The enemies within can be dangerous. The phenomenon is old and real and has the semblance of betrayal. Every society has its own fair share of such persons and has a way of dealing with them. Instances abound where the man betrays the wife and vice versa. Or the children betraying their parents and vice versa.
Cast your mind back to the days of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and you will understand why things are the way they are.
Betrayal has no colour. It has no ethnic exclusivity. It knows no religion and does not consider status. It has simply acquired a life of its own in our ever changing society.
Where I come from, the story of the rat and the fish is used to illustrate the dangers the enemies within can cause. The Igbo say “oke di na ulo gwara oke di na ama na azu di na oku”, meaning it is the rat within the house that tells the rat outside the home that there is fish in the kitchen.
Even the Bible recognises the potency of the enemy within, hence the Lord Jesus Christ warned his followers to be wary of such fellows.
Those familiar with the Lord’s Supper and how it turned out to be a session where Judas Iscariot, one of the very close disciples of Jesus Christ who betrayed his master was unmasked, will understand what I am talking about.
“I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me,” Jesus Christ told his disciples at the Passover.
“The one who has dipped his hands into the bowel with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born,” he added. In the contemporary world, Judas was a member of Jesus Christ’s kitchen cabinet.
When I wrote the “Fall of Jonathan’s men” in this column on December 22, 2014, the idea was not to denigrate President Goodluck Jonathan, but to bring to the fore developments that will come from the so-called people he thinks are part of his political house or kitchen cabinet.
I was convinced that all the “we will swim and sink with Jonathan” and the “it is Jonathan or never” prophecies and sermons from his cabinet members and others in his kitchen cabinet were because they were benefitting momentarily from the perks of office.
Almost all the ministers who resigned from the cabinet to seek elective positions late last year have jumped political ship, with some of them making negative comments that have jolted the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leadership and say a lot about what I said they are in the piece in question (check One The Beat in www.thenicheng.com).
One word to describe what is brewing between some former aides of Jonathan, like former Information Minister, Labaran Maku, and some chieftains of the PDP is the work of the enemies within.
Someone else may call it betrayal of trust. Therefore, when the PDP and its chieftains descend on Maku you understand the pain that can be felt when an enemy within is at work.
“Maku is a dangerous boy whom the PDP helped to groom from nothing. We must make sure that now that he has shown his colour, he will continue failing for the rest of his life,” former PDP National Chairman and Jonathan’s Campaign Director General, Ahmadu Ali, fumed at a rally in Nasarawa last week.
While Ali called Maku an ingrate, Senate President, David Mark, said Maku is a liar. Jonathan described his defection to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) where he intends to contest for the Nasarawa governorship as anti-party.
However, Maku said the attacks on him show that there is panic in the PDP in Nasarawa State following his emergence as the flag-bearer of APGA.
But why would Ali get leprous over only Maku when several other enemies within enjoy the ambience of the inner caucus of Jonathan’s administration?
I read an advertorial in The Nation of January 28, 2015 titled Jonathan’s Men: Who Said What and it made me wonder why our president is still keeping close to himself such fellows, no matter how good they may claim to be. From Nuhu Ribadu to Tom Ikimi to Femi Fani-Kayode to Reuben Abati to Ibrahim Shekarau and Sule Lamido, if the All Progressives Congress (APC) decides to make the comments credited to them as the cornerstone of its campaign, the PDP may need to work extra hard to clean the dent on its candidate.
Be that as it may, Ali should be rest assured that there are many Makus within Jonathan’s camp shouting Hosanah, Hosanah for Jonathan, but ready to betray him as Judas did Christ and deny him as Peter did in the due season in keeping to the age long tradition of enemies within.
The magnitude of what Ali and the PDP are worrying themselves over Maku should attract the same concern on what is trending between Bauchi State Governor, Isa Yuguda, and the Minister of the Federal capital Territory (FCT), Bala Mohammed.
Yuguda had openly said Mohammed is undermining the interest of Jonathan in Bauchi, and given his position as the Chief Executive Officer, and the amount of security information at his disposal, he ought to make informed comments on national and state developments.
It took the campaign train of Jonathan moving to Bauchi for what he said to emerge after the president’s convoy was pelted with sachets of water and the youths wielding broom on Bauchi streets.
Yuguda said: “The whole thing was carefully planned and implemented by the FCT minister in collaboration with his cohorts who wanted to embarrass me and prove to President Jonathan that they were more politically relevant in Bauchi State than the sitting governor.
“The minister and his group sponsored small boys of not more than seven years of age and gave them brooms to give the impression that they were from the opposition party whereas they were all wearing T-shirts branded with his name and that of TAN.
“Before the arrival of the boys, the presidential rally was going on smoothly. When they entered the venue they started singing Sai Jonathan, Sai Jonathan only for them to begin to chant Sai Buhari, Sai Buhari to the bewilderment of all present.
“I feel bad over the sad incident caused by Bala and his group to discredit me and all that I have been able to accomplish in Bauchi. I must say I am very sad and disappointed by the antics of the minister.”
Bala fired back: “It is totally illogical, irreconcilable, wicked and fallacious for anybody to insinuate that the Hon Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala Mohammed, imported thugs to stone and attack himself while addressing President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential campaign rally in his state, Bauchi.
“The question begging for answer is ‘why wasn’t Governor Yuguda stoned by the rampaging thugs when he was on the podium addressing the same rally?’ Every sincere person in this country can attest to the fact that the loyalty of the FCT minister to President Goodluck Jonathan and his commitment to the success of the PDP in all elections have never been in doubt.
“Those who are specialists in running with the hare and hunting with the hounds should please leave Senator Bala Mohammed and the PDP alone to campaign peacefully for President Goodluck Jonathan and other PDP candidates across the country, Bauchi State inclusive.”
Whether anybody likes it or not, the embarrassment the president was subjected to in Bauchi was clinically conceived and executed. The responses of the two political heavyweights notwithstanding, it still has all the trappings of the work of the enemies within. But there will always be time when the Judas will surface.