The young ones are asking through the Obi-Datti ticket for a regime change to a proper civilian politics under the rule of law. I think the youth of this country have a good case and they have presented it with dignity and decorum. THAT IS WHY WE NEED TO VOTE OBI-DATTI INTO POWER THIS YEAR.
By Elder Dr. Uma Eleazu
- Pseudo-military/civilian Regimes
General Olusegun Obasanjo and Major General Shehu Yar’adua were opposed to the high-handedness of the Abacha regime and were loud about it. They were opposed to his perpetuating himself as maximum ruler forever like Idi Amin of Uganda. Because of that, he clamped both of them into jail so that no bloody civilian will follow their example to dare oppose his ambition. On the eve of Abacha’s death, Obasanjo was released from prison, but unfortunately, Yar’Adua died in Prison.
In his second coming as President and Head of State, OBJ surrounded himself with technocrats who helped him to function like a civilian and according to the spirit of the constitution. But there was a problem. The constitution itself was a fraud, declaring what we the people had not seen or said. Agitation for a proper people oriented constitution dogged his administration until he called for a Reform Conference which achieved nothing because he too wanted to use it to get an extension for four more years. It flopped and he did his eight years and re-retired a rich man.
Had General Yar’Adua not died in Abacha’s Gulag, he would have been the one to succeed Obasanjo. So the military cabal decided to find somebody close to him to become the next President so as to appease the people of his home state for his death. The lot fell on the ill-prepared brother of the late General, Alhaji Umaru Yar’adua. Unfortunately for him and the country, he was not in good health, and did not have the stamina to go through the rigours of an election campaign. So, no sooner he was elected, than he became sick and died, leaving the throne vacant.
The Senate invented the doctrine of necessity which allowed his vice president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to become the President. It was during this time that the Governors of states grew wings. Having captured their respective states, and with a weak president at the centre and a near political novice, they took advantage of his naivety and formed all sorts of power blocs – Northern Governors Forum; Southern Governors Forum ; G7; G22; G8, SW and SE Governors Forum, all operating under immunity from arrest, they turned their immunity into impunity to loot their respective treasuries while party functionaries looted the Central Bank.
By 2014, these groups coalesced into two gangs of like-minded state looters namely, Peoples Democratic Party and All Progressives Congress. Only few governors governed their states as the constitution required. Others just pocketed the funds they got from the federation account. They raised the entry bar against would be entrants into their looting structures.
In the meantime another retired General, one time military head of state did not see why he too cannot have a second coming like Obasanjo. General Muhammadu Buhari contested for the presidency in 2003, 2007, 2011 and finally got it in 2015. During the campaigns, he claimed to be a no-nonsense fighter of corruption. He promised to kill corruption before corruption kills Nigeria. He even promised to stabilize the Naira, so that the exchange rate with the US$ will be 1 : 1. He promised to end all insurgency in Nigeria etc. The population was hoodwinked and they voted him into office in 2015.
After inauguration, it took him six months to figure out who to appoint as ministers. In the meantime, he took off to the UK for medical checkup and visit friends in Westminster Abbey and friends in Chatham House, where they helped him to shape up his policy on protection of interest of the West in Nigeria and sharpen his Islamization/Fulanizaton Agenda. By the time he was ready to govern, he became really sick, again, and went AWOL for months.
Nature abhors vacuum. In the absence of the captain of the ship of state, the country went adrift; people started a free for all fight for survival in Aso Rock. The cabals and “oligarchs” had a field day. It was rumoured that one cabal led by his uncle was really the rulers of the country and another headed by his wife struggled for a share of power, at least for the kitchen cabinet headed by late Abba Kyari. Unelected, faceless people were running the country while he was going in and out of hospitals. (His wife in the “ozer room” even testified to the existence of a cabal that wanted to boot her out of her “matrimonial home” in Aso rock.) By the time he woke up, it was time for reelection in 2019.
The country was now firmly in the hands of cabals and war lords (read Governors); and roving bands of bandits and gun-totting Fulani herdsmen roaming and terrorizing the country side, killing and maiming innocent citizens at will. We were later to learn that these were fighters imported by the President’s party (thanks to Gov El-Rufai), when he promised to let monkey and baboon blood to flow, if he did not win the 2015 elections. For him it was a case of either he gets in or he pulls down the whole edifice. But having ridden the tiger to victory, he could not dismount and send the tiger hungry.
So the insecurity threatening the country now was actually master-minded by the President and his handlers in 2014/15 for their selfish political interest. The surprising thing was that in 2019, in spite of the existential threat he had created, his co-gangsters managed to have him re-elected again to continue the carnage. That is how the country got so run down that even angels are weeping for Nigerians. Among the leaders, it was not only mismanagement of the Naira, there was also the deficit of character. The erosion of public morality produced men without character and leaders without moral principles.
So when the young generation found just one man who is different, and speaks a different tune from run-of-the- mill Nigerian politicians, they decided he could lead them into a New Nigeria. When things come to crisis, God will say STOP!
Exodus 3:7: And God said to Moses, “I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows; so I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up ….”
God has certainly heard the cries of His people in Nigeria and has “come down to deliver them.” It behoves all peace loving people to cooperate with the Obi/Datti Labour Party ticket, to bring about a peaceful change.
READ ALSO: EXCLUSIVE: Why Nigerians need to vote Obi-Datti into power on Saturday (1)
Why Nigerians need to vote Obi-Datti into power on Saturday (2)
Buhari has destroyed the country – Dr. Uma Eleazu
2023 is a defining moment for regime change to true democracy and true federalism and true civilian regime in Nigeria.
Demography and political change
There is a generational change which our politicians seem not to understand. With this generational change are the changes that have taken place in the society, which in turn has affected the economy and society at large. Consider those who were born in 1984, when Buhari came to power in a coup. Assume they went to school in 1990, and probably went through primary and secondary school and graduated from secondary school in 2002/2003, aged 12 or 13; those of them who went on to tertiary institutions, graduated in 2008/9/ or 10 (then aged 24 to 26). For them, names like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, sound like figures from ancient history. The coups, the civil war, and their effect on their lives today seem vague, even though their parents had high hopes that when they finish school, they would find some employment, alas many of them have no jobs. In 2015 when this PMB-generation was about 30 years old, this same Buhari returned to power again as retired General.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the incidence of unemployment among the youths is 42.5 per cent; so half of those 18 and above registered to vote are unemployed. What is their view of politics? The political leaders they know are those politicians who came to power since 1999 when they were in their teens. Their experience of political life and elections, if they were observant enough, would be what happened in 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019. In those years Buhari was always on the ballot wanting to lead the country.
The PMB generation may have participated in bringing him to power, the only political “hero” they knew. Otherwise, they have really never seen democratic governance in action. Their experience of politics is the cash-and-carry politics of stomach infrastructure or political parties hiding under the mantra of ethnicity and/or religion to divide the people. The so-called dominant political parties PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) and APC (All Progressives Congress) have no coherent ideology nor political ideals that inspire patriotism.
There is nothing democratic about the way the PDP operates, nor is there anything progressive about the APC. The PMB -generation sees the parties as mere gangs of robbers united by one thing – state capture and plunder of state treasury.
For the younger generation, the outcome of this type of politics is nothing but inhumane, dog-eat-dog, and a game for the big boys who have managed to capture the state institutions and use them for their selfish ends. They see nothing in politics about the public interest, only selfish interests which results in poverty, insecurity, poor health conditions, poor educational facilities and a general breakdown of law and order for the masses. But this PMB generation has one advantage, they are the children of the IT age, a generation whose stock in trade are computers, laptops, smart phones, internet access, networking of all things, and lately of artificial intelligence.
The news of a bomb blast in Pakistan reverberates in Sokoto and Bakassi; thanks to WhatSapp, podcast, and tweeting. They travel to faraway places vicariously. News of the world come instantaneously. They think differently from their parents, their worldview is beyond the horizon of their parents including the treasury looters. Some now sit down in Ajegunle or Festac Town while working for a company in Silicon Valley or New York or Beijing. This human resource is what Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed are reminding us as the major resource for remaking Nigeria before all of them emigrate out of the country to better climes. LET US NOT WASTE OUR MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE – HUMAN BEINGS.
The world has shrunk in space and time and our children are part of this new world. Most of them have travelled vicariously to many places and are part of a world where people of my age could not have imagined. As their international anthem says, “We are the word, we are the children…Let us make a better world for you and me….”
This is the generation that form the backbone of the Obi-Datti Obedient Movement. They want change, they want it now. They have chosen their leaders to help them usher in A New Nigeria, which they see as Possible. With God all things are Possible. I believe that God’s hand is in this movement to salvage Nigeria from the doldrums of poverty of body and mind. They want to move in a different trajectory with people of Competence, Capacity and Character. They want to re-introduce basic morality into public life.
They see change coming with the Obi-Datti ticket and they are determined to recreate the politics of Nigeria in their own image of a humane society based on rule of law and love for one another as citizens of the same country. A country governed by honest men and women with integrity of character; An open society with equal opportunity for all irrespective of conditions of birth or status of the parents. Their outlook transcends ethnicity and religion – the great divider of nations and the source of many -a-conflicts.
This will involve also constitutional and institutional restructuring, a change of mind-set and adoption of a new political game plan. In short, the young ones are asking through OBI-DATTI ticket for a regime change to a proper civilian politics under the rule of law. I think the youth of this country have a good case and they have presented it with dignity and decorum. THAT IS WHY WE NEED TO VOTE IN OBI-DATTI INTO POWER THIS YEAR.
It has been argued in some quarters that the Obi-Datti ticket will find it difficult to govern because the Labour Party has only few candidates running for the Senate and House of Representatives on its platform. The 1999 Constitution nowhere says that a President must have a majority of his party men in the National Assembly to be able to function as a president.
IT IS ONLY A RED HERRING. In fact, the Constitution specified functions of each arm of government and also provides processes of interaction between and among the three branches of government. If those elected on the platform of the old regimes of cash and carry, stomach infrastructure politics are unwilling to perform their constitutional functions, or become a barrier to change, they will only help to hasten the revolution that will sweep all of them away.
- Elder Uma O. Eleazu, OON is the Chairman, BoT of Anya-Ndi-Igbo, a non-partisan, socio-political and economic development-oriented organisation, committed to equity, peace, unity, justice and progress of Nigeria
- Concluded