of the then opposition All
Progressives Congress and he issued every manner of fallacious press statements
against the ruling party and government yet no one addressed an international
press conference to call him an enemy of the state.
As far as the
PDP was concerned in those days, both Buhari and Lai were playing their roles
as opposition elements then and there was no reason to label them enemies of
the state.
If Atiku's only
offence was going to the court to challenge the outcome of the February
23 presidential elections, it beggars the question why the APC and Buhari
desperately want Atiku to withdraw his litigation if indeed President Buhari
had truly won.
At first, the
story was that government was mounting pressure on Atiku to drop his case at
the court with some mouthwatering offers. Obviously, that didn't work. And now,
there is this shameless outburst by the same government that Atiku and the PDP
are overheating the polity. It is evident that the only right conclusion to
reach on the matter is to sum it up as a case of mobilizing the stick where the
carrot did not work.
From available
public record, Atiku is not a stranger to political persecution. And if the APC
and the Lai Mohammeds of this world were wise enough, they should pretty well
know that the man they are dealing with is sturdier when he is under the fire.
In his long
history of defending democracy, Atiku has slipped through the claws of dictator
like Sani Abacha and even dared the tempest of Olusegun Obasanjo when he served
as Vice President under the administration. In each of those episodes, he not
only came out victorious, but stronger.
Given the
military nature of his government, one can excuse Abacha for attempting to
muscle out opposition. But what of a supposed democratic government headed by a
self-confessed convert democrat?
The Buhari
administration in the past four years had done nothing tangible other than buck
passing and blame game. If a government came into power on the premise of
change it should be expected that such a government will set forth with clearly
thought out policies that will achieve that objective.
Four years down
the line, the best you can credit the Buhari government of doing are random and
worthless programmes such as Tradermoni and the school feeding
schemes which, in practical term, are ambiguous.
If the
administration cannot provide explanations for the wide spread criminality in
the country and there is also no explanation for why the economy has remained
moribund since 2015, isn't it obvious that the government is merely groping in
the dark? And to add more to the provocation, whenever they are overwhelmed by
the consequences of their actions and inactions, they run to town blaming the
opposition.
For goodness
sake, in spite of all the down turn in every facet of the Nigerian life, the
president never deemed it fit in four years to even cause a review of his
cabinet. No cabinet minister was sacked, none was swapped and the
administration is here telling us that it is the opposition that is
over-heating the polity. Should the government have an ear, let them hear that
they are the very cause of their problem - our problem.
Was President
Buhari anticipating a different outcome from this current chaos when, despite
all the hues and cries about how bad the economy was going and the security
being poorly managed, he refuses to change the personnel in charge of those
functions? His government spent a whole four years blaming the previous
administration and now their new song-song is to blame the opposition for their
self-inflicted misfortune.
Important cities
in the Northern part of the country from Kano to Zamfara are embroiled in one
form of crisis or another, the government is not showing any obvious interest
in intervening in those crises and the next thing we will hear is that PDP and
Atiku are planning to overthrow the government.
Just out of the
blues, the military a few days ago came out dissociating itself from an alleged
coup plot. About two days after, it all began to make sense when Lai Mohammed
came out with his outburst about the opposition planning to disrupt the federal
government. We can estimate it as part of politics if the government would cry
wolf to make the opposition look bad. But it will be more than disappointing if
the military actually did submit itself as a cannon fodder in a political
brickbat.
And, in any case,
there is absolutely nothing in Atiku's political record to justify the
outburst. If the former Vice President did not support any military government
when military rule was fashionable, is it now that totalitarianism has
become an anathema that he will begin to support it?
Whichever way
the musical chair ends, we can only wait and see at what limit the government
will call itself to order in the apparent bid to frustrate the opposition and
the challenge against President Buhari's second term election at the court.
Teslim Sanni, a
public analyst wrote from Ilesha, Osun State.
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