By Ochreome Nnanna
IN a way, Professor Chinua Achebe was right. When he was offered the Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR, national honour for the year 2011 by the President Goodluck Jonathan regime he turned it down on the ground that the problems that prompted his rejection of same offer in 2004 still exist in the country.

Even though some praised him for saying no to yet another award in a country where politicians virtually empty public treasuries to get nominated even for the most mundane of awards, some thought that Africa’s most respected novelist had taken the “game” a little too far.

One of Achebe’s reasons for rejecting the Obasanjo Greek Gift was that the regime condoned the abduction of an elected governor and the destruction of public buildings by his local political agents. Surely, the governorship election in Anambra State in February 2010 was not even won by the candidate of the President’s Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. It was difficult to make the connection between what happened in Anambra under Obasanjo and what took place there under Jonathan.

In fact, Dr. Reuben Abati, the presidential spokesman, reminded Achebe that the Jonathan administration in 2011 supervised one of the best general elections in the nation’s history only in April this year, which were widely acclaimed locally and internationally. This regime distanced itself from the “do-or-die” methods of brazen impunity the Obasanjo regime used to conduct democratic affairs in the country.

But how does one describe the methods that President Jonathan’s PDP has adopted in the ongoing process towards the election of a new governor in his own home state, Bayelsa, in February 2012?

Only in October this year as the various governorship candidates warmed up to pick up forms from the PDP, the President assured them all of a level playing ground, urging them to go into the field and canvass for support unhindered.

It was based on this assurance that we saw an enthusiastic series of heavy politicking at the national secretariat of the Party when aspirants like Governor Timipre Sylva, media mogul Ben Bruce and former Labour Party candidate, Timi Alaibe, queued for forms.

One by one, all three were denied the forms under one pretext or the other, which showed the President was not willing to follow through with his pledge of a level field. By then, it had become clear that he had an anointed candidate, Seriake Dickson. Bruce and Alaibe took their exclusion without a fight.

The governorship primaries of the party that followed on November 19, 2011 conformed to a typical Obasanjo politics of exclusion. Not only was Sylva refused the opportunity to vie in the primaries, he was not even allowed by security agencies to leave the Government House while the exercise lasted at the Sampson Siasia Stadium, Yenagoa.

The Party ignored an order of an Abuja Federal High Court presided over by Justice Gabriel Kolawole, directing it to postpone the primaries until November 22. It was ordered to show cause why a fresh governorship primaries should be held by the Party in the state when the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had already been furnished with a ticket earlier given to Sylva after the January 6, 2011 primaries. PDP conducted the primaries and announced President Jonathan’s candidate, Dickson, as the winner.

After initially mulling the idea of seeking the renewal of his mandate on an alternative platform, Sylva decided to stay in PDP and fight it out.

The truth is that any political adventure in any other party other than the PDP in a state like Bayelsa is likely to flop. That of Bayelsa is even more so because it will be an uphill task to mount a campaign against the party of the President, a son of the state.

It is an emotional hurdle to expect Bayelsans to vote against their son in Aso Villa. When will Bayelsa produce another president of Nigeria? Which state has produced an elected president of Nigeria more than once?

Sylva knows that it is safer and smarter to fight the President’s candidate from inside the PDP than outside. Then it will be easier to continue to tell people that the President is behind him; it is only some evil people around him and in the PDP that are fighting him. Sylva is also pushing ahead with his campaigns to fulfill the provisions of the 2010 Electoral Act.

The Judiciary, they say, is the last hope of the common man. It would appear, as Sylva’s case seems to indicate, it is also the last hope of some high and mighty individuals as well. Especially, when such individuals are ranged against higher principalities and powers. Sylva is hoping that the Judiciary will see him as the persecuted underdog (as in the case of Chibuike Amaechi who has been very active in lending Sylva the Governors’ Forum’s helping hand). He is hoping that the judges will be irked by the PDP’s revival of its cult of impunity and give him favourable verdicts.

It is now for the courts to decide if his case deserves such favours. It is a major test case for the judicial regime of Chief Justice of Nigeria, His Lordship Dahiru Musdapher. Nigerians expect verdicts that will advance the course of justice in our democracy. Let the law prevail over politics. If any of the parties to this political dispute has done disservice to our democracy, the courts are now in a position to punish offenders and reward the injured.

Political parties need to be reminded that even though the law gives them wide-ranging powers to conduct their internal affairs without outside interference, they are, however, bound by the law and the Constitution.

US, UK, keep your aids

FOR the first time in a long while, the government and people of Nigeria have spoken  with one voice disowning the legalisation of the demonic activities of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, LGBTP.

The Nigerian Senate under the able leadership of Senator David Mark, on Wednesday, November 30, 2011, passed a law criminalising public display of the unnatural, deviant sexual behaviours of these creatures in human form. He told Britain, which said the law was not “acceptable” to it to keep their foreign aid which they threatened to withdraw. The more vibrant House of Reps will definitely concur with the Senate.

My initial fear was whether President Jonathan would sign it into law. My fear is well founded. He seems too eager to be in their good books. I was not comfortable with his willy-nilly alignment with the opinions of the West over the Cote d’Ivoire and Libya crises. I was afraid he might withhold assent to the “anti-gay” law when eventually it came to him.

But the statement issued by the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, reassured Nigerians. He told America, point-blank, that they must respect our sovereignty and right to make laws that cohere with our own norms. The US had also directed its agencies administering foreign aid to dispense these “favours” only to countries that allow these LGBTP’s to pollute their socio-cultural environments.

It is time now for us Nigerians and Africans to see through the veil of Western concepts such as “human rights”, “secularity” and “free speech”! Porn actors, producers and distributors now argue before judges that curbing this devilish occupation is an infringement on their right to “free speech”.

Secularity, the separation of Church and State, is now employed by atheists to persecute teachers who mention the name of God or Jesus Christ in public schools in parts of America. Daily, many television evangelists are pleading for signatures to reclaim the rights of Christians taken away by the ever-increasing activities of secularists like the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU.

This latest unprecedented cultural onslaught meant by Europe and America to re-enslave aid-needy developing countries is a great insult. We must rebuff it by taking three concrete actions: (a) outlaw all foreign aids, including prohibiting the use of these aids by crooked Non-Governmental Organisations, NGO’s, lawyers and activists to propagate alien and abominable behaviour in our country; (b) pursue these anti-gay legislations to their logical and conclusive implementation and (c) as soon as possible, set up aid programmes to help re-correct the warped values that have befallen the West, just as Nigerian churches and preachers have started re-evangelising these lost societies.

Yes, we should give financial assistance to Europe and America, not them giving us. It was our wealth and sweat that was used to nurture Western civilisation. Since the end of imperialism and colonialism, these great empires have fallen into serious decline. It is even predicted that the UK will become a Caliphate by 2060, given the drastic fall of the White population and the invasion of the Isles by Muslim immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. America, already, can no longer fund its budget with its normal income. It has to borrow, living from hand to mouth. Are these the people giving us aid?

The adoption of the demonic lifestyles practised by the LGBTP creatures as “normal” and “acceptable” is chiefly responsible for this population and economic anaemia. And they want to impose it on us! Tufiakwa!

On this note, I bid you MERRY CHRISTMAS as  I proceed on my annual leave. See you mid-January 2012. We will resume with Ojukwu and related matters.