Democracy 1999-2007: "PDPgate"?

There will be time for history and posterity. There will even be space for revisionist heist and hackers. Oh yes, there will be time for honour and ultimate disrobement. It will ALL come!

As eye-witnesses and active citizens of the land, we must help history with base material and fore-help posterity with healthy suppositions. We should do so with a fair and open mind. We must not hide behind one finger, as our elders warn.

After the evil of military rule/dictatorship, did democracy dawn us a new day or a near doom? Can we or do we look back on the 1999-2007 era with pride or pain?

As the dominant political force, was the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) truly "power to the people" or tragically "PDPgate"?

What lessons for da future?

It is difficult, even painful, to deny ourselves and the role we played or did not play in the ways of the past. Are we all culpable? Well...

Now, to the meat of our matter. Those who led must ask themselves the following questions, just as those who lead now:

a) What were the expectations of Nigerians in 1999?
b) What did both the PDP and its various candidates promise the voters?
c) What were the levels of national resources vs the levels of budget-implementation?
d) How much was consumed as recurrent expenditure vs capital votes?
e) What was spent as security votes at each tier of government?
f) How much did local and foreign trips cost the nation?
g) Where are the projects financed by our huge external debts recently settled?
h) Of all indicted or suspected looters, how many are of the PDP?
i) When will federal agencies and the presidency be audited, probed or cleared?
j) Did the ruling party have or uphold democratic practices within its fold?
k) Were the electoral bodies at all levels truly or ever independent?
l) Why was our petroleum sector shrouded in darkly secrecy, with loud hints of "monkey " business and screams of "cloak & dagger" gymnastics?
m) Why were legislators helpless or colluding with their (as is now so clear) reckless executives?
n) With the failure of public utilities and parlous state of infrastructure, how can the party sell its diabolical statistics of a successful tenure or healthy economy? Where were them graphs cooked or manufactured from?? Where are the spin doctors today???
o) Over its tenure, and particularly leading up to the April elections, what is the aggregate image and record of the party and its governments as regards da rule of law, obeying court orders and deploying security forces/agencies?
p) Where are the founders and other distinguished elders of the PDP today? What are their tales of separation, and parting shots of angst or love?

Final Question: Why are successors (though mindlessly and ruthlessly imposed by the PDP) so consciously, cautiously, cleverly, courageously and calculatingly dismantling the old order, gradually and gratingly gravitating away from the party line, and publicly parting ways with the ways of their benefactors/godfathers???

Ultimate Pointer: Have you been reading celebrated press interviews of erstwhile pillars and partisans of the party recently? Using big grammar to describe their regime's failure, and sledge hammer to slam their former leaders? As the race for party positions heats up after the NWC resigns from October, and the corruption trials take their tolls - compounded by some lost cases from the election tribunals - how will the public posturing pan out? Will the centre still hold?

Verdict? May the reader don the voter's hat and answer the intriguing posers above. Then, decide. May the party wear the citizens' robe and answer all the unnerving posers above. Then, decide. Was the eight-year era for gain or for pain?

Did we have PDPgain.....or.....PDPgate!!!

Madam Speaker, Are You on the Peel?

Hahaha! I can sense arms and daggers up in my humble direction!! Okay, stupid, I said "peel" NOT "pill"!!! The proverbial "Banana Peel" of the National Assembly. Settled? Hahaha!!!!

But this be no laughing matter, at all. For non-speakers of our unique parliament-speak, this is the metaphorical stepping on the slippery slopes in the leadership musical chairs in the Nigerian Legislature. A few senate presidents and a former house speaker have fallen off their exalted seats in controversial and scandal-fuelled circumstances. The term was actually coined by one of them!

The tortuous and torturing terrain of Nigerian politics should temper anyone in exalted position. In this business, it is intrigues and treachery all the way! Caution and cleanness be da armour of the wise...

Now, it seems our first-ever woman speaker of the federal house of representatives is in more trouble than meets the eye. The now-legendary bug and proverbial "contractgate" seems to have bitten her leadership. Sad part is, there is confusion and commotion everywhere. Facts and figures are being bundled, bandied, unbundled, re-bandied in dizzying bits and pieces! Amazing! There is a remarkable degree of sloppiness, dodginess and incompetence in the whole saga. We are at once amused and bemused. I am mightily mystified!

If this were a campaign season, the case be made. Fully. Now it is a new campaign, a different campaign. And the stakes are at once high, and.... NOT settled! Indeed, things are very very unsettled in the House.

Is Madam Speaker on da Banana Peel, or....

State Legislators: Partners in LOOT?

There is no question that the State Houses of Assembly (parliaments) were an abject failure during the last eight years of democracy. And that was not a swell advert for the majority party in the land, the PDP.

Example: If governors are now being arraigned for alleged looting of state treasuries, pray, where were the legislators? What was their primary function and duty? Who approved the budgets and who abandoned constitutional oversight?

Not that it was any better at the federal level, but the search be already afoot there. No escape, as there is enough clamour for answers and there is solid evidence that action will come.

Our thoughts must be with the hapless citizens in most states and local government areas in the land. They have been so badly served and short-changed that there must be urgent and FULL investigation. Governors and local government chairmen could not have unleashed such mindless looting and primitive gorging alone! Nah...

Let their accomplices be fished out and arraigned too.

For example: We hear an arraigned governor, who is a serving senator of the republic, averred that he actually siphoned several billions from his state's treasury to fund/support the failed Third Term Agenda of an opposition president! Can you beat that! Thereafter, he moved over to the ruling PDP, bundling his entire state cabinet, legislators and party hierarchy and political elite in tow! He was rewarded with a senatorial seat, alas!!

We are not unmindful of the extra immunity he thus enjoyed from the then-president, who gleefully paid a state visit to the rural and impoverished territory to proclaim the governor as a miracle worker, and the land as a place of admirable progress! The media was awash with this presidential endorsement and ruling party heist. The rest, as they say, be now history.

And, hallo-hallo, the history is unraveling...to tell the true story. Yes, for the real history, at last!

So, why will that governor be alone - in arraignment, in humiliation, and in gaol, if convicted??? Where are the technocrats? Where are the bureaucrats? Where are the colluding-contractors? Where, pray conscience, are the party chieftains and the state parliamentarians???

Who audited the state accounts? Did the anti-corruption agencies and other authorities get any hints, petitions and bank withdrawal alerts?

How come it took the new governor, a fellow party stalwart, to blow da whistle - with a media megaphone - before action followed???

May the other governors follow this gallant example! Fast. Double-fast.

We wait.

Did They Loot?

This whole question of loot and looting don't frighten Nigerians, you know. We just get da kick out of da damn thing! Go on the streets and ask. What do you get? My people will ask you back: You mean say dem tief, true-true? Na wa o, for this kontri! Hahaha!!!

And guess what? You are dead wrong if you ever think they don't bother. For, they will then go ahead to list all the neglected, ignored, abandoned, substandard, overrated, under-delivered and demonic projects, policies, issues, contracts, people and places.....!

Finally, they will punch you a parting breeze: God go catch dem, you go see! Plus including dem family...just wait. Hmm, you go see!

Some punch-line!

Is da time here?

Mr President, Sign the FOI Bill right away!

Finally, the National Assembly has passed the Freedom of Information, FOI, bill - after 4 years! Knowing this administration and its track record, we must still acknowledge the feat!!

Indeed, because of such huge skepticism, I advise that President Obasanjo signs the bill into law as soon as it lands his desk. There is no doubt that many are nervous about this new instrument in the hands of both the media and critical segments of civil society.

Well, as you lay ya bed may you sleep on it, ba? Let the crooked panic for aye! It is their due, it be their portion. Stay firm.

This law was long overdue. No openness, no anti-corruption! Period.

Impeachments and the Rule of Law

We are all for tackling corruption at all levels. But it must be done within the tenets of true federalism, full democratic rights and transparent processes. No breach, please.

The situations in Oyo, Ekiti, Plateau and Anambra States call for caution. As the Nigerian Bar Association has posited, no one should fight for justice unconstitutionally. You cannot tackle an illegality by using another illegality as tool or means. Senseless.

Let the anti-corruption agencies, especially the EFCC, and the presidency heed the mounting calls for caution and constitutional compliance. Simple.

Let the National Assembly rise up to its role and fullest potentials in these transition months. It should be the unwavering defender of Nigeria's Democracy. No excuses, no failure.

Impeachments and declarations of state of emergency be no child's play or political chess game!
They must not be trivialised or bastardised. The rigours of our constitution must be upheld at all times.

Watch Thy Present, Mind The Past

All present and past political actors must introspect. The political terrain is treacherous and retroactive. No escape....for long.

Future players can't, shouldn't, be counseled. The proverbial cane that thrashed their seniors remains enscounced in the loft. It will descend with generous ferocity in their own moments of heist! Why pretend?

The lessons are writ large in our public domain. What be prompt this warning, do you ask? Oh, dear moon-citizen, it is the new presidential scandalfest - a mutual dirty and murky linen plus underpants public laundering of sorts. It has become a street fight with little to hide, scanty to hold on to. The late afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, coined it "roforofo" fight. How true of Aso Rock! The media celebrate it as Presidential Roforofo!!

Patience has its virtue: Nigerians will come out of this messy and mesmerising scandal a richer and saner nation. We have a good chance of recovering the political space from rent-seekers, do-gooders and miscreants, and reclaim a reasonable portion of looted resources. EFCC has so promised. We must watch.

Who now wants to contest on the basis of erstwhile Aso Villa endorsements (or its counterparts in states), or by scaling the public's present "aware" scrutiny? This is the bounden burden of all our aspirants! Godfatherism and garrison politics be now tainted and damned. Counsel: Those short-sighted name-dropping paperweights better listen to the music of our noon. Interestingly, Col Ahmadu Ali, the PDP (which faction?) chairman, has vowed that Abuja will no longer choose or "impose" candidates on the grassroots! Hear, hear. How time changes....all things!

You seek office? Check ya history.

Want our votes? Watch ya company.

Got the post? Mind ya work.

Pray, all the above will help or haunt you. And all temporary gains will dissolve into excruciating pains in the fullness of time. Incumbency or no incumbency, the people will win in the end. That is the power of time. Watch out.