By Donu Kogbara
In a statement released on Wednesday, Chief Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, complained about the APC’s alleged misconduct in Ekiti State and accused General Buhari and his party of “moving around the country instigating division, engineering crisis and heightening tension” (“instead of settling down to plan a smooth transition and design ways of deepening democracy in appreciation of the mandate given to him”).

The APC is, according to Metuh, also guilty of displaying “sectionalism and insensitivity”, “odious triumphalism” and “arrogance in victory”. The President-Elect, meanwhile, is said to be “tacitly encouraging his men to…cause panic in a bid to muzzle personal freedom and impose a reign of terror in the land.”

*Olisa Metuh

Hmmm! I’ve always regarded Metuh as a pretty reasonable kinda guy, but I think it is fair to say that he is being extremely unreasonable on this occasion!

I am 100 per cent sure that if the PDP had won the election, its stalwarts and their sidekicks would have been strutting and swaggering around for the past few days, being far less gracious than the APC leadership/followership has been!

Throughout the election campaign, PDP people constantly taunted me and never stopped bragging about how they would use Federal might, their superior fund raising capacity and Jonathan’s powers of incumbency to crush APC.

Where I would tentatively say, “IF we (APC) win”, they would aggressively say “WHEN we (PDP) win” (especially after the election was postponed by six weeks to give them more time in which to try to charm hostile or floating voters).

Would they have allowed to us to rest if things had gone their way? Would the rooftops not have been echoing with their boasts if GEJ had trounced GMB?

Would we not be hearing that they had spent billions on the finest champagne for the noisy celebration parties they’d have hosted every day for weeks?

Can you imagine the likes of Dame Patience Jonathan, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, Chief Nyesom Wike, Dr Doyin Okupe, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai and Governor Theordore Orji being as restrained – if the boot were on the other foot – as Buhari, his wife Hajiya Aisha and most of his senior subordinates have been?

Did Mrs B direct any retaliatory attacks at Dame P’s hubby after the latter described The General as “brain dead”? Did The General launch any personal insults at the presidential couple during the campaign?

When Madame Peace un-peacefully urged her supporters to stone The General’s supporters, did any high-profile APC member spew out any similar utterance?

When Dame P accused Northerners of bad parenting, did Mrs B abuse the many Niger Deltans whose kids have gone off the rails and are social menaces?

Is The General REALLY heightening tension, etc, etc? Have he and his team not bent over backwards to be nice about – and nice to – Mr President since he phoned The General to congratulate him? Has Mr President not been lavishly praised for agreeing to go quietly? Has he not been promised a soft landing?

Even Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the normally outspoken APC boss of Rivers State, avoided vainglorious rhetoric during his Easter broadcast last week…and humbly apologised to anyone he had hurt or offended in the course of his career.

As for Metuh’s Ekiti allegations: Governor Fayose has reportedly been caught on tape bullying security personnel and planning to rig last year’s gubernatorial election.

Fayose is famed for preferring non-intellectual methods of persuasion. Fayose is a no-shaking tough guy I’d rather never have to face in any type of contest! Fayose is, in a nutshell, not a sweet little shrinking violet or naïve boy scout.

So please forgive me if I sound callous or as if I am not aware that two wrongs don’t make a right; but if there is any misconduct going on in Ekiti at the moment, I’m certain that Fayose is an enthusiastic participant in the skullduggery; and I am more inclined to pity his opponents than to pity him!

Metuh also says that APC has dragged a revered traditional institution into the fray, with Oba Akiolu of Lagos threatening death to Igbo PDP supporters “while Buhari plays the ostrich…and displays his insensitivity by jetting around the country campaigning for his party.”

Metuh concludes that: “If this sort of insensitivity…is a foretaste of what to expect in a Buhari presidency, then our dear nation and its people are headed for a long trek in the wilderness.”

My take on this Lagos Oba controversy is that Akiolu is the APC’s Dame P – as in tactless, destructive, tribalistic, prone to outbreaks of verbal diarrhea and VERY different from the more civilised elements in the party he supports (plenty of APC loyalists are even more upset with Kabiyesi than non-loyalists are!).

Nobody dragged the Oba into any controversy. He dragged himself in, head-first, without consulting anyone in advance; and APC leaders have wearily distanced themselves from his comments. And I don’t see what is so insensitive about Buhari continuing to campaign despite the Oba’s indiscretions.

Did Jonathan not continue to campaign when Dame P was in full toxic flow?!

And, by the way, while I understand why some folks care about the whole traditional ruler thing, I am a staunch modernist, within this context at least; and I am not remotely interested in the opinions of traditional rulers, unless they are known for achievements beyond merely inheriting or purchasing titles!