Ideas and debates for good governance in Africa.

Monday, March 30, 2009

PDP and undermining failed government

PDP and undermining failed government
Last three weeks brother Mahmud Jega wrote in his Monday Column that he did not write on that column for two weeks because there was nothing to write. That time I was enraged, how dare him to say that. Why will he spoil the day of most of us who start our Mondays with his column? But this week I realised what my brother was saying and I quite understand now that some things are better left unsaid. Though I was not among those who threatened to stop buying Daily Trust on Monday because of that but you don’t need to tell how angry I was not to see his columns at that time.
The events happening in Nigeria are sometimes ridiculous, funny and disgusting. We wake up early last week with a news story that some people in the opposition are trying to undermine the PDP led government of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua. This is to say that some people are trying to topple the government. Reactions from Nigerians on that alarm are enough to tell you that the Nigerian people have stopped taking PDP serious. PDP is surviving as a party today because they are the custodian of the nation’s resources. Secondly, we are having an opposition led by people who sold their conscience, dignity and betrayed the Nigerian people.
Many including this writer were of the opinion that it was very early to assess the performance of the Yar’adua administration, but two years into his tenure, Nigerians are yet to see any change from the past, in terms of good governance, fighting corruption or the provision of basic amenities to the populace. Although, to be sincere, few Nigerians expected any positive development to come out of this administration, if we consider the controversies that surrounded his selection as presidential candidate of the PDP and his subsequent [s] election as the President. The party itself, that is the PDP, under which Umaru Musa Yar’adua contested, has never won a free and fair election in any constituency in Nigeria – up-turning of elections was what characterised the polity since May 29, 2007, and PDP candidates were mostly affected.
In the first place Obasanjo was forced on us in 1999 and we were made to accept him, since we had little choice, as Nigerians were completely tired of military dictatorship. The party or some group within the party were misled into choosing General Olusegun Obasanjo as the Presidential candidate in 1999. Eight years under Obasanjo was hell, as the rich became richer, ordinary Nigerians were left struggling on how to survive. Obasanjo was able to destroy the internal democracy within PDP and forced its founding fathers out. The party was over taken by garrison commanders who wanted things to be done their own way. The party lost direction and resort to violence, intimidation, blackmail, election rigging and manipulation to perpetuate itself on power. If not because of media outcry, opposition from well meaning Nigerians and Civil Society Groups, Obasanjo and the party leadership would have imposed themselves on us in 2007. Therefore, when it became real that 3rd term has failed, Obasanjo hurriedly selected somebody to succeed him. That person, who was selected was unprepared to face the enormous challenges and came in with no plans or programmes to move the country out of its problems.
Why should anyone dream of undermining the Yar’adua administration? The PDP led government is a failure already and to be sincere if a free and fair election were to be conducted tomorrow PDP would have lost woefully. The PDP as a party has failed Nigeria and the Nigerian people. In 1998, with the calibre of people in the PDP one thought it was the only political party at the time that will bring about the much awaited change after 15 years of military dictatorship. Alas, today what we see under the PDP is people swimming in stinking wealth and affluence not because of hard work but on account of positions they occupy in government. Nigerians are fed up with the PDP. We have to state here that the criticisms of the PDP and the government they are leading were not based on hatred or sheer jealousy but because Nigerians expected higher than what they are seeing today.
The PDP propaganda has failed. As propagandists they employ short-cuts — particularly those which short-circuit rational thought. They always invent lies, pursuing shadows where there was none. The undermining story is just one of many tactics use by the PDP propagandists to capitalise on people emotions, what if the people know that you are lying? Insecurity; why can’t they inform the relevant agencies, why go to the media? Was it meant to seek people’s sympathy? Only those who are benefitting from PDP’s misrule can sympathise with it, not Nigerians who were made to suffer in times of abundance. Nigerians know you are lying, and they know this is just another diversionary tactics employed to take our minds from the failure of the government to implement the Justice Uwais led Electoral Reform Panel recommendation.
By capitalizing on the ambiguity of language, and by bending the rules of logic, as history shows, they can be quite successful sometimes. But we want to remind the PDP and its leaders that it is a matter of time before Nigerians boot it out of Aso Rock. By 2011 and by the will of God, PDP will cease to be a ruling party. This cannot be done by the so-called opposition parties because they are no different from the PDP, but we hope that honest and credible people will form a party that will stand against the PDP in 2011. Nigerians – this poor Nigerians, whether in rural Northern Nigeria, South-West or the Niger-Delta, whose life dreams were shattered in the last ten years will rally behind it and oust PDP come 2011.
It is a belief and hope.
Kabiru Danladi Lawanti,
Area 11, Gaki Abuja
kblondon2003@yahoo.com
08054546764, 08035150369

No comments:

Post a Comment