Patitos Post

Obasanjo and Babangida in a game of draught. Could Nigeria be the board on which they have been playing their games all these while?

With the impending constitutional crisis now looming in the nation, I have voiced my views on what I think should happen and that is that the Nigerian constitution should be allowed to prevail. If for any reason the president is incapacitated, then the Vice President should be immediately sworn in to take his place and must be encouraged to conduct elections in 2011, after implementing the Justice Uwais electoral reform committee’s recommendation,in which he should not be a participant.

Having said this, I begin to wonder if there has been a hidden agenda all this while. For one thing, former president Olusegun Obasanjo could not have been unaware of the precarious health situation of president Yar’adua, yet he personally picked him to be his successor and imposed him on the nation. Why? Is it that Obasanjo wanted revenge for his failed alleged third term agenda and foisted on us a man whose health was notoriously bad. Did he expect that we will be facing what we are facing now? Knowing the reptilian and calculating brain of former president Obasanjo, I simply can not put this past him though I have no proof.

I recall that when there was a raging controversy over the exact interpretation of the unwritten power shift internal arrangement of the PDP, Obasanjo was quoted to have said ‘allow me as leader to interprete what this means’. Is what we are now experiencing Obasanjo’s interpretation?

Given the fact that the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan, was propelled by Obasanjo via the impeachment of his then boss, Governor DSP Alamieyeseigha, to leap from being deputy governor to being a governor, could it be that Obasanjo even back then was calculating the events that are unfolding right now?

Goodluck Jonathan owes his emergence as governor not to an election, but to one man alone, i.e Obasanjo. He also owed his choice as then candidate Yar’adua’s deputy to Obasanjo, and ultimately he became Vice President riding on the back of Olusegun Obasanjo.

Somehow as I sleep, the words of Fela Kuti in his song ‘Overtake don overtake overtake’ ring in my sub conscious. I recall Fela sang ’when Obasanjo and Yar’adua—-belleful and go, dem put civilian friends for there dem shout 2nd republic. People when no know they happy, people when know them dey look’. This whole thing looks like Deja vu. The more things change the more they seem the same.

Come to think of it, why did former president Ibrahim Babangida who was obviously very determined to become a civilian president suddenly drop out of the race in 2006 after he had bought the PDP Presidential nomination form? I mean, yes he gave an excuse that he considered himself a member of the Yar’adua family and could not see himself running against Shehu Yar’adua’s brother because of his brotherly relationship with the late Shehu Yar’adua. Well of course we bought it then because  the frenzy of an impending election got us all excited, but now that we have lost that excitement its now clear that that could not have been true and does not wash because if Babangida loved the late Shehu Yar’adua as he led us to believe, why did he cancel the 1991 elections that Shehu Yar’adua was poised to win? Something here does not add up. Was IBB in cahoots with Obasanjo all this time? Did they know that it was all a grand charade and that Umaru Yar’adua was only………. I cant even complete the sentence.

Vice President Good luck Jonathan must be supported by all lovers of democracy in this trying period and if the unthinkable happens then he must be allowed to ascend the throne as the constitution prescribes, but we must not lose sight of the fact that he appears to have a guardian angel in former president Obasanjo and we must insist that if these manipulations and illussions which have characterized the political activities of Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida since 1975 must cease, then we must make sure that going forward these two individuals are shut out of our political space. You can not prove anything, but the convenient way and manner that things continue to work out for them and their surrogates as well as their public spats and private love affair far away from the prying eyes of Nigerians make these two principalities very suspect. No one can prove it, but it is too neat to be a coincidence!

From the inexplicable manner in which Babangida was able to go into the Ikoyi Federal Radio Corporation office without arms to rout Dimka to Obasanjo’s subsequent ascension as head of the Supreme Military Council to the late hour Supreme Court judgment of 12 2/3rds to Shagari’s ouster for which Babangida recently confessed that the initial plot was to return Obasanjo to power until Obasanjo himself refused only because he did not want to take over from the man he gave power to, to the annulment of the June 12 election when Obasanjo rather than speak out for Nigerians said in far away Zimbabwe that ‘Abiola is not the Messiah Nigerians are looking for’ to Abacha being left behind to conveniently take over from Ernest Shonekan, to the framing up of Diya before Abacha died under still as yet unclear circumstances to pave way for Babangida’s cousin General Abdulsalami rather than Diya to succeed the late Abacha,whose first major act was to release and pardon Obasanjo only for Abiola to die in still as yet suspicious circumstances paving the way for Obasanjo’s election which would have been impossible had Abiola not mysteriously died to the plot to stop an almost unstoppable Atiku Abubakar which paved the way for Umaru Yar’adua’s ascension and now this. Oh no, these two must now retire from Nigerian politics.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU