Month: January 2015

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Buharists And Their Stockholm Syndrome – BY KENNEDY EMETULU

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

A useful read for all Buharists

Sayelba Times

First, let me quickly make an apology. I apologize for using the term “Buharists” to describe those invested in voting for General Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming presidential election if he is presented as the flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

First, let me quickly make an apology. I apologize for using the term “Buharists” to describe those invested in voting for General Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming presidential election if he is presented as the flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I make the apology duly noting that those who are opposed to the reelection of President Goodluck Jonathan and a lot of who are Buhari supporters have taken to describing those in support of Jonathan’s reelection derogatorily as “Jonathanians”, especially in social network exchanges
.

Kennedy Emetulu

I mean, it is not in doubt that if you open a Buhari supporter’s dictionary, a Jonathanian is that…

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Davis, Boko Haram, El Rufai, APC, Northern Elders vs Ihejirika

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

JONATHANS PREZZY ORTHERN ELEM

FACT: Ihejirika was NOT sacked as Chief of Army Staff. He was RETIRED after his mandatory service years elapsed just like IGP Abubakar…Danbazzau was the sacked COAS just before Ihejirika (and he – Danbazzau- was said to be unhappy about his removal) SEE ‘’ Dambazzau who was relieved from his position while attending a conference in New York and is said to have expressed anger over the way and manner he was fired. He has a long list of followers among soldiers of Northern extraction.’’ http://www.pointblanknews.com/News/os3912.html

FACT: The Boko Haram witnessed today is different from the one headed by the Late Yusuf of the Yusifiya sect, said to have been bankrolled by Ali Modu Sheriff for his political advantage… till date, whether he likes it or not, the Boko Haram ” tag” has stuck on Sheriff who a few weeks ago left the APC to PDP after 15 years in…

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APC AND ITS FRENZIED ATTEMPTS AT SHAKING OFF ITS BOKO HARAM-NESS

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

APC AND ITS FRENZIED ATTEMPTS AT SHAKING OFF ITS BOKO HARAM-NESS

Make no mistake about it. A vibrant opposition is a prerequisite for an enduring and effective democracy.

Before the conjugation of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria People’s Party and Okorocha’s All Progessives Grand Alliance (APGA) to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), political party opposition to the ruling PDP was more or less fragmented across board.

The ACN was seen as South West Party and just before the celebrated merger, Tinubu’s political fiefdom. The CPC, followed mostly by Buhari’s loyalists and dozens of Northern born-to-rule protagonists, was seen as a North West party; even though the only state it had a governor was in the North Central state of Nasarawa.
The APC, a hurriedly knocked together political contraption was expectedly thought of (by many) to be the long awaited match for the…

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Posted in Politics, Prose

“Opposition” strategies to diminish GEJ’s achievements

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

Several strategies are employed by the “opposition” in their reactions to any comment on social media that suggests that Jonathan has achieved anything! Each time you as much as suggest that GEJ has some impressive achievements to show in his four year presidency, what you get is panic, instant hostility & then a swarm attack from his die-hards opponents and “serial-opposers” in the APC – such facts and truths frighten them. The facts threaten to pierce the fabric of well told lies such persons have almost succeeded in imposing on major sections of the public as truths through a blend of strategies and tactics involving distortions, fabrications, cyber–aggression, bullying, threats and ridiculing of persons. A study of APC tactics in relation to Jonathan’s major achievements reveals the following as dominant techniques employed in trying to deny/downplay/diminish GEJ’s successes –

  1. One technique is the TOTAL DENIAL or OBLITERATION strategy. The man has achieved NOTHING. Point your interlocutor to some solid achievement and you get the retort – “but that is nothing”! Ask what then amounts as “something” and all you get is blabber and incoherence.
  2. A variant of this TOTAL DENIAL technique is the “WE ARE EVEN WORSE OFF TODAY THAN WHEN HE CAME IN” line of attack! Invite your interlocutor then to a “Before GEJ” and “Since GEJ” comparison in a number of key sectors using valid indicators and communication breaks down because your interlocutor now refuses to abide to comparisons based on valid “Tertium Comparationis”.
  3. Another technique is THE MINIMIZATION STRATEGY- Yes, the man has achieved but he has only achieved very little – not much at all! Ask your interlocutor what the cut-off point for “sizeable achievement” is and all you get is insult – “You people do not think”
  4. A variant of this minimization strategy is THE TRIVIALIZATION STRATEGY – what he has achieved is trivial and of minimal import.
  5. Another strategy is to recognize the achievements & then slam them as not been good or modern enough – this is NOT GOOD ENOUGH strategy
  6. Another variant is to recognize the achievement but then smear it with the label of MEDIOCRE – The MEDIOCRITY CONDEMNATION STRATEGY.
  7. Another approach is to recognize the achievement but then to counter immediately to say that its gains are not evenly distributed!
  8. Yet another strategy recognizes but derides the achievement by claiming it has minimal social impact potential and therefore not useful.
  9. Another strategy accepts the reality of the achievement but faults it by claiming it has possesses little beneficiary impact value. Ask your interlocutor to define beneficiary impact value and all you get is hot air.
  10. Another approach consists in accepting an obvious achievement but then to say that the choice of project focus shows poor prioritization.
  11. Yet another approach is to recognize the achievement but then claim that it costs too much to deliver.
  12. Yet another approach is to recognize the achievement but then rubbish it by saying that it took too long to deliver.

The opposition strategy to GEJ’s achievement can be described as one that MINIMIZES his SUCCESSES and then struggles to MAXIMIZE whatever SHORTCOMINGS he may have,  mostly imagined, out of proportion. A GEJ success that is dismissed as nothing is usually praised to the high heavens should they have occurred in an ACN led state. The name of the game as played by opposition handles and spokespersons is inconsistency and intellectual dishonesty.

One is therefore better off taking whatever the opposition says on Jonathan’s achievements with plenty of salt and criticality. Very little truth and objectivity are found in their evaluations of what has been a fresh and humane centered approach to quiet but effective presidency, a presidency that has delivered despite having to navigate several roadblocks and minefields put in its way by an unholy alliance of the ungodly!

Posted in Politics, Prose

The APC’s Joke of a Scarecrow President

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor


by

Shehu Dikko

shehuspen+paper at gmail dot com,  December 2014

Buba Galadima has given a world record twelve years of his life full time to the ongoing Major General Muhammadu Buhari campaign for president. He has been loud and often bombastic as the most audible voice of the campaign, and you must question his effectiveness, but he has taken on its critics frontally, directly. He has provided loyal support to Buhari: first in the erect ANPP of nine elected Governors; then in the limping ANPP reduced to just four Governors; then in the crippled CPC of a lone Governor; and now in the APC on crutches that has already lost one of its Governors since Buhari showed up there. Scratch that. Galadima is not there alongside Buhari anymore.

In radio interviews in Hausa and in a letter sent to the editor of the Daily Trust and published on 10th November, Galadima has said that “no interlocutor ever stood between him and [Major] General Buhari.” He has revealed that after the 2011 election, Buhari personally informed him that after three failed attempts at the presidency, he was not going to contest again, only for him to hear on the radio that Buhari had gone back on his word. Here is Galadima in his own words:

“Whatever anybody may say, the fact still remains that I contributed my widow’s mite towards the projection and promotion of [Major] General Buhari as a politician at a time when those ‘yan kwanta kwanta [highway robbers who command their victims to lie face down while they rob them] who for personal reasons hover around him today felt that he was an aberration and poison that could not be touched. . . . There are people who worked with [Major] General Buhari when he was in the military, public service, politics and school. Where are they in his political project today?”

They are nowhere to be found. All the politicians that were its publicly visible backers at the commencement of the campaign a dozen years ago, and the many others who gave their all to it in the sincere belief that it held a promise of a better governed country have all abandoned it. Buhari has been unable to lead a political project team and to command and retain the loyalty of its executives. He was unable to do this even as a military dictator. This is why his military regime was short-lived and why his retired military colleagues have not been found near his political project. Now aged seventy plus, it has become too late to transform him into anything other than what he is: proven incompetent as a political leader.

Galadima tried harder than most to stay committed. But it was all in vain for no interlocutor ever stood between Buhari and his zero programme for his cult following.

No interlocutor ever stood between Buhari’s backers and a misplaced hope of leadership by example. Major General Buhari has provided no true inspiration to his frenzied crowd of followers. He has failed to make them disciplined. When they took to violent protest after the last election, he neither took to the vanguard of the protest nor did he call them to order. He fled. He claimed that he too was attacked. Leader? No.

No interlocutor ever stood between Buhari and his zero ideas on what to do about the problem of corruption in a democratic setting. In twelve years of campaigning, he offered nothing at all.

Alas, no interlocutor appears able to stand between those so determined to see to the triumph of proven incompetence sure to lead to disaster, likely to end in tragedy, and the fantasy that all you need to do to make corruption fly away is to erect a scarecrow in the presidential villa. Where has a scarecrow ever scared away dark nighttime creatures like the bat that lies in bed at noon?

All the creatures that belong to the day who have seen the scarecrow president project for the joke it is and abandoned it have been replaced by distressed-project managers and asset liquidators that were its critics and political enemies who have seen in Buhari’s leadership incapacity and in his fanatical following that has been used by many other opportunistic politicians before them opportunity to further their own calculated objectives which, going by their records, are far removed from the blind expectations of the fanatical poor.

As devious distressed-project managers well aware that they would have recouped their investments by the time there is any buyer’s remorse, they have spent so much on imported dangerous stage-managed promotion gimmicks, scrubs, deodorants and washing up liquids in an effort to conceal the fact of his leadership incapacity so as to make him marketable to necessary but hitherto wary buyers, most recently in a scrubbed speech broadcast to a national television audience to conceal a dismal performance in an un-shepherded television interview conducted a couple of days before.

Give them this article to read and they will see in it ways to come up with more stage-managed gimmicks and they will be sure to do so by lunchtime tomorrow, perhaps even show him sporting a tattoo and sagging his sokoto as he rebukes an errant area boy; they are that shameless.

As flagrant as any asset liquidators that we have seen they have also since proceeded to ridicule him and to disrobe him of any pretended garments of integrity. They have done so on the public highway, most recently in getting him face down to issue them a dud cheque and to “just keep a straight face” and ring up his bank manager to honour it after they had left the scene, and in getting him to give a written undertaking that he will employ the resources of persons alleged corrupt in furtherance of his campaign for the presidency.

What more do you need to be able to see that Buhari is a sad joke and that any expectation that he will make a positive and lasting impact as president is fantasy?

Buhari is not a simple man. He is a simpleton. He has spent years complaining that the PDP rigged him out of victory in previous elections. It’s on his bitter lips right now. Give him the office of the president and I can assure you that he will try to kick out at those who he believes did it. Yet the architect of the 2006 PDP plan to use the security forces to its electoral advantage is his replaced Galadima, Nasir el-Rufai, the man alongside whom he cried in 2011 and who made him renege on his verbal pledge not to run again. Yet one of his managers today, Audu Ogbeh, was the Manager of the PDP of President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar men to whose homes he was led, supinely, spent, twelve years late, to beg for a piece of the action.

The desperate Major General has truly been reduced to taking commands from any and all comers. His current commanders are only the most venal of the lot: they are pitiless what’s the polite euphemism for bastards? He will try to kick out without any realisation that his long walk from failing to beat them to joining them has severely damaged his legs.

Waylay him on the private jet tarmac of his commanders and ask him to give you a written undertaking that he will kick out at el-Rufai, Ogbeh, Obasanjo and Atiku with the hard metal crutches you will supply if he wants your vote. Ask him to give you a written pledge that he will issue no cheque nor authorise any payment to any Alpha Beta or Alpha Beta disguised as Alpha Bravo or Charlie Delta if he wants you to echo a clear radio signal around the country that no Foxtrot will be issued a dud cheque either.

If he falls short of meeting these demands just laugh and dismiss the would-be scarecrow president as the joke that he is; but do help massage his legs and tuck him away in bed if, unlike his users, you are apt to pity the scarred and disfigured old man.

Posted in Politics, Prose

Shehu’s reply – On OBJ, GMB and GEJ – what does available evidence say?

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Thanks for sharing Dan Agbese’s 2000 article about Haroun Adamu’s probe
of the Petroleum Trust Fund. It seems that people are digging but I can
tell you that left to himself alone Buhari cannot device ways of being
dishonest but in league with others, he has never had any problem
partaking in dishonesty. That, in fact, is his current situation.

Any expectation that a Buhari government will make an impact in dealing
with the problem of dishonesty in government is fantasy as I have
consistently maintained. Headline making stories are only a minor
reflection of the scale of the problem of dishonesty. Buhari knows
nothing about relevant policy formulation and it is not a priority for
his current leader, Asiwaju.

Buhari didn’t run the PTF. He left it to the late Salihidjo Ahmad who
came from his circle of friends and family, and went to sleep. It was
run just like any old corrupt Nigerian government venture. No difference
whatsoever. Its officials took bribes, awarded overinflated contracts
and the like. As a result of this, one of the men on the board of the
PTF, the late Group Captain Usman Jibrin who would have none of it
decided to resign. Buhari stayed put.

I also see you paying attention to Obasanjo’s self-serving talk.
Obasanjo has zero credibility. Not many are seeing this right now but it
is to the credit of Jonathan that he has actually grown the balls to
refuse to continue to take dictation from him.

If truth be told, it is easier to point to where Jonathan has spent
money in his four+ years than it is to show where Obasanjo did in his
first term. Let us be concrete. Obasanjo faced turbulence, Sharia riots,
Odi. Obasanjo failed to punish the perpetrators of the Sharia riots,
that served to embolden others including the Haramites; he was
high-handed in dealing with Odi, that served to further militarise.

Jonathan has had to deal with the consequences of Obasanjo’s failures,
in addition to the BH which is now a problem with a serious
destabilizing foreign dimension. This has provided a very tough
environment for the government. Worse, owing to the circumstances in
which he came into office and the sense of betrayal felt by the many
Northerners who consider their turn to rule as having been hijacked, as
well as his failure to properly reach out to the disgruntled, he has
been unable to win the confidence and support of influential sections of
the North. This failure is what I foresaw in 2011, and warned that it
could lead to division.

That North is also suffering from another problem which is a direct
consequence of the Babangida privatisation programme which was
accelerated and completed by Obasanjo. I have a problem with the
privatisation of vital social services but that is irrelevant here.
Recall the old days. There was a time when people looked forward to
Board appointments, First Bank, NITEL and the whole battery of other
huge government owned enterprises. Membership of those boards afforded

people the opportunity to use their influence to serve the interests of
their immediate communities, and because of the Federal Character
principle, this patronage was widely spread but always what were seen to
be the choicest positions were invariably occupied by Northerners.
Federal Character also ensured that there was a spread of offices of
those companies occupied by local employees thoughout the country.

That disappeared completely under Obasanjo. The persons who bought the
privatised companies were mainly persons from outside the North, ditto
those who stepped up to fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of
NITEL who have only been driven by market considerations which cannot
overlook employee competence. It’s not been noticed by many but the
handful of companies bought by Northerners, like Nigerian Ropes and
Steyr, have floundered or have been comatose since they acquired them.

For a North used to widescale patronage, it has been hard to deal with
new realities, which is why so many there are intent on doing whatever
they can to to ensure a return to the old comforts. One new reality from
which there is no escaping is that Jonathan has actually shown a
commitment to making and fulfilling promises which is why he has been
running for re-election on his record, something which Obasanjo did not
do in 2003.

Obasanjo could not have done so. He built a stadium in Abuja, and its
Games Village. That’s it. He channeled a lot of money towards power
generation. Liyel Imoke has yet to account for what became of that
expenditure. The rest of the time, Obasanjo was away from his desk on
extended visits abroad. He left Atiku to run the government. He provided
no account of the proceeds of privatisation. Obasanjo and Atiku were
later to build their own private schools and universities.

By contrast, Jonathan has built new government schools and universities;
built a major new railway line, Kaduna-Abuja, for the first time in a
hundred years; built a road between Abuja and Lokoja that is the finest
in the country; is building a metro line in Abuja; empowered Innoson
motors of Nnewi to manufacture transport buses that are visible on our
highways. All these are things he committed to doing in the aftermath of
the oil subsidy saga, and he has managed to do them despite the major
challenge of BH.

I have not dismissed the view that aspects of the complex BH problem are
the work of persons working to return to that which they had grown
accustomed. But what’s your general take on the election campaign so

far? I honestly fear it may all end up being of only “academic
interest.” The stakes are very very high. There are operators with ugly
records who will stop at nothing. There is trouble on the horizon. I
have sent out warnings. I hope they are heeded.


shehu
===

Posted in Uncategorized

Dangote attributes success to Jonathan’s ‘favourable’ policies

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Achieving and delivering results!

TransformationWatch

Business mogul, Aliko Dangote, on Thursday said his achievements as Africa’s richest man and 25th richest person on earth was due to the favourable policies of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

Dangote spoke on Thursday night in Nairobi when President Jonathan met with the Nigerian community in the East African country.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the meeting was part of the activities lined-up for the three-day visit of President Jonathan to Kenya which began Thursday.

Dangote, who was on the President’s entourage told the gathering that Jonathan had done a lot to improve business climate in Nigeria.

He said, “I want to tell you what the President has been doing in Nigeria. He is very humble and may not want to sing about what he has been doing.

“I will tell you what he has been doing to Nigerians and to some of us who are in business…

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Posted in Prose

Osinbajo to the rescue

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A.Ihebuzor

I stayed up to watch the Osinbajo interview on @Channelstv last night 04/01/2015.

The professor was brilliant, articulate and fluent. At some point, it looked like he had taken over the interview from the interviewer. By most standards, that was a good outing for the APC. The Professor Pastor succeeded in rescuing the APC from the media disaster that was GMB’s (its flag bearer and presidential candidate) outing on the same channel a few weeks back when GMB conveyed the impression of a man who was lost and out of his depths even in the shallowest of waters. GMB had projected an image of a disturbing shallowness during much of that interview. It was a sad performance, painful to watch for both audiences at home and for the interviewer. At the end of the interview, most watchers concluded that the man who had demonstrated such ineptitude on such a simple interview was not fit to lead Nigeria. Some even wondered how such a person ever made it through the ranks in the army. Osinbajo has wiped that disgrace from the face of his boss and from the face of the APC. But his success also further accentuates the perception that his principal is starkly deficient.

The Osinbajo interview holds another interest for me though. And it is that Osinbajo, without wanting to, almost ended up endorsing Jonathan’s transformation agenda in the energy sector. Take out the deliberate evasiveness, acquired no doubt, over years of legal practice. Cut through the eloquence and oratory, polished no doubt, by years of preaching and teaching,  and ask yourself what Osinbajo said about power sector reform that is really new? I hope I am being fair but what I heard him saying amounts to this – “We will do the same as GEJ and team are doing but we will also privatize transmission”. What are we to make of such a plan when we know that TCN is already privatized via a management agreement. We must do well to remind ourselves at this point that privatization is a continuum that encompasses management agreement, concession and sale of assets, a fact that which Professor Osinbajo’s suggestion’s of an APC led privatization of transmission as an innovation fails to bring out. The planned innovation is already on-going! He also says that an APC administration would streamline gas supply to power the turbines and bring more  IPPs on stream. How different is this from what is going on currently? Is APC’s change not PDP transformation dressed up as a synonym? To be credible change must be real and not a convenient buzz word.

On dealing with insurgency, Osinbajo nearly allowed his eloquence to dribble him into trouble when he almost suggested that the  entire country was not behind the efforts  to defeat BH. Almost trapped, Osinbajo beat a hasty retreat and sought refuge in a sound byte “leading from the the front”  and in the platitude of preaching a “bipartisan approach”, conveniently forgetting that his  principal had earlier rebuffed efforts by GEJ in this same direction. Who does not remember that GMB refused to serve on a task team set up by Jonathan to address and resolve the insurgency?

Finally, that Osinbajo cleverly avoided answering the question of near identity of persons and characters in APC and PDP (given the dominant  recruitment and resourcing strategy of defection in the two parties) says a lot about him. It says something about an emergent personality trait that can only come from acquiring the third P of politician. Only a politician too can choose to gloss over severe human rights abuses in GMB’s first coming and seek to justify these by claims that the administration was hailed and welcomed by all on arrival. A pastor would have shown some remorse over the gross human rights abuses that were associated with Buhari/Idiagbon regime and apologized to Nigerians on behalf of his principal for these. But not this eloquent professor of law and pastor turned politician.

So, as we admire his impressive outing, let us welcome Osinbajo, Pastor, Professor and Politician and pray that the occupational hazards from his latest P do not drown out or crowd out the fine attributes from the first two Ps.