Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Lola Shoneyin's False Testament

I think it is appropriate to cite Soludo's own response to the ad hominem attacks on him for his article about the challenges Nigeria will face after the elections:

"I am not bothered about the personal abuses: I actually expected worse. What name has the government not called President Obasanjo or any person who has dared to disagree with it of late? Anyone who disagrees with the government must either be 'insane' or have a 'character' deficiency or must be 'looking for a job' or 'without honour', or a 'charlatan'. Yesterday, Sanusi alleged that $20 billion was missing and he was accused of gross financial mismanagement, recklessness and poor governance to the point of being the first governor of central bank to be suspended from office. Today, he is the good one; and for daring to award an "F" grade for our economic performance, Soludo has become the 'worst' and 'without character' or perhaps 'looking for position' (Lol!). Some days ago, a former president was called 'a motor park tout' and 'un-statesmanly' just for disagreeing.  This "how dare you criticise us" mind-set of the government is dangerous for our democracy."

We see this at work in Kennedy Emetulu's article.

While there are some die-hard Buhari supporters and some die-hard Jonathan supporters, you also have voters who have had to weigh both candidates to make a hard decision about who to support.  While Buhari's refusal to debate for what seem to me to be specious reasons weighs against him for me, on the other side I place these kind of attacks on a person just because she expressed her political opinion (which the writer patronisingly sneers that she is not qualified to do!) that have contributed to a stream of invective with a decidedly primordial bent - after which we are supposed to do what?  Pretend that nothing has happened?  Forget all the abuse heaped on one's ethnic group, one's accent, one's religion, one's family?

The Emetulus of this world would do better if they would understand that voters who say #IHaveDecided are (a) aware that Jonathan has achieved some results in some areas of national governance (b) aware that Buhari ruled as a military dictator and took some unacceptable decisions during the 20 months or so that he was in power.  We also know that Buhari is a Muslim and a Fulani, just as we have increasingly had it rammed down our throat that Jonathan is a Christian and an Ijaw.  So what's new?

Ayo

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama

On Feb 2, 2015, at 2:31 AM, 'Kennedy Emetulu' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

..

 

 

Lola Shoneyin's False Testament

 

I like Lola Shoneyin. I like her for her literary work, but political commentary is way over her head. After reading her piece of kindergarten PR titled: "How my father's jailer can offer Nigeria a fresh start", published in the London Guardian of Saturday, 31 January 2015, I sincerely advise her to stick to her day job. Of course, any literary writer can write anything and use the fact that he/she is a writer to launder such in the international media, but when all is said and done, whatever they write will have to walk the plank of intellectual inquiry. Let's just say Lola failed woefully here.

 

First, the fact that Lola's father today embraces his erstwhile tormentor is not a new phenomenon. People can do this as a way of showing forgiveness or moving on from the trauma or the experience. But whatever the case, you don't get many people later embracing their tormentors, which is why you will not get many people that Muhammadu Buhari had tortured celebrating the fact he's looking to return to govern Nigeria again.

 

However, while we will not question the personal or psychological reasons behind her father's decision to embrace Buhari, we cannot but question the public reasons proffered here by Lola, because we are talking the same country in which we all have a stake. Lola says she was 10 years at the time Buhari was military head of state, I was 20 and in university and by the time he was overthrown, I was out of university already. So, my account of Buhari's time as head of state is no fairy-tale; it's experience. For old enough British readers, let me remind them that the fellow Lola Shoneyin is rooting for here is the same person who as Nigeria's military head of state on Thursday, 5^th of July, 1984 criminally undermined British extradition laws by attempting the kidnap of Dr Umaru Dikko, a Nigerian exile living at the time in London. If you think such a man should be trusted, then trust Lola Shoneyin's account!

 

Honestly, Lola needs to review her account of events and admit that there is no logic to her story and the relationship between the account of her family or father's misfortune under the Buhari regime and the support and supposed credibility she and her father are giving the Buhari presidential run today. If she wants us to believe that she and her father are supporting Buhari today, because he is the only face or one of the few faces of anti-corruption known to Nigerians today, then her story about her father not being guilty of the charges that took him to Buhari's gulag in 1984 cannot be true. I mean, if her father went to prison on trumped-up charges, then Buhari is not only corrupt to let that happen, he is also a tyrant for putting an innocent man in jail. If Buhari is not corrupt and he's no tyrant, then her father was a corrupt criminal duly put in jail by Buhari after a fair judicial process had found him guilty upon a consideration of all the evidence. In that context, we can accept that her father's happy-clappy return from prison and his rededication to Buhari's cause today is an admission that he was a thief now reformed and now prepared to carry the Buhari anti-corruption message to the rest of Nigeria.

 

If we understand the above distinction, then Lola needs to admit that it cannot be both. It's either her dad was corrupt, in which case his support for Buhari can be understood, having served time and reformed himself and reconciled himself to the truth that Buhari did him justice or he was and is still not corrupt, in which case we would have expected him to stand firm against a corrupt and tyrannical Buhari who jailed him and turned his life and that of his family upside down, despite him being innocent of the charges.

 

But, while opinion is free, facts are sacred. Lola's fact-free endorsement of the present Buhari political misadventure is only good enough for her and those gorging up on the new Buhari gravy train. I mean, which opposition governor in Nigeria is being starved of funds or harassed for not doing the bidding of the first lady? Is Lola by any chance talking of Rotimi Amaechi, the governor of the first lady's home state of Rivers State who chose to insult her and the President? Okay, whatever the political differences between them, was Rotimi Amaechi ever starved of funds? Isn't this same Amaechi today a byword for corruption in Nigeria? Isn't he the same man who rather than pay salaries of public workers, fleeced the state of public funds which he poured into the Buhari campaign in his quest to be the vice presidential candidate? Is she talking of the same APC governors that have stolen their people blind? So, where did they get all this money they're throwing around in their campaign to make Buhari president? Would any person truly serious about fighting corruption be associating with Bola Tinubu, possibly the most corrupt politician in Nigeria?

 

Lola disappointed me greatly when she repeated a lie that has been severally disproved, which is that Buhari wrote to the minister of finance "requesting that he only receive 10% of the allowance that all past presidents receive on a monthly basis". When and where did this happen? Which finance m inister did he write and where is a copy of that letter? Did Buhari himself state this? Did the Ministry of Finance confirm this and is there a record available today to indicate he receives only 10% of this allowance? Of course, all this is a lie! This is an urban legend planted on the social network by some Buhari supporters without any basis whatsoever, yet Lola finds it convenient to state it as fact!

 

So, what are the facts? Buhari's anti-corruption toga is borrowed, if not stolen. As Federal Commissioner for Petroleum in a military government in the late seventies, the records show that he presided over the stealing of $3 billion of Nigeria's money. After a public demand that the issue be probed, Buhari was indicted by the Senate of the Second Republic, but he then returned at the head of a military coup to sack that government and the first thing he did when he took over as the leader of that military junta was to ransack the Senate and destroy all papers and resolutions relating to the stolen money.

 

The above was not the only issue that exposed Buhari's corruption. For instance, Buhari was one of the henchmen of the murderous General Sani Abacha regime. At the time, he was given charge of a hurriedly-created outfit called Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), which had at its disposal vast sums of public money that Buhari and his cohorts syphoned and for which he was indicted by an official inquiry set up by then President Olusegun Obasanjo, despite the attempt by that same Obasanjo to shield him today as part of the military old boys' conspiracy to oust President Jonathan. So, despite this manic frenzy to airbrush Buhari's very poor public record with regard to corruption, there is enough information out there for those yet to be informed to look up. I dealt with some of this in an article titled: "Buharists and their Stockholm Syndrome":

 

http://saharareporters.com/2014/11/02/buharists-and-their-stockholm-syndrome

 

Now, here is the truth that anyone interested in Nigerian politics today should know. Buhari is the candidate of the Islamist fundamentalists and the Hausa-Fulani ethnic jingoists who think power should return to the North (despite the fact that they've had it for about 40 years of our 54 years of flag independence and have achieved nothing with it).  More crucially, he is the candidate of the industrial-military complex that had held Nigeria down for 45 years before the election of President Goodluck Jonathan who rightly removed their prebendal hands from the national throat. They have now all ganged up in the APC as a majoritarian oligarchy, using propaganda and false narratives about national development to undermine the great work President Goodluck Jonathan has been doing, including helping to sabotage our war against Islamist terrorism in the North –East with the aim of removing Jonathan as president. But they will fail. They will fail, because Nigeria is God's project and no amalgam of liars, thieves and murderers will return to lord it over us again now that we have crossed our Red Sea.

 

Discerning Nigerians know that the change we crave is already here and we are experiencing it for real under President Goodluck Jonathan. We know this, because change is not an event. It's a process and as a process it takes time. But those who have been part of it can attest to it, despite the lies being vigorously put out there by the opposition. Of course, post-1999 Nigerian democracy has been short-circuited by the military types or people with strong relationship with the military, like Obasanjo and Umaru Yar'Adua who had ruled the country since return to civilian rule. But Jonathan is the first president since the end of the First Republic without ties to the industrial-military complex. Thus the change he has brought to Nigerian politics is mainly in temperament.

 

Unlike many African leaders, Jonathan has resisted the urge to use the big stick, even when it is in his personal interest to do so. He has accepted the opposition casting him as clueless and without any serious achievements, even as he quietly changes the political topography and culture while investing heavily in agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructural development, power generation, transport, education and so on. They've shouted wolf over the election, accusing him of having rigging intentions, even as he continues to allow Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to be strengthened institutionally to the extent that the ruling party losing elections is the norm as the judiciary became less burdened by electoral disputations. It is his quiet internal revolution within the PDP that took power from the predatory members of the industrial-military complex and which led to all the hoopla within the PDP and the flurry of decampments to the ACP by characters who want a new vehicle to retain power or seize power to continue with their impunity.

 

For instance, one of the greatest achievements of the Jonathan government is in agriculture, but it wasn't easy. For those who do not know, in time past, large-scale farming was a preserve of military generals who use it as a cover to acquire vast lands and create a fertilizer cartel to milk the nation dry. But Jonathan comes and democratized the fertilizer distribution process and freed it of the corruption of the generals with the attendant result being the achievement of great success in our agricultural sector for the first time since we abandoned it almost half a century ago and the generals are not happy. So, when we see the old political generals running to the APC and shouting change, we know the beat they are dancing to. They think with their colleague Buhari in power they will return Nigeria to the days when they used agriculture to fleece the nation without producing anything. They are dead wrong.

 

So, despite Lola's fairytales, Nigerians know the truth. They know that the leading lights within the APC rabble shouting change today are part of the architecture of the Nigerian problem. They are no less corrupt and no less inept than those they rail against. They can see that what Jonathan has done is to establish the condition for the growth of a viable opposition in order to strengthen our democracy and give Nigerians real alternatives. This is clearly something an Obasanjo or a Yar'Adua would never allow. But Jonathan knows it is imperative for national growth. Yet, that's all he can do. He cannot people the opposition with the right characters. They also have to fall or stand on their records, antecedents and processes.

 

Today, Nigerians can see that Buhari is all gloss, no substance. His campaign has the best media and campaign advisers from America, Europe and Australia, all oiled by Arab money and money stolen from public coffers by Bola Tinubu and the APC governors backing him, but they still cannot do magic with a candidate that is damaged goods. The hoopla over him lying on oath about his qualifications has exposed his corruption and the fact that he has been a leech on the state. His refusal to take part in a public debate with President Jonathan has confirmed the suspicion of many that he really has nothing to offer. I mean, not that this needs any type of confirmation, as he is clearly a glorified illiterate who knows nothing about modern governance. To think that 72-year old Buhari is the symbol of change that the APC proposes for Nigeria in 2015 is mindboggling. But we know he's just a stalking horse for their scheme to take the nation back to the hounds.

 

Curiously, Lola says he's been travelling with the Buhari campaign team for the last three weeks before she penned her piece and that this was because she had a personal need to understand this Buhari man who's run for office a record three times. Yet, Lola would not tell us in what capacity she was hanging around the campaign. Is she or was she a paid or unpaid adviser to the campaign? Wouldn't a full disclosure be in order? She says in that time, he's had several conversations with him and "have come to understand what the mass hysteria is all about and why Nigerians would vote for this soft-spoken but highly principled 72-year-old". Really? So, what did they talk about and why is Lola not sharing that with the rest of the world? What is it Nigerians and the world don't know about this man that Nigerians have rejected at the polls for the past 12 years? One would expect that Lola would be eager to share with us the man's vision of national development, but she's chosen to keep all that close to her chest while selling us blind messianism.

 

Merely telling us that Buhari "has surrounded himself with a brilliant, savvy team of young Nigerians" and that she much enjoys "the passion with which he talks about his three main priorities: unemployment, insecurity and education" is a fudge. Who are the members of this savvy team of young Nigerians and what have they done in this campaign to exhibit their brilliance. Is it the poor advice he received over the certificate debacle or him doing a runner from the debate? The only passion Buhari has is in his desperation to be president, but he exhibits none when he speaks of unemployment, insecurity and education, because up till now, Nigerians have no idea what he would do about these except his repetitive declaration of fighting this or fighting that without any exposition or expatiation apropos to the issues.

 

The fact that Lola thinks she can pull the wool over our eyes about Buhari's lack of political and intellectual gravitas is the tragedy of her piece. Worse still is the fraudulent idea of offering us Buhari as the nation's opportunity of a fresh start. How does an old dictator who still stridently justify all the atrocities he committed as a military Head of State and who arrogantly says he regrets no decision he took or any effect of any such decisions or actions qualify as the harbinger of a fresh start? How does a man who's threatened to send people to Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison without due process in a democracy represent anything but a dinosaur? Does a 72-years old man who thinks he has the power to singularly stabilize oil price have what it takes to lead Nigeria in 2015? I don't think so. The joke has gone too far already and we can't wait for February 14 to come, so we show the world that majority of us Nigerians are not suffering from amnesia or Stockholm syndrome.

 

 

….

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.