News
Atiku to Tinubu: Bad business! Your mischief has blown up in your face
Atiku Abubakar is presently having a bellyful of laughter over the claim of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu that he never met with the Group of Five G-5 Intelligence Group, saying it was a fat lie, being sprung up because the deal had blown up in his face.
Mocking the former Governor of Lagos State, now presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Atiku, himself, former Vice President and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku said Tinubu’s apparent volte face, because meeting with the G-5 Governors, did not succeed.
“The Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, told a barefaced lie by denying ever meeting the governors in London,” Atiku, said in a statement on Sunday by his spokesman, Phrank Shaibu, adding: “Incidentally, Governor Nyesom Wike, who is known for his bravado, had failed to deny ever meeting with Tinubu, saying instead that “They said we had a meeting with so and so. What is your problem?” I make bold to state that if the G-5 never met with Tinubu, Wike would have been the one to deny it.”
He pointed to the statements made by two of the APC Presidential campaign, Festus Keyamo and Femi Fani-Kayode, who took to social media to celebrate the support Tinubu would be getting from the G-5.
The statement said: “On Facebook, Fani-Kayode specifically stated: “The endorsement and declaration of support that Bola Ahmed Tinubu will get from at least six (not just five) governors from the PDP this January will finally put to rest the delusion that Atiku will stubbornly harbour about winning the 2023 Presidential election.”
“It is funny that it took three whole days after reports of the meeting before Tinubu decided it was time to put out a statement denying it ever held. It is also awfully coincidental that the G-5 and Tinubu all decided to travel to London at the same time and depart at the same time with Tinubu proceeding to Saudi Arabia and the other governors returning to Nigeria.
Incidentally, Tinubu had also in August denied plans of meeting the G-5 only for Wike to later issue a statement confirming that they indeed met with Tinubu and other candidates separately. Tinubu’s latest denial should therefore be discarded as another lie.
“For Nigerians who wonder why Tinubu would deny such a meeting ever held, the reason is because the details of the meeting are too messy and the APC candidates in the five states are fighting back. All the G-5 governors are on the ballot except for Governor Wike and there is a fight back from the APC governorship and National Assembly candidates from the affected states where the G-5 Governors hold sway.
In Oyo, Senator Teslim Folarin is reportedly angry at a proposed treacherous deal to trade off his mandate as the APC governorship candidate. The situation is not different in Abia, Enugu , Benue and of course Rivers state.
“This larcenous move exposes the nature of the man who wants to be the next President of Nigeria. Tinubu, a man who is yet to explain to Nigerians his ignoble role in the infamous heroine trafficking case which led to his forfeiture of $460,000, is a treacherous man who is more of a dealer than a leader. He will trade off all his loyalists for power.
“This desperation was brought to the fore in 2011 when Tinubu removed the rug from under Nuhu Ribadu of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and made a deal with the Federal Government to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan wins. All these machinations will end in failure for Tinubu because Nigerians have decided that their future will not be put in the hands of a man who is willing to trade their destinies for a mere porridge or agbado?
“The truth is that no amount of horse-trading can make Nigerians forget the torture they have been subjected to in the last nearly eight years of the APC. Nigerians are far worse off than they were in 2015. The faces of frustrated motorists queuing to buy petrol during the Yuletide are a graphic reflection of life under the APC where road travel to any part of the country has become a journey through the valley of the shadow of death.
“Seemingly, this Yuletide saw Nigerians starving as the price of food stuff has hit the roof with inflation at a staggering figure. In the last seven and a half years of the APC, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), spent a combined two years on strike with innocent students paying for the bad governance and maladministration of the APC. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), at least 133 million Nigerians live in abject poverty. That is more than the combined population of Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Mauritania, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Benin, Guinea, Senegal and Mali, making Nigeria the poorest nation in the world.
“On the watch of the APC, violent and mindless killings have become commonplace. Nearly 5,000 Nigerians were killed in the first half of last year, the Nigerian Security Tracker operated by the Council on Foreign Relations stated. In Kaduna State where the APC is fully in charge, bandits took over the international airport and bombed a train, kidnapping several passengers who had to pay billions to secure their release. There were also attacks at a Catholic church in Ondo where 40 worshippers were killed while at the Kuje Correctional Centre, many terrorists were released with most of them still on the loose.
“The United States and other countries had to advise their citizens not to visit Abuja because of the clear failure of the APC. Rather than apologise to Nigerians, the APC is now selling a false message of renewed hope through Tinubu, the party’s national leader. How can those who plunged us into the current mess be the solution to the same mess? Balderdash! The problems plaguing Nigeria will determine how citizens vote and not the political horse-trading of a ‘corn-man.”’
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
“Now that the court has ruled against it, we are sure that, in the coming days, we will witness a mass exodus from the ruling party,” were the words with which the African Democratic Congress (ADC) welcomed Wednesday’s ruling of the Federal High Court, Abuja reversing the deadline for party primaries, among others.
Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesman, who conveyed the party’s excitement over the development, said it viewed the ruling as vindication of its objections to key aspects of the electoral body’s guidelines at the time they were issued.
Recalling its specific objections to the strict timelines on membership registration as well as the conduct of party primaries, the statement, said: “The decision of the court on these issues, including those that directly contradict the constitution, is therefore a welcome vindication of our position.”
Stressing that the ruling, which removed the impediment placed by the guidelines on politicians who wished to seek alternative platforms to contest elections, was a positive development that would promote freedom of association, the statement, added: “We believed at the time that that particular restriction was designed to prevent people from leaving the ruling party, APC.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.
The US military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, “No, not at all.”
Rubio, a Cuban American and vociferous opponent of Havana’s government, described the island 90 miles (145 kilometres) from the US shore as a “failed state” as it suffers a major economic crisis.
“Their economic system doesn’t work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place. What they’ve gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out.
“They’re not going to be able to wait us out or buy time. We’re very serious. We’re very focused. The US preference is always a diplomatic solution, but President Donald Trump has other options at his disposal.”
Stating that Cuba had tentatively accepted an offer by the United States of $100 million in aid in return for reforms, he said it was unclear if the United States would accept Cuba’s terms, as Washington insists on circumventing the military-backed conglomerate GAESA, which dominates the island’s economy.
Rubio said Thursday that the GAESA chief’s Florida-based sister, Adys Lastres Morera, had been arrested and was being held by US immigration authorities, adding in an X post: “Managing real estate assets…while also aiding Havana’s communist regime, until I terminated her permanent resident status.”
The charges against Raul Castro — younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s communist revolution that culminated in 1959 — stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996.
Cuban authorities called on citizens to protest the “despicable” indictment, with the official newspaper Granma urging Cubans to gather outside the US embassy in Havana on Friday at 7:30 am (1230 GMT).
“This isn’t really an accusation, something from more than 30 years ago, but rather a public attack on a public figure,” Fabian Fernandez, a 30-year-old accountant, told AFP in Havana.
Trump in January seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.
“The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolas Maduro,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The Maduro operation led to the end of free oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which relied on its ally for nearly half its needs.
Cubans have suffered power outages of up to 20 hours a day and taps running dry.
Runaway inflation has caused the price of basic goods to soar and mountains of trash have piled up on the streets of Havana.
In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.
The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was “legitimate self-defense” against an airspace violation.
China and Russia both criticized Trump’s steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington “should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn.”
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We believe that under no circumstances should such methods — which border on violence — be used against either former or current heads of state.
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