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Tinubu fast transforming into a despot – Atiku
President Bola Tinubu, is fast degenerating into a despot by the way he is dealing with opposing views, especially coming from the National Assembly, Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, in the 2023 election, said on Thursday.
Atiku, Tinubu’s main opponent in the election, is reacting on the heels of the summary removal of Ali Ndume, Senator (APC), for calling out the President, who he accused of surrounding himself and his office with kleptocrats, having a field-day on the national till while the rest of the country suffered.
Appearing as guest on Prime Time, a public affairs programme on Arise News Television, the former Chief Whip, one of the longest serving legislators in Nigeria currently, had stressed his earlier comments in made via a press statement, claiming that the President had been completely caged.
Though he absolved the President of complicity in the alleged massive thievery he alleged that was going on around the Presidential Villa and among top government functionaries, he said: “The government is also populated by kleptocrats, but unfortunately that is not what the President is up to. He really meant renewed hope, but you can only do that when you have people around you that are on the same type of thinking.”
Ndume one of the longest serving members of NASS, explained that much as Tinubu, whom he described as a close political associate and a democrat, would always be quick to act on any act of malfeasance that came to his attention, such as his recent repudiation of the Cyber-crime bill, the said unscrupulous aides, had been doing much to keep him away from some critical information.
Emphasizing about the cybercrime bill, he had said: “When the president realised that he had not heard about it, he quickly suspended it.” He highlighted the significant challenge of hunger and food scarcity, mentioning that inflation has risen to 40%. In some places, even with your money, you won’t find the food items you want to buy, which is very dangerous.
“Nigeria has never been included among countries facing severe food crises or food insecurity, but recent UN and World Food Programme figures rank Nigeria as a hotspot. For people like me, I have to be scared because I’m 64 years old with 10 children, 20 grandchildren, and I don’t have a passport or visa to anywhere.
“Some Ministers only meet the president during council meetings and that the President is often the first to leave. I’m the chief whip, and if the chief whip can’t have access to the president, the new senators won’t have access either. During the time of President (Olusegun) Obasanjo’s administration, any senator could see the president within 24 hours.
“President Tinubu is caged in. There are no visible efforts by the government to address pressing issues like climate change. The President has to harness Nigeria’s natural and human resources. He must get the right people into office and dominate his government with democrats. The president needs people who will realise his dream and tell him when something is wrong.”
Incensed by the comments, APC, in a letter by Abdullahi Ganduje, National Chairman, to the Senate, had on Wednesday, demanded Ndume be stripped of his position as Chief Whip, one of the principal offices at the Red Chambers, with the Senate going further to also remove him as Chairman, Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters.
The lawmakers, however fell short of suspending him from its activities, as proposed by Fasuyi Cyril, Senator representing Ekiti North, complained that his privileges had been breached by Ndume calling Senators, thieves, when Godswill Akpabio, Senate President, who argued that the Borno Senator mentioned kleptocrats, but not thieves, put the motion to vote and the Ndume’s colleagues voted against the move.
Regardless that the Senators did not go the whole hog, Atiku who assailed them over the development, linked it to the pressure by the Tinubu-led executive, who he accused of having scant regard for opposing views, a sign of despotism, which is a danger sign to democratic ethos.
In a statement, he personally signed, the former VP, said: “In the evolution of systems of government, a major concern for thinkers was a governmental framework that will reduce the highhandedness of the executive arm of government. It was thought, and rightly so too, that a participatory approach to governance, such that will make the government derive its legitimacy from the people will better serve the interest of the masses.
“And thus, to make sure that the executive does not go overboard in the application of its powers, the legislative arm of government was conceived as a means of protecting the people from the authoritarian tendencies of wielders of state powers. Regrettably, however, the democracy in Nigeria in the current administration of President Bola Tinubu has become an anathema to that general principle of democracy as providing primary protection for the people against executive excesses.
“This ugly tendency is being manifested by the steady posturing of our National Assembly, especially the Senate, of taking a reverse course in its core function and becoming a puppet in the hands of the President. It is uncharitable that whenever members of the Senate stand on the floor of the red chamber to perform their statutory duty of calling the executive to order, they are immediately reprimanded for doing so.
“When Senator Abdul Ningi called attention of the country to the incident of budget padding in the 2024 Appropriation bill, rather than calling for a thorough investigation into the observation, the reaction of the Senate was to hand him a suspension. Today, the people of Nigeria are victims of an ambiguous budget framework upon which appropriations for the current fiscal year are hinged in the face of multiplicity of appropriations.
“Only yesterday, Senator Ali Ndume called for the President to wake up to his responsibilities and provide succour to address the biting hunger and poverty in the country. Ironically, the response of the @NGRSenate to his patriotic warning is to relieve him of his principal office as the Chief Whip of the Senate. Also, despite persistent solicitations that government put its priorities on canceling the excruciating hardship in the land and suspend the idea of spending scarce resources on the purchase of new aircraft for the presidential fleet, the Senate took a stand against the people and ignored the voices of altruism by decorating the President with controversial purchases of an aircraft and a yacht amidst the worst material conditions of the average citizen in the history of our country.
“We are, therefore, beginning to see a pattern in which the National Assembly has become an enabler of executive recklessness, and the concerns of the people stand in the nadir of priority list of the legislature. This emerging reality must stop. The health of our democracy is being compromised by this unholy alliance between the executive and the legislature and portends a dictatorship that will worsen the lot of the people.”
For not only pardoning Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others on Thursday, but decorating them with national honours, Suage Bade, son of Albert Bade, one of the four prominent Ogoni leaders killed by a mob in 1994 has a word for President Bola Tinubu – you have killed my father a second time.
“Since yesterday (Thursday) night, I started mourning my father again,” the scion of Bade, a retired permanent secretary in Rivers State Government, who later took on the role of a traditional ruler in his native Ogoni community, said on Friday.
A guest on Prime Time, a public affairs programme on ARISE NEWS, television network, Bade saw the move as propelled by the quest for money, accusing Tinubu of being too eager to see to the commencement of resumption of oil drilling in Ogoni land that he did not care about the consequences of his action.
The pushback came just a day after Tinubu, at the celebration of the 32nd anniversary of June 12, 1993 presidential election, now being marked as Nigeria’s Democracy Day, pardoned the Ogoni-9, led by Saro-Wiwa, leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), the family of the slain leaders also known as the Ogoni-4, hold culpable for the murder of their parents.
Though the President, who made the declaration in a speech he delivered at the joint-sitting of the National Assembly, did not absolve them of guilt in the crime, which led to their arrest, trial and eventual hanging by the military government of Sani Abacha, after their conviction by a military tribunal, he went ahead to confer on them national honours.
Palpably anguished by the gesture, Bade told his host on Friday: “It is a complete disregard for the memory of our fathers, who actually served this country diligently without blemish over the years and were killed, murdered in cold-blood in broad daylight by the same men that are being honoured today – yesterday – and they made no mention of the four. It’s a very sad development.”
Acknowledging that Saro-Wiwa and the rest might not have participated in physically killing the Ogoni-4, he said they remained blameworthy by vicarious responsibility, because they were the ones who instigated the mob as leaders of MOSOP, the group agitating over the activities of oil companies in the community.
He added: “It is actually a vicarious responsibility on the part of those who were at the leadership of MOSOP at that time. So, if they were leading MOSOP and people were defamed and at the end of the day, they conspired, hacked them down, butchered them and today we have not seen their bodies, how else do you – you know that if somebody assigns somebody to go and kill and you’re not there, you have also killed that person.
“So, he was the mastermind of the killing. I’ve said that before, he was the mastermind for the murder of the four. However, for me, I don’t have anything with the pardon, what I feel that is wrong, which is an aberration is how do you honour a murderer that you have just pardoned. Then you said nothing about the four, our fathers that were butchered to death. They didn’t disappear.
“Pardon is okay, as I said. It’s the President’s prerogative to grant pardon. But to now honour murderers, I think we are now introducing a new low in our Nigerian society, because a lot of Ogonis who escaped and went under the cover of United Nations Refugee Programme, are you telling me if they return, you’re also going to accord them an OON (Officer of the Order of the Niger)?
“We have a lot of respectable Nigerians like Wole Soyinka and other people who deserve such honour. But I can now see why Chinua Achebe turned down such an offe,r because it looks like values are not being considered anymore. You can now be a career murderer and be given an honour in Nigeria. That’s what it means. That’s the new low.
“So, I’m not happy about this because my father was a man who was straightforward. He served and at the end of the day, contributed in development, not only in the sphere of his service, but in Ogoni. But all he got from the people he served, through Saro-Wiwa’s evil rhetoric was for people to hack him down, cut him into pieces and take his body away and till today, there’s no remorse.
“Well, we can’t cry on for more than 30 years. If certain people in Ogoni don’t want to be remorseful for what they did and they want to stand by all the lies, and continue to promote themselves, because they want to enrich themselves – because they have protruding stomachs that cannot be filled and continue an activism that is not real to the people – I want to say for the Bade family and for others, we have reached a point, we hand it over to God.
“I think all of these is all about how to come to Ogoni and get oil and they are in a hurry about it. I’m not in a hurry to betray my father for any form of compensation. In fact, honouring him and putting him side by side with murderers, I don’t think I will accept that. I don’t need compensation.”
Regarding to many who are calling for the total exculpation of the Ogoni-9 of blame over the incident, Bade, attributed it to disinformation, which he said usually led to misinformation adding that a lot of people, particularly the younger generation who did not know the true story, saying if they truly knew the correct story, the situation would be different.
“Just imagine that a man left his house and then he was hacked down. I was there. I saw blood splatter all around the wall in the palace. Today, they refer to that place in Gokana as “slaughter.” People leave their homes and say they’re going to “slaughter.” Then people like Ledum Mitie, Professor Ben Nanem and all those who are agitators for MOSOP, who have the responsibility to turn around for good, they have created a transgenerational catastrophe in Ogoni land.
“This is going to pass through generations and Ogoni is remain divided. I’m so sad. What the President did is wrong. I used to see him as one who listens to both sides and does the right thing. But unfortunately, I think he is misguided and I don’t know why he fell to that.”
A woman who was scheduled to board the Air India flight that tragically crashed in Ahmedabad has spoken about her narrow escape, saying she missed the doomed plane by just 10 minutes, The PUNCH is reporting.
Quoting Mail Online news, the report said Bhoomi Chauhan was en route to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Gujarat to catch flight AI-171 to London when heavy traffic caused a critical delay, preventing her from boarding, and eventually spared her from a devastating crash that claimed 241 lives, leaving only one survivor.
Chauhan, a resident of Ahmedabad, who due to being stuck in heavy traffic, reached the airport 10 minutes later and ultimately ended up missing her flight, told local media that upon receiving information of the devastating crash just moments after she was turned away from the boarding gates, she shivered badly and her legs started shaking.
The Gatwick-bound plane carrying 242 passengers, including 53 British nationals, crashed just moments after take-off.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner careened back down to earth in the densely populated Meghani area of the city just minutes after leaving the runway around 1.40pm local time (8.10am BST).
Terrifying CCTV footage shows the plane appear to lose control before it starts rapidly descending with a high nose angle and landing gear deployed.
Chauhan said her ‘mind went numb’ after she learned of the incident before she returned home. She had been visiting India for a holiday while her husband remained home in London.
Akpabio: Diary of a legislative czar in the Red Chamber
Pardon of Ogoni nine: Tinubu has murdered my father a second time – Bade
How traffic jam saved me from ill-fated Indian plane – woman narrates
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