By Pius Ogwa.
I am contributing this piece more out of amusement than in response to the frenetic utterances of APC foot soldiers to the mammoth crowd that graced PDP’s political rally which took place on Saturday 14th January, 2023 in Lokoja, Kogi State. Had the rally held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital under Governor Nyesom Wike, I could have imagined the petulant Governor dancing sarcastically to his trademark irksome music that is often played by his personal DJ whenever he wants to take his transducers to the gutters. Most Nigerians have become familiar with Governor Wike’s popular musical refrain that goes thus ‘as it the pain them, it dey sweet us and as it dey sweet us it dey pain them.’ Ordinarily, no sane Nigerian will join issues with APC as it were, a political party that has misruled Nigeria and has squandered the goodwill that Nigerians bestowed on it over the past seven plus years; let alone answer the many perfidious political scavengers and interlopers that currently swell its ranks.
As it stands currently in Nigeria, the APC and its followers do not need a soothsayer to tell them that Nigerians have discovered their deceits and have tired of their crass ineptitude with governmental shenanigans.
The APC and its many conscienceless members have been witnessing with palpitation, the rising profile of the PDP and its candidates for various elective positions across Nigeria led by the party’s Presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
From PDP’s crowded rallies in Maiduguri, Uyo, Katsina, Jos, Lagos and to Lokoja lately, the APC is becoming apprehensive and more jittery; hence the resort to intrigues, blackmail, character assassination etc. by its members in attempt to divert attention from its dwindling political fortunes.
Realizing that those styles are not achieving intended purposes, they have now decided to unleashed their fangless human attack dogs corresponding to real breeds like the loyal German Shepherd, aggressive Rottweiler and the ferocious Pitbull.
Yes, the APC have them in abundance in its ranks and they are all barking concurrently from their respective comfort zones currently to please their paymaster. In addition, they recruited one hapless and unrepentant conman that claims to be a former aide of PDP’s Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in their satanic plot. Lacking in facts and shallow in acumen, the young man took to social media to claim insider knowledge of certain financial deals of PDP’s Presidential Candidate involving a donation in 2007 or so, of the sum of N100 million by a former Governor of a North Central State to PDP’s campaign committee headed at the time by the former Vice President (VP) of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
The chap claimed that the former VP used a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to receive the said money on behalf of his party. According to the inarticulate lad, the donation was sourced from ecological fund of the donor Governor’s State which the State Chief Executive was accused of misappropriating ultimately.
One cannot but forgive the poor young man for his limited knowledge of public finance and campaign funding. This is because he neither told his intended audience that the former VP instructed the Governor to source the donation from his State’s ecological fund nor informed them that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was a member of, or owner of the SPV. So, ‘wetin come be the former VP’s own for the matter na’?
Be that as it may, one cannot just discountenance the foolery and treachery of the hirers of the poor lad that ought to know better. That certain characters that claim to be legal luminaries within the ranks of APC would rely on some pedestal and jaundiced claims of a hungry conman to call for the disqualification and prosecution of PDP’s presidential candidate tells of the aggregate frustration, dangerous desperation and pervasive hopelessness among members of APC currently.
Like a drowning man that would cling to anything, including a reed for life, the APC and its members are desperately looking for about anything with which to malign the person of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar at the moment. Like all of their other strategies however, this has also failed woefully, and what a pity? The only good thing about their current obsession is that, it reveals how they have run out of ideas and shows the personal constitution of certain persons in APC that had hitherto portrayed themselves as learned progressives.
These are the very persons whom many Nigerians thought had depth, focus and vision on account of their endless rantings and fake altruism. Thankfully, most Nigerians now know better that all those braggadocios, chest thumping and saber rattling were merely to court relevance and consideration for their current positions in government. Therefore, one needs not waste much energy on this category of noisy and pretentious individuals because they have legal experts among them and should know what to do over the bogey allegations rather than going to the market square to cry over a dead dog.
The absurd and perhaps most ridiculous thing about current bellyaching by APC members over the mammoth and unprecedented crowd that thronged PDP’s Lokoja rally however comes from no other person than a Mr Kingsley Fanwo; said to be Kogi State’s and Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s conspiracy spewing and barefaced liar commissioner for information. A person that has over the years tried laboriously without success to launder the soiled image and woeful performance of his APC Governor, is least qualified to speak about PDP’s political rally that was held in Kogi State Capital, Lokoja on 14 January, 2023.
This is because the mammoth crowd of people that came to Lokoja from far and near on that day witnessed for themselves first hand, evidences of acute mis-governance of Kogi State under APC’s Alhaji Yahaya Bello with cohorts like Mr Fanwo. The dilapidated infrastructure, dirty State Capital, IDP like civil servants that are barely eking a living out of paltry percentile salaries and the general forlorn look of the State capital spoke volumes to many visitors that came to Lokoja.
They experienced consequences of grandiose corruption and rapacious treasury looting in Kogi State under Alhaji Yahaya Bello and his soulless band of courtiers that has Mr Fanwo as its defender and image launderer. If Mr Fanwo were to be a man of conscience and character, the honourable thing that he would have done was to simply keep quiet and vamoose into thin air with his face covered in shame rather than identifying with Kogi State’s inept APC administration.
But because he is no different from other characters in the ranks of APC that fraudulently usurped power in Nigeria, he continues to indulge in his barefaced lies about PDP hiring crowds from neighbouring States. Mr Fanwo went further to brand the administrations of former Governor Ibrahim Idris and Captain Idris Ichala Wada both of the PDP, failures while shamelessly alluding to some illusionary achievements of current APC administration under Alhaji Yahaya Bello. How else does one describe a feckless and soulless individual that can do anything for his stomach? Here is an excerpt of what Mr Fanwo once said on Capital FM Radio about Captain Idris Wada and late Prince Abubakar Audu, the candidates of PDP and APC respectively during the 2015 gubernatorial election in Kogi State ‘APC is not only battling with the towering, unimpeachable performance of Wada.
They are also battling with the wet log which their candidate represents. Their candidate has been charged to court by an anti-graft agency. And his party won the Presidency on the strength of their promise to fight graft. Will they fight their candidate? Will they bend the rule? Will Buhari campaign for a corrupt materialist who is known for arrogance of power? As far as I know, APC lost Kogi on August 29.
Those of us that beheld the crowd of PDP supporters that thronged Lokoja Stadium and environs on 14th January, 2023; among whom were disenchanted members of APC, knew that its end game for APC in Kogi State particularly.
In a half-hearted attempt to dissuade disillusioned electorate from voting APC out of existence in the forthcoming general elections in Kogi State, Mr Fanwo decided to label some members of his party that defected to the PDP as ‘expired politicians.’ Wait for it and quote me please if you wish, this shallow minded commissioner will realize sooner than later that he is a mere appendage without any political identity or base anywhere in Kogi State like those distinguished individuals that he branded as expired.
It won’t be too long again before Mr Fanwo comes surreptitiously to these same people to scavenge on crumbs from their tables just as he is doing currently under Alhaji Yahaya Bello. A pig they say does not abhor the stench of a gutter because that is its character.
Let Nigerians and indeed the PDP not pretend that they did not envisage the rash of reactions that we are witnessing from the ranks of APC supporters currently. I personally would have been surprised and bothered had the APC with its barking dogs kept mute over PDP’s Lokoja rally. Expectedly, the rally has elicited envisaged responses and therefore, has sustained some of our predictions.
For now, let us allow the APC and their Aso Rock ‘oracles’ to continue to indulge in self-delusion by assaulting our sensibilities with false claims of non-existent achievements. Without telling, Nigerians know what they have suffered in the hands of APC over the past 7 or more years and need no soothsayer to advise them to reject APC in its entirety during the forthcoming elections. In case the APC and its money bags think that Nigerians are unaware of their plot to use our money that they have stolen so brazenly under the very nose of their leader and our President to buy votes, they are in for a shocker.
Go ahead and bring out the money but let them be reminded that Nigerians will vote their conscience this time around. After all, the money that they will be bringing out is just a fragment of our commonwealth that they have stolen these past 7 years or more which they shall be returning to the rightful owners.
Similarly, if APC’s fangless Pitbulls believe that they can rely on vain and concocted stories of a conman or in peddling of falsehood about PDP renting crowds to stop the pending political tsunami in Nigeria, let them continue to play the proverbial Ostrich. Like the famous ‘day of the jackal’, the day of reckoning for the APC and Nigerians is drawing near. In fact it has come and there is no hiding place for them.
