THE DAY GOODLUCK JONATHAN BECAME MY HERO

By Femi Aribisala
I WRITE this as someone who does not know President Jonathan personally. I have never met the man. Neither have I ever spoken to him electronically. All I know about him is what I read in the papers, or what I have seen of him on television. Nevertheless, he has been my president for the last five years.
When you write positively about the president, his opponents insist you must either be a card-carrying member of the PDP or be looking for a job. They act as if it is impossible to like him without having an ulterior motive. I have ignored this cheap blackmail designed to discourage people from expressing freely their liking for the president. But it has already outlived its usefulness. In a matter of days, the president will leave office. From now on, those ostensibly looking for a job are the praise-singers of president-elect Buhari.
Sabotage

WHY I’M NOT PROUD TO CALL BUHARI MY PRESIDENT — ARIBISALA

Dr. Femi Aribisala, a pastor and Vanguard columnist, in this interaction with Vanguard editors, ventilates his passion for President Goodluck Jonathan and explains his position on the person and politics of the president-elect, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari. Excerpts:
What is your perspective on the just concluded presidential election?
This has been the most important political campaign I have witnessed in Nigeria. And the campaign will, to some extent, define the presidency. There were things that needed to be said, emphasized and brought to Buhari’s attention because we needed to remind him that some things would not be acceptable if he becomes the president. Buhari was made to go through a lot of phases. There were some things like the Muslim-Muslim ticket which some of us made so much noise about and they just had to drop it at some point. There were other things that Buhari did which he would not normally do because we made so much noise about his antecedents. Sometimes people simplistically define the process by the result. No! The whole debate is to make him understand that it is not what he had before. It was to make him realize that this is a democratic framework. It was also to sensitize him that certain things would not be acceptable.

BUHARI AND THE LION OF BOURDILLON

By Femi Aribisala
ONE month ago, the APC had whipped its supporters into frenzy in believing it is bound to win an election it really has no chance of winning. In truth, if the election had been conducted then for chairman of the EFCC, Muhammadu Buhari would have been declared winner by a landslide. However, with postponement of the election, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Even Buhari’s self-styled credential as Mr. Integrity has unraveled.
Buhari’s entire campaign posture for the 2015 presidential election stands on two shaky grounds. He fashions himself as Mr. Integrity; the implacable enemy of corruption in Nigeria. He is the one who reportedly is going to ensure that corruption is a thing of the past in Nigeria. He is also the one who is going to destroy the Boko Haram in the twinkling of an eye; even though a number of months ago, he was negotiating for amnesty and golden handshakes for the insurgents, and they nominated him as their preferred middleman in any truce negotiation with Nigeria.

WHY BUHARI WILL NOT AGREE TO A DEBATE WITH JONATHAN

By Femi Arbisala

IN all my years of studying elections, I have never seen a campaign as bogus as that of Muhammadu Buhari. It is amazing that, for a man who is running for election as president for a marathon fourth time, Buhari is so bereft of ideas as to how he would do anything if he were to become president. Campaigning in 35 states, Buhari has spoken for a total of less than 60 minutes in all. Surely, he wants to be president; but he clearly has no presidential agenda.

Buhari’s blueprint for the presidency is similar to his Cambridge/WASC certificate; it is yet to be discovered. It is an article of faith of things hoped for by his admirers, the evidence of things neither seen nor articulated. No man becomes president of Nigeria on the basis of vain platitudes. No man becomes president as a result of social media blogs and soundbites. No man becomes president by giving two-minute speeches in craftily-packaged rallies, one minute of which is spent introducing his entourage.

THE END OF APC’S FABRICATED MOMENTUM

By Femi Aribisala
I HAVE news for APC stalwarts. You don’t win an election in Nigeria by being the champion of social media. You don’t win by renting crowds to fill up your rallies. You don’t win by putting up your billboards everywhere while tearing down those of your opponents. You don’t win by master-minding in the media a false sense of the inevitability of your victory. When you do all this successfully, you simply end up deceiving yourself.
You win elections by mounting an effective ground-game at the grassroots level; designed to bring out the people on Election Day to vote for you. Instead, APC strategy was to stampede the electorate into victory. The design was to proclaim victory even before the election, laying grounds for protests and acrimony in event of defeat.
Attempted coup d’état
The APC blueprint is see-through. Present a new refurbished, suit-wearing and church-visiting Buhari to the electorate chanting a mantra of “change.” Give him a Teflon-coated Redeemed pastor as vice-presidential running-mate. Shield him from public scrutiny and debates to hide his weaknesses and absent-mindedness. Gloss over his objectionable past and pedigree. Mount an aggressive image-laundering social media campaign.

MUHAMMADU BUHARI LIED UNDER OATH

THESE are interesting times. Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate whose only policy plank is that he will fight against corruption without wavering, is not as straight-forward as he would have Nigerians believe. Buhari lied under oath. He perjured himself claiming his school-leaving certificate is with the military. This has now been revealed to be a tissue of lies.
This is a scandal of immense proportions in an aspiring presidential candidate. Under no circumstances should it be swept under the carpet. For this blatant perjury, Buhari must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It should also lead to his disqualification from contesting for election as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In the language of Buhari’s own anti-corruption rhetoric, Nigeria must be shown to be a nation of laws and of the rule of law. No man, no matter how highly-placed, no matter his ethnic or political pedigree, should be shown to be above the law. For this reason, a public example must be made of Buhari.

HOW TO LOSE THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FOUR TIMES (4)

By Femi Aribisal
Whatever the case, a man with no primary or secondary school leaving certificate has no business running for president of Nigeria.
Muhammadu Buhari can conduct a coup and declare himself Nigeria’s head of state. But under no circumstance should Nigerians elect him as president. Nigeria is fighting a Boko Haram insurgency whose mantra is that western education is a sin. These people have kidnapped innocent young girls who dared to go to school. How then can we give our votes to Buhari, a man who cannot even be straightforward about his secondary school leaving certificate?
In Nigeria, if a university graduate does not have an NYSC certificate, he is ineligible for public employment. That is the law. Similarly, if a presidential candidate does not have a school leaving certificate, he is ineligible to stand for election as president of Nigeria.

TIME TO GET RID OF TINUBU’S CRONIES IN LAGOS

BY FEMI ARIBISALA
Bola Tinubu is not a democrat, has never been a democrat and will never be a democrat.
There is a popular Yoruba song that says: “Eko o gba gbere rara o.” It means: “Lagos does not take any nonsense whatsoever.” It is high time for Lagos to fulfil the intent of this song by putting a stop to commandeering of the political processes in the state by Bola Tinubu and his cronies.
Enough is enough. The domination of Lagos politics by one man has gone on for too long. Lagos must be wrested from the control of Bola Tinubu who has enslaved the politicians in the state and privatised its resources for the last 16 years. Senator Femi Okurounmu, a Yoruba Afenifere leader and co-coordinator of the recently concluded National Conference, said early this year: “Now that the Yoruba people have known that the APC is worse than PDP- in corruption, impunity and lack of internal democracy- we have to vote against APC.”
Divided house
The shenanigans of Tinubu at the just concluded APC gubernatorial primaries in Lagos provide strong confirmation of the veracity of the Senator’s position. Nobody should be fooled; the primaries were nothing but one big charade. Those of us who have insisted that there is nothing progressive or democratic about the APC were sadly proved right once again. Tinubu frustrated every pretension to democracy in the elections and manipulated his cronies into office; all in the interest of sustaining his domination of Lagos politics.
In the process, he has sown the seed of his own downfall. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Tinubu has effectively divided the APC in Lagos. It is now up to the PDP to capitalise on his high-handedness by coming up with a candidate that can be sold to Lagosians. If it does, the days of slavery to Tinubu in Lagos will certainly come to an end on 29th May, 2015.
We have seen this before. In 1991, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) seemed to have Lagos under lock and key. In the House of Assembly election, the SDP won an overwhelming 26 of the 30 seats. However, it lost the election of governor to the National Republican Convention (NRC). Sir Michael Otedola became governor of Lagos as a result of conflict and split within the SDP and he was the beneficiary of the resultant protest vote.
The evidence suggests that, thanks to Tinubu’s high jinks, history might repeat itself in 2015 with the probable loss of Lagos by the ruling APC to the opposition PDP.
Mafia godfather
Bola Tinubu is a political leopard that cannot change its skin. The man is not a democrat, has never been a democrat and will never be a democrat. The truth of the matter is that democracy does not suit Tinubu’s the political agenda. In a moment of Nebuchadnezzar exuberance before the Ekiti poll, Tinubu declared: “Nobody, no one under the sun, under the United Nations Human Rights Charter, can stop Bola Tinubu’s ambition.”
After what we witnessed on Thursday at the APC primaries for the prospective governor of Lagos, it is clear that the onus is now on the Lagos electorate to put a stop to Tinubu pomposity in Lagos.
Tinubu never even found it necessary to pretend in the past to be a democrat. According to his own choice of expression, he fashioned his political style in Lagos State and, indeed, the entire South-West, grandiloquently as “godfatherism,” claiming: “godfatherism is biblical, which is why Christians refer to God as their father.”
However, Tinubu’s “godfatherism” is more akin to that of unscrupulous mafia dons in Sicily. It is certainly anathema to democratic norms and principles. Tinubu’s “godfatherism” means candidates for public office of his political party are not elected by popular vote but selected from Tinubu’s bedroom in Bourdillon Road and then imposed on the party. They are then held under a tight leash by the Jagaban and are required to do his bidding on pain of being summarily replaced or impeached.
Bisi Akande, former chairman of Tinubu’s legacy ACN party, declared unapologetically that democracy had no place in the internal arrangements of the ACN. “Anyone that is not comfortable with that should go and contest in another political party,” he said.
Anti-democratic APC
Nothing has really changed in this stance beyond the fact that ACN has since metamorphosed into the APC. The first test was the so-called election of the chairman of the party. Recognising that his choice candidate might not be elected in a free and fair democratic poll, Tinubu engaged in backroom deals whereby, instead of electing a new APC chairman, Odigie-Oyegun was rigged into the office.
APC governors went along with this charade out of fear Tinubu might otherwise lose interest in the new party and deny it valuable South-West support. The lie was sold to the convention that all other candidates had agreed to step down for Odigie-Oyegun. As a result, he was declared the new consensus chairman of the party.
Unfortunately for Tinubu, he had to contend in the APC with new people who were not beholden to him and refused to be subservient to him. Thus, Tom Ikimi blew the whistle on him, insisting he never dropped out of the race for Oyegun but was forced out because, at that time, Tinubu had designs for a Muslim/Muslim APC presidential ticket, with him as the vice-presidential candidate. Ali Modu Sheriff was even reported to have been so incensed by Tinubu at an APC NEC meeting that he threatened to beat him up. Both of these men have since left the APC.
Sharp practices
With these antecedents, it is not surprising therefore that the APC primary for the party’s gubernatorial candidate for Lagos State was yet another sham orchestrated by Tinubu. Long before the election, Tinubu had unveiled Akinwumi Ambode as his preferred candidate. Oba Rilwan Akiolu, who Tinubu arrogantly announced is one of the very few Obas worth his salt in the entire South-West, had already publicly endorsed Tinubu’s irrefutable choice.
But there were already rumblings that some were not going to take this lying down this time. Muiz Banire, one of Tinubu’s former acolytes, declared publicly that the imposition of a candidate on the APC should be resisted. He said: “I want to encourage our people, particularly APC people, to shine their eyes. They must shine their eyes this time around and not allow anybody to pull the wool over them. They have their votes, their rights, and they must go all out to ensure that we have and enjoy free, transparent, and just primaries.”
But this was not to be. Tinubu manipulated the process from beginning to end. Delegates were not chosen from the 20 local governments recognised by the APC constitution. Instead of direct primaries in the different local government wards, indirect primaries were held, enabling the powers-that-be to select their preferred disciples and give them voting instructions. To that end, the delegate list was not made known to any of the candidates, except favourite-son Ambode.
Once the results started to be declared, the other contestants realised they had been conned. They all stormed out of the venue in protest; leaving only Ambode and Ganiyu Solomon. Tokunbo Wahab, one of the aggrieved candidates, declared: “I can say categorically, that what happened today was not a primary but a pre-orchestrated drama. We shall be making our positions known to the party and INEC within the next few hours and we shall pursue this to a logical, legal conclusion.”
It should be clear to any but the most politically naive that in a truly free and fair election, Ambode is no competition for many of the other contestants. Ambode is not a politician, and he is an unknown political quantity in Lagos. How then can he prevail over far more popular and better–known politicians in APC, including Ganiyu Solomon, a serving Senator; Adeyemi Ikuforiji, a long-standing Speaker of the House of Assembly; and other household names like Femi Hamzat, the State Commissioner for Works.
The results themselves gave the lie to the entire process. Political lightweight Ambode received a whopping 3,735 votes; while Hamzat could only manage 1201 votes; Ganiyu Solomon 272 votes and Adeyemi Ikuforiji 182 votes.
Tinubu pleaded with aspirants to accept the contrived outcome, saying: “You are 12 aspirants and like the 12 tribes of Israel you have some differences but you must remain one and united.” Someone needs to inform the Jagaban that the 12 tribes of Israel were not united. As a matter of fact, they split, with two tribes becoming the kingdom of Judah and the remaining ten the kingdom of Israel.
Emasculated governor
Tinubu’s machinations are all about power and control. By choosing a candidate without grassroots support, Tinubu is ensuring that he would not be a threat to him if he becomes governor. Moreover, he would not be able to rely on his own independent sources of power outside of Tinubu. That way, the man would be at Tinubu’s beck and call. This ensures that Tinubu would emasculate the governor; making him entirely dependent on him without having a significant political structure of his own.
If the governor grows wings after a few years in office, the threat of impeachment by Tinubu’s henchmen in the House of Assembly would be held as a sword of Damocles around his neck to keep him back in line. Through the same flawed process, Tinubu loyalists also swept the APC House of Assembly primaries, even as his supporters swept the election in the 20 LGAs and 30 LCDAs. With this clean sweep, Tinubu’s continued control of the state legislature is assured should the APC candidates prevail at the polls in February.
It is therefore imperative for the Lagos electorate to throw out Tinubu and his gang lock, stock and barrel in the coming elections. For too long, Lagos has been run as the personal estate of one over-bearing man. This must come to an end. Come February 2015, Lagos voters must send Tinubu into early retirement, recognising that a vote for APC again is a vote for political slavery to the whims and caprices of one insatiable godfather.
Source: Vanguard

NIGERIA: WHAT EXACTLY IS 'CLUELESS' ABOUT GOODLUCK JONATHAN? (3)

By Femi Aribisala
It is increasingly apparent that if Jonathan is "clueless," his "cluelessness" is the magic that Nigeria needs at this very moment in time.
By the time you are reading this, by the grace of God, the 218 kidnapped Chibok school-girls may have been released. If not, their release is imminent. A ceasefire with the Boko Haram has been negotiated. Never mind that there are still skirmishes here and there. “Clueless” Goodluck Jonathan has forced the insurgents to consider seriously putting down their arms.
He has done this in spite of the nagging of the opposition about his "cluelessness." He has done this through the much-maligned Nigerian military; and without mortgaging the nation's security to foreign troops. Now is the time to give the microphone to Lai Mohammed, who talks about Nigeria's security as if he were a Chadian. Now is the time to hear from Muhammadu Buhari, who claimed in the past that Boko Haram is a malevolent Southern conspiracy against the North.