SHAMELESS PRESIDENT YAR ADUA promotes the judge in his case two weeks before judgment
I have just read from the Internet portal, www.sahararepoters.com, that President Yar Adua has promoted Justice James Ogebe, the Chairman of the Presidential Election Tribunal, to the Supreme Court. If this is true, it would be happening just a few weeks before the tribunal delivers its judgment in the case challenging the validity of the president’s election. It would be the clearest evidence that the so called servant leader has abandoned all pretences regarding the rule of law, honesty and subservience to the will of Nigerians. What a tragedy this would be for this beloved country.
In the last few weeks, the print and electronic media have been abuzz with reports of efforts the president was making through making through several intermediaries, including the twisted attorney General of the nation, to bribe the Chairman of the Presidential Election Tribunal. These efforts included payment of bribe to his United States based son and offers running into billions of naira.
I have never been bamboozled by Nigeria’s political elite nor the PDP. I have always looked at every product of the system with grave suspicion, including the sitting president. I have always suspected the whole story of the eagle that gave birth to a dove which is the equivalent of the PDP producing a honest president from the ranks of the criminal organization that it is. From the “warning” he made to the judiciary some months ago that it should base its judgments on facts and not emotion, to the inclusion of several senior members of the judiciary on the National Honors list, some of them potential decision makers in the case against him, I suspected the president of attempting to influence the judiciary, despite his hue and cry about the rule of law.
What bothers me about this president is his ability to fool many people into believing that he is one thing whereas he is actually something else. Nigeria has a long history of producing politicians or soldiers of his mould. Ibrahim Babangida preached human rights and economic reform while he looted the treasury dry and savagely violated the rights of Nigerians, including the letter bomb dismemberment of the late journalist, Dele Giwa. Sanni Abacha preached war against corruption while he siphoned billions of dollars into foreign accounts around the world at the same time that he was waiting to die in the “adorable” bosom of a prostitute imported from India. He was not even “patriotic” enough to patronize our home made Allen Avenue mamas. The immediate past president, Olusegun Obasanjo, launched the longest sustained so called war against corruption. For eight good years, he filled the local and international airwaves and newspapers with his anti-corruption rantings, exaltations and proclamations, the type of which one can only find in a man possessed of an anti-corruption demon. But he was not possessed, nor was he convinced of the evil of corruption. Like most Nigerian politicians, he was just acting. The facts are out now and he may have surpassed Ibrahim Babangida in the league of African’s big thieves.
Then comes President Yar Adua, a supposedly amiable fellow, dedicated to serving his people as a servant leader. He declared his assets upon assumption of office and gullible Nigerians celebrated. But the eagle eyed ones noticed that not only had his his assets had jumped from N66 million in 1999 to almost N900 million in 2007, the honest president had added to his personal list of assets, millions of naira and tens of vehicles contributed to his presidential campaign. None of those around the president reminded him of the fact that his presidential campaign and his personal estate were two different entities requiring different accounting. Despite demands for explanations from some Nigerians, the president and his handlers did not feel he owed any obligation to Nigerians by explaining his “wonder growth” formula. This president publicly admitted the shortcomings of the 2007 presidential elections but inside the four walls of the Presidential Appeal Tribunal, his high prized legal team with the full assistance and connivance of the federal security apparatus are engaged in a blitzkrieg, the type of which the country last saw in late sage Obafemi Awolowo’s challenge of the infamous 12 and 2/3 formula used in choosing the winner of the 1979 presidential elections. The president preaches honesty but spend his day in the company of shady characters. The president wants Nigerians to believe that he is capable of leading this country after publicly declaring on NTA that “a corrupt person cannot lead nor can such a person provide leadership,”
The president preaches the rule of law with total disregard for the theoretical violence that his version of this legal and political doctrine does to the great works of Samuel Rutherford and Montesquieu, the two political and legal philosophers who pioneered the doctrine. The president’s version of the rule of law allows politicians who have looted the country blind to go to court in suits, luxury cars and without handcuffs, while his side kick, Mike Okiro, gives orders for petty criminals to be shot on sight without any effort being made to apprehend and bring them before a court of law. Fellow Nigerians, this is President Yar Adua, the self declared honest servant leader.
A man whose claim to fame is based on his claimed adherence to the rule of law is unwilling to recognize that in a democracy, power flows from the thumbprints of electorates, not the barrel of a gun (apologies to Chairman Mao Tse Tung). He is employing all illegal means to scuttle the will of the people while pretending not to be interested in power. He does not recognize the inconsistency in the arguments being advanced by his lawyers in defense of the illegal mandate he obtained from an election he had publicly declared to be “dubious.” Before any one says the lawyers are the ones making the arguments, permit me to remind you that a lawyer is only an agent of his principal. Every action taken by a lawyer on behalf of a client is vicariously that of the client.
Why has President Yar Adua become desperate? If he won the election as he claims, he should let the tribunal decide his faith without interference. If he believes that it is the will of Allah for him to govern Nigeria, he should demonstrate his religious belief and love for Nigeria by calling new elections. Some people have asked me why I bother to write these articles because the targets never read it. Honestly, I have better things to do than worry about the politicians reading my articles. On the day of their judgment, a day many Nigerians believe will never come, they cannot say they were not warned. If this article does is stand as one the several milestones of warning to this generation of politicians and their supporting cast of government contractors, bank executives wanna-get-rich-by-al-means aspirants, that no group of people have been oppressed for ever, I would have achieved my goal.
By Majekodunmi Adega
madega@naijanet.com