Editorial
Igbo must go: APC agenda! Tinubu knows what to do
“To those who have taken undue advantage of this situation to threaten any section of this country, be warned: The law will catch up with you. There is no place for ethnic bigotry or such threats in the Nigeria we seek to build. Our democracy progresses when the constitutional rights of every Nigerian are respected and protected.
“Our law enforcement agencies should continue to ensure the full protection of lives and properties of innocent citizens in a responsible manner. My vision for our country is one of a just and prosperous nation where each person may enjoy the peace, freedom, and meaningful livelihood that only democratic good governance can provide – one that is open, transparent and accountable to the Nigerian people.”
These were the exact words with which President Bola Tinubu, reacted to the heightened ethnic threats directed against Ndigbo in Lagos, led by the Lagospedia, a group using the hashtag – #Igbo-Must-Go, in his nationwide broadcast on Sunday, August 4, 2024. It was part of the President’s official clapback to the 10-day nationwide protests against his government to call attention to the biting hunger in the land occasioned by what the promoters link to the bad policies the administration has been churning out since its advent on May 29, 2023.
From the outset, we, at WhirlwindNews.com.ng, finds the President’s declaration as outrightly pretentious and utterly hypocritical. At best, it is an uncanny attempt to hoodwink the people or a gambit to whitewash a sordid situation. In other words, the President is clearly playing to the gallery, an art, which he seems to have perfected in his well-strung political history that has eventually landed him at Nigeria’s number one job.
This ignoble campaign against Ndigbo did not just happen. It is the outcome of a progressive political strategy, which has gained a lot of verve in recent years, particularly since Tinubu found new political alliance outside his hitherto Igbo friends. As Governor of Lagos State, Tinubu had pitched his tent with Ndigbo as chummy political bedfellows.
He not only brought them in as part of his government, but as true allies in many of his other engagements, including his war with the Federal Government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. That he survived as the only governor that returned for a second term in 2023 on the platform of Alliance for Democracy (AD), was partly against the backdrop of this alliance.
So, what changed? His alliance with Buhari! That relationship changed everything. The formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was hinged on one central philosophy – anti-Igbo. It was clear to every discerning observer that there was nothing for the Igbo in the party.
Two factors could have led to it – Buhari’s anti-Igbo sentiments, founded on the issues that led to the civil war and even after. Remember that Femi Fani-Kayode, had revealed how the former President allegedly told him that he would never forgive Ndigbo for killing Northern leaders. Should that be true, then it would have followed and accounted for why his APC government adopted the marginalisation of the South East as a state policy.
The second factor, could also be the prevailing feeling in certain quarters that the subsisting administration of then President Goodluck Jonathan, was more or less a high-decked Igbo government to the advantage of others, based on the strategic offices their people occupied and the fact of the massive support the former President enjoyed from the South East zone.
But whatever it was, the fact of this sentiment, and somewhat retaliation, was evident in the distribution of the APC offices where the key positions were farmed out to the other zones to the exclusion of the South East. Even when the late Ogbonnaya Onu, then National Chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Rochas Okorocha, Governor of Imo State elected on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), donated their structures to the party, it did not change anything.
So, it emerged that out of all the key positions in the party – National Chairman, National Secretary and even National Publicity Secretary, all went to different zones, leaving the South East with only such mundane and insipid offices as National Organising Secretary and National Treasurer.
It was even more apparent in official government structure – President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN), Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). The South East, the third leg of the Nigerian tripod never came close to any of these positions in Buhari’s eight years in office.
It is obvious that the plate has not changed as Tinubu, Buhari’s successor, appears bent on sustaining it. In fact, the highest position of the Igbo today is lowly Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. Imagine! Even under Buhari, the South East even managed to get a better deal at a point in Deputy Senate President.
So, the current campaign in Lagos, is girded with shield and armour from higher, very powerful quarters – as powerful as the Presidency – right before Tinubu’s nose. Therefore, if any, the measures to tackle it must start from the President himself. No more no less! No one should therefore be deceived.
Nobody should really be surprised about the life and death bent the tendency has now assumed. For the APC and the government it controls since 2015, what this means is that the very day Ndigbo cease to be the fall-guy during elections, the APC government will come to an abrupt end. It is that simple.
Even a political imbecile knows that APC is finished in Lagos as it were. The party has withdrawn all its deposits with the people. What is left is a huge deficit. It is so, more out of the peoples’ weariness with the party rather than performance. In other words, even if the government in power lines the entire street with gold in terms of performance, the party will still lose in any free and fair election. People are simply tired of seeing the same face daily.
This much was demonstrated in the 2023 presidential election. In the February 25 poll, this message was delivered to the party in clear terms when it scored less than 15 per cent of the votes. Forget what was officially recorded to them by the electoral umpire. That dismal outing was actually not a verdict against President Bola Tinubu, its candidate as it was for the weariness of the people towards the party.
Now, the phenomenon of hitherto popular political parties losing elections is not peculiar. It is indeed normal. That is why in the US, the Democrats would be in power for a period only for the Republicans to take over. The UK has just had their own change of guards a few weeks ago, when Rishi Sunak, of the Conservative Party, had to give way to Kier Starmer of the Labour Party.
The African National Congress (ANC), had to reach out to the Democratic Alliance (DA), its sworn enemy recently, after losing its hitherto comfortable parliamentary majority to form a coalition government, as a result of the gradual, but steady loss of the vice grip on voters in South Africa over the years. Reason? Same weariness of the people. In Ghana, Nigeria’s West African neighbours, it is usually a relay race between the New Peoples Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
However, the difference is that in Nigeria, the government in power never allows this natural change in the feeling of the people to occur. They see it as an affront that their authority to rule forever is either questioned or threatened. That is the sin of Ndigbo in Lagos. They are seen as the tool through which this obvious change will occur at Alausa and the strategy is to put them down to ensure that it does not happen. Who is the culprit? Simple – APC!
That the intensity of the campaign against Ndigbo reached its fever-pitch in the 2023 governorship election after the massive trouncing of Tinubu in the presidential race is therefore not surprising. Even if the APC is aware that the number of Igbo people in Lagos could not have conduced that shameful outcome, its members know enough not to place the blame where it really belongs, but have to create an imaginary enemy – Ndigbo as the fall-guy.
The late Lateef Jakande, never had to pass that route because he was sure that he could afford to go to sleep and even snore on the day of election and still wake up to claim victory despite the huge presence of the same Ndigbo in Lagos. Why? The momentum was with him! His time was even during the most intense political rivalry between Nnamdi Azikiwe an Igbo and Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba. Besides, the Baba Kekere, as he was known, had a different mindset altogether.
Apart from weaning himself of itchy fingers in government, which is one of the greatest flaws of the new helmsmen today and using the resources of the state to work for the people, he also knew how to apply himself to his enemy territory and seduce them. Jakande, it was, who actually described Lagos as a no-man’s land – a positive indicator to attract more people and the concomitant investment to develop the state.
To prove the veracity of his mindset, Igbo people won the Jakande low-cost houses he built, just like their Yoruba counterparts, Igbo children enjoyed full free education with the Yoruba, Alaba Market, a vast area of land were allocated to Ndigbo to do their trading, just as Alaba Rago was given to the Hausa people as market for their animals. Nobody ever heard that Ndigbo ever wanted to take over Yoruba land or were disrespecting the Yoruba culture, whatever that means.
What have we been saying? Tinubu was merely being clever by half by that declaration. He not only knows the truth about the anti-Igbo campaign, he knows the culprits. One of them is Bayo Onanuga, who he sees every day. Even if he does not know the faces behind the Lagospedia group, he has the tool to fish them out quickly.
Fredrick Nwajagu, the embattled Ezeigbo of Ajao Estate, was picked up in a matter of hours and charged with treason by the authorities in the same Lagos. Yet, all he did was threatening to invite the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) – not to attack anybody – but to protect Igbo properties in Lagos. Certainly, that offence could not be compared to the damage of a probable genocide on a group of people as the recent threat indicates.
This is also true of the government of Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Last week, Obafemi Hamzat, his deputy, was on television denying knowledge of the patrons of the evil campaign and even swore that he was not aware of the variant provided by Onanuga, which was everywhere in the social media immediately after the onslaught against Ndigbo in Lagos during the March 18 governorship election.
Might well be that he is not even aware of how to get to Ketu from Alausa. But whatever happens, the agelong message present in the no-condition-is-permanent inscription on the back of the gwongworo truck remains quite germane. Some 20 years ago, Tinubu and many of those dishing out hemlock to Ndigbo were fugitives running away from Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s erstwhile military despot. Today, they are on the same seat. Tomorrow, nobody knows who would be there.
Igbo people have lost assets worth billions of naira since this onslaught. On the heels of the governorship election, Akere motor parts market went up in flames. Some other markets have also suffered similar fate. Choice edifices belonging to Ndigbo have been pulled down under one guise or the other under official cover. To say that Ndigbo have really suffered under the APC government in Lagos is a huge understatement.
Our position! Ndigbo must never be under any illusion that their battle is against the Yoruba. It is completely an APC onslaught. It is their strategy. They should remember that their progenitors were here before the present actors. Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, had built the Apapa Wharf long before Sanwo-Olu was born. Ndigbo had interacted with the Yoruba and done business with them even before amalgamation of the Nigerian North and South more than 100 years ago.
What they are facing now is just a phase, which must come to an end at a point no matter how long it lasts. For the APC and their goons, stopping a change is akin to standing on the way of a moving train. It is an impossible act. Their attempt to hold on to power forever and by other means is futile. It will come to an end one day and the true owners will regain it. Those true owners are not going to be Ndigbo, but the people of Lagos.
In this regard, if Ndigbo must leave Lagos, it will be by their own accord and not by cajolement. Bode George, elder stateman perhaps captured the true message when he described Lagos as a melting pot of the Nigerian polity, just like New York is to the US. A guest on The Morning Show, a breakfast programm on Arise News Television, he had wondered how a man from Ogun State would be threatening Ndigbo to leave Lagos.
What this means is to further strengthen the point that the Igbo-must-go threat is not a Yoruba affair. It is a project the real patrons must take ownership of. If it bears repeating, we say so unequivocally. A government that is worse than Buhari’s in terms of nepotism, particularly against Ndigbo cannot turn around and disassociate itself from their current ordeals. Tinubu has given Ndigbo more than a raw deal. Let the redemption begin from the Presidential Villa.
When the mother goat is chewing the cod the kids are watching the movement of its jaws. The Igbo haters know where they derive their powers. To effect the desired change, Tinubu not only knows where to look to fish out the culprits, he knows what to do thereafter! Nobody is deceived. Anything else is not only buck-passing, but hypocrisy!
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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